TV Review: Severance season 2

After you've betrayed yourself, can you trust yourself again?

After its season 1 ended in a thrilling cliffhanger, Severance took its sweet time to return to screens. And it (literally) hit the ground running: now our protagonist, Mark, knows that Gemma, his wife, is still alive, hidden somewhere in the restricted levels of his workplace. Now he'll need to enlist the help of his other self, the separate identity the company created for his job, but he has his own budding romance to worry about. An added problem is that said love interest is Helly, the work self of the company's heiress, whose agenda appears to be not fully in line with her father's or her unwitting coworkers'. Meanwhile, the rest of the Macrodata Refinement team have to deal with the consequences of their escape attempt: Irving struggles to keep a sense of purpose now that Burt has retired (even though their external selves seem to be getting acquainted), and Dylan still hasn't gotten over the revelation that he has a full family—but what he learns from pursuing that route may not be the antidote to loneliness he's seeking.

One of the best things about Severance is the richness of levels of interpretation that it allows for. While Season 1 focused mainly on the corporate dystopia side of the story, season 2 aims inward and explores the personal trauma side. We knew that Mark's reason for undergoing the severance surgery was to avoid experiencing the pain of having lost Gemma, which creates the separate identity that lives during office hours in his stead. An implication that was not immediately obvious in season 1 is that this process resembles the survival mechanism that occurs in people with dissociative identities: to protect itself, the mind creates other selves who will bear the burden of trauma that the core self finds too much to face directly. As we discover Gemma's whereabouts, the reason she's being kept there, and how that relates to the real purpose of severance technology, we find more dots to connect that bring us nearer to the full picture: in fulfillment of the doctrine of its mythologized founder, Lumon plans to permanently subdue the Four Tempers.

A key step in this plan is Macrodata Refinement. In this season we learn what those funny numbers our protagonists spend endless workdays sorting mean, and the answer reveals yet another side to Lumon's unflinching cruelty. In fact, even those most loyal to Lumon can be tossed away without a thought. We saw in season 1 how Harmony Cobel went through a collapse of her entire worldview (and season 2 reveals the extent of how much she actually did for Lumon); this time it's Seth Milchick who gets pushed to the limit of his patience, not so much by the employees' already established rebelliousness but by the totalitarian capriciousness of upper management, whose disciplining methods start to grow increasingly degrading.

Another important shift relates to location. We get more episodes set outside of Lumon, some of which are the highlight of the season, which showcase how far and how deeply Lumon's reach has corrupted the world around it. These episodes help us better understand the motivations of Harmony, Burt, Seth, and even Gemma and Helly, but these are the kind of brilliant revelations that don't close off follow-up questions. Yes, now we know what those characters want, but why would they want that?

This insight into hidden motives and strange choices informs the central relationship of the season: that between Mark and his work self. Each half of his identity knows only part of the puzzle about Gemma, and they're going to need to work together in order to rescue her. But of course, it's hard to join forces if each Mark exists only while the other doesn't. The external Mark's efforts to communicate with his workplace half escalate in desperation until both versions of him realize how little they know each other and how incompatible their goals truly are. And here's where the story's various interpretative possibilities come into play. Rather than a separate character, office Mark can be seen as a part of Mark's mind that he's neglected and refused to acknowledge. It's a substitute self that helps him skip the necessary steps of his grieving process. After so much time spent nurturing such an unhealthy coping strategy, it shouldn't be surprising that the original act of self-betrayal becomes multiplied. Mark, who has been suffering intensely without the love of his life, should know better than to try to inflict the same pain on someone else. And yet, in his moment of need, that's exactly what he offers to his other half. The latter's response is shocking, but understandable.

After a stellar first season, Severance found a way to raise the bar even higher. Somehow managing to juggle the interpersonal tension of the panoptical workplace, the dark dead-ends of unprocessed grief, and the ever-worsening difficulty of staying true to oneself under a system of coerced devil's bargains, Severance continues to be a masterpiece of psychological intrigue and imaginative storytelling.

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Close your eyes and enter Dream Productions

Turns out you can give yourself an epiphany without being quite sure how you did it

Dreams aren't stories in the strict sense: they don't proceed from an authorial choice, don't follow an ordered causal progression, and don't express a deliberate stance on their theme. Only the most surreal category of stories would include the semi-random free association carnival our unconscious minds are capable of spitting out. But dreams do have some sort of secret logic, a symbolic language that is unique to each of us. Because they're generated from our own thoughts, they can never tell us something we don't already know. It's just that sometimes we need to be reminded of an obvious truth.

