anyone seen SEVERANCE yet?

The set design asthetic is something I'm seeing a lot of lately (and yes, Maniac is one of them). Theres something Eastern Bloc about it.

I have literally worked in an office once that was a big, empty room with 4 desks right in the middle with partitions and only 4 of us in a room way too large (because we planned on moving more ppl in there and never did in the end). So that, plus the baffling, timewasting work and windowless, cold-white light and endless coridoors gave me visceral Bad Vibes.

I'm not sure how much I can talk about this but, a government job I had many years ago had a department in a basement, that was completely underground, seperate from the building itself, cut off by a secure door. No windows, so they had this weird strip lighting in the walls that changed colour during the day and night so the staff working there had some idea time was passing. Theres a lot about this show that I found quite plausible haha.

This show has mark s in it!

Hahaha I had the same thought!

Yes Mark S has taken on a Kafkaesque ring since watching this show. All the shrines to a mysterious leader called Kier also prompted some lols.

The combination of dystopic bureaucratic discourse + self-help shtick reminded me a lot of George Saunders' Civilwarland in Bad Decline? Mark's bro in law felt like he belonged in another show really. That marriage was possibly the least plausible thing about the whole thing.

Watched the last four episodes on Friday, but my Plex autoplayed and for some reason skipped e07, so felt like I had my own severance moment for a while there.

100% on the George Saunders vibe

pic.twitter.com/dbRnVwqWpr

— Zac Coe (@_normalzac) April 18, 2022

Lol!

haha britt lower def does give off jenny lewis vibes

i keep wanting to push dylan’s glasses back up

any two-handed task leads to that level of precarity within 11 seconds, ime. Dylan knew what he was volunteering for.

Yup

Best show this year, so far. I wonder how much the writers have planned ahead, I really don't know where it would go next season

haha britt lower def does give off jenny lewis vibes

her face reminds me a lot of Lena Headey's

The creator says the show is meant to run 3 seasons, so I figure he has a story planned out

Good to hear, I don't want this show to go too LOST

Yeah, they've set it up so that they could pretty easily undo all of the progress of the last episode and start over again from square one, or have the whole show be upended, or anything in between. Very curious how they will handle it.

^yes to all of this

It's hard to imagine Helly's outie letting her go back to the office. In fact, it's hard to imagine the innies not being wiped or something now that they've seen too much.

Yes, this is what I have been thinking. Unless...

It is hard to figure out how they haven't reached a narrative dead end, sort of where The Good Place went during the second season, where a return to the status quo doesn't make narrative sense, but going too far from the status quo could make the series lose the specific intrigues that make it interesting.

On the other hand it could all be fine! And I hope it well be. Aside from all the puzzlebox mystery shows that lost their way, there's still The Leftovers, which basically aced it all the way through to the finale.

And I'm still thinking about the finale! It wouldn't work as a discrete hour of television, but it's got to be the most enjoyable single episodes of television I've watched in a long, long time. Totally Reaganing.

Yes, finale was excellent. Still thinking one way they could play it is that the whole thing was some kind of mega-experiment, allowing them to read Ricken's book and then to escape to See What They Would Do and the Whole Town Is In On It so they all just get put back in the box next season but then that would sort of be a copout, so I dunno. *scratches head*

I watched the final three in a row, so I may have missed something, but I feel like the most clearly dangling thread to pick up in the next season is the Lumon chip doctor, who iirc never reappeared after meeting with Mark and killing the security guy. So an obvs way to not just wipe the innies would be to have them reintegrated

Yes, pondering that too.

Yes. Alternatively Lumon could just reset their chips so their innies would be back to ignorant bliss.

or they could reset *us* and show the same season to a fresh audience

love this interview w Stiller

https://defector.com/ben-stiller-explains-how-severance-became-the-rare-streaming-show-thats-actually-good/

So after watching Severance, I started reading Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and am struck by many similarities, starting with the labyrinthine setting and making of notes, among other things - anyone else?

Yes!

