Good News About Hell

"**Good News About Hell**" is the first episode in the first season of the Apple TV+ thriller series ***Severance***. It was released along with the next episode on the eighteenth of February in 2022.

## Synopsis

Mark is promoted to lead a team who've had their memories surgically divided between their work and personal lives.

## Plot

### Intro

A 30-ish, redheaded woman lies face down on a table in a conference room. A male voice coming from a speaker on the table asks, "Who are you?" It asks again, "Who are you?" and she stirs. She looks at the speaker, bleary as she wakes up, and says, "Hello?" She rubs her necks as if in some pain. The voice says, "I'm sorry. I got ahead of myself," then pauses and starts again, as if reading from a script: "Hi there, you on the table. I wonder if you'd mind taking a brief survey." She asks, "Who is that?" The voice says, "Five questions. Now I know you're sleepy but I just bet it'll make you feel right as rain." "Who's speaking??" she asks. She climbs off the table and stumbles toward the door which she finds locked. She calls out, "Hey! Open the door!" As she looks around the room, the voice says, "I'd be just thrilled to chat once we've run the survey. Shall we begin with question one?" She presses on a wall, testing it, and then says defiantly to the speaker, "I'm not taking your survey." The voice says again, "Shall we begin with question one?" She says, "Let me out of here." She circles the room, arriving back at the door and bangs on it and kicks it and yells, "Hey! Open the door!" She yanks on the door handle and continues yelling, "Hey! Let me out!" She eventually falls to floor, panting from the effort. Defeated, she says calmly to the speaker, from her spot on the floor, "Hey." "Hello," the voice says. "Five questions," she says. "Five questions," the voice repeats. "What do I get at the end?" she asks. "Depends on your answers." "Okay," she says. "Great," the voice says. "Off we go. To start: Who are you?"

She says in disbelief, "That's the first question?" "First name will do," the voice says. She thinks for several seconds and then says, "I don't…." "That's okay," the voice says. "If you can't answer the question, feel free to say, 'unknown.'" "What is this?" she asks. "Okay. Unknown," the voice says. "Question two: In what U.S. state or territory were you born?" "Wait," she says, waving her hands. "What state or U.S. territory, please," the voice says. "I don't know." "Unknown. Question three: Please name *any* U.S. state or territory. First that comes to mind." "Fuck. I don't know. Delaware. What is this?" "Delaware. Question four: What is Mr. Eagan's favorite breakfast?" "I don't… That one makes no sense." "Alright. Unknown. Question five, and as a reminder, this is the final question: To the best of your memory what is or was the color of your mother's eyes?" She shakes her head in disbelief and then realizes with great sadness she doesn't know the answer. She asks herself softly, "Okay, what's… what's happening?" The voice says, "Unknown. So that's unknown, unknown, Delaware, unknown, unknown." "What the hell did you do to me?" she asks. The door opens and she pulls back in fear, still sitting on the floor. A forty-something man in a suit stands in the shadow of the doorway and says, "That's a perfect score." She regards him in fear and confusion.

### Act One

The man sits in his car and cries. He pulls himself together, checks his watch, gets out of the car, and walks across a parking lot to a large office building. There is snow on the ground. He enters the large lobby of the building and shows his badge to the receptionist without saying a word. She picks up her phone, types a number, and asks, "Are you ready for Mr. Scout?" After a long pause, she says, "Thank you," and hangs up the phone. "Go ahead," she says, and he proceeds across a huge lobby/atrium area with a large Lenin-like image in the middle of the space. He walks down some stairs, passes a sign saying SVR'D ACCESS, and uses his key card to enter a locker room. He removes his coat and watch and places them, along with his phone and money clip/wallet (with his driver's license showing), in the locker from which he takes a different watch and i.d. badge. He trades his winter boots for dress shoes. He leaves the locker room and greets a security guard who greets him by name ("Mr. Scout") and passes a wand detector all over him before saying, "See you this evening." "Yep, see you soon," Mr. Scout says and gets on the small elevator next to the guard's desk. As the elevator comes to a stop, we hear an electronic *bing*, Mr. Scout closes his eyes, we hear another *bing*, and he opens his eyes. He appears to have changed from being tired and bored to having a more neutral demeanor. He exits the elevator to cheesy, Muzak-like music and walks through several hallways. He finds a tissue in his pocket (that he used when crying) and appears confused at seeing it before he throws it in the trash. He sniffs several times and coughs, but continues walking and appears relaxed and happier as he goes (and the "happy" music continues). He arrives at a large room with four desks at its center and sits at one and turns on its computer. He has a lighted lucite figure of himself on his desk with the inscription "Mark S - Allentown." A voice says, "You're breathing shitty. You sick?" "Sorry," Mark says. "Maybe. Petey was sniffling yesterday." We see it's Dylan in one of the other desk/cubicles and he says, "If you breathe on me I'll rip your larynx out." As they banter, Irv enters and says, "Hi, kids. What's for dinner?" Dylan complains about Irv's corny joke greeting. They talk about the missing Petey.

