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Severance season 1
I have watched a TV show! This happens about once every 6 months or so...
Severance is one that I've been wanting to watch for a while, knowing nothing except the basic premise, which is that it's a near-future/alt-reality/retro-futurism world in which people at work have their memories severed from their outside memories, so at work, they only remember what happens at work, and switch to their other set of memories as soon as they leave.
It has a slow start, and Orion was pretty close to noping out after the first episode. The style is Prestige TV meets 1970s filmmaking, with long sequences of following characters through their daily lives, lots of up-close shots and extended single-shot scenes and real-life-adjacent trippy weirdness. But once we got into it, we really enjoyed it a lot. Naturally there was a cliffhanger.
This is one of those twisty shows that's more fun unspoiled if you like that sort of thing.
One thing I really liked is how the absolute horror of their situation builds episode by episode, where in the first one it's just sort of like "Well ... that'd be weird and creepy, I guess" and then by episode four or five you've realized that the work versions of the characters - whose memories start at the door of the office; they don't remember their outside lives and aren't allowed to know - have literally never seen anything except the four walls of their office. They've never talked to any human being besides their handful of coworkers and creepy/culty bosses; they've never seen a plant or an animal or child, they've never even interacted with someone who loves them, aside from whatever connections they've managed to make at work. There's a budding office romance during which Orion pointed out that the two characters (who are both elderly guys) are behaving like shy virgins because they are! They have absolutely no memory of ever having a relationship with anyone other than their co-workers. None of them do. In fact, they don't even have anything except the word of their (creepy, abusive) supervisors that the outside world even exists and they aren't in a simulation or the sole survivors of an apocalypse or something ...
Meanwhile, the outside person at least doesn't have that to deal with, but they effectively lose most of their waking hours; their entire lives consist of going home, doing whatever they do in the evenings, and sleeping. And sometimes they show up with unexplained cuts or bruises or, in one case, the aftermath of a suicide attempt ...
So it's very nicely done horror on that level, even aside from the general bleak-humor workplace satire of the place they work, which is next-level corporate hell -- no windows, endless white-painted corridors, absolutely meaningless makework that consists of moving numbers around on a screen, and a founder cult that includes Renaissance-style paintings of the company founders, life-sized statues, and workplace slogans quoted like Bible verses. Effectively the employee handbook is their Bible, since it's the only book most of them have read.
It was also fascinating to realize that the character we're primarily following, corporate drone Mark, is experiencing two different character development arcs. They feed into each other - in fact we were speculating that his becoming more assertive on the outside reflects his behavior on the inside and vice versa - but also he's learning different things, bonding with different people, and having very different moments of assertiveness or connection ... and he doesn't remember any of it as soon as he passes through the door.
The final episode, in which things have built to the point where they've figured out a way to briefly regain their work memories in their outside lives so they can tell the truth about what's happening inside the company, was a whole lot of screaming at the screen, "WRITE THINGS DOWN! TALK TO SOMEONE!" ... but I was legit surprised by how much they did manage to get out before they were shut down, and also by how emotional it was to see work!Mark (the protagonist) finally meet his outside-life sister, who he didn't previously know existed (but who is close to his outside self). We got zero answers to anything this season, and I suspect this is one of those shows that's going to be exactly 0% satisfying if we ever do get answers - fantastically creepy setup, probably no way they could explain it that wouldn't be a letdown - but I'm really enjoying it and looking forward to season two.
ETA: Oh yeah, and the cast is great. Lots of "oh, that guy!" actors - off the top of my head, there's Christopher Walken (as one-half of the aforementioned old-guy workplace romance), Patricia Arquette, Adam Scott from Parks & Rec, John Turturro, Dichen Lachman ... and apparently they've got next season.
Severance is one that I've been wanting to watch for a while, knowing nothing except the basic premise, which is that it's a near-future/alt-reality/retro-futurism world in which people at work have their memories severed from their outside memories, so at work, they only remember what happens at work, and switch to their other set of memories as soon as they leave.
It has a slow start, and Orion was pretty close to noping out after the first episode. The style is Prestige TV meets 1970s filmmaking, with long sequences of following characters through their daily lives, lots of up-close shots and extended single-shot scenes and real-life-adjacent trippy weirdness. But once we got into it, we really enjoyed it a lot. Naturally there was a cliffhanger.
This is one of those twisty shows that's more fun unspoiled if you like that sort of thing.
