Forever is a long time.

One of the obvious drawbacks of undergoing severance, is the fact that your ‘innie’ (inside-self) would always and forever be at work. They would know no other consciousness. No bright mornings waking up and smelling the coffee, no evenings out, no weekends… you’re just in a lift going down then a lift going up. Helly is not adjusting well to this.

It makes me wonder, as her increasingly desperate determination to leave continues, why her outie chose to be severed – would she not have known herself well enough to understand how she might react? I am curiouser and curiouser to know why she made the choice, or what her agenda might be. It’s both funny and horrifying.

The allegedly irreversible procedure that Petey had reversed – called ‘reintegration’ – does not seem to be going well either. He has blended and disorientating flashbacks and when Mrs Selvig breaks in to Mark’s house and he sees that she’s Cobel, things start to go even less well. It’s a tense scene, but you’ll probably remember to start breathing again when it’s over.

Follow that up with some light inter-departmental warfare, team sanity fraying at the edges, the world’s most awkward board meeting and the dullest office away-day in history and Lumon is seeming less and less attractive as an employer. That’s without finding out exactly what happens in the break room. That sense of unease and foreboding, accented throughout with the cold, stark landscape both inside and outside the facility is worsening and I’m waiting for something or someone to snap.

Verdict: A fortress of solitude with cracks in the walls that let the blackness through. 7/10

Claire Smith