Episode Guide
Good News About Hell Half Loop In Perpetuity The You You Are The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design Hide and Seek Defiant Jazz What’s For Dinner The We We Are -| Review Score – 5/5 In the words of Dolly Parton: “Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living.” But imagine if instead of work being a means to make money, work was just…it. Endless loops of working 9-5 without leaving, engaging in weekend breaks or holidays. Ad infinitum. If the sound of that just filled you with existential dread, welcome to the world of Severance, AppleTV+’s mind-bending, genre-hopping gem. With thought provoking ideas about work/life balance, a very well worked mystery and a host of talented actors across the board, Severance is one of 2022’s best shows. The story centers on Mark Scout, a man who’s still grieving the loss of his wife, deciding to undergo an experimental procedure called severance off the back of this. Severance is incredibly controversial, and many activists take to the street to try and stop it. Essentially, this severance act sees the subject’s memories surgically divided between their work and personal lives. What happens in work stays in work. What happens during the weekend and during time off work, well that remains separate too. As one may expect, this leads to two versions of the same person start to emerge in this cleverly written series. Mark works in the Macrodata Refinement department, and it soon becomes apparent that the work Lumon (the company in charge of this severance procedure) are doing, is very strange indeed. I won’t spoil that here because it’s part of the mystery but suffice to say, it’ll keep you watching through the different episodes. While Mark’s “innie” (the colloquial term for the severed work-self) starts to uncover secrets about the company he works for, his “outie” is approached by Petey, one of Mark S’s colleagues from inside Lumon. He’s managed to “reintegrate” and warns that Lumon are not to be trusted. What ensues from here is a carefully put-t0gether mystery as both versions of Mark try to uncover the truth in their own ways, unaware of what their other self is actually doing. But yet, the story goes deeper than that. Fleshing out the roster is Helly R, who really does not want to be there. She tries everything to get out of Lumon, and through her attempts of escape we learn more about the company’s tight-knit security and different protocols. It’s subtle, but a really clever way of exuding exposition. Alongside Helly are both Dylan and Irving, two of Mark’s colleagues who essentially serve the same narrative function as Helly (showing extra parts of the Lumon world) but play very different roles to get there. Irving finds himself befriending Burt, the head of a rival department at Lumon called Optics & Design. The pair share a really sweet and tender friendship, throwing into question the ideologies they’ve been led to believe about the different departments. Ideologies that Dylan vehemently fights to preserve since he’s the star employee. As the season progresses, all four of these characters change and begin to question their own realities. Not only that, but this also extends across to their boss, Harmony Cobel and several other supporting characters too. What’s particularly interesting about Severance though is the way it refuses to be pigeonholed into a single genre. There are light bits of horror, plenty of surrealist and quirky comedy, bits of character drama, romance and even sci-fi too. It’s impressive the way Severance skips between these different tones – sometimes in the space of 5 or 10 minutes. All of this leads into one of Severance’s most compelling elements – the themes. The show’s use of themes and symbolism is, quite simply, outstanding. Overhead cameras reinforce the idea of being “looked down upon” by one’s superiors; the use of green and blue is clever and ties into the final episode’s explanation; the idea of trying to control one’s workforce and rebellions is shown; and even the trippy Hitchcockian camera zoom in the work elevator, shifting between the personal and work parts of one’s self, plays a significant role in all this. There are numerous other examples but these are just a taste of what Severance offers – and the creators deserve a lot of credit for keeping these consistent and fresh until the very end. Sticking with the visuals for the second, everything in Severance is very deliberate too. The use of colour as well as the use of lighting and shadows works to eerily set the scene early on before actually becoming symbiotically linked to the main narrative. As the series progresses, the scenes start to become darker. Those brightly lit corridors soon become dark and uneasy tunnels. There’s also some subtle but very interesting details in the background of shots too. In episode 3 for example, Mark’s fish tank in his room back home shows a single goldfish, but the way this is framed shows off the reflected fish too. It’s a visual metaphor for this double-life Mark has been living and the fish-tank signifies the cage he’s trapped in. These little nuggets of details may not stand out to everyone but they’re worth mentioning nonetheless. It’s testament to the whole team behind Severance’s inception that they’ve managed to craft such an impressive show that nails every element. But beyond that, Severance is a fantastically enjoyable season of TV. The 9 episodes are masterfully paced, the narrative interesting and themes are both topical and thought provoking. While it’s too early to call this the best show of 2022, this one has certainly set a very high bar indeed.
