Milchick is tasked with doing damage control…

There are a lot of lies this week. Some are revealed as lies told earlier, some are fresh to us but if there’s one thing which characterises Lumon and its people it’s this: they lie.

They lie to themselves.

They lie directly to your face with a smile and a reasonable tone.

People find it impossible to tell truth from fiction under such circumstances because what are you supposed to do except take what someone says on face value or press the nuclear button and consider them to lie when they’re breathing.

The problem with the latter, although it’s easy to say, is that its implications are beyond challenging. If you have someone in your life who you believe is lying to you all the time how are you supposed to treat with them? It is that much worse if that person has power and can exercise it with only the suggestion of your consent.

Many companies (as well as people) operate on this kind of proviso. They tell you what you think you want to hear in order to get your superficial consent for what they really want to do.

The problem of their lies is that when called out on them they will lie again. There are no rules that can bind them because people who value the truth too often believe that the truth, by itself, acts as some kind of disinfectant.

As shown by reality and by this show, the truth spouted into the air like a spray of spit does nothing more than disappear into nothing while accomplishing less.

For truth to challenge lies it has to be weaponised, backed up and sharpened to cut with action. It is why Lumon fear Ms Cobel so much, why that true believer, now rejected and still not over it, is their most dangerous enemy. If she chooses to be and, for someone like Harmony Cobel, who’s drunk their lies into her soul, the change might be simply too big to make.

One does not turn away from lies but must climb out of the hole they excavate and that process is a fight, a clawing up through the dirt even as the hole gets deeper. It is all too easy to fall back in.

People love lies because while we’re fighting to get clear of them they can get on with the actual deeds they had in mind. Too often, by the time we’re clear of the fakery, the real problems have become entrenched and intractable.

If there’s one person at the centre of all these lies it Helena/Helly. Britt Lower’s performance is mesmerising, chilling, thrilling. She casts a ghostlike presence across both worlds and as both characters but they are different people. They walk and talk and feel different things and while Helly R is a free spirit, the power at Helena’s fingertips continues to leave us unsure of what she’s hiding, what she knows and what’s still to come.

As usual, the entire thing’s elevated by its cinematography, by the music and by the colours and lighting. Long panning shots of people walking become something marvellous to behold.

Lastly I want to talk about Dylan’s interview at Great Doors. Bizarre, double taking shenanigans that reminds us that Severance can be substituted with the word Slavery without blinking.

That someone on the outside is outraged and morally repulsed by the idea of severance/slavery should remind us how easily we accept something like the severance procedure without feeling that same disgust by virtue of how it’s presented to us. It’s frightening because we normalise it as part of a story and because the idea of voluntary economic indentureship is one that continues to sit around company boardrooms – barely being held in check by existing worker’s rights.

Zero hour contracts come from this impulse and are sold to us as a boon to your flexibility as an employee, glossing over the absolute command over your life your bosses are taking.

Severance, being an innie, being a slave, being an indentured servant. These are all shades of the same thing – one human having the right to control you.

We should hold the moral disgust of the interviewer at Great Doors in our hands and not let go.

I have a great many theories about what’s going on but I’m saving those for private chats with friends. For now though I’m still wondering who Helly R really is, who was that figure behind Mark in Episode 1 and who is the new figure representing the board with very real power and another luxurious beard

9/10 terrible lies

Stewart Hotson