One thing I really liked is how the absolute horror of their situation builds episode by episode, where in the first one it's just sort of like "Well ... that'd be weird and creepy, I guess" and then by episode four or five you've realized that the work versions of the characters - whose memories start at the door of the office; they don't remember their outside lives and aren't allowed to know - have literally never seen anything except the four walls of their office. They've never talked to any human being besides their handful of coworkers and creepy/culty bosses; they've never seen a plant or an animal or child, they've never even interacted with someone who loves them, aside from whatever connections they've managed to make at work. There's a budding office romance during which Orion pointed out that the two characters (who are both elderly guys) are behaving like shy virgins because they are! They have absolutely no memory of ever having a relationship with anyone other than their co-workers. None of them do. In fact, they don't even have anything except the word of their (creepy, abusive) supervisors that the outside world even exists and they aren't in a simulation or the sole survivors of an apocalypse or something ...
Meanwhile, the outside person at least doesn't have that to deal with, but they effectively lose most of their waking hours; their entire lives consist of going home, doing whatever they do in the evenings, and sleeping. And sometimes they show up with unexplained cuts or bruises or, in one case, the aftermath of a suicide attempt ...
So it's very nicely done horror on that level, even aside from the general bleak-humor workplace satire of the place they work, which is next-level corporate hell -- no windows, endless white-painted corridors, absolutely meaningless makework that consists of moving numbers around on a screen, and a founder cult that includes Renaissance-style paintings of the company founders, life-sized statues, and workplace slogans quoted like Bible verses. Effectively the employee handbook is their Bible, since it's the only book most of them have read.
It was also fascinating to realize that the character we're primarily following, corporate drone Mark, is experiencing two different character development arcs. They feed into each other - in fact we were speculating that his becoming more assertive on the outside reflects his behavior on the inside and vice versa - but also he's learning different things, bonding with different people, and having very different moments of assertiveness or connection ... and he doesn't remember any of it as soon as he passes through the door.
The final episode, in which things have built to the point where they've figured out a way to briefly regain their work memories in their outside lives so they can tell the truth about what's happening inside the company, was a whole lot of screaming at the screen, "WRITE THINGS DOWN! TALK TO SOMEONE!" ... but I was legit surprised by how much they did manage to get out before they were shut down, and also by how emotional it was to see work!Mark (the protagonist) finally meet his outside-life sister, who he didn't previously know existed (but who is close to his outside self). We got zero answers to anything this season, and I suspect this is one of those shows that's going to be exactly 0% satisfying if we ever do get answers - fantastically creepy setup, probably no way they could explain it that wouldn't be a letdown - but I'm really enjoying it and looking forward to season two.
ETA: Oh yeah, and the cast is great. Lots of "oh, that guy!" actors - off the top of my head, there's Christopher Walken (as one-half of the aforementioned old-guy workplace romance), Patricia Arquette, Adam Scott from Parks & Rec, John Turturro, Dichen Lachman ... and apparently they've got
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I have never seen this show, but I have seen this gifset.
(What kind of mysteries is this show setting up not to answer? I ask because both times I have read friends talking about it, it has sounded as though the character development of the premise itself would be compelling enough to drive the story!)
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(What kind of mysteries is this show setting up not to answer? I ask because both times I have read friends talking about it, it has sounded as though the character development of the premise itself would be compelling enough to drive the story!)
I definitely think the character development drives it! And it also seems like something you may enjoy if you get a chance to watch it. Currently it's only on Apple TV, as far as I know.
The unanswered questions are the big-picture stuff - what the numbers they're editing on the screen are actually doing, whether this is a near-future our world or a near-past alt-world or something else entirely, who runs the company and why, whether upper management even exists. There are a handful of surreal glimpses of unexplained bits of their workplace that hint at other things going on, like a room on their floor that's just ... full of goats. There's a character who may be dead on the outside but still alive inside. There's also a resistance movement that showed up for one episode, killed a guy, and were never seen again.
I feel like the show occupies a trippy and surreal enough space that it doesn't necessarily have to explain most of this. There's a 70s sci-fi aesthetic to it that I don't think is coincidental. But then it flirts with answering questions rather than just leaning wholeheartedly into the characters' trapped cluelessness, because hinting at unanswered questions keeps people watching multiseason TV in 2023. I honestly do hope there's an actual 2-3 season plan and they stick to it, because I think this show could really stick a planned landing - or it could spin its wheels for ages or veer off in some other direction entirely. It's really hard to tell.
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I have semi-access to Apple TV in that my mother has been keeping it around for Slow Horses, but I am not sure if Severance is her kind of thing! I miss when TV shows actually got home media releases and if I really felt like it, I could check them out from the library years after everyone else.
