Severance season 2 Finale: Question Mark about Mark's Choice and Aristotle's Causes

So Severance ended its powerful Second Season with even more powerful finale.  And has now become a thin two-season tradition, the finale leaves us more unanswered questions than when this season began.  But Severance is a such a fresh and sharply original narrative, my guess is its tradition be increasingly less thin, as the years with new seasons roll by,

The above is the unspoiler part of my review.  [Here, then, is the warning about spoilers ahead ... ]

The biggest question in this finale is why Mark chooses his budding innie Love Helly instead of his deeper and longer outie love, Gemma.  Actually, we know why Mark made that choice -- his innie is falling in love with Helly -- which I've been entirely in favor of -- instead of the wife that his outie has been yearning for.  We know the proximate cause -- or what Aristotle would the "efficient" cause -- of why that happened:  Mark was his innie at the time he made that choice.

But, wait a minute.  I thought Mark's outie had been undergoing some integration process which would unify his innie and outie.  He was, and we've seen some evidence that this process was working, at least in several episodes that preceded the finale.  And, indeed, the finale took some pains to indicate there was still some separation -- aka, lack of integration -- between Mark's innie and outie.  In one of the best scenes in the series, we have Mark's two beings talking to each via recordings via a device that looks it was last used in maybe the 1980s.  That scene ended in argument and frustration.  Which of course was necessary to set up Mark's innie going his own way at the end.  (By the way, they played "Windmills of Your Mind" at the end, which was an appropriate enough choice, but I would've preferred "You Can Go Your Own Way".) From a narrative point of view, I think the lack of integration should have shown itself in a more predominant fashion prior to this finale.  As it was presented, it seemed like a little bit too much in one short hour, put in the hour to set up and justify the ending.  Or, to stay with Aristotelian philosophy, the efficient cause -- Mark's innie -- was a little too patly set up to justify the final cause, which was Mark's innie of course choosing Helly.

But there were some elements that were especially gratifying to see.  Mr. Drummond was an arch Lumon sadistic monster.  It was good to see him die, and it was a nice touch that we don't know if the killer was Mark's innie or outie, because he shifted from one to another in that notorious elevator, and it's pretty likely that it was the finger on the trigger undergoing the shift and twitching that pulled the trigger.  In other words, the efficient cause in the killing of Drummond is a question mark -- a question mark about which Mark pulled the trigger -- and, come to think about it, a question mark as to Mark, whether he was his innie or his outie -- deliberately pulled the trigger.  Though whereas the innie or outie is a 50/50 proposition, the deliberate or accidental question seems much likely answered as accidental.

The other scene I really liked was that woman with the goat.  She not only saved the goat, she saved Mark.  If there was an Emmy Award for actor who saved both the star of the series and a goat, it would be this woman.  (Ok, the character's name is Lorne, and actor's name is Gwendoline Christie).  And the goat's performance was pretty impressive, too.  It had a name, too -- Emile.  Hey, how about an Emmy for Emile for best non-human actor in a series?

Back to what I thought could have been better: I'd say Milchick could have had a bigger role.  I mean, locked in a bathroom only gives you so much room for exposition, and when he was out of the bathroom he really didn't do that much, either.

But, all in all, Severance established itself in this second season as an exceptionally original and remarkable science fiction series.  I'll be back here with reviews of the third season as soon as it's up on Apple TV+.

See also Severance 2.1: Ultimate Fake News? ... Severance 2.2: MultipleDylans ... 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 ... 2.8 Nordic Noir and Charles Babbage

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

Top of the Lake: China Girl: Top of the Genre

My wife and I saw all six episodes of Top of the Lake: China Girl on Sundance last night.  It was that good.  The first season a few years back took a little longer, and not just because it had seven episodes.  It was compelling and memorable, but meandered down side stories a little too often.  In contrast, China Girl was even more compelling, and tight as a drum in its complex, multi-tiered plot.

Elisabeth Moss is back as Robin Griffin, a detective with a palette of smarts, passions, and vulnerabilities like none you've ever seen on television (I guess Gillian Anderson as Stella Gibson in The Fall would be about the closest, but even she is figuratively as well as literally continents apart from Robin).   Robin's back in Sydney from her visit in season 1 to New Zealand, this time to investigate the death of a prostitute who turns out to have been part of a surrogate mother ring.  Robin's personal life is woven in perfectly - which is to say sometimes harrowingly, sometimes lovingly - into the plot, including her 17-year old daughter last seen by Robin shortly after she was born.  Moss's performance is incandescent.

Her police partner is a nice surprise - Miranda Hilmarson played by Gwendoline Christie from Game of Thrones, with Christie showing a much greater gamut of acting talent than she did on Thrones.  Robin and Miranda are a complicated, ultimately powerful team, alternately screaming at and consoling each other, and one of the best scenes in this series is the two of them sitting on a dock, coming to terms.

There are paucity of really worthwhile men in this story - I'd say maybe one and a half - with the majority being liars, psychos, sleazes, and killers.  But that's the story, the scoundrels are very well acted, and some of the women are close to despicable and well acted, too, including Nicole Kidman (with grey hair) as the adoptive mother of Robin's daughter.

The plot contains all kinds of twists, some sudden, some long and dangling, and I'd rate these six hours as among the best ever on television.  Kudos to Jane Campion who wrote and created this.