anyone seen SEVERANCE yet?

New episode is up. Never sure what time it actually drops. At one point I was getting alerts for certain shows.

Tell you one thing: I really dig Patricia Arquette’s nosy neighbor routine despite myself.

Spook too soon maybe

A lot of these shows seem to have only eight episodes per season.

This one has nine.

Loved the reveal at the end of this episode (although was expecting something along those lines but maybe a different character)

Renewed for season two too

Oh, and that defiant jazz reward scene was fantastic

Yes it was

Also Burt's retirement video was straight up comedy

I'm hoping Burt and Irv are actual outie partners.

Had that thought too

I doubt this was influence, but this show reminds me a bit of the film/MST3k episode Parts: The Clonus Horror: clones are raised on a campus with no contact with the outside world as "spares” for the person they were cloned from. The clones are treated in a simple, almost childlike way similar to how the work incentives at Lumon are juvenile things like finger traps, or how they are spoken to at the wellness session. Clones are given a big party when they "graduate”, which actually means they are whisked to a surgical room to have their organs harvested, similar to how Burt’s retirement seems to mean he (the innie, at least) effectively cease to exist, despite it being presented as a joyful occasion. The influential/rich people who commission the clones for parts don’t consider their clones to be actual people, similar to the outie’s attitude to the innies. And, of course, the plot is that the clone protagonist becomes aware of the outside world and finds a way to escape and expose the operation.

I keep thinking there might be some cloning aspect to this show as well and wondering when Petey 2.0 will show up.

Because of baby goats, because Haley R. tries to commit suicide but then the next day only has some bruises, because the guy’s wife dies in a car crash but then lives on as an innie

The only thing about that theory is that you don't want the clones to get old, surely? Young organs are better than old ones, so would you let them reach traditional retirement age before you "retired" them? But it does seem plausible otherwise.

A moment there of Eyes Wide Shut.

The only impressive thing about the Clonus movie was the casting for the young & old version of the protagonist. It was eerie! Everything else about it was hilariously bad, hence the stellar MST3K episode.

turturro is still my fave but the guy who plays milchick is great too - doesn't look like he's done a ton of stuff before this.

lumon sure does love having super-creepy parties. whether it's a dance party, an egg party, or a waffle party, it's going to be creepy and have intense lighting.

burt keeps painting the hallway down to wherever adam scott's dead wife goes when she's not working - so presumably he has some knowledge of whatever goes on back there? or he has gone through the same process as her (cloning/revivification)?

Excellent post, na. Yes, Milchick is particularly good, everything about him, even or especially his work uniform, but especially his surprising range of emotions, kind of like Naomi Watts in Mulholland Dr.

i'm sure all of our questions will be answered in the next episode

Ha, yes, exactly.

The only real issue with the premise is the idea that they know enough to have witty social interactions and vocabularies but perfectly don't have any memories of their other life. It should all be intertwined. If they can converse fluidly and make quips etc., those skills come from learned experience, so the basis of those skills is "remembered". Therefore are other basic things that are based on experience/memory maintained? Do they know what the sky and grass look like? How can they know some things and not other things? They're infantilized and yet they still can speak to each other with normal social intelligence. So it's kind of a discrepancy when you think about it but I'm sure one could make up a sci-fi explanation for it all. It doesn't ruin anything for me but I was just thinking about it. Fun show.

Also I don't get whether Rickon is successful... they have a nice house and he has a book deal but he is such a cartoon character and is tbh just a bit too goofy to really fit in with the rest of the universe of the show. Still fun! Just thoughts!

none of it really makes much sense if you think about it too much, lol. it's not really bothering me though.

rickon fits in with the tone of the show imo, given that it veers from creepy to depressing to absurd constantly. he's like the animated screen helly gets when she hits 100%.

Feel like Rickon must also have some kind of academic post or else is associated with some sort of Healing Institute.

I assume people with amnesia know all sorts of things except for the details of their own life, so maybe the severance process mimics that although I don’t know anything about any science of amnesia only familiar with it as a plot device.

something else that they can't really explain bc it would make less sense if they try to explain it: how known is it to the general public that Lumon is, in addition to being a huge corporation, a very creepy cult? is that stuff supposed to be secret, only used to control the severed? or is it part of the mainstream corporate culture as well?

Dunno, but that is a good point, especially given Patricia Arquette's considerable devotional shrine.

I figured that is supposed to explain the company loyalty among the dedicated employees that aren't severed.