The world of Inside Out is the perfect venue for that kind of exploration. In the limited TV series Dream Productions, a school dance approaches, and our girl Riley is going through the messy balancing act between her childish whimsy and her drive toward maturity. Unsurprisingly, the forces inside her head are working full-time to process those complicated feelings. The surprising part is how neatly the dreams-as-stories metaphor corresponds to the inner conflict.

In the abstract mindspace of Inside Out, dreams are made in a movie studio with a limited repertoire of plots and an unlimited VFX budget. We meet scripwriters, actors, directors, stunt performers, camera operators—but let's not forget these homunculi are actually fragments of Riley's mind. The cutthroat rivalries and artistic disagreements that drive this series are meant to represent unconscious urges that are channeled into dream imagery. The question troubling Riley is whether she has enough social competence for teenage activities; she loves fun, but she's terrified of being perceived as uncool. Her mother's less-than-ideal choice of dress for the upcoming occasion triggers a whole week of disturbing nightmares she needs to sort out on her own.

What adds a level of meta awesomeness to this premise is that it lets us witness (albeit very indirectly) the creative process at Pixar. Since its foundation, the studio has been praised by its strong grasp of emotional stakes; when you go to the movies for a Pixar production, you know you're going to end up crying, and you're looking forward to it. You love how Pixar makes you cry. You love how it seems to understand you so well. That is the degree of insight that Riley's inner movie studio has about her.

The use of dreams as a catalyst for self-knowledge and growth will be immediately recognizable to viewers familiar with The Cell, Paprika or Inception. Where Dream Productions sets itself apart is in the argument that we can learn from our dreams even if we don't remember them. And here the connection between dreams and stories is especially relevant. Maybe you grew up watching Pixar movies, but do you remember everything that happens in them? What Pixar seems to be telling us in Dream Productions is that what matters in their stories isn't their plot, but the emotional imprint they leave upon us. What stories do for us is something deeper than provide models to follow or cautionary tales. They suggest ways of feeling we hadn't considered. They test our stated values. They teach us to be human.

As if that weren't enough substance, Dream Productions adds yet another meta level: the series is told as a mockumentary where Riley's homunculi talk to the camera. Who is supposed to be filming this and interviewing Riley's unconscious? Who are these characters addressing? Go figure. Like in Diego Velásquez's painting Las Meninas, you're invited to put yourself at the center of this piece of art. You're meant to participate as a character in the story, but the world of the story is a slice of you. You're watching yourself watch yourself.

And here Dream Productions finally reveals the ace up its sleeve. I won't spoil how this plays out, but if you connect the idea of dreams as an improvisational form of storytelling with the idea of deliberate introspection turning its gaze on itself, you'll probably guess what I'm talking about. As I've said a thousand times on this blog, the best stories are those about stories. And Dream Productions draws you into an infinite page of potential plot, the text of which comes from a pen your hand is holding.

That is the hidden lesson of every story about dreams: you need to become aware that you are their only author, and you have always been.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Welcome to the Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy

We really hope your insurance covers transdimensional discorporation

It's the far, far future, and doctors are still beset by the familiar woes: difficult patients, dangerous new diseases, petty status games, questionable sponsorship deals, inflexible protocols, atrocious work/life balance, oppressively demanding parents, legal gray areas, career uncertainty, iatrogenic infections, unexpected opportunities for turbulent self-discovery, the growing weight of responsibility to society, scary but admittedly hilarious side effects, workaholism weaponized against oneself, and way more bodily fluids than anyone needs to see or smell or touch. Space whale got your tongue? Doctors Klak and Sleech are at your service. Anesthesia is not guaranteed.

Workplace comedy is tricky to get right. Over-the-top exaggeration is one of the staples of humor, but there's a very precise mix of vibe, mood and flavor in communicating what it's like to do a certain job. The point of this type of comedy is not to achieve an accurate account of daily tasks (how many delivery companies get dragged into universe-breaking crises the way Planet Express does?) but rather to get at the core of people's relationship to their career. No doctor has ever had to cure accidental time travel or black-hole-inflicted injuries, but the animated series The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy manages to feel true to the pressures and anxieties that all doctors face.

