I was thinking back to the first episode when Mark nearly ran over Helena in the car park, providing a confirmation “oh hey he really doesn’t recognise her”.
Knowing what we do now though,
- Did Mark not realise that he nearly ran over one of the Lumon leadership? He acts as if she was just some random employee.
- Why is Helena walking to an old car in the outer reaches of the car park when she is so senior and tends to get driven around? (Maybe the flowers she’s carrying are a clue?)
I think these are good questions, but I think the answers are banal. Do you know what Jeff Bezos’ daughter looks like? If you almost ran over Priscilla Chan, would you know it was her?
The flowers we know are Milchik’s parting gift for Helena’s first day. I do think this second point stretches credulity and the best answer I can give is that they wanted to send no flags about Helly R. being really important for most of the employees who don’t recognize her.
It can be tricky to recognise famous people when you don’t expect to see them and they’re outside the usual context. I doubt I’d recognise even Bezos in that situation. 15 minutes later I might think “that guy looked a lot like Bezos, huh.”
They will probably retcon this as Helena trying to get closer to Mark’s outie, like she did at the restaurant. In terms of not recognizing her, it could be that she wasn’t very well known until the incident with the OTC and her public apology. Mark probably would have seen that in the news which would have made him aware of who she is?
I also think this was an oversight in the early episodes, we don’t have any reason to believe yet that helana knew who mark was before season 2.
Helena is not just the rich man’s daughter, she’s THE face and advocate of the severance process. She’s supposed to be very known in that company-town.
They probably didn’t write that plot arc yet when filming the 1st episode.
Edit: was supposed to be a reply to @PhilthePill@lemmy.world