The unanswered questions are the big-picture stuff - what the numbers they're editing on the screen are actually doing, whether this is a near-future our world or a near-past alt-world or something else entirely, who runs the company and why, whether upper management even exists.
It would probably be more Kafka-esque if it didn't, honestly.
There's a character who may be dead on the outside but still alive inside.
That sounds metaphysically fascinating as well as body-horrific if so; please keep me posted on the progress of this subplot.
There's a 70s sci-fi aesthetic to it that I don't think is coincidental.
Paranoid cinema? Have I already recommended you the first season of Homecoming (2018), which is what this show made me think of the first time I heard about it?
But then it flirts with answering questions rather than just leaning wholeheartedly into the characters' trapped cluelessness, because hinting at unanswered questions keeps people watching multiseason TV in 2023.
I wish it didn't. I feel very strongly that not all narratives need to be puzzle-boxes and worldbuilding does not need to be explained so long as it's detailed enough for an audience to roll with it.
I honestly do hope there's an actual 2-3 season plan and they stick to it, because I think this show could really stick a planned landing - or it could spin its wheels for ages or veer off in some other direction entirely. It's really hard to tell.
Good luck!
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Yeah! I absolutely loved it, and I thought it was excellent enough that it might really be the kind of show that develops on all the groundwork it's laid in unexpected and deeply satisfying ways. Then again, it might end up the kind of show where we all say to each other, "What an amazing one-season show! TOO BAD IT NEVER HAD ANY OTHER SEASONS, TOO BAD A SECOND SEASON JUST DOESN'T EXIST" pointedly as we cast judgmental glances towards s2. Who can say! Not me, for sure! But I loved s1, even when it was intense enough to be rough going.
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Honestly, that was my first thought when I heard about the premise of this show - how absolutely, viscerally horrific the entire scenario is. It does sound fascinating, but I don't think I could bear to watch it.
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(Also it gave me the world's weirdest dreams last night. I think if you think this one is going to be Too Much, it probably is.)
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I hesitated to recommend it to anyone because I feel kind of trapped by it! But it does an awfully good job of creating a dystopia that most people can't even see. Helena the Outie seems to think of Helly the Innie as some sort of monster who isn't even her. And that office romance broke my heart—I wanted that go to somewhere, but it can't.
The last episode of the season exceeded my expectations. I was so glad of how much Mark managed to convey to his sister despite the awful circumstances! I want Dylan (innie) to get to know Outie Dylan's children!
And what of Mark and his not-really-dead wife? Does she have a life as an Outie at all?
What do they do all day? I'm convinced they're not doing any real work; they're purely the subjects of an experiment.
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And what of Mark and his not-really-dead wife? Does she have a life as an Outie at all?
Current working theory around our household is that she doesn't. We're guessing that she's brain-dead in the real world and the chip is reanimating her somehow. I'm just not sure how; that theory would work better if they were in a virtual simulation rather than being physically present.
She might even be someone who's had plastic surgery to *look* like his wife, but that seems like it might be going a bit far for the effort they're putting in to, presumably, explore how much of Mark's outside memory still exists when he's in his Innie persona ...
What do they do all day? I'm convinced they're not doing any real work; they're purely the subjects of an experiment.
My guess is that there's *some* purpose to it, but I do think it's related somehow to the function of the experiment. The numbers are ones that they have an emotional reaction to, and they have to be there for a while before the ability to recognize it kicks in. My husband speculated that they're editing their own minds, or other people's, which is possible, but it also might be something like giving them data that relates to their old life in some way and seeing how they reaction.
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I watched this one with a friend last year and I honestly thought it was the freshest-feeling TV I had seen in ages and ages! With the exception of the romance between inside Mark + Helly (…which managed to be so painfully TV Heterosexuals in the most predictable way that I felt like it fell rather flat amid the rest of it) it’s so unusual in tone and presentation, I really really liked it. And the combination of horror and humor is just so totally impossible to explain to somebody who hasn’t seen it, because it’s not exactly black humor but it is…? Definitely a combination of those two things…? The absolute edge case of black humor, or something. That whole sequence where the insiders are having their spiritual experience about the shitty self-help book is just SO MUCH.
And agree, the cast is great, and Adam Scott is so great in the leading role! I always think of his default facial expression in this show as “confused owl.” :-D
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But yeah, we're really loving it, and can't wait for season 2.
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he's got a lot more range as an actor than I realized from seeing him on Parks & Rec, which is the only other role I've seen him in
Yes same! I definitely had a moment of going "wow, he's actually a really talented guy," I'm glad he landed a role that gives him a chance to show it.
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