This episode was especially hard to watch - so little progress, so much manipulation

This show has a lot of mysteries and I don't expect everything to be solved immediately, but on the whole this episode was focused on many many ways that Lumon is successfully slowing progress of all the characters through manipulation and it was just too real and too frustrating.

Dylan doesn't progress on Irving's advice because Lumon offers him his outie's wife. Outie Irving is being manipulated by Burt (at least as far as we can see). Helly's focus on dealing with Lumon was totally thrown off by the revelation of what happened with Helena and Mark. Any progress Milchick could make towards turning away from Lumon seemed to be out the window w/ his paperclip punishment session. Mark's conversation with Helena in the chinese restaurant was so gross. At least it seemed to spur Mark to continue with the reintegration process, but there has been so little about his reintegration so far that has positively affected the process of saving Gemma that it feels a bit drawn out.

I guess I'm just ranting. I understand shows can't resolve everything immediately, and that this part of a season is probably the part of a story where everyone is close to their lowest point - but for me this week it was more painful than entertaining to watch. Maybe too similar to current events to be enjoyable, idk. I would have appreciated if the writers could have thrown a little shred of hope in there I guess. I think the ORTBO episode was pretty good at this - lots of mystery, manipulation, and stressful events but something happened that moved the story forward and gave some hope. This episode I struggle to see any positive movement in the story.