Mr. Milchick enters and greets them and asks Mark to come with him for a word. Milchick escorts Mark to Ms. Cobel's office. Mark asks, "What's this about?" Milchick ignores the question and encourages Mark to complement Ms. Cobel on her new office. They enter the Administration area and go into Ms. Cobel's office. Mark compliments her office and when she says, "Ugh. It's horrid," he says, "Yeah, the old one was better." She tells him he looks hung over, then plugs in the speaker on her desk and says, "The board will be joining us today." She announces that she has Mark S. at her desk and then sits without speaking, with Milchick standing behind her. Mark tries to fill the silence by talking about how he has subbed for Petey before but she cuts him off and says Petey is no longer with the company. Milchick says, "I'm sorry, Mark. You guys were one of my favorite office friendships." Milchick tells him non-disclosure policy forbids them from telling Mark why Petey is gone, saying, "We'd be aiding an assault on Petey's privacy by you." Cobel tells Mark to put his key card on her desk. She stands and formally tells him he is the new department chief of Macrodata Refinement and tells him, "A handshake is available upon request." He asks, with equal formality, for a handshake. She shakes his hand, though she clearly doesn't want to. Milchick hands him a binder while Cobel tells him he'll be running his first training, Irv will shadow him, and he'll be fine at it. ("Just stick to the flow chart and escalate properly depending on dialectics.") Mark thanks the board, to which Cobel says, "The board won't be contributing to this meeting … vocally." Mark leaves.

In a dark room with a video monitor, Mark and Irv discuss Petey's departure. (Irv: "He was the only one who really appreciated your humor.") They discuss the "training" they are about to begin. Milchick is present and tells Mark, "Just start at 1A and continue by line depending on her answers." Mark finds the portion of the instructions that says, "The trainee must ask to leave three times before you can let them leave the room," and Mark underlines "three times." They turn on a monitor and see Helly lying unconscious on the table in the conference room. Milchick leaves and we then see the opening scene from the point of view of Mark and Irv as Helly awakens and Mark gives Helly the survey, reading from the script in his binder after his initial mis-start. When Helly rattles the conference room door, we see that Mark and Irv are on the door's other side. Irv says, "She's not supposed to do that. She's going to break in." "No she's not," Mark says.

Milchick enter's Cobel's office where Cobel is watching Helly's "training." Milchick offers to help but Cobel tells him he should not. Mark opens the conference room door and tells Helly, "That's a perfect score." He enters and says, "Now I think I know where our disconnect is coming from." He is improvising rather than reading from the script. He explains that he "unfortunately skipped" the preamble that he was supposed to read before the survey questions. "I am livestock?" Helly asks. "Did you grow me as food and that's why I have no memory?" He laughs and tells her no, and then tells her her name is Helly R. and asks her to sit at the table as he tries to calm her. She nervously sits at the table and he resumes reading from the script, thanking her for taking the survey and saying, "I can sense you feel afraid or disoriented." He tries to reassure her by smiling in a friendly (though forced) way, but she continues to eye him suspiciously. He tells her she's at "the severed floor" at Lumon Industries. "The *what* floor?" she asks. He pages through the binder, looks nervously at the camera through which others are watching, and says, "I understand you are confused about the severance procedure." He begins to read about "the work-life balance" and when he says, "Imagine yourself as a see-saw," she stands, grabs the speaker on the table, and throws it at Mark, hitting him on his forehead and causing him to yell in pain. She runs to the door and begins rattling it again. He yells, "Fuck!" in pain and then, "That locks from out there!"

