Severance S1

 2022, d. Ben Stiller, Aoife McCardle - AppleTV+ (9 episodes)
created by Dan Erickson

It was maybe about 20 years ago I recall I was doing that thing that guys do where they say to their girlfriend "what do you mean you haven't seen [X] film, we need to watch that right now."  The film was Office Space and about halfway through my then-gf said it was hitting too close to home and she couldn't handle it.  Despite being a satirical comedy, that Mike Judge film was reminding her of her unhappiness as a corporate office drone, and the reminder was too painful.  

Severance pokes needles at that same nerve, of being an office drone, uncertain if what you're doing truly matters, spending these great chunks of your life in a space and around people that either become like friends or allies in the trenches, or adversaries in a cage match (you can only get out by submitting to defeat or climbing over the top).  For most, the only reason you're there is to serve the life outside, for money and/or benefits that you need to keep you and maybe your family going.  For others it's an escape from life, something to sink yourself into to escape whatever it is that is making you unhappy in your life.

I rarely put a great amount of consideration into why I do what I do as an office drone. To me it's just what must be done.  If I'm not doing it where I am, I'll have to do it somewhere else.  I don't have it in me to struggle, so working in a field that would maybe make me happier or feel like a better use of my time but paying less or sporadically won't do (and ain't nobody going to pay me to write these reviews).  I guess I'm not a risk-taker and I work for what little security the job provides.  Watching Severance did, however, make me consider the metaphor it plays with, the separation of work and life, and how, even with a chip in your brain that splits your persona in two, you can't escape the impact of one or the other.  

As much as I was down for the analogy it's trading in, I fell in love with the show because it's working in a few of my favourite sci-fi subgenres: retro-futurism, dystopian settings, and slow-sf.  The retro-futurism is all aesthetic.  This show, lovingly directed by Ben Stiller for the first and last three episodes and Aoife McCardle for the middle three, feels like it could have been pulled off the video shelves of the mid-1980s.  The set design, full of flat white corridors, splashes of kelly green carpeting and painted walls, and chonky old computers with big wedge keyboards and monster clacking keys, oh yeah, that's the wheelhouse.  There's rooms with banks of monitors or fully wood panelled, and fully bizarre additions that are best left discovered, but feel like they're pulling from imagery from 70's po-ap.  This isn't our reality, but it's tangible, the metaphor makes it feel 5 minutes into the future.

The dystopian element is itself two-fold. The workplace environment is totalitarian, though in the first season we've yet to actually see the top of this particular food chain, but at least in the microcosm, there's a brilliantly devious Patricia Arquette who operates as the boss at work, and duplicitous ally on the outside.  She rules the severance level with an iron fist , and it's shocking to see her be subservient to anyone, flinching when having to address "the board".   Even outside of the boss, there's a whole eerie doctrine the severed employees are supposed to follow, a three-volume tomb of rules and manufactured history and proverbs and such.  There are devoted followers who admire the twisted paintings and appreciate the token gestures of appreciation for work accomplishments.  It's all quite bizarre, and I relished it. The dystopia extends outside, where there's a whole anti-severance movement, but also pro-severance legislation which may extend the technology beyond just the workplace.

My take on slow-sf is it involves taking a very high-concept idea and exploring it in patient detail.  It's less about telling a straightforward story than looking at the way the new science of the world makes it different from our own.  How does the science impact the people, the society, families and corporations, politics and entertainment. Severance seems fully ready to play in its world.  I went into watching the show expecting a tight mini-series, assuming that Stiller's involvement meant it was a limited run, but by episode 7 I was keenly aware there wasn't enough runway, given the show's methodical pacing, to finish...and I was a little disappointed, but mostly happy that I would get to spend more time in this odd little world.

I also love stories about duality, and this is really centered around the idea of what it means to live two lives, but be completely unaware of what happens in the other.  The fact that the severed-self only experiences time only when they're in the severed floor.  They when they enter the elevator their awareness of the world stops and only resumes back in the elevator.  Time has little meaning to them, their existence is in service of their outer self.  They are, in effect, prisoners and slaves, reaping no benefit for the work they do and not allowed to leave until their outie retires, or dies. 

I haven't touched upon any of the character arcs, but the entire world is viewed through them.  Mark (Adam Scott) is our central figure, the outie is deeply depressed, and severance is a way for him to escape the loss of his wife which he's unwilling to face.  Innie Mark is unaware of his outie's mental state, but his own mental state isn't drastically different.  His innie world is rocked when his best friend, Petey, doesn't show up for work, and he's promoted into Petey's job, and has to take Petey's replacement, Helly, under his wing.  Helly (Britt Lower) vehemently does not want to be there, but her every effort to leave are rebuffed by her outie, there's serious discord between the two halves.  The Macrodata Refinement division is rounded out by the by-the-book Irving (John Turturro) and the boisterous Dylan (Zach Cherry).  Their supervisor, Milchick (Tramell Tillman), holds an invisible club hidden behind a big smile, he's there to keep everyone in line.  

In the outside world, we're centered on Mark, whose sister is late-term pregnant, and his brother-in-law is a hypersensitive nu-man who thinks he's unlocked the key to the world, but is just kind of annoying.  I'm not sure how Devin and Ricken work as a couple... but I like how both play into the larger story (and they fit in highly unexpected ways).  But Mark's outie world is shaken further when Petey (a complete stranger to outie Mark) turns up with his brain reintegrated but suffering direly for it.  

The inside world and the outside world, despite the precautions taken, by the end of the season, well...not so much collide as slightly graze each other, and the dribble of information that both sides receive of the other is just so full of possibilities.  I want to know more, so much more.  Thankfully the show has been renewed for a second season, it just can't come soon enough.