Emotional honesty is the anchor that allows the rest of the story's elements to go wild in all directions. Behind the exploding fungi and extinct germs and exoskeletal injections and extrasensory drama lies a solid understanding of who these characters are and what they desire and fear.

Our protagonist duo is composed of doctors Klak and Sleech, famous for their unconventional, sometimes legally dubious approach to treatment. Klak grew up as the unwilling test subject for her mother's psychiatric research, which left her with serious confidence issues and an unhealthy perfectionism. Sleech has an aversion to intimate attachments, to the point that she never speaks of her family, can't relate to people who get along with theirs, refuses to trust anyone else's competence, and sabotages any personal connection that threatens to get too close. These are not science fiction scenarios. These are realistic characters who have to deal with relatable problems; they're just thrown into a setting that has aliens and spaceships. The zany antics of galactic medicine are just scaffolding around the emotional pillars that support each episode.

If you prefer to come for the zany antics, they're thrown at you aplenty. There are immortal brain parasites and mind-reading birds and teleporter fusion and face-swapping STDs and death-reversing implants and hairy heart disease and mutagenic candy bars and gastric detonation therapy. The writers aimed incredibly high with the creativity that a show like this requires. Every permutation of alien body types and body parts you can imagine is represented here.

Also, splatter. Lots and lots of slimy entrails hurled at every surface. Who knew aliens had so many squishy parts inside?

But again, the best moments are those that involve interpersonal dynamics. Our two protagonists have gone through so much together that their bond resonates as a solid, thriving one, even when their mismatched personalities cause inadvertent hurt and they need to have vulnerable conversations. In spite of all the times they drive each other up the wall, they still rely on each other for strength when dealing with a toxic ex, a stressful coworker, a personal insecurity, or a forbidden experiment that might endanger every brain in every known planet.

The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy is a great example of what you get with an all-female writing room. You get smart humor, you get psychological insight, you get a mature treatment of the tough experiences that happen at a hospital, and you get carefully constructed characters who feel like people you want to hug.

And you get splatter. I can't stress this enough. Brains and guts and feathers and who knows what else go flying all the time. And it never fails to be irresistibly funny.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

On the bittersweet sincerity of Carol & the End of the World

Yes, yes, we know, the world is ending, but do you really need that bucket list?

In the world where Carol Kohl lives, the days of humankind are numbered. A rogue planet will crash against Earth in just a few months, and there's no way to avoid it. Governments have collapsed; money has lost all meaning; shops and streets have become lawless playgrounds; and everyone is frantically squeezing all the excitement they can get out of their precious last months.

Everyone except mild-mannered, gentle Carol. If you ask her what she wants to do with the quickly shortening rest of her life, she'll have a hard time deciding what to say. While her parents are out on a cruise ship with their new lover, her school friends are going on spiritual self-discovery adventures, and her sister paraglides across the world, Carol would rather just sit at a cafeteria and have a relaxed evening. She has no stomach for wild parties or car races or last-second impulse tattoos. That whole "seize the day" ethos ends up seizing too much of you. Yes, life is short and we only get one, but what's the rush? You may call Carol depressed, but isn't it a sign of a deeper malaise to be constantly in a state of pursuing the next exhilarating, unforgettable thrill?

However, even Carol eventually finds her bliss, and it's hidden in what is apparently the only company still in operation. Every morning, she puts on her business suit, drives through the noise of improvised concerts and public orgies, under the ever-growing silhouette of the approaching planet that will put an end to everything, and sits at a desk to look at a computer screen and type numbers. What does the company sell? It doesn't matter. It's not the result that motivates her to get out of bed. It's the safety of the familiar. It's the distraction from the imminence of death.

Carol & the End of the World weaves the most caustic nihilism with a deep compassion in an unlikely mix of emotional punches that hit hard, but never low. If, as the scriptwriting manuals say, true character is manifested at times of crisis, this animated limited series pushes its characters to the ultimate stress point and forces them to disclose their sincerest selves. But Carol doesn't even need to be at the top of the world to show us who she is. We hear all the time of people who go windsurfing and mountaineering and backpacking in search of awesome, but what of those who are satisfied with nice? What right does the adrenaline junkie have to pity the tranquil?

