The Box Set: "Severance Season Two."
Deconstructing Ep. 10, the season finale, "Cold Harbor."
This is a weekly examination of each new “Severance” episode. It contains spoilers, so if you haven’t watched, come back when you have.
Do you trust yourself?
That ended up being a key element of the second season of “Severance” and it might be a question you ask yourself, with a little devilish add on: “Do you trust yourself to be a good judge of a season finale that’s also a cliffhanger?”
I think you are.
Because we were always going to get a cliffhanger, no mater what happened. The show had to go on and erasing the existence of the Innies didn’t seem like a great plot turn, though in shows like “Severance” you’re never quite sure what can be undone or not, what can be changed by rules nobody seems to completely understand and also an audience’s overall willingness just to “go with it” and be entertained.
However, what “Severance” managed to do with “Cold Harbor” was a clever little parlor trick that ended up making the ending both a good choice and also wildly entertaining.
Of course, it was already wildly entertaining before the ending and perhaps a more false note or different turn would have annoyed a larger group of the audience than this one likely did (the assumption, as always, is that just like the long-delayed rarity of the “Cold Harbor” MDR project, reaching 100 percent acceptance rate on a finale is a near impossibility — or will always be ruined by someone pushing in the opposite direction).
Instead of quibbling about what we didn’t get — and there were several notable non-answers — I think it’s more important to focus on what we did get, which was a pretty great episode and a number of compelling directions that Season 3 might take.
Strike up the (marching) band and let’s close out this installment of The Box Set by looking deeper at the “Cold Harbor” finale episode.
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