The Mark/Mark/Helly/Helena square gives me the heebie-jeebies
Mark S. (Adam Scott) started his work at Lumon as an innocent man on the team. Now, he’s caught in a love square and is anyone else freaked out by this? This week’s Severance had everyone catching the hooking up bug. For better or worse.
In season 2, episode 6 titled “Attila” we get to see Mark and Helly R. (Britt Lower) rekindling their romance. Mark tells her that he slept with Helena (Lower) but thought it was Helly at the time. As a way of moving past it, Helly says that she’s angry that Helena took that from her and wants to have sex with Mark on her own.
So the two go into an abandoned office to be alone. If Helena hadn’t essentially sexually assaulted Mark S. two episodes before (since he did not know who he was actually sleeping with), I’d think that the romance between Helly and Mark was cute, despite Mark S. knowing that his outie’s wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) was still alive.
But then the episode took another turn that made my skin crawl: Helena Eagan showed up at a Chinese restaurant that Mark Scout was eating at. She joins him, talks with him, and is invading his privacy all while Mark Scout is unaware that the two technically had sex with each other. Helena in this moment knows because she was the one there to have sex with Mark on the company retreat.
While the romances of the innies vs. their outies can be cute, it does blur lines and become a little wonky given the practicality of their situations. But the Mark S./Helly/Helena/Mark Scout square went from cute to unnerving in the last few episodes and it is hard to wrap my head around it all.
I want to love Mark S. and Helly R. but Helena ruined it
My feelings on Mark S. and Helena sleeping together are not great. It made me uncomfortable knowing that Helena was aware of what she was doing and Mark thought he was sleeping with Helly. It’s basically like if identical twins switched places but didn’t tell the person sleeping with them in my mind. Helly R., in this case, is innocent though.
So even though Mark S. though he was (potentially since we don’t really know) losing his innie virginity to Helly, he still was there for Helly R. when she wanted what Helena took from her. On the one hand, I do think that is sweet. The two have each other and are willing to fight Lumon with the other. But Mark S. knows who Helly’s outie is. He can love her all he wants but I don’t understand how he can trust the situation.
Helena coming to Mark in the outside world, saying Gemma’s name wrong, and acting as if she doesn’t know what she did to his innie is another level of overstepping and while it shows the depravity of “Lumon” and all those in charge, it doesn’t make me feel great about the Mark S. and Helly R. love story happening on the severed floor.
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