She yells, "Let me out!" He stands and, talking off-script, and asks, "Can we just take a beat? Please." He sits again, asks her to sit, touches the wound on his head, looks back at the binder, and then decides to talk to her without the script. He says his name is Mark and tells about his own experience her in situation and how the voice quizzing him, who he resolved to kill, turned out to be his "best friend" Petey. He says, "There is a life to be had here, Helly." She is disbelieving. He begins reading again, "You see, life, like a see-saw—" but she grabs the binder and they struggle for it. "Let me the fuck out of here!" she yells at him. He looks nervously at the camera again (as we see Cobel and Irv watching separately). "Ask me again," he says. She asks again (for a third time) and he reads from the script, saying, "I hate to keep you somewhere you're not happy. So let's get you outta here." He leads her down the hallway and tells her she's a "replacement." "Replacement for who?" she asks, and, "Why are you saying it like you hate it?" He ignores her questions.

### Act Two

They come to a side hallway and he gestures around the corner and says, "Here's your stairwell. Just around the bend," but doesn't step around the corner with her. "You're not coming with me?" she asks. "Oh, I'm not allowed to see," he says. She's confused. "I just can't watch you leave," he says. "Of course you can't," she says with a derisive sneer and heads for the exit at the end of the side hallway.

She hesitates at the "exit" door, which has a sign above it saying SVR'D THRESHOLD / RESTRICTED. She looks through the window in the door and sees what appears to be an exterior stairwell. She pushes the door open and steps through, only to find herself back in the same side hallway, facing back the way she came with the door behind her. "What .. the hell," she says, looks back and forth, and again pushes through the door and again finds herself back inside the door. She gets a running start and pushes fast through the door and is gone. Mark, standing around the corner where he can't see the door, checks his watch. After a few seconds Helly comes back through the door. She comes back to Mark and asks, "Am I dead?" "No," he says. "This is like hell or something?" she asks. "No," he says. "Then why the fuck can't I leave?" "You did leave," he says. "Just now. Out into the stairwell at least. You left, but you came back." "I did not." "You did. C'mon," he says, and turns and walks back the way they came.

Milchick puts a band-aid on Marks wounded forehead outside Cobel's office as Cobel speaks to Helly inside the office. "Weaponizing office equipment on your first day," she says. "You are gonna be fun. Look, I do sympathize. I've wanted to pummel Mark myself but I am his employer and he is your department chief, so we'll both have to be strong. The good news is that there's only one part left of your orientation and which Mark can't possibly derail." "Why is that?" Helly asks. "Because it's a video," Cobel says, taking a disc out of her desk drawer. "Welcome to Lumon, Helly." Helly picks up the disc, which has "Helly R" printed on its sleeve, looks at Cobel and Milchick with great skepticism, and leaves the office. She passes Mark outside the office where he stands with the band-aid on his forehead.

Mark enters Cobel's office and sits. He asks her if she's mad at him. "For the incompetence or the disobedience?" she asks. He starts to speak but she cuts him off in anger. "Yes!" she says. She then calms and says her mother was an atheist who used to say there was good news & bad news about hell. The good news is that hell is just the product of a morbid human imagination. The bad news is that whatever humans can imagine they can usually create. Mark says he doesn't know what that means. She says, "A department like yours can go so good or so bad. You know what makes the difference? The people."

Back in MDR, Helly watches the video of her Outie self (calling herself "Helly R." and reading from note cards) explaining that she is making the video about two hours "before it will be shown … to me." Innie Helly while watching the video becomes progressively more interested in it as it plays. "I have of my own free accord elected to undergo the procedure colloquially known as severance," Outie Helly continues. "I give consent for my perceptual chronologies to be surgically split, separating my memories between my work life and my personal life. I acknowledge that henceforth my access to my memories will be spatially dictated." Mark turns from his computer and looks over at Helly watching the video. Outie Helly says, "I will be unable to access outside recollections whilst on Lumon's severed basement floor, nor retain work memories upon my ascent. I am aware that this … alteration is comprehensive and irreversible." Innie Helly looks behind her at Mark and the others in disbelief. "I make these statements freely," Outie Helly concludes. Milchick says, "Okay. That's a wrap," and stops the video. Helly looks at him, stunned. "Okay," he says to her. "Go ahead." As he powers down the video equipment, she rises slowly and walks to the center of the room where Mark, Irv, and Dylan sit at their desks.

