Innie turmoil
Severance is one of the most ambitious television shows in recent memory. It also asks a lot of its viewers
When the TV show Severance debuted more than three years ago, it was freaky, weird, and fascinating.
It both posed an interesting moral question — what if we could separate our work brains from the rest of our day-to-day lives? — and was filmed in an intricate, deeply stylized setting, mostly in a maze-like office with distinctly retro vibes. It was a slow burn, but visually striking, and it soon became clear that there were layers upon layers of mystery.
By the time it built to a crescendo of a first-season finale, Severance was a shining example of the kind of television that is almost never made: a producer (Apple, in this case) had given a creative team a giant budget and seemingly free rein to see their vision through, even if it was costly and complicated and sometimes hard to follow. If someone had tried to make Severance at, say, CBS, they would have been told to add more jokes and explain the mystery by the third episode.
All of which is to say, I loved the first season. And then, owing to pandemic-related production problems, it disappeared for a long time. The second season finally debuted this winter, and while it is still compelling, it has also shown the downside of what can happen when a creative team gets all the freedom they want. Much like the characters who were huffing ether in a recent episode, Severance seems a little high on its own supply.
I’m writing this before the final episode of the second season airs, and I remain hopeful that it can manage a soft landing after a bumpy journey. It’s a still a very cool show. But does it know what kind of a show it wants to be any longer?
Season 1 posed a big central mystery. Mark (Adam Scott) has undergone the severance procedure because his wife, Gemma, died in a car accident and he wanted to have fewer hours in the day in which he was stricken by grief. Fair enough. I suppose brain surgery is an alternative to, say, chugging bottles of Jack Daniel’s. But viewers discover that his late wife is fact also working at Lumon, the uber-mysterious company at the centre of everything. Neither of them recognize each other because their “work-only” brains take over whenever they ride the elevator to the severed floor. Poor Mark, heartbroken by the loss of someone who is not, in fact, dead. But why is Gemma not dead? Did she fake her demise? Did Lumon fake her demise? Is this all some cruel way to test whether the severance thing has really worked? So many questions.
There are countless other related mysteries:
What are any of these people actually doing in their jobs? Mark and his three colleagues spend their work time doing what looks something like Word Search on Commodore 64s. It’s explained that there is actually something meaningful going on behind the code of numbers and letters on the glowing monitors, but no one knows what that is.
What is with the retro-futuristic vibe? Is it supposed to be the 1980s? Are we in a different world entirely that sorta-kinda looks like 1980s upstate New York? Is it our world, but some kind of post-apocalyptic deal where the technology has been dialled back several decades? (I know, there are cellphones. Shush, you.)
What is the deal with Lumon? Is it a stand-in for heartless corporate America? Is it a cult? A little of Column A, little of Column B? Or, is it actually not evil, but willing to break a few eggs on the way to a world-improving omelette?
Why don’t more workplaces throw waffle parties?
Season 1 ended with the four work-brained protagonists — the Innies, in the show’s vernacular — launching a mini-revolution and getting a brief taste of what their outside lives — the Outies — were like. It was harrowing, with the episode unfolding like a taut thriller, but all those mysteries remained.
Three years later, Season 2 began with the question of how the Innies would be able to advance that little bit of knowledge, and so far the answer is that they haven’t. Which also means the viewers have also now spent an entire second season wondering just what in the hell is happening at this Lumon place. There have certainly been revelations along the way — one character turns out to be much more responsible for the severance procedure than previously known, another appears to be held prisoner amid Lumon’s gleaming white hallways — to give the audience something new on which to chew, but it also feels as though every surprise only creates even more questions. Dylan, one of the Innies, spends much of Season 2 walking into rooms and saying, “What the fuck?”. Preach, brother.
Most significantly, as the second season draws to a close, it feels like the original central theme, the work/life split that is right there in the title, has already run its course. Now it seems much more like a story about a Bad Company doing Bad Things and the team of plucky underdogs who will try to stop them.
Which might be fine! But it also makes me think a little of Game of Thrones, which is nothing like Severance in most ways except for the fact that both series were expensive and complicated and spent an awful lot of time doing a lot of world-building. Eventually Thrones’ expansiveness worked against it, and the creators ended up hurriedly tying off all those threads in a way that no one liked. That show spent many seasons building up to the terrifying reveal of the Night King, who would threaten the Seven Kingdoms’ very existence, and then he ended up getting killed by a kid with a knife.
Severance’s looming adversary isn’t an undead leader of a zombie army, but a thing: Cold Harbor, the Lumon project that only Mark, for some reason, is able to bring to completion. What is it? Why do the creepy Lumon execs care so much about it? Will Mark finish it?
Perhaps we will find out in the season finale. But, like the Innies, I suspect we will be left with a lot of questions.