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argentnoelleon other watches of the show I felt like o!Mark was more laid back/less traumatized than i!Mark, but now I'm like no... he's just absolutely overwhelmed by grief, very bored and very depressed. His life is so meaningless.
the bits with him and Devon are a bright spot; literally his only friend is Mrs. Selvig and most of what they talk about is recycling bins; no wonder Mark just decides to take Petey at his word and invite him into his basement—Petey's the only person who's actually talked to him in what seems like forever, and he has this presence, this life and momentum that completely drags Mark along. Petey comes across as almost a secondary main character.
When Mark leaves the date with Alexa and runs into the Whole Mind Collective the kid has a line about how severed workers "never see the sun" which in this cut really hits differently because that's o!Mark. He wakes up, walks into an elevator, walks out and it's nighttime, and he goes into his house and drinks and watches TV and sleeps and then does it all over again.
He's alienated through his nightly existence by being physically cut off from people, and he's alienated socially by having undergone the severance procedure—every single time he talks to people, that's what comes up and people ask him the same questions and yeah, of course he's sick of it.
If the basement floor is hell, this outside existence is limbo. (after the party scene—he's sleeping in that 3rd bed—he's so "in between" in every single way). He tells Petey that he thinks severance is helping him, which in the original cut is ironic, but in this cut is just so painfully... idk, painful. Because you can see just how pathetic and sad and empty his life is, and even putting aside what horrors may or may not be happening to him at work, it's like—you think this is helping you? you miss your previous job, you're stuck in this absolutely drowning void, you're miserable.
the bits with him and Devon are a bright spot; literally his only friend is Mrs. Selvig and most of what they talk about is recycling bins; no wonder Mark just decides to take Petey at his word and invite him into his basement—Petey's the only person who's actually talked to him in what seems like forever, and he has this presence, this life and momentum that completely drags Mark along. Petey comes across as almost a secondary main character.
When Mark leaves the date with Alexa and runs into the Whole Mind Collective the kid has a line about how severed workers "never see the sun" which in this cut really hits differently because that's o!Mark. He wakes up, walks into an elevator, walks out and it's nighttime, and he goes into his house and drinks and watches TV and sleeps and then does it all over again.
He's alienated through his nightly existence by being physically cut off from people, and he's alienated socially by having undergone the severance procedure—every single time he talks to people, that's what comes up and people ask him the same questions and yeah, of course he's sick of it.
If the basement floor is hell, this outside existence is limbo. (after the party scene—he's sleeping in that 3rd bed—he's so "in between" in every single way). He tells Petey that he thinks severance is helping him, which in the original cut is ironic, but in this cut is just so painfully... idk, painful. Because you can see just how pathetic and sad and empty his life is, and even putting aside what horrors may or may not be happening to him at work, it's like—you think this is helping you? you miss your previous job, you're stuck in this absolutely drowning void, you're miserable.
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Date: 2023-08-19 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-19 04:20 am (UTC)(((that is one terrible coping mechanism.))) lol :) yeah when I watched that part in this version I was like "uh-huh.... sure....."
(((severance cuts him off from people socially, since it leads to the same questions over and over and people don't really look beyond that a lot of the time.))) yeah you really start to see just why Mark gets fed up with people so easily. It's because he gets this All The Time
actually, another fun thing about this version of it though is that it was also a lot funnier! Because it was a lot more of a close-in/personal story, a lot of lines or moments that were mildly funny originally became just so much funnier because they weren't standing against the SF plot.
The dynamics between characters that ended up happening between Mark & Devon, and Mark & Alexa, and Mark & Petey, ended up really being far more of a focal point in the end in a great way. So I was pleasantly surprised by how this version turned out! Although it was slow-paced, it ended up being quite satisfying and touching and good.