Severance

[Grub]

I did not like Black Mirror. It felt like they were aiming for 50’s Twilight Zone and landed in 90’s Outer Limits instead.

But all of those shows are good.

It's about a new procedure that separates your work self from your personal life self with the use of a cranial implant. You are essentially creating a copy of yourself without memories of your personal life, and you can't communicate between the two, hence the name, severance.

The premise does actually sound pretty cool and black mirrorish. I haven't watched a TV show in years. This sounds like something I might actually check out.

 

[Google.com]

January 17th

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Oooh - What are your theories?

My theory is that they're doing nothing except being programmed to follow the bible(the employee manual). The nonsense work they do would have to fit a pattern of how they normally do it to see if they can be conditioned into their roles. Whatever they choose as a gut feeling needs to be reliably repeated. It serves no purpose beyond that.
But at the end it's all about their bible(employee manual), it's the only higher power they can believe in down there.

 

[Google.com]

Its been a while since I watched, but

Spoiler: Season 1 spoilers

it sounds like the rich people are already using the severance shit outside of the offices to skip difficult parts of their life. So whatever the office people are doing are definitely related to that. Probably mapping the rich peoples brains to MK Ultra them.

 

[Mister Ferro]

Season 2 trailer just dropped:

 

[MirrorNoir]

I'm actually going to thank you for this post, since reading it instantly crystallized a lot of my thoughts regarding this show, Black Mirror, and work in general.
The criticism I'm going to land on, is that this right here is the type of discussion these types of shows inspire: banal watercooler talk, usually answered with a simple yes or no. These shows are built on the premise of a technological convenience on the surface, which is contrived (and sometimes the contrivance is really stretched) to be in actuality inconvenient.
I'm going to also answer the question, even though it wasn't aimed at me: absolutely not, for a few reasons:

It really touches on the mentality of the white collar desk jockeys that these types of shows are aimed for. These people are so unfulfilled at work, beyond the simple obligation to show up, that they would rather sacrifice a third of each day from their consciousness to not have to deal with it. I would bet the target audience is in an Office Space situation, where they spend more time pretending to work than actually working, and even the work they do is dull. Add to the fact that the average person holds no pride in their work, and they're just waiting for the clock to run out. But to get this procedure means to not just fragment who and what you know, but fragment your growth as a person; a concept which would actually be interesting in a sci-fi setting, but this show has no signs of exploring. You know what show did do this premise? The Prisoner, from the fucking 60's!
Seriously, if you want to not be miserable for most of your day, convince yourself to develop a pride in the work you get done. You can hate your job and your coworkers and whatnot, but pride in what you've accomplished with your own two hands will at least keep you afloat to where you don't want to be effectively lobotomized.


From what I've seen, that one feels like a bad ripoff of Rendezvous with Rama.

To give perspective of my current TV consumption, my last attempt to watch a TV show was 1 episode of Cheers every other day or so. Before that was 2-3 episodes of Samurai Jack a day a few months prior. Before that was 1-2 episodes of Breaking Bad a week with my dad, pre-Covid. I do not understand how people do the binge watching thing. Usually I can barely manage 1 really good movie a week.

The idea with binge watching new shows is both the fear of missing out (since everything is released at once the season as a whole gets discussed online not just individual episodes, meaning you have to watch it all when it comes out of miss out on the conversation) and the idea of making appointment TV for streaming with regards to making watchi g a whole season a day long treat for yourself with you making time to dedicate an entire day watching it (hence why Netflix drops shows on Friday so you can binge watch over the weekend).

 

[Google.com]

Apple TV doesn't do the whole binge watching thing though for new shows? They upload the first 3 episodes then 1 a week?

 

[Quijibo69]

Like the show but I know the ending will be the stupidest thing you can think of. Just like Lost.

 

[urr13 account]

Like the show but I know the ending will be the stupidest thing you can think of. Just like Lost.

Agreed, there's no way this show ends with anything other than the stupidest possible ending. Looking forward to season 2.

 

[grump]

Finished watching it. Lumon deserves to fail simply for having such shit security. My overall feeling is the show is decently put together but not mindblowing.

My biggest gripe is the missed opportunity where Lumon is more strange than it is mysterious. To clarify I was hoping for something more akin to Nowhere man or the Prisoner or the Stanley Parable. Where you have an utterly mysterious organization/entity fucking with the protagonists in mindbending ways. Lumon is just mostly nonmysterious people doing weird not mysterious things. Its the difference between looking out your window to an old abandoned lighthouse in the middle of the ocean at night and seeing the light in the window flicker on and seeing the local oddball walking backward every day. Yeah the stuff Lumon does is also unexplained and I guess interesting in its own way if they manage to kungfu some good explanatation or parable out of it. But the payoff for the other stuff was better and more consistant.

Also it would be interesting if there was more conflict between the Innies and Outies. Which we do get a little of with Helly but all the others seem to pretty much be on board with each other.

I did not like Black Mirror. It felt like they were aiming for 50’s Twilight Zone and landed in 90’s Outer Limits instead.

I loved Black Mirror - last season was super meh though.

Black Mirror had a couple interesting episodes. But I didn't bother with it after the first season or two because you can feel it is written by throbbing wieners the entire time you are watching it.

 

[Terror Sandwich]

Season 2 is ongoing, currently on episode 3.
I'm enjoying it a great deal. The quality seems on part with the first season.
I like that the plot is moving at a decent pace and I specially liked the direction they took at the end of episode 3.

Having Mark be reintegrated so early in the season feels like a ballsy move. I didn't think it would happen so soon in the show, I assumed it would be something for the very end of the series.
I'm curious to see how it will play out. Hopefully it won't get teased for too long. If the operation "fails" and they drag this on for countless episodes I'll be very disappointed.

 

[Quijibo69]

Spoiler

Having Mark be reintegrated so early in the season feels like a ballsy move. I didn't think it would happen so soon in the show, I assumed it would be something for the very end of the series.
I'm curious to see how it will play out. Hopefully it won't get teased for too long. If the operation "fails" and they drag this on for countless episodes I'll be very disappointed.

Spoiler: Maybe

I have a funny feeling it's going to be like Dark City.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

I was enjoying the show as a pretty timeless sci fi thriller until the hamfisted gay romance showed up. Reminded me I'm watching a current day apple show instead. They show does a fantastic job setting up a mystery and making an office enviroment a nail biting tension filled set piece. The cinematography is fantastic and the sets are excellently minimalist.

Severance is the best portrial of a liminal space/purgatory/hell I have ever seen and one of the most dystopian settings imaginable.

Problem is, its all continent on the mystery. Mystery boxes are easy as fuck to set up. You don't get credit for setting up mystery boxes, you get credit for paying them off. I refuse to rank season 1 because it doesn't answer the main mystery it set up. As far as I'm concerned its half a show and its ranking is entirely contingent on whether or not season 2 pays off the mystery.

Oooh - What are your theories?

Its complete bullshit, the work is intentionally meaningless and designed to empty their minds by programming them to conflate uncertainty with certainty and believe ANYTHING as long as its repeated enough times.

"Scary numbers definitely exist, trust me just keep looking you'll see them."

Same with the break room ritual. Its designed to break them. Same with all the religious iconography and worshiping the company like the bible.

The whole thing is an experiment on brainwashing and mind control. They want to see how pliable they can make someone, its literally just MK Ultra.

