Praise Kier! A new cursed Severance food is here.
Season 1 of Apple TV+’s workplace thriller introduced the world to melon spreads, egg bars, waffle parties, and a variety of other cursed foods that I felt compelled to rank. Though we’re only two episodes into Season 2, a delicious, suspicious new contender has appeared: pineapple.
The tropical fruit first popped up in the Season 2 premiere’s “Lumon Is Listening” video, when Keanu Reeves — I mean the Lumon administrative building — explained to Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Irving (John Turturro) that “pineapple bobbing” was one of their exciting new Severance Reform incentives.
In Season 2, Episode 2, Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) showed up to Mark’s house in hopes of convincing him to return to work post-Overtime Contingency chaos. But because he has impeccable manners, he didn’t come empty-handed. He brought a Lumon fruit basket, featuring a pineapple as the star of the show.
Milchick also brought pineapple gift baskets to Dylan and Irving’s outies to entice them to return to work after he fired them. And before the episode ended and Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) had a heated conversation with Mark outside their homes, she dropped the curious p-word, too.
After learning that Mark had yet to sever himself from Lumon, Cobel said, “I thought you were quitting. They convinced you to stay? Was a pineapple involved? You’re so easy to sway.”
As noted on The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller & Adam Scott, Cobel knows all of Lumon’s tricks, so she was able to easily predict the pineapple move. But are the Severance Season 2 pineapples just pineapples, or do they hold a deeper meaning?
Hungry for answers, I asked Severance creator/writer/EP Dan Erickson for the tea, or the pineapple juice, if you will. His response? “There’s always a deeper significance.”
*Ms. Cobel scream*
It’s the dead of winter in Severance Season 2, so pineapples aren’t “in season,” right?! Is the fruit grown in-house like their doors?! Are the pineapples…contaminated with something capable of altering a brain? Or is that just what they want us to think? And crucially, why wouldn’t Lumon simply use regular old apples — or another smaller, non-painful fruit — for bobbing? Do I have to do a deep dive on the history of pineapples right now? Dan Erickson, sir. I just want to talk!
Perhaps Erickson’s comments suggest that on Lumon’s fruit hierarchy, pineapples are simply superior to melons, so they busted them out make amends with the innies and outies. Or maybe there’s something more nefarious at play?
While we wait for answers, be sure to keep your eyes peeled (fruit joke that doesn’t work great here, but I’m rolling with it) to see if pineapples pop up again this season! Where there’s a pineapple, perhaps there’s been a Milchick delivery…
New episodes of Severance Season 2 premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.
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