The second season of Breakupwhich debuts tonight on Apple TV+, proves that the corporate sci-fi drama still has it. But that was also the case (checks notes) three years since we last had an episode, so we can’t blame you for feeling a little unclear about what was going on at the time. Luckily, we have more compassion for you than Lumon has for its laid-off employees, which is why we’ve put together this refresher course ahead of this new season (which we’ll be recapping each week).
What’s the big idea?
In the world of Breakupthe powerful company Lumon has developed a new medical process allowing certain employees performing sensitive functions to mentally separate their professional and private lives. Thanks to a chip in the brain, they essentially become two people sharing the same body: an “outie” who lives in a world far from Lumon and has no idea what’s going on there; and an “innie”, who mentally never leaves the “separate floor” of the Lumon building and only knows the bare minimum required about the outside world.
Lumon is run by the Eagan family, who have built an entire religious cult around the idea that the company’s founding father, Kier Eagan, is a divine figure worthy of worship.
Who are our heroes?
The show focuses on a quartet of cubicle mates who work in the mysterious Macrodata Refinement department, which even they don’t understand. (Most of the time, their job is to look at a bunch of floating numbers on a vintage computer screen and place them in different virtual bins based on how the numbers make them up. feel.) The quartet is:
- Mark (Adam Scott), the leader of the MDR team. Innie Mark is level-headed, easy-going and as happy as can be under such strange and restrictive circumstances. Outie Mark, on the other hand, is a mess, as we discover he volunteered for severance pay to deal with his grief over the death of his wife Gemma in a car crash.
- Helly (Britt Lower), the newest addition to the team. Helly instantly hates everything about Innie’s life and does everything possible to stop, even if it means she will cease to exist. When her partner refuses to let her – coldly telling Innie Helly in a recorded video: “I I am a person. You are not. » — Helly attempts suicide, but is foiled by management’s rapid intervention. She gradually falls in love with Innie Mark and kisses him.
- Irving (John Turturro), an overly formal artsy type who devoutly believes in the cult of Kier. He begins a flirtation with Burt (Christopher Walken), a veteran employee from another separate department, and is discouraged when Outie Burt chooses to retire, thus killing Innie Burt.
- Dylan (Zach Cherry), the member of the team who seems least troubled by being an innie, and who takes the most pleasure in doing his job and earning perks. But when he discovers that his friend has a wife and children he will never know, his entire worldview collapses and he joins the others in their rebellion against management.
Arquette and Tillman
AppleTV+
Who are our villains?
Besides Helena and the rest of the Eagans, Lumon is represented by the two bosses of the Separate Floor, who are not themselves separated: Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), a religious fanatic when it comes to Kier Eagan, and his sidekick Mr. Milchick. (Tramell Tillman), who smiles despite all kinds of threatening behavior, including various forms of psychological torture that he deploys on MDR members. For unknown reasons, Mrs. Cobel also lives next door to Outie Mark, posing as a soap seller named Mrs. Selvig. At the end of the first season, she is suspended for allowing various innie shenanigans, including Helly’s suicide attempt.
Who else should we know?
Mark’s sister Devon (Jen Tullock) and her inspirational author husband Ricken (Michael Chernus) live nearby. Outie Mark thinks Ricken is a pretentious poseur, but when one of Ricken’s books ends up on the cut floor, Innie Mark is fascinated.
There’s also Petey (Yul Vazquez), who worked in the MDR with Innie Mark, Irving and Dylan, until his partner decided to undergo an untested “reintegration” procedure that would merge his innie and outie selves . The process didn’t really work and Petey ultimately died from complications.
Petey’s reinstatement was carried out by Reghabi (Karen Aldridge), a former Lumon employee who claims to have installed Mark’s departure chip. She has come to believe that separation is evil and rebels against Lumon as best she can while living off the grid. At the end of the first season, she assassinates the head of security of the cut floor in front of Outie Mark.
On the separate floor, everyone loved to visit the wellness counselor, Mrs. Casey (Dichen Lachman), and then were sad when she was, like Innie Burt, retired.
There are also kids on the cut ground. No, we don’t know why.
How did the first season end?
Innie Dylan discovers his friend’s family when Mr. Milchick uses the “overtime emergency protocol”, which allows innies to temporarily take control of their bodies away from the cut ground. Dylan tells the rest of the MDR about the protocol, and they decide to use it to break out of the building and try to tell the rest of the world how horrible the conditions are for them. While Dylan barricades himself in the room that controls overtime, Mark, Helly and Irving find themselves back in their friends’ lives. Innie Mark is stunned to meet his idol Ricken and unintentionally refers to Mrs. Cobel by her real name, which makes him realize that the Innies have rebelled. (She alerts Milchick and briefly kidnaps Devon and Ricken’s baby.) Innie Irving goes looking for Outie Burt and is dismayed to see that Burt is in a relationship with another man. Helly is horrified to realize that her partner is Helena Eagan, who was ordered to take severance by her family as part of a glorified PR stunt. The season ends with Milchick overtaking Dylan to end overtime, but only after Innie Mark discovers that Mrs. Casey is actually Outie Mark’s “late” wife Gemma and after Helly gives a speech at an event in Lumon explaining who she really was. is and begs for help to escape the nightmare of a life cut short.
