anyone seen SEVERANCE yet?

^ same

he’s literary Zoolander <3

Couldn't stomach him in the first episode, got giddy every time he appeared in all future episodes. The Ted Lasso effect.

Zoolander doctrine is great. Never realised how much I rate Ben Stiller humour till now

ben stiller is solid as long as i'm not reminded of his lack of a neck

Great set up of cliffhanger. Made me laugh at conclusion or set up of needing several. Very well done.

I hope mystery just deepens further. & there is no easy out.
Super creepy connotations of so much of this.
Wondering if gala event is going to have audience who will see Helly's comment as more than amusing anyway. Or was it being live televised. Will see what knock on effect will be.

Anyway worlds within worlds and fun things like that. Will see how far refractive that goes in next season I assume.

Funny also to be watching Ricken actor playing John's brother in Patriot at the same time I was watching this. Somehow missed that before but somebody on a podcast was proselytising it as the best thing ever over the last couple of weeks so I grabbed the 2 seasons. & it is really good. From about 7 years ago a govt agent placed in a firm to give him cover for foreign work and messing things up badly. Comedy drama. Very black comedy.

Thread on Patriot here

https://www.atlasofwonders.com/2022/03/where-was-severance-filmed.html

Just caught up. The finale was the most goddamn exciting, fun thing I’ve watched in forever. Amazing cast too.

And nice, for a change, to watch something thrilling and tense that didn’t depend on the threat of ultraviolence to create tension.

yes!

Thirded.

The pacing was amazing.

i honestly had no idea what was going to happen week to week, it was the most “in the moment” i’ve been watching a show in a while

Also just caught up on this, binged most in one sitting. Wow. So layered, so well paced, so strange!

All the allusions to a sort of DPRK/Stalinist love of leader, with images and statues and songs, and nothing but The Handbook to be allowed to read, which I also noted as someone else upthread did looked very like a bible. Similarly just the keeping everyone in line by keeping them all so separated/siloed and in fear of each other.

One thing that really struck me no one else has touched on much is the dreamlike state of it all. Well, my dreams anyway. There was a lot of clever use of focus pulls (like the lift sequences) that distorted the frame/aspect. In one scene two of them are walking thru the corridors and the camera did a focus pull and pan in such a way that they looked like they were walking in place, like in a dream where you never get anywhere when you move.

Even the outies seemed to be perpetually in the dark, with lights in their houses not working , and it being night 90% of the time.

I did NOT see the fact that Helly was the daughter of the CEO coming AT ALL, which was brilliant, it wasnt remotely telegraphed so that was a real shock. Same with what happened with Marks wife, but my othr half worked that out (somehow) before it was revealed.

WHAT THE HELL WAS WITH THE WAFFLE PARTY SCENE. That was something straight out of Legion.

i'm reading a nonfiction book with a segment about military drone operators and how their job impacts their mental health, and it was talking about how they have cognitive dissonance from basically being "at war" for their workday and then they leave their top-secret drone operation facility and are suddenly back in "normal life" where they're running errands and are with their families but because of confidentiality requirements they can't discuss their jobs at all with their friends or families and GUESS WHAT TV SHOW IT MADE ME THINK OF

The Flight Attendant?

I get that cognitive dissonance is run-of-the-mill jobs too — that sense, when you’re at work, of suddenly caring (or having to pretend to care about) about something you normally wouldn’t give two shits about.

Xpost

I did NOT see [show hidden text]coming AT ALL, which was brilliant, it wasnt remotely telegraphed so that was a real shock.

I didn't either -- genuinely shocking, and I'm extremely impressed at how not-cheap the surprise/reveal was.

And while the surprise of the music cue for the Music and Dance Experience was spoiled for me when I saw Stiller on Seth Meyers, holy hell, what a choice.

And I was really struck by the set design; things like the choice to use all cathode ray tube monitors made it feel bizarrely timeless and futuristic simultaneously.

https://www.atlasofwonders.com/2022/03/where-was-severance-filmed.html

― Ramones Leave the Capitol (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, April 17, 2022 6:33 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

As a NJ resident I think I remember the office building catch my eye during a bored google maps scroll long before seeing the show.

And as a Hudson Valley frequent visitor I immediately noticed the outside shots of Irving's house from Kingston NY (95% sure...) and, when he was driving, the intersection + Roundhouse Hotel in Beacon NY (150% sure)

And I was really struck by the set design; things like the choice to use all cathode ray tube monitors made it feel bizarrely timeless and futuristic simultaneously.

And as a Hudson Valley frequent visitor I immediately noticed the outside shots of Irving's house from Kingston NY (95% sure...) and, when he was driving, the intersection + Roundhouse Hotel in Beacon NY (150% sure)

― Evan, Monday, April 18, 2022 2:06 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ha weird I thought some of that looked oddly familiar. Also, the musician-composer featured in the Music Dance Experience is from Poughkeepsie. It's all a rich tapestry.

For much of the season I was confused by Helly’s character, as it seemed weird for someone who had signed up willingly for Severance work to rebel against it so violently from the get-go. Like did innies have completely different personalities from their outies? The reveal made it make sense though, as Helly is clearly someone who has never had to work a real job or take orders before.

xxxp the lighting and particularly shot framing reminded me strongly of THX1138 for some reason.

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?