"So I'll never leave here," she says with evident disgust. "You'll leave at five," Mark says. "Well, actually they stagger exits, so five-fifteen. But it won't feel like it, not to this version of you, anyway." "Do I have a family?" she asks. "You'll never know," Mark says. "And I have no choice," she says. "Well, every time you find yourself here it's because you chose to come back," he says, and turns back to his computer. Dylan gives her a curious look as she sits at her computer. Irv says hello, trying to look reassuring. She gives a pained smile and turns to her computer. Milchick wheels the video equipment out of the office.

### Act Three

Mark gets on the elevator to leave the severed basement floor. As the elevator climbs, we hear the first *bing*, he closes his eyes and them opens them after the second *bing*. He passes the security guard, saying goodnight in a tired voice. He reverses the morning process in the locker room, switching badges and watches, pausing to look briefly at his new, blue inside badge, and leaving the building through the impossibly large lobby. He finds an envelope on his car windshield with "Mr. Scout" on the outside and a card inside that says, "Dear Mark, Whilst carrying boxes in a room today, you slipped on an overhead projector slide and sustained a minor blow to the temple. Enclosed please find a VIP gift card to Pip's Bar and Grill. Congratulations on the gift card." While he reads it he touches his temple and then finds the band-aid on his forehead, and then finds the Pip's VIP card in the envelope as well. As he drives through the parking lot, he removes his badge lanyard from around his neck and while distracted doesn't see Helly walking in front of his car, carrying flowers. He stops in a skid as she yells, "Hey!" and he apologizes. "Maybe keep your eyes on the icy road," she says as she walks on. "Sorry," he says again, somewhat put upon, and drives out of the empty parking lot.

Mark drives through a wintery landscape to a neighborhood labeled Baird Creek Manor. He goes into his home and drinks a beer while watching TV in a mostly dark room. The next morning he wheels a garbage bin to the curb and then we see him on the phone with Mrs. Sevig explaining that "it was in my space again. Well, trash comes tomorrow night. *Tonight's* recycling. Yeah, it is weird, but that's how they do it and with both yours there's no room—" We cut to Mark inside when he hear a knock on the door. He opens to the door to find a woman about his age who looks at him for a beat and then says, "Did you forget?" It's his sister Devon who takes him to a "dinner" gathering where's the no actual dinner. She jokes about being a better sibling to him when they were kids and then seriously says they're "nearing the anniversary so maybe you'd want to be around people." "Nope," he says. She notices his wounded head and he says, "It's fine. I got a gift card."

He meets his brother-in-law at the door and calls him Rick but Ricken corrects him ("Ricken. C'mon. It's 'Ricken.'") and then says Marks looks "at peace." The group of six sits at a dinner table with only glasses of water in front of them and talk inanely about the unimportance of food. Mark is asked about his "take on all of this" (about food) given that he was a history professor, but he says, "I'm not sure. I taught mostly about World War One?" Ricken's friend Patton asks a dumb question to which Mark points out that people didn't call it World War One at the time because World War Two hadn't happened yet. Ricken mentions that Mark's late wife Gemma taught Russian literature. They then talk about Mark at Lumon, where he has been "for about two years." They mention that Lumon makes "medicines" and other things ("What *don't* they make?"), but Mark says he works in "the corporate archives division" and so doesn't know about the products. Ricken says Mark's work "is sensitive enough as to require the severance procedure," which leads to an awkward conversation about the controversy over the procedure. Danise says, "I just don't grasp the visceral element. What does it *feel* like?" and Patton says the Innie "version of you is … trapped there. Not trapped, but…." Mark takes exception to this and asks Patton what he was going to say — "But *what*?" — but Patton drops his head and doesn't answer. Danise, noting Mark's anger, says in a quiet, accusing tone, "So I suppose we know where *you* fall on the congressional goings on." Ricken, in his typically pompous way, says the procedure and Mark's decision to undergo it are controversial "ethically, socially, morally, scientifically, but Mark, I stand behind you, without reservation." Others agree, and Mark is superficially polite in thanking them despite his irritation at their ignorance.

