Straight after spending an hour on the Gemma-centric episode, "Chihkai Bardo," Severance returns with a second supporting character-centric episode, "Sweet Vitriol," which focuses primarily on Harmony Cobel. Although Cobel had been a constant presence in season one, she has barely appeared as a relevant character in season two, and thus "Sweet Vitriol" not only feels out of place in terms of devoting an entire episode to focus only on her character, but also in terms of allowing this series to have two back-to-back episodes that are completely separated from the show's main plot and central characters. A bad creative decision and dull plotline, "Sweet Vitriol" is nothing but a momentum stopper for all of the excitement toward Mark's re-integration and other mysteries surrounding Lumon Industries and the severance procedure. Although it does present a bit more backstory to Cobel's character and Lumon Industries as a whole, this episode does not do anything to push the narrative forward for a majority of its series regulars.
Severance is normally a show where the audience has to be fully awake and paying attention to the events on-screen in order to follow along with the storylines of what is going on inside Lumon and the outside world. However, by presenting two bottle episodes in a row, it cuts off the pacing of the story, especially as Gemma and Cobel's bottle episodes are also drastically different from each other in tone and story. The biggest event of the Cobel-centric episode is the confirmation that Mark has completely re-integrated, an event that "Chikhai Bardo" teases, but the audience is not privy to Mark's reaction upon waking up. It would have been a much smoother transition to go from "Chikhai Bardo" to going back to Mark's perspective as being fully re-integrated and seeing how he reacts to it, in comparison to taking a break from all of the show's major characters to focus on a supporting character who has had barely any screen time in season two in a town that is completely disconnected from the main plot, even if Lumon does have a history in the neighborhood.
"Sweet Vitriol" reveals one major narrative element about Cobel, which is that she had been far more involved in the creation of the severance procedure than she was given credit for. While that does present a stronger motivation and connection between Cobel and Lumon, it struggles to justify an entire episode devoted to this plot point, where half the episode could have followed other characters instead. Unless any of the characters that Cobel interacts with become significantly more important in the upcoming episodes, spending so much time on Cobel's time in town is more for the sake of filling time than for anything that will become relevant in future episodes. It certainly did not help their case that these newly introduced characters do not come across as interesting additions.
The two bottle episodes back to back also hurt the show's momentum due to them occurring toward the end of the season, which is usually a great spot for all the plot threads to start coming together in preparation for a season's big ending. With Severance reaching its final episodes of season two, it is time for the season's biggest mysteries to start coming together. While the two bottle episodes may not throw the timeline completely off-course, they do remove emotional elements of anticipation and connection to the storyline that would have come from focusing on the main characters each week. Even though "Sweet Vitriol" did present important information, straying so much from the show's main cast two episodes in a row was ultimately a decision that negatively impacted the pacing of season two.