The treatment of characters in Carol & the End of the World is a difficult needle to thread: the script is funny enough to let us see them at their limit, but aware enough to not fall into mockery. We're meant to laugh at the absurdity of mortality, but not at these characters who are doing their best to keep their head in one piece while civilization falls irreversibly apart. It's as if the plot of Don't Look Up happened to the cast of Please Like Me. It's simultaneously hilarious and painful and ridiculous and poignant and impossible and true. It's beautiful.

Of the works of science fiction that delve into social commentary, the best are those that describe the real, everyday world at just the right distance to expose the strange bits we haven't noticed. Yes, this life is indeed very weird. We're not all that different from the inhabitants of Carol's world; the only change is that their memento mori is plain to see, a huge ball of rock hanging in the sky. So the question that this show is asking us to consider is not "What if we had a permanent reminder of our mortality?" No, that's already the world we live in. We already know our time is finite, and we're bombarded with exhortations to make the most of it.

Nor is the question "If we know for a fact that we're going to die, why hasn't our society blown up like this?" No, it's not that, because, again, that's already the society we have. We're awash in the cultural messages that warn against regret and urge us to collect souvenirs of what this world has to offer. Every bookstore has its version of "1001 dishes/museums/singers/beaches/cocktails you have to try before you die." But do we have to, if we're being honest? Why treat life as a scavenger hunt game where you're counted as a loser until you've done it all? What's so wrong with wanting little?

Despite Carol's quiet contentment at finding a thing to do with her final days, the office atmosphere can still use some improvement. And here is where Carol shines: what she brings to work is a dose of much-needed human connection. Keeping your mind distracted from the ever-present horror of death won't do the trick; you need others to endure it with.

Which is basically what life in this world of ours feels like. It doesn't matter if you suspect everyone else is having more fun than you. It doesn't even matter if they truly are. Sometimes sitting on a park bench and having a soda with a stranger is enough. Sometimes late night TV is enough. It's all going to vanish in the end anyway. Faced with the approaching shadow of eternal oblivion, the fact that there's a you at all is enough.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Futurama is back, as sharp as ever

The world of the 31st century feels even closer to ours

Depending on how you keep count, this is season 8 or 11 of Futurama. After being killed and revived twice, it makes sense that this time the series has some things to say about the state of television, corporate whims, and the meaning (of lack thereof) of death.

For example, episode 1, "The Impossible Stream," makes fun of streaming media and the trend of show revivals. Note how trivial it is to bring Calculon back from robot hell and how Bender shrugs off the death of a TV director, while Fry briefly appears to have died, just to show up unharmed. There's a theme being built towards, but it's not evident in the first viewing.

Episode 2, "Children of a Lesser Bog," resumes the hanging thread of the tadpoles spawned by Kif back in season 4. The bulk of the plot deals with the usual antics of new parenthood, plus a brief legal drama with a disappointingly deflated resolution, but there's also a point at the beginning where Kif's hundreds of tadpoles are eaten by various swamp predators until only three survive. This incident is portrayed as normal in Kif's culture, but one has to wonder about a civilization where this degree of child mortality is acceptable. Again, this is all part of an overarching theme. Earlier in the same episode, Kif intentionally lets a man die as part of a rescue mission.

Episode 3, "How the West Was 1010001," is all about the Bitcoin fad. This one must have been easy to write; Bitcoin is laughable enough in itself. The Planet Express crew visits a town that has reverted to Wild West technology because "mining" consumes all electricity, which provides a believable excuse to call back to the aesthetic of Gold Rush movies. Several minor threads converge in a massive shootout, but the final scene reminds us of all the minds lost to Bitcoin. This is shown for laughs, but it's connected to the growing interest of the season in how we react to huge personal losses. The news of a whole planet being destroyed, with a population of 50 billion, is likewise treated as a minor affair.

Episode 4, "Parasites Regained," goes even more personal: Nibbler's brain is being eaten by worms. In a parody of the Dune movies, our heroes battle armies of microscopic beasts in the desert sands of Nibbler's litterbox. After perhaps too many toilet jokes and a couple mystical visions, the day is saved. Nevermind that Nibbler ate a whole person in broad daylight with no consequence.

