I don’t consume much pop culture these days. But, on occasion, my Slavic wife curates some stuff that we watch together.
This is how I came to be obsessed with “Severance,” an Apple TV+ show marketed as a “science fiction psychological thriller” directed and produced by Ben Stiller. It went on a long hiatus following season one but is now back with the second.
The premise is that a mysterious megacorporation called Lumon has developed a breakthrough technology that allows workers to have their work selves “severed” from their real-world selves via a brain chip. The selling point is “work-life balance” — no need to take the office home with you.
Even if most people wouldn’t spring for a brain implant to pull it off, the draw is clear to anyone who has had their soul crushed by a corporate or state job, sat through weird struggle sessions under fluorescent lights with human resources goblins, been subject to diatribes of PR-speak nonsense in lieu of plain English, or navigated Kafkaesque bureaucracy that makes communist regimes look transparent and sane.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s relatable.Related: Supercomputer Given Authority to Decide Whether to Block Out Sun For Climate Change
When the “innies” (the slang term used for the workers when they’re inside Lumon) emerge from their shifts into the outside world, their “outies” (the term for their non-work identities) have no idea what they’ve been doing for eight hours. This premise works on several levels and allows for multiple storylines that almost write themselves.
One element that really works is the “secret lives” of the innies that they live totally unbeknownst to their outies or anyone else who doesn’t work at Lumon.
What happens down there? wonder the outies and their friends and families. Without spoiling anything, a lot.
Voyeurism, relatedly, is another draw of the show — to see what is not meant to be seen, to taste what is not meant to be tasted. It’s a tale as old as time (literally, if we’re talking Garden of Eden).
The viewer gets the opportunity for voyeurism both through his/her own eyes and through the eyes of the characters as they try to piece together what’s going on and who they are “on the outside.”
It’s got hidden loves and cliffhangers and more twists and turns than a NASCAR speedway (a stupid metaphor, I know, but whatever; it’s the first that came to mind).
If you’re not white-knuckling it through the last episode of the first season, check your pulse.
Then there’s the politics of it. Lumon is a well-oiled machine — although we haven’t discovered yet what it actually does — that obviously spends a lot of time trying to convince the world that brain chips for employees to make them forget what happens to them at work is a great idea.
Naturally, there are political movements on the other side of the fence that don’t approve — you know, like anti-Science™ people.
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On a final note, while I’m giving you the hard sell, the show is decidedly un-woke. There are no real social engineering angles that reach through the screen and beat you over the head. There’s a gay character, but it’s not weird in any way and there’s no real agenda behind it that I can see. The main characters do not appear to be cast to please DEI sensibilities. No transgenders so far.
Give it a whirl.
