Television has been waiting a long time for a show like Breakup come around. Amid reboots, franchise sequels, and Marvel shows, the AppleTV+ series is truly original. Launching in 2022, the speculative series imagines a world where employees can separate their professional lives from their private lives. This means that one version of them is never at work and only enjoys the benefits of freedom, but the other is at work all the time and never experiences anything about the outside world. The first season of Breakup considers the ethics of this as well as what the Lumon company actually does on the cut ground. With mysteries and an ’80s aesthetic, there hasn’t been a series this imaginative since Lost.
The only downside is that two years have passed since the surprising cliffhanger at the end of season 1. The four employees of the Microdata Refinement department have gotten closer to understanding what is happening, only for more questions to be introduced . Finally, fans will find out what happens to Mark, Helly, Irv and Dylan in the aftermath of the finale. But just as the characters have questions, so do viewers who need certain answers during the second season.
How many employees does Lumon spy on?
Like many detective series, Breakup introduces more questions that it can’t legitimately answer in the first season. The first big reveal is that Mark’s scatterbrained neighbor, Mrs. Selvig, is actually his boss, Cobel, undercover.. Mark lives in housing subsidized by his company but is keen to say that anyone can live there. Turns out there’s a good reason why Cobel looked out for Mark. He decided to take a eliminated job so that he would not have to suffer the grief of his wife’s death during working hours. Mark is also best friends with Petey, who is the only Lumon employee to attempt to have the severance package reversed.
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But is Mark an exception? Or do all laid-off employees have a manager just outside their periphery? Was Milchick able to get to Dylan’s house so quickly when he initiated the overtime protocol because he lived right next door? There are many things Lumon is capable of doing with seemingly unlimited resources. The answer to this question would indicate whether Mark is a special case or whether Lumon’s tentacles actually extend that far.
Can severance pay really be canceled?
Lumon’s layoff program is based on the idea that there is no way to reverse the process.. Employees who choose to move forward with the procedure are so eager to split their minds in two that they will do anything. But what happens when someone realizes they don’t want to work for the rest of their life? Petey was one of those people and reportedly had the implant removed. He quickly becomes ill and does not survive the process. When Mark learns of this, he is told that if Petey had followed proper procedures, he would have survived.
Breakup does not indicate why Petey would have deviated from treatment other than fleeing Lumon. Cobel and the Lumon board also deny that the implant is reversible, which raises many questions surrounding the procedure.. If Mark and the rest of his colleagues can’t escape Lumon, then Breakup will turn into a rather dark spectacle. Viewers want to see the characters escape the road to hell, that of corporate America.
What do microdata refiners actually do?
Typical of any corporate office job, job titles are vague enough to cause confusion. When Helly R. first wakes up on this table, she is thrust into a world where she has a vague job for an obscure company. All his colleagues have only one certainty: they are part of the Microdata Refining department. Helly makes a point of making fun of it during her training. All he’s asked to do is put together scary-sounding numbers on a computer. Even if she eventually figures out how to accomplish her task, the question still arises: What are Lumon employees actually doing here?
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Helly and Mark make their light guesses. Even Dylan has a theory about what those numbers mean. Just like in Lostthe numbers appear to have greater meaning, and it’s unclear when the public will know what that meaning is. But judging by the workplace culture, it must be something important. Lumon wouldn’t bother erasing workers’ memories if something huge wasn’t happening at the company.
What’s up with the goat room?
An underrated sci-fi show like this wouldn’t be complete without a bizarre side quest that transcends comprehension. One of the strangest events happened when Mark and Helly went on a field trip to see a room they were unfamiliar with. They come across a room full of goats while a Lumon employee is feeding them. He tells them that the goats aren’t ready yet, and Helly and Mark look for the quickest way out of there.
Helly later theorizes that the numbers they group together are related to goats. This might be as good a guess as any, but nothing is really resolved by the end of the season. Many fans wonder if this will ever be perplexing. Or is it just an addition to the story to help maintain the eerie mood? Breakup is this ok for that?
What does Gemma think happened to Mark?
Perhaps the biggest reveal of season 1 is that Mark’s wife, Gemma, is not only alive but also working at Lumon. The only reason Mark took the job at Lumon in the first place is because he is grieving the death of his wife following a car accident. Suppressing your memories for eight hours a day is a way to escape the pain. But at the end of the season, Mark learns that Gemma is actually Mrs. Casey, the wellness counselor. This revelation raises many questions, such as what Gemma’s point of view is in all of this.