After the others are gone, Devon makes Mark a sandwich and jokingly offers to purchase his forgiveness for her friends' cluelessness. He mentions her coming baby. She asks about his therapist whom she guesses he's no longer seeing. He only says, "The work thing's helped." She says she's proud of him for taking "that job. I really am. And I think she would have been, too. I *know* she would have been. I just think that … forgetting about her for eight hours a day isn't the same thing … as healing." Mark considers this but doesn't respond. She jokes about Danise's dumb question, saying, "I'm just not grasping the visceral element of it." Mark spends the night at Devon and Ricken's house, and while in the kitchen in the middle of the night getting a glass of water, sees someone outside. He goes to the door and sees a man in a suit standing in the snow in the yard. A car passes, and when it's headlights are gone, so is the man. The next morning he again looks out the window at the spot where the man was standing. He tells Devon, "The was a … business man in the yard last night. … He looked at me weird, like he knew me." Devon jokes, "Did the prowler invading my home make you feel seen?" and then says, "There's a bar down the hill. It was probably just a stumbler."

At home, Mark is on a ladder as he cleans a gutter. He looks off in the distance, pondering. Later at Pip's, looking frazzled, he gets a call from Mrs. Selvig and again starts discussing garbage night versus recycling night. He says he's out having dinner by himself when a man sits at his table across from and him and tells him to hang up quickly. Mark recognizes him as the man he saw in Devon's yard the night before. Mark hangs up, and the man says, "Hi, kids. What's for dinner?" When Mark is confused, the man says, "Sorry. You don't get that reference." "You following me?" Mark asks. "Your voice is different here," the man says. "Worse." Mark asks him who he is. "Petey," the man says. "My name's Petey. I'm from work." He says he was severed, and when Mark says severance is "pretty permanent" Petey says, "Yeah. Bypassing the implant wasn't easy. I had help." Mark says, "So you were unhappy at work so instead of lodging a complaint, you…" "No," Petey says. "I tried that first. So did you." Mark, coming up to speed quickly, says, "So now you've unsevered and now you ... what? They're after you or something?" "Yeah," says Petey. "'They' being Graner. He's probably out here right now." "Graner," says Mark. "Is that like a person you knew…?" "We both know him," say Petey. "We don't like him." Petey gives Mark a red envelope and says, "Nothing down there is like they say. If something happens to me, the things I know … need to stay known. I prefer it'd be by a friend." Petey gets up quickly and starts to leave. "So … we're friends?" Mark asks. "I'm your *best* friend," Petey says. "You're my very good friend," he says, and then leaves.

Mark sits in his car and takes a card out of the envelope. It's a birthday card to a niece which Mark opens and we hear what's written in Petey's voice. After a joke about the niece's birthday card, the card reads, "We used to wonder about the men we were on the outside, what choices we had made and why. I used to think it would take a monster to put someone in a place like that office, especially if the person was himself. But we're not monsters, Mark, not real ones. If you don't want to know what's going on down there, I won't force it. But if you do, there's an address on the back of this card. Go alone, and you'll find the beginning of a very long answer." Mark turns the card over to see the address 499 Half Loop Rd. Mark shakes his head and gets out of his car. He is at home. Mrs. Selvig appears and apologizes for the "mixup with the bins" and asks him how dinner was. Mark says he's tired. She says her mother was a Catholic who used to say that "it takes a saint eight hours to bless a sleeping child. I hope you weren't rushing the saints." "Well," he says, "I'll give 'em ample time tonight." He says goodnight and she says, "Mark, you're good people." He smiles and walks away without responding, turning back once to look at her again before going inside.

## Cast

### Starring

* Adam Scott as Mark Scout
* Britt Lower as Helena Riggs
* Zach Cherry as Dylan George
* John Turturro as Irving Bailiff
* Patricia Arquette as Harmony Cobel
* Tramell Tillman as Seth Milchick
* Jen Tullock as Devon Scout-Hale
* Michael Chernus as Ricken Hale
* Dichen Lachman as Ms. Casey (credit only)
* Christopher Walken as Burt Goodman (credit only)

### Guest

* Michael Cumpsty as Doug Graner (credit only)
* Yul Vazquez as Peter Kilmer

### Co-starring

* Annie McNamara as Danise
* Donald Webber Jr. as Patton
* Grace Rex as Rebeck
* Anthoula Katsimatides as Florence
* Mark Kenneth Smaltz as Judd
* Marc Geller as Kier Eagan (credit only)
* Jeff McCarthy as Nature Documentary Voice

## Trivia

* This is the pilot episode.
* There is a mural at the lobby, resembling science fiction author Philip K. Dick. Dick's work echoes all of the themes (memory, identity, concensual reality) present in the series.
* The watch worn by Mark before starting work (seen while in his car and while he's changing before checking in) looks like a Russian Vostok Komandirskie military watch.

## Gallery

* Promotional
* Screenshots