Severance followers, in case you’ve ever needed to learn the sensible phrases of Dr. Ricken Hale (Michael Chernus) for your self, you are in luck. On Jan. 31, Apple Books launched the primary eight chapters of The You You Are: A Non secular Biography of You, Ricken’s self-help guide that spurred Lumon Industries’ Innies to motion in Severance Season 1.
These can be found in e-book format, or in audiobook format, with Chernus himself narrating.
The You You Are is the second Severance companion guide to be launched, with the primary being 2022’s The Lexington Letter. Whereas The Lexington Letter is an epistolary thriller diving deep into Lumon’s secrets and techniques, The You You Are is a mixture of self-improvement recommendation and cringe comedy. What else would you count on from Ricken, who famously hosted a dinnerless feast?
Apple Books’ excerpt options a number of memorable strains from The You You Are that we heard in Season 1, like “they can not crucify you in case your hand is in a fist” and “a society with festering staff can’t flourish, simply as a person with rotting toes can’t skip.” Even “Future, An Acrostic Poem Expertise” makes an look.
However the first eight chapters of The You You Are additionally flesh out our understanding of the often-infuriating Ricken, in addition to give us extra clues in regards to the broader world of Severance. From Ricken’s backstory to Lumon’s interference in his work, listed here are 4 fascinating issues we realized from The You You Are.
Lumon would not need folks studying The You You Are.
Zach Cherry, Adam Scott, and John Turturro in “Severance.”
Credit score: AppleTV+
In Season 2, episode 3 of Severance, Ricken tells his spouse Devon (Jen Tullock) that he’s working with Lumon to write down a model of The You You Are particularly for Innies. In fact, that model will fully undermine the unique guide’s themes, however for Ricken, that is too massive a chance to move up.
Apple’s launched model of The You You Are goes one step additional, implying that Lumon has fully derailed the publication of Ricken’s work. In an introductory word, Ricken writes, “As you understand, the guide was meant to launch nationwide this week, and I used to be deeply wanting to share its splendors with you. Sadly, occasions past my management have led to a short delay as I liaise with a number of company events as to exactly the place and in what kind the guide ought to be launched.”
Seems like that is Lumon in disaster administration mode following the occasions of the Season 1 finale.
Ricken goes on to say that he negotiated for the discharge of the primary eight chapters. (Based on Season 1, there are at the very least 29 chapters.) Meaning we miss out on the context for such banger strains from Season 1 like “bullies are simply bull and lies” or “it was not me who was mistaken, however literature itself.” Here is hoping we’ll get the final chapters by the tip of Season 2 — or maybe tied to a future season?
Mashable High Tales
Ricken has a really wild backstory.
Patricia Arquette, Michael Chernus, and Jen Tullock in “Severance.”
Credit score: AppleTV+
The You You Are is required studying for anybody who has ever puzzled, “why is Ricken so unbearable?” (I do know I’ve.)
The reply started at delivery, the circumstances of which make for such a weird passage I merely have to incorporate it in its entirety:
Readers of my earlier books know that each my conception and delivery befell in a small theatre behind a defunct perfumery in Western Oregon, as a part of a nine-month efficiency artwork piece originated by my mother and father titled “Smells Like Afterbirth, F**ker.” It was noteworthy in that I used to be the primary baby sired completely for theatrical functions, and critics on the time hailed it as “a baroque deconstruction of the more and more perverse human urge to procreate.”
Ricken writes that his mother and father (whose efficiency group is named HumpDumpster) held a Boston bar hostage at gunpoint as one in every of their subsequent items, leading to a jail sentence and in Ricken spending a lot of his youth alone. The knowledge, equal elements tragic and hilarious, proves enlightening. No surprise Ricken seeks reference to others in pretentious artsy circles.
The You You Are is filled with different Ricken tales, together with approach an excessive amount of details about his intercourse life, in addition to some tidbits about Mark (Adam Scott) and Gemma’s (Dichen Lachman) lives earlier than Gemma’s loss of life and entrapment in Lumon.
Mark and Gemma present up in The You You Are — sort of.
Michael Chernus and Adam Scott in “Severance.”
Credit score: AppleTV+
Ricken explores his relationship with Mark and Gemma all through The You You Are. He refers to them beneath the pseudonyms of Flip and Nan, as a result of they needed their actual names not noted of his guide. (Are you able to blame them?)
In a single anecdote, Ricken writes about him, Devon, Mark, and Gemma happening a hike — a narrative he brings as much as Innie Mark within the Season 1 finale, asking him, “you keep in mind the humorous bees?”
The “humorous bees,” we study in The You You Are, got here from a wild beehive that Ricken discovered each hilarious and a commentary on human society. However maybe probably the most intriguing element from the mountain climbing story is what we hear about Gemma from Ricken. From the sound of it, they’d way more of a bond than he at present has with Mark. He says the 2 of them learn Physician Zhivago throughout a lunch break on the hike, and that she entertained his bee idea whereas Devon and Mark mocked it.
These cases may merely be Ricken projecting kindness onto Gemma, one thing we see in a later story about her texting him that she is having fun with a “self-produced Tuvan throat singing album” he gave her for her birthday. (What a present!) After Gemma’s loss of life, a grieving Mark tells Ricken that he and Gemma laughed at it. However, Ricken ponders, was the laughter playful or merciless? Both approach, it colours what he considered his interactions with Gemma in life, making for a surprisingly unhappy scene in a guide that’s in any other case filled with Ricken’s nonsense.
The truth that Mark performs such a big position in The You You Are provides a brand new layer to his Innie discovering a lot which means in it. There is no approach he may have identified the “Flip” passages have been about his Outie, however it’s surreal to consider him studying about recollections just one a part of him is aware of. Plus, it provides extra weight to Ricken’s unhappiness at Outie Mark not having learn the guide. The You You Are is not simply an train in Ricken’s ego — it is also partly an exploration of his grief about Gemma, and maybe his personal unusual approach of extending an olive department to Mark.
The You You Are has a Lexington Letter Easter egg.
Jen Tullock and Michael Chernus in “Severance.”
Credit score: AppleTV+
In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it passage, The You You Are mentions “the Dorner truck explosion” as the explanation Devon and Ricken lastly moved away from the town. The Dorner truck explosion performs a key position in The Lexington Letter, with Dorner referring to Lumon competitor Dorner Therapeutics.
The Lexington Letter follows former severed Lumon worker Peggy Kincaid, who finds a well beyond to bypass Lumon’s code detectors and talk together with her Innie. From their written conversations, Peggy learns that she accomplished a file simply two minutes earlier than a Dorner truck blew up in New York Metropolis. Was this only a coincidence, or had the Lumon file triggered the explosion?
The You You Are would not supply any additional data on the topic, however its temporary point out right here highlights the affect the Dorner truck explosion had on the broader world of Severance. Maybe it is solely a matter of time earlier than it is introduced on the present itself.
The You You Are is free and available for download on Apple Books. Severance Season 2 is now streaming on Apple TV+, with a brand new episode each Friday.
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