Episode 5, "Related to Items You've Viewed," has a thinly disguised Amazon devour the entire universe yet everything stays the same.

Episode 6, "I Know What You Did Next Xmas," is about the, honestly, overdue murder of Robot Santa Claus, who somehow has been allowed to go on a violent rampage every year. As this episode involves time travel, we once again encounter Futurama's established lore that successive restarts of the universe are identical and thus interchangeable. To Professor Farnsworth, to watch whole generations rise and fall seems to be an amusing spectacle.

Episode 7, "Rage Against the Vaccine," is a not very successful parody of the disinformation crisis during the present pandemic (yes, I said present, because it's not over). This episode has the same director as "Children of a Lesser Bog," which may explain why the ending falls a bit flat. Here the plot point to keep in mind is the callousness of negationists whose words literally cost lives.

Episode 8, "Zapp Gets Canceled," hinges on a scheme by the Democratic Order of Planets to trick the natives of a peaceful planet into surrendering their air.

By now you may protest that it's surely a stretch to focus on so many minor deaths when it's already known that Futurama uses a zany, absurdist style of humor. But then we get to the crux of the matter, the weird and experimental Episode 9, "The Prince and the Product," where the season-long theme is finally explored in full: does death matter all that much? Early in the episode, three nameless royal guards in the service of the King of Space are crushed under the Planet Express ship, with no one even commenting on it. A few minutes later, the King coldly sends his son to die in combat, and the Prince's fiancée ends the episode untroubled by his death.

To underscore this theme, the episode is interrupted by three fictional commercials, featuring the Futurama cast as windup dolls, car toys, and rubber ducks. And here the plot applies a much closer focus on the triviality of death. In the first commercial, windup dolls turn out to be able to reincarnate, so it doesn't matter if they lose power. In the second commercial, parts of dismantled cars still retain their consciousness when taken apart. In the third commercial, a war between toys leads to the revelation that toys can reproduce. In each segment, and also at the end of the episode, this idea of the cycle of death and return is expressed via the recurring motif of loop-de-loop acrobatics. The fact that the entire cast of Futurama is involved in each tale of death and return may allude to the diminished impact of each cancellation and un-cancellation of the show. Futurama has already died and come back before. Should we care?

Episode 10, "All the Way Down," gives us the answer, but it's not an easy one. Professor Farnsworth creates a simulation of the universe, including digital versions of everyone in Planet Express. This leads to a snowball of existential questions that results in the show all but stating that the characters of Futurama know they're not real, but that doesn't make their experiences less valuable. They may vanish any moment, or they may remain suspended in infinitely slowed time; that makes no difference from their perspective. What the season treated as a repeated joke, this idea that death doesn't matter, now makes a peculiar kind of sense if seen from the other end: life is what matters. Yours may end now or end in a hundred years, and that doesn't change its worth. You may even discover that your reality only exists in someone's computer, and that doesn't change anything about you.

This resolution is a beautiful callback to the end of the previous season, where time stopped in the whole universe except for Fry and Leela, who got to experience a full lifetime together. This new ending (of what is just the first part of the season) reintroduces the same idea: time appears to prolong in one level of reality while whole generations rise and fall in the next level up. The viewer's circumstances aren't too different. An inconceivable number of deaths are happening right now across the universe. All you have is now.

Futurama will be back. Or not. Enjoy it while it's still with us.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

In 'Severance,' the perfect work-life balance is a horrific illusion

This instantly addictive satire lays bare how easily corporate culture turns totalitarian as soon as it gets a chance

It's every manager's dream: employees who can behave 100% professionally and leave their personal problems at the door. Obedient cogs whose entire philosophy of life consists in loyalty to the company. Eager followers who wouldn't dare form close ties with their coworkers and whose aspirations don't aim further than winning a commemorative paperweight. Hyperfocused nonpersons who will never get distracted from their tasks because that's literally the only thing in their minds.

Corporate culture would love nothing more than to achieve that fantasy. Apple TV's new series Severance, created by Dan Erickson and gorgeously directed by Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle, explores the nightmare that would result if companies could wield complete control over human beings without interference from the outside world.

