With the Emmy Awards airing on Monday, I thought it was a good time to provide a review of the best new series of the year. Refreshingly original, uniquely inventive, and brilliantly conceived, Severance debuted on Apple TV+ in February 2022. It sits at the top of an impressive stable of original series for the three-year-old streaming service that includes, For All Mankind, Foundation, Pachinko, See, Slow Horses, and The Morning Show.
Of course, when I say best, I don’t necessarily mean most popular. I know a number of people whose taste in television and movies are generally in synch with my own who hate Severance. And for the life of me, it’s hard to explain to them why I like this show so much. And I certainly understand why it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. I’ve never seen a series where so little actually happens in each episode (except for the unbelievably tense season finale) that is nevertheless so compelling and endlessly interesting – much of which is due to the stellar cast. It’s a wonderfully innovative series that combines multiple genres – workplace comedy, sci-fi, mystery drama, psychological conspiracy thriller, and religious allegory. For some reason, the show reminds me of the Bob Dylan classic, Ballad of a Thin Man – “You know something’s happening here, but you don’t know what it is …”
Work-life balance comes to the forefront in this mystery thriller from Ben Stiller. Office workers voluntarily undergo a medical procedure known as “severance,” which surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives. When they are in the office, they do not recall anything about their outside lives, friends, or families. When they leave the office, they remember nothing about their jobs or co-workers. The elevator ride into and out of the office erases all memories of their other selves. Their work selves are referred to as “innies’” and their outside selves as “outies.” There is extremely tight security and full body scans upon entering the building’s elevator to prevent either version of an employee from trying to smuggle communications or clues to their other self.
While the innies and outies are technically the same people, only the outies have any life experience. The innies just exist at work, and are essentially placed into a world where they have no past and no knowledge of anything or anyone beyond the few co-workers with whom they share a windowless, blank-wall, fluorescent-lit office space, and their controlling bosses who dole out rewards if they meet production quotas (and punishments if they break the rules). Once they leave the office they have no memory of going home or going to sleep. Their experience is leaving the office and immediately returning to the office (and somehow feeling refreshed if their outies had a good night’s sleep).
Would employees be content with this situation or would they find it a torturous existence? Different people respond in dramatically different ways. To make matters even more frustrating for some, is that the innies are basically trapped. Even if they want to quit they can’t unless their outie agrees – which they virtually never do, partly because they have no idea what their innie is actually going through at work.
The series follows Mark Scout (a pitch-perfect Adam Scott), an employee at the mysterious Lumon industries, who was recently promoted to lead a team in the Macrodata Refinement division on the “severed” floor (in the basement of the building). Even the employees of this division don’t know what Lumon does. Their entire job seems to be looking at a computer screen filled with row after row numbers which they have to classify (based on how the numbers make them feel) and sort into the appropriate folders.
This darkly humorous commentary on the drudgery and insidious cult-like nature of corporate office cubicle life is amplified by the fact that these worker bees have no idea why they are performing these dull, repetitive tasks.
Mark was elevated to team leader after the previous team leader and his best friend (at work), Petey (Yul Vaquez), was fired under mysterious circumstances. Petey’s replacement, Helly R. (Britt Lower), quickly decides she doesn’t want to work there, but since her outie does (and she has no idea why) there’s no escape. Her performance is nothing short of spectacular.
The rest of Mark’s team are Irving (the always terrific John Turturro), who is a dignified stickler for company policy, and Dylan (Zach Cherry), a wisecracking follower, who enjoys the bizarre company perks employees receive for achieving certain goals (such as finger traps, waffle parties, and five-minute music/dance breaks).
In the outside world, the severance procedure is controversial, with many people protesting it as unethical. One reason Mark’s outie agreed to the procedure is because he is grieving the death of his wife. But and as his pregnant sister (Jen Tullock) tells him, “forgetting for eight hours a day is not the same as healing.” At work, with no recollection of his outside life, Mark is relatively content, although he misses Petey and is constantly trying to deal with Helly and prevent her from being punished for breaking the rules and trying to escape.
One day, in his outside life, a man he Mark recognize approaches him and says he is his co-worker Petey, and has managed, with help from a secret organization, to reverse the severance procedure (something which is supposed to be impossible). He goes on to tell him that Lumon industries is an evil company, but won’t say exactly what they do – he fears the company is searching for him and his life is in danger. This sets up almost everything that follows.
It’s Helly’s persistent and courageous rebellion that gradually nudges her seemingly content co-workers to start questioning their work and seeking answers about their outside lives – which puts them all in danger.
Patricia Arquette is chilling as Harmony Cobel, Mark’s boss at Lumon, who is also his next door neighbor, Mrs. Selvig, on the outside. Although she takes on two separate identities, we soon realize she is not severed, and is actually keeping tabs on Mark’s outie.
Christopher Walken plays another of his many wonderfully quirky characters as Burt, the severed chief of the mysterious Optics and Design division, who has a mutual attraction with John Turturro’s Irving (one of the more fascinating relationships on television). Tramell Tillman is creepy as Mr. Milchick, the constantly smiling supervisor of the severed floor, who doles out rewards and punishments. Dichen Lachman is a find as the robotic Mrs. Casey, a Lumon wellness counselor on the severed floor, who may be more than she seems.
The season finale has some major reveals and a bold cliffhanger (considering it was filmed before the show was officially renewed for a second season) – it’s among the most tense and thrilling episodes of television ever (particularly the last five minutes). There’s nothing else like this on television.
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