Right? (Hidden spoilers are for the book) plus the inside/outside knowledge/memory of oneself and trying to cross the worlds, the question of whether you want to, the 'work' in Severance maybe being similar to the 'Secret Knowledge' in Piranesi, who is trustworthy. Possibly getting people inside by nefarious means. Dunno what the equivalent of the waffle party would be though...

Really curious as to whether Piranesi had any influence at all over Severance? I might not have put the two together if I hadn't read/watched in quick succession.

I'm reading that the Backrooms horror meme had a bit of influence over Severance and, in particular, folks talking about this 16-year-old's series of videos, but the first one went up 3 months ago so it can't be true. They're pretty good though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4dGpz6cnHo

I have little interest in most dystopian stories but gave Severance a try anyway. I was immediately hooked by the opening scene's conference room as prison cell and absurdist corporate survey. And how Helly responded with the fury it all deserves from any sane person. Later scenes of doublespeak and goofy dancing, though entertaining, haven't been quite so on target.

I guess I've kept watching for the mystery and the puzzle aspect, although it's hard to really care what evil mechanics of Lumon turn out to be revealed. What matters more is the tone and the characters.

It is a relief to follow a series with a relatively small cast of characters you don't need to struggle to keep track of.

Every time I see this thread I think about Ecks vs. Sever.

I thought this was really excellent. Some of the scenes were so formally perfect, if plucked from a 70s Italian auteur work they would be taught in film courses.

The "it's a lab experiment" theory faded somewhat by the end of the season; if it is an experiment then I think it's a Prison Experiment variant where the supervisors (Cobel, Milchik) are not in on it but also subjects. Given where the season ended up though, I think the purpose of the innies' work is just to demonstrate the viability of the severance technology, which Lumon wants to make mainstream. The work is mysterious but probably not important.

I liked how the innies were the central characters and the outies mainly rounded out their stories, kind of a reversal of how the outies would feel about themselves.

Waffle party is objectively the worst party, egg dish social is seriously underrated (though what was with the purple eggs?)

Xp Stanford Prison experiment appears to have been quite different than it appears in the public semi cosciousness. I heard a couple of pretty good podcasts on it last year. You're Wrong About was one I think.
So was more 2 sides being aware of situation than double blind. Just misreported.

Just discovered Apple's spin-off ebook thing: https://books.apple.com/us/book/severance/id1613220757

the implications of the severing can get really dark really quickly; my mind immediately thought about evil people using the procedure to force people (women mostly) into sex slavery. but the idea that they can turn you on and off whenever is also pretty wild, suggesting that they could "kill" either half of you whenever they wanted.

― ian, Saturday, April 2, 2022 8:31 AM (one month ago)

This brought me back to Gibson's Neuromancer and the "puppets" who were essentially prostitutes who turned "off" when they were servicing johns. I was discussing the show's core concept with my mother (before she's seen it) and she immediately went to how people running the concentration camps in WW2 would probably benefit from it.

Definitely not a new concept, and one that only seems to truly benefit a society with a lot of ills we want to "wish away" with a mere symptomatic fix rather than a systemic one.

I'm glad more and more people seem to be watching this, but I wish Tramell Tillman's amazing supporting role was a bigger part of that conversation (unless I'm missing something)

That did have a big moment on this thread, although probably easy to scroll past what with all the other posting.

Oh I didn't mean here particuarly, just in general online whatnot

Oh, okay. I don't think it's going out on a limb to say his peformance is key to the whole thing.

I think he has probably getting noticed by people who cast shows and films. There were a few articles calling him the breakout star of the show.

tillman fit in well with the 1970s vibe of the innie world. none of the other lumon bosses fit in so well.

they needed mustaches too

Walken did well with a being in his 70s vibe

tillman fit in well with the 1970s vibe of the innie world. none of the other lumon bosses fit in so well.

the point where he started dancing was a real "this guy can do... anything!" moment

Ha, yes, exactly.

I'm just reading the book Soldaten which is based around a load of tapes of German POWs from he 2nd World War being transcribed. So it shows a lot of casual conversation caught unconsciously. & shows what the epistemology of those involved. Some horrific stuff about attitudes toward Jews and other civilians.
Interesting parallel to what appears to be being depicted here.