‘Severance’ just gave us the best possible version of this annoying trope
For starters, she's alive.
Severance just blew the doors open on the dead wife trope–and not just because Mark’s wife Gemma isn’t actually dead. Season 2, Episode 7 “Chikhai Bardo,” which detailed the history of their relationship and revealed Gemma a.k.a. Miss Casey’s current predicament, is a win for storytelling everywhere.
People who know me and read my writing know that I find stories with male protagonists motivated by dead or kidnapped women to be pretty boring. Excuse me if I don’t aspire to be laughing under the sheets, “full of love to the point of being stupid” as Annie puts it on Community. I’m not particularly antsy to be dangled off a building by a villain just to prove a point about how nobody the hero loves is safe, either. (It’s so funny that, nine times out of ten, the guy’s response to that second scenario is to cut everyone out of his life and have zero emotional attachments. Male heroes really are something else).
We learned that Mark Scout’s (Adam Scott) wife is the wellness counselor known as Miss Casey in Severance season 1. Until that reveal, I was a little skeptical watching Severance. I thought it was playing in this tired sandbox. Darn it, Severance turned this trope inside out into an episode I will cherish forever. In under an hour, Severance re-introduced Gemma as a fully-fledged character. All movies that want to motivate their male protagonists with dead or missing women should take note! If you insist upon doing the trope, the least you can do is do it in a way where the female character is more than a plot device.
Gemma has an interior life and agency… imagine that!
We still don’t know if Gemma’s last name is Casey, Scout, Casey-Scout, or something else entirely. (Huang? Probably not at this point…) But, we learned so much about her. Gemma taught Russian literature and speaks the language. Her class goes deep on Tolstoy with The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Hadji Murat. (The syllabus is not just Anna Karenina and War & Peace.) She can recognize that it’s the thought that counts when it comes to giving gifts. (Plant farms, not ant farms, Mark!) Gemma has her own friends and likes doing tests and puzzles, possibly to her detriment.
Now, this may sound like one of Miss Casey’s lists of comforting facts about outies. The difference is that in “Chikhai Bardo” we see Gemma experience these things. We’re not just hearing about them. Show don’t tell is real, y’all! And we get a sense of her feelings about Mark and various things in her life instead of just her husband’s happy, doting memories.
As trapped as she is on the testing floor, Gemma is not a passive damsel in distress. She may not be not a relentless rebel like Helly R., but she’s not content like Dylan’s Innie or loyal like Irving’s (at the start of the series) either. She’s listless in her sterile apartment with its inflatable food, a stereo, and a single shelf of books. She makes her desire to go home known and wants to be spoken to like a normal person. At the end of the episode she tries to escape. And it’s probably not her first attempt. Drummond mentions in passing that she once broke Dr. Mauer’s fingers.
Gemma is not a virtuous or angelic figure either.
This is another thing that I really like about her story as a twist on that dead/missing wife trope. We don’t 100 percent know that Lumon kidnapped her before faking her death. There’s a possibility that Gemma volunteered for this and got in over her head. If that is the case, she’s as culpable as anyone who signs up for the severance procedure. Gemma is an intelligent and well-read person. She has to know that subjecting an Innie to only experience unpleasant tasks is a form of torture. Still, flawed as she may be, she’s gotta get out of there.
I was invested in Mark S.’s quest to be reunited with his wife. I found Mark S’s enthusiasm to help locate her charming. Now I’m rooting for Gemma to be free with a renewed sense of urgency, empathy and trust in Severance. After watching so many narratives treat dead or missing female characters as collateral damage, it’s so good to see a show put in the work like this. To put it very bluntly for the people in the back: Severance cares that Mark’s wife Gemma is an actual person. Her value is not derived from a man’s love. Praise freakin’ Kier.
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