I will eradicate from my essence childish folly
you must grow up
This post contains spoilers for Severance S2E6, “Attila”.
In season 2, episode 6 of Severance, Mr. Milchick addresses his flaws. He properly paperclips stacks of papers until his hands shake. (“Incorrect use of paper clips.”) He looks into the mirror and repeats out loud a sentence he spoke a few moments ago to Miss Huang. “You must eradicate from your essence childish folly.” He tries again. (“Uses too many big words.”) “You must eradicate from yourself childish folly.” “You must abandon childish things.” “You must grow up.”
“Grow up.”
“Grow.”
Mr. Milchick simplifies and strips down his language to the point where he’s only giving himself a basic, primal command. In the prior episode of the show, Milchick cautiously reaches out, asking Natalie—another unsevered Black employee at Lumon—what she thought of the bizarre racialized paintings they had received as gifts from the higher-ups. She’s not completely unaffected, but she rejects his attempt at connection. It’s a rare moment of vulnerability from Milchick right before he enters his performance review, where he’s dinged—by a child, nonetheless—for the very intelligence, professionalism, and respectability he exudes at work, which apparently fails to compensate for any unfair prejudices people may have.
In paring down his language, Milchick buries his intellectual prowess, putting on a mask of what feels eerily suggestive of Orwellian Newspeak—the language of an authoritarian government that seeks to suppress its subjects’ ability to think critically or express their full range of thoughts and emotions.1
It’s a deprivation that the innies on the severed floor face on a regular basis. Many fans of the show have likened the innies’ experiences to that of children growing up, children who know very little about the world apart of their immediate surroundings and who are shielded from important information for allegedly their own good.
This season, we’ve gotten the sense that Seth Milchick might actually care about the innies, a little. With just four episodes left, we’re approaching the end.2 Could this episode be a twisting point? I don’t deal in predictions, but if Burt G.—whose story about undergoing severance to have a chance at getting into heaven with his husband becomes less believable once Fields lets slip that Burt’s been working at Lumon for much longer than initially implied—is revealed to be on the other side, then maybe Mr. Milchick will be soon having a change of heart and allegiance.
Totalitarian governments, notably, love to attack education and suppress free speech.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO