After almost three years of waiting, this series returned with the same level of intrigue and refinement as its first season.
From the second season of Severance onwards , one might wonder if the series is prophetic.or a reflection of an already existing reality.
Directed for the most part by Ben Stiller , Severance follows four employees and their struggles to regain their consciousness and individuality while working at a mysterious company called Lumon Industries .The underlying idea is that Lumon implants a microchip in its employees that splits their consciences.Those who enter Lumon to work voluntarily submit to this treatment. What the chip does is divide the person’s life: inside Lumon, the employee forgets what he does in the outside world; conversely, when he is outside, he does not remember what he did during his eight hours of work or even what the work environment is like.
The protagonist is Mark ( Adam Scott , Parks and recreation ), a man who chooses to work at Lumon to deal with the weight he feels after the death of his wife. Thus, when he is in the company’s underground facilities, large, spotless offices designed with a retro-futuristic taste, he completely forgets the rest of his life. There he meets three other employees, a disturbingly friendly manager and a manager (Patricia Arquette) who behaves with a heavy hand.
One of the best ways to engage an audience in fantasy or science fiction premises is to start with universally understandable facts and ideas that the viewer can immediately identify with. Series as different and highly successful as Game of Thrones and Lost used this resource. The former began with a strong emphasis on political intrigue and strong characters, then very gradually introduced magic and dragons. The latter took enormous work to give soul and life to its characters and then really develop the fantasy elements and mythology of the island they were stranded on.
The first bright spot of Severance is in the way it applies that resourceIt appeals to the idea of the person who perceives that their work time is outside of their life in general, which is often expressed with the exclamation «I have no life!»
The other way in which this resource of seeking closeness with the spectator is used is when showing the task that Mark and his companions do. On very old computers, which seem to run DOS, they are busy choosing numbers from a grid and placing them in little boxes. The questions about the meaning and logic of this work multiply, until the characters accept that the way to do it well consisted of grouping the numbers intuitively, without asking themselves what for or why.Accepting that we don’t know why we do work or what it contributes to is also a universally understandable starting point., even for those who have been lucky enough to choose or build their own work.
From there, the drama and misfortune that the characters go through develop. They begin to have concerns at the same pace as the viewer, they get to know new corners of Lumon, they manage their external lives with increasing anxiety and they learn about the mysticism surrounding the deceased founder of the company, venerated almost as if he were a biblical character.
Nothing seems random or careless in the nine episodes of the first season.The twists and turns and revelations keep piling up as each character, both their professional and external selves, ask themselves questions about their consciences and existences (about their I’s, in short). And so the story progressed until a final chapter in which it seemed that everything was going to change.
Almost three years passed between the end of that season and the beginning of this one,whose chapters are released Friday to Friday and there will be ten in totalIn fiction, only five months have passed since the events of the last episode of the previous season and the start of this one.
The time jump that the first chapter presents is as strange for the viewer as it is for the protagonist, thus once again managing to synchronize the real experience with that of the fictional characters.The point of view that Ben Stiller and his screenwriters choose is that of Mark’s working self, who now has some memories of what happened outside., but he doesn’t fully understand how five months passed. The viewer doesn’t either, and will only begin to put things together as the episode progresses and the protagonist half-understands what happened.
AppleTV ‘s choice to release one episode per week is a good one. Severance is so engaging that it can be binge-watched, just like you can now with the first season.
But in the oversaturated entertainment landscape, it’s a relief to enjoy it at this pace, as it allows you to process a work that leaves its mark without resorting to easy resources (for example, the brutal violence of Squid Game ). Much of the merit of this series lies in its great cast (including John Turturro and Christopher Walken), in the visual refinement, a measured pace and a clever script that balances drama with a strange sense of humor, intrigue and well-dosed information.
In cinema, old critics used to say that a film was much more than its plot.In streaming, arguments are essential to maintain interest(hence the subscriptions). However, what makes a series go from being good entertainment to a work of another value happens when it manages to leave a seed that grows in the mind of the viewer; when that seed grows between chapters and endures. Perhaps it is too soon to draw further conclusions because, ultimately, it would have to be done when the series is complete. For now, these first impressions and what they hint at about its future are worth it.
Severance is available to watch on AppleTV+