I think the company definitely has cult-like roots if not an actual cult in practice

The work that the primary group we're observing seems odd, but what they're doing on computers seems to be associative logic puzzles. I keep wondering whether what's really going on (outside of the bizarre rituals) is refinement of the severance procedure.

The people working at most jobs at Lumon are:
- Raising goats (possible early test subjects for implants)
- Curating art (cataloguing creative endeavors, which could be some metric of mental acuity and creativity they want to quantify/qualify)
- Doing weird logic/categorizing puzzles on computers (measuring how the implanted human mind performs)

The cloning theory has some legs. I think overall, Lumon is trying to create a way to monetize and trade in modified humans that can do certain tasks with no objections or memory, and maybe refine humans (via technological innovations) in a way to do those things more effectively

The politician's (?) wife who didn't remember her pregnancy could be an application for the rich. Other than that... humanoid robot slave race, obviously

Wow, good analysis!

I like your theory of logic puzzles, although I originally thought the MDR tasks were a kind of disguised version of some other process à la "Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?" in PKD's Time Out of Joint?, in case I haven't mentioned that already.

Man, somebody beat me to it and posted that on a metafilter over a month ago!

haven't read the last couple weeks' posts because i'm only up through e04 but i've had enough closeups of adam scott's face. i mean he's not ugly, but he's a haggard man with a bad haircut and enough already

i could look at john turturro's face all day tho

someone said Adam Scott in this looks like Tig Notaro & I cannot unsee it

Just realized the other day that Adam Scott looks a lot like a relative of mine, which has probably been adding something.

Maybe the chip/implant is also learning about the person it is in so as to further its efficacy when reimplanted in the clone

xp lol yes

-adam scott looks like a busted tom cruise to me?

-wonder if petey's address @ 'half loop' is a dig at apple ('infinite loop drive')

my theory on macrodata refining: thought maybe they're refining out the urges of innies to break out into the outies? i.e. what they're refining is scary maybe in the way unwanted memories or intrusive thoughts pop into your head.

like james upthread i see my theory has already been posted on mefi a month ago... guess it's too obvious!

this is giving me brazil vibes but i see that's been posted on mefi already too!

I think nothing is too obvious? It seems like a deep thoughts show where it could quickly pivot to a simple premise with esoteric trappings, or gesture toward a much more complex conspiracy with simple methods

I like 龜’s theory, sorry if it was scooped.

Yeah, me too. I don't know what metafilter is, so this is all exciting and new to me.

I don't think the jobs have any deeper meaning. I think it's all meant to be inscrutable.

I binged episodes 3-8 yesterday and it was quite the experience. It's interesting how the political angle gets very little airtime in the show but you can pause on all the news articles and read them if you want.

Feel like it would be a totally wasted opportunity if it turned it that what MDR does is really only just busy work.

I wouldn’t mind. Shows where everything has to mean something get tiring

Not saying everything ever has to mean something, just this particular case, because of the way it has been set up.

-I think the macrodata refinement is one facet of a study on the employees, who are doing meaningless work to which they have attached great importance. super cult like vibes permeate. i think the curation of the art is part of the cult's myth-building, and another way to give the workers a sense of importance. The goats, I think I agree that they are probably for chip testing?

-the break room feels to me like a Sc13nt0logY-allusion, to e-meters and repeating things until you have cleared the "blockage." the feeling of coercion and surveillance also give me this very unpleasant vibe.

-part of the severance procedure remind me of the protagonist of PKD's "A Scanner Darkly" whose mind undergoes a similar division.

-i think parts of this are intended as a brutal satire of workplace culture, particularly the meaningless incentives and office-sponsored funtime.

-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.

i'd be happy to be wrong about what the macrodata refinement is for xpost.

My other theory, which is mine: always thought Helly was a big shot, probably some kind of Lumon insider and this last episode only seemed to confirm this.

And of course a cursory google search seems to find a youtube video with a similar theory which I didn't want to click on.

So… Helly R is an Eagan right? Cobel mentioned an Eagan family gala in the previous episode and it definitely looked like Helly’s outie was at some kind of formal event there. Explains why the board was pissed that Cobel didn’t tell them about her suicide attempt.

Also Cobel is keeping a hospital wristband with the name Charlotte Cobel on it among the things in her shrine. A dead relative she’s hoping Lumon can revive?

This stuff making me feel like I’m watching LOST all over again.

Yes and yes. Keep wondering what happens on the testing floor. I decided to call it a reboot although now I am may lengthen it to remake/remodel

I was saying to my wife yesterday, “I hope this doesn’t end up like Lost.”

I was saying to my wife yesterday, “I hope this doesn’t end up like Lost.”

Well it looks they brought