Severance 2.8: Nordic Noir and Charles Babbage

So, Nordic Noir is one of my favorite genres.  It usually takes place either in Scandinavia or Iceland (which I don't think is part of Iceland, but don't quote me on it).  At its best, the genre combines crime with scenery so cold you want to put on an L. L. Bean winter coat indoors -- wait, I think anything (like the latest True Detective) that takes place in Alaska is also a kind of Nordic Noir -- but getting back to this eighth episode of the second season of Severance, which we're told in the creators' epilogue takes place in Newfoundland, it certainly delivers a deep Nordic Noir chill.

As for the story ... [here's the spoilers ahead advisory ...]

Well, as for the story, it pretty much delivers one thing, but that one thing is pretty important: Harmony Cobel is apparently the inventor of the severance process!  I mean, it's not clear if she actually built it, but she came up with the designs for the process, including how to deal with its complications, and that's impressive.  I guess this makes her the Charles Babbage of Severance.  (Babbage came up with the design for our digital computers -- his analytical engine in 1837 -- which Turning liberated from paper into the ancestors of the digital computer more than a hundred years later, and we all have in our laptops and phones today, which my students tell me is in turn now in the process of being transformed again into astronomically-fast quantum computers, even as I'm writing and your reading this).

I doubt that Lumon will have much to do with quantum computing -- though, come to think of it, Cold Harbour could be some kind of code for quantum computing --  but as of now, Lumon seems very much rooted in the 19th century, almost literally so.  On the other hand, in addition to Cold Harbour, since Severance is science fiction, anything that in retrospect is plausible could well be the way this season goes.

See you back here next week.

See also Severance 2.1: Ultimate Fake News? ... Severance 2.2: Multiple Dylans ... Severance 2.3: Innies<->Outies ... Severance 1.4: Innies Out in the Snow ... 2.5: Watermelon Man ... 2.6: Tables ... 2.7: Gemma and the Dentist

And see also Severance 1.1-1.2:  Erving Goffman Meets The Prisoner ... Severance 1.3: The History and the Neighbor ... Severance 1.4: Deadly Ambiguity ... Severance 1.5: Second Lives ... Severance 1.6: Lumon on the Outside ... Severance 1.7: Overtime Contingency ... Severance 1.8: Fired, Kissed, Almost Fired ... Severance: Season One Finale: Stunning Revelations

Emergence 1.6: The People Who Are Kindred

Emergence checked in with another strong episode - 1.6 - this week, and brought us to two surprising revelations.  Both concern Kindred.

One is that Kindred didn't invent or create the android that is Piper.  It turns out that the well-named Alan Wilkis did - well-named because he has the same first name, spelled the same way, as Alan Turing.  He was the genius who in real history broke the German Enigma Code (which in many ways was responsible for our winning the Second World War), perfected the basis for the digital computer, and left us with the iconic Turing test: if an AI is indistinguishable in its intelligence from human intelligence, then by what logic can we say that the AI lacks human intelligence?

But Alan Wilkis not Kindred as the creator of Piper was not as surprising as what hits us at the end of this episode.  That Second Life-like virtual apparition or avatar of Kindred that keeps drawing Piper into his conversation and into his world turns out to be none other than Emily - or at least, her apparition or avatar.  And this twist of Emily from the hunted to the hunter changes everything, or would seem to, because we still don't know what's really going on.

But I like Emily as a Keyser Soze character, who starts as a vulnerable victim and turns out to be the one who, at least at this point, is pulling the strings.  What it strongly suggests is Emergence has all kinds of tricks up its sleeve.  It's rare that I literally have no idea where a series is heading, certainly rare after the sixth episode.   But Emergence has managed to do that, in an intriguing way, and keeps making me want to watch it more and more.

See also: Emergence: May Just Make It ... Emergence 1.2: Cleaning Up ... Emergence 1.3: Robots and Androids ... Emergence 1.4: Android Child ... Emergence 1.5: Supergirl





The androids are coming out into the open, for the first time in centuries ....