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Lumon brings Mark and Gemma together to see if their implants really work, but how did Gemma get into the business? Does she also believe that her husband died in a tragic car accident and that this job is the only way to cope with this loss? Or is there something more serious going on? Even more worrying is Gemma’s dismissal at the end of the first season, leading to many fears about her ultimate fate.
What happened to Burt?
Severance pay Dark Horse in season 1 was Christopher Walken’s role as a rival department head, Burt. Optics and design are also at the forefront and are shrouded in even more mystery than the microdata refiners. Irving, in particular, becomes close to Burt and is upset when he retires. Irv had no idea that Burt was leaving the company and, in many ways, seemed like someone with Stockholm syndrome. Retirement is akin to death in Lumon because it effectively erases an entire person who has created their own memories and experiences.
It could be that the Burt storyline was introduced simply to emphasize how bad the separation is. But it’s also easy to read even further. Fraternization among coworkers is frowned upon, and Irv’s relationship with Burt wasn’t exactly a secret. It stands to reason that Burt wasn’t really on board with the idea of retiring. It might as well have been a punishment for forming attachments.
Was there really a coup?
One of Lumon’s greatest weapons is misinformation. The company keeps departments separate by pitting them against each other. Spreading gossip and fear is easy when departments are physically far apart. Before the series even begins, Dylan harbors animosity towards optics and design, believing that they are all murderers. This theory is supported by a macabre painting that allegedly depicts the coup. It’s easy to think that Lomon is spreading lies to maintain control of the cut soil.
However, it would be much scarier to think that there was a reason why Lumon had to go this far. Was there once a big battle between the departments? Lumon doesn’t seem to fear overstepping the mark when it comes to protecting the company, a metaphor for how real companies operate in the real world.
What’s going on with Irv?
Irv is the most die-hard microdata refiner, which makes him so emotional when he decides to join the department to oppose the company. Burt’s loss pushes him into action. But that still leaves the ominous aura surrounding it. Several times, Irv falls asleep at his desk, succumbing to terrible visions of a black void. When viewers see Irv at home, he paints nothing because of a void of blackness surrounding a hallway in Lumon.. It seems like Irv’s conscious mind bleeds into his work.
Irv is punished at work for dozing off, but this may be a sign of a bigger problem. Fans have already seen what happened to Petey when his implant was tampered with. Could Irv’s separation implant work the same way? This idea puts more pressure on Mark’s initiative to escape Lumon if Irv could end up like Petey.
How far has the technological breakthrough gone?
Mark isn’t the only one with ties to the severance program. Although she doesn’t work for Lomon, Mark’s sister, Devon, has had her own experience. While giving birth to her child, Devon encountered another woman in the delivery room. When Devon meets the same woman in the real world, she has no knowledge of her encounter. She even gives her child a completely different name than the one she said when Devon first met her. This woman is the wife of a senator and Devon begins to suspect something is wrong.
Sure enough, the woman appears in the finale, admitting to having lost her memories of when she was giving birth. Her conscious mind does not need to experience the pain of childbirth, while another part of her mind only experiences pain. This implies that severance technology is not just reserved for Lumon but for well-paid civilians outside the company. Do only dignitaries benefit from it? Or is Lumon further along in the tech market than we think?
Why did Helly accept a eliminated job?
By the end of the season, fans know more about Helly than they ever thought possible. Her work becomes sensitive in the real world and she learns that she is an Eagan from the mysterious family that founded Lumon. She attends a benefit, which is a monument to the Eagan family, celebrating the fact that one of their number took a job that was eliminated. Helly struggled internally more than anyone, coming up with clever plots to escape the torment of being at this job forever.
Helly – or Helena, as her family calls her – doesn’t feel the same way. She is the epitome of separation, pushing the idea that everyone should be separate in the beginning. This could be part of a plot to sell severance technology to the masses. But when it comes to Breakupit’s likely that something much more nefarious is going on.
Mark leads a team of office workers whose memories have been surgically split between their work and personal lives. When a mysterious colleague appears outside of work, a journey begins to uncover the truth about his job.
- Release date
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February 18, 2022
- Seasons
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1