Helly reawakens in a stairwell outside the severed floor hallway, and realizes that her "other" self is attempting to leave the building; Milchick explains this is an ordinary part of the orientation process, and simply has her reenter the office.

In the present, Helly returns to Lumon, where Mark (Adam Scott) explains that her job is to sort encrypted numbers into digital bins as part of "macrodata refinement".

Milchick gives her a welcome party, hoping that Mark, Irving (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry) help her feel comfortable with her new job.

The following day, Mark skips work by calling in sick, and decides to go to the address that Petey (Yul Vazquez) gave him in the envelope.

Petey shows him a map he has created of the severed floor, telling him he hid a copy in the office for Mark's innie to find, and that he is still unsure how many departments are operating at Lumon.

As Helly and Dylan discuss the purpose of their job, Irving dozes off and begins to hallucinate a black liquid emerging from his cubicle.

As he waits, Irving meets Burt Goodman (Christopher Walken), the head of the Optics and Design department, and they bond over their admiration for art.

Club gave the episode an "A–" and wrote, "Aside from MDR, “Half Loop” reveals that Lumon's got O&D's apparent two-person team on the floor, led by Burt.

It's an extremely wack piece of art in which Kier is portrayed with a whip, controlling an old woman, a young one, a clown, and a half-human, half-goat.

"[3] Oliver VanDervoort of Game Rant gave the episode a 4 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "The show relies quite a bit on being weird.

"[6] Caemeron Crain of TV Obsessive wrote, "Severance S1E2 leans into the show's premise by devoting a lot of its time to the versions of our characters while they are at work — or the “innies” as Lumon would have us call them — and it really serves the series well, as the second episode opens a number of questions (both banal and existential) that will surely drive the narrative as it progresses.