 

[Kit Marz]

My brother is a big fan of the show and convinced me to watch it. I'm just now all caught up and enjoy it. I found that I actually don't care what their jobs actually are or what the company produces. I'm more interested by the interactions of the company, the employees, and the outside world. Figuring out how topple a company with severe communication and memory limitations is intriguing. That being said, I didn't care for episode 4 of season 2. I spent most of the time trying to figure out why I should care. Then ending reveal felt pretty weak, too.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

I don't get why nowadays it takes four years to produce an eight episode "season," back in the 90s The X-Files were churning out 20+ episode seasons every year. The concept of "prestige television" is a garbage can and a shit meme.

we've decided that quality over quantity was a better decision for shows like this as you can have 20+ episodes come out and they look like shit or far less episodes but better production value so they can get away with doing things that'd be more limited to movies or a miniseries. cant say anything about writing in general for that, but that's an issue not necessarily relegated to how many episodes a show can have

 

[hulijing]

newest episode was interesting... kinda felt like a filler episode at first, but it was still alright
made the mistake of checking the reddit, and man, these people are retarded, a lot of things were incredibly obvious and they make it seem as if this episode was the first time the viewers could tell something was off
are people actually this slow? theres no way my media literature class from way back in 10th grade is the reason why i was able to tell what was going on... i thought redditors were supposed to be autists

 

[Pedophobe]

Funny how they dropped the bit about Mark getting re-integrated almost entirety. This show seems to have a pacing problem with things happening, then being undone, then happening again, then forgotten about, repeat as needed until the rest of the plot catches up and they can happen for real.

Still pretty good though. Love to hate Rickon.

 

[Terror Sandwich]

The pacing feels a bit too fast this season. The episode 4 development felt like it happened way too soon.
Outie Hellen barely did anything as a mole. She fucked Mark and that's pretty much it. It feels like that entire plot point was just to remove Irvin from the team, and maybe make Mark S. and Hellen R. relationship a bit awkward.

 

[PositiveMonk]

Going to be a little generous with the spoilers here just in case.

Funny how they dropped the bit about Mark getting re-integrated almost entirety.

I think it's a process that takes a few attempts. The first step was him accessing innie Mark's memories. That's why we saw innie Mark's first memory. I do really feel this story needed to be isolated to one episode and not have conflicting B and C stories fighting for time.

Spoiler: Spoilering this meme

To give my two cents on this show: It's... good. I had a lot of expectations at the start of season 1, that this would be a sci-fi focused show that mainly looks at the ethics of a procedure like this. I've heard a lot of people saying the last episode was what jumped the shark for them, for me it was in season 1 when Lumon was established to have some cultish characteristics. though this wasn't really a bad thing. It definitely lowered my enjoyment of the show, but I just accepted that it wasn't what I wanted and carried on enjoying it as a different more surreal show. A good comparison would be Mr.Robot which really felt like a bait and switch to me. This happened early enough that I could accept it. The writing at this point feels a little weak to me, like they're just sort of making things up as they go along. All things considered, it's still way better than so many shows that are currently airing.

 

[grump]

Going to be a little generous with the spoilers here just in case.

I think it's a process that takes a few attempts. The first step was him accessing innie Mark's memories. That's why we saw innie Mark's first memory. I do really feel this story needed to be isolated to one episode and not have conflicting B and C stories fighting for time.

Spoiler: Spoilering this meme

View attachment 6958351

To give my two cents on this show: It's... good. I had a lot of expectations at the start of season 1, that this would be a sci-fi focused show that mainly looks at the ethics of a procedure like this. I've heard a lot of people saying the last episode was what jumped the shark for them, for me it was in season 1 when Lumon was established to have some cultish characteristics. though this wasn't really a bad thing. It definitely lowered my enjoyment of the show, but I just accepted that it wasn't what I wanted and carried on enjoying it as a different more surreal show. A good comparison would be Mr.Robot which really felt like a bait and switch to me. This happened early enough that I could accept it. The writing at this point feels a little weak to me, like they're just sort of making things up as they go along. All things considered, it's still way better than so many shows that are currently airing.

I was hoping for a Stanley Parableish, Control, Willy Wonkaish direction in show form where the corporation is mindbendingly mysterious. But the bizarreness of Lumon is curiously restrained and unimaginative and so far seems more incompetent than anything else. Severence is the one major thing then they also have a few more minor strange practices haven't really paid off yet.