Severance takes place in a biomedical corporation that subjects its low-level employees to a surgery that separates their memories and identities between their office selves and their outside selves. Every day, they drive to their jobs, enter an elevator, and forget who they are. They work their shifts without any knowledge of their personal lives; while in that state, all they can remember is life inside the company building. At the end of the day, they enter the same elevator and switch back: out in the street, they have no idea what they do for a living or even who their coworkers are.

Not that their jobs make the least bit of sense, mind you. That workplace couldn't be any more ridiculously shady: with its endless featureless corridors, creepy supervisors who won't stop smiling cheerfully, outlandish teambuilding rituals, an obscure internal mythology around the company's founder, an obsessive degree of surveillance, and punitive reeducation worthy of a North Korean prison camp, the surreal environment of Severance presents a heightened version of worrying trends that already exist in real-world companies.

The dangers of organizational totalitarianism and CEO worship have been raising alarms for quite a while now. Our jobs already dominate a big chunk of our lives. The main reason they don't exert more control is fear of worker solidarity, public opinion, and legal retaliation. But in a scenario where no one outside can know what happens inside, where not even we can know what is done to us for eight hours of the day, the corporation won't hesitate to claim every part of us. Once it has control of our actions, it will gladly morph into its own little dictatorship. Let it get its hands on our brains, and it will become a cult.

The fictional company in Severance devotes an amount of effort and resources to singing the praises of its founder that is only one step away from the cult of personality of real-life CEOs. When we think the show can't get any more bizarre, the next episode reveals even darker depths of how much these workers are expected to bow at the feet of the founder. His sayings are holy scripture, his image is a focus for displays of reverence, and his recreated house is a site of pilgrimage. While inside the office, employees are forbidden from reading any literature except the company manual, which is written with such disturbing solemnity that, toward the middle of the season, a mediocre self-help manual smuggled into the building proves life-changing for our protagonist.

Said protagonist is Mark (Adam Scott), a recent widower who applied for a split-memory job so he could forget about his pain for eight hours every day. He only starts to question his routine when a man claiming to be a former coworker contacts him with confusing revelations about what really goes on inside the company.

Honestly, you don't even need a conspiracy theory to smell that something is very wrong about that place. In the office, social interaction is impersonal to the point of loss of humanity. Mark's department spends the workday classifying meaningless numbers, so personal achievements feel empty, and when supervisors recognize them, any enjoyment is clothed in an artificiality that robs it of value. No one knows what their work means; the board of directors are only present as an ominous silence on the phone; the floor layout is deliberately labyrinthine to discourage employees from joining forces; and for whatever reason, there's a goat farm.

Everything about this series sounds incomprehensible. But the cast does a stellar job of grounding the absurdity in real human emotion. Britt Lower, who fulfills the trope of the new hire through whom we learn the rules of this world, takes the story into deep existential terror as her character learns that she is her own worst enemy. John Turturro plays a bootlicking senior employee who gets radicalized when he realizes that his office crush's retirement implies that that version of him will cease to exist. And Patricia Arquette is deliciously menacing as the tyrannical manager with an agenda of her own.

The impressive talent starring in Severance would suffice to recommend it. But the ace up this show's sleeve is its visual language. Both directors convey the claustrophobic life of cubicle workers with an impeccable eye for shot composition. We frequently see Mark sitting alone with half the frame obscured, symbolizing the missing half of his life that he no longer has access to. Although the story appears to be happening in our present time, the office space is designed with a vaguely retro aesthetic that heightens the incongruity of the situation. The end result is simultaneously funny, intriguing, scary, unsettling, sad, relevant, and at its core, intensely human.

With this kind of premise, Severance could easily have rolled down the hill of shocksploitation. But it manages to never lose hold of the humanity at the center of the story. Severance is about the unfair demands of "professionalism" and the increasing pressure to not let our personal issues affect our performance. It's about the frustrations that continue to drive the Great Resignation. It's about private corporations' ongoing attempt to build their own secluded societies, isolated from scrutiny. It's about a system of social relations that makes us complicit in our own exploitation.

On a more intimate level, Severance is about our willingness to rip ourselves apart if that's what it takes to avoid confronting deep pain (there's a subplot about a woman who undergoes the brain surgery to create a separate self who will only exist for the purpose of experiencing childbirth). And, like all great stories, it's about the search for happiness and the amounts of unhappiness we can inflict upon ourselves along the way. Severance is the most important television show of the year, and it will remain culturally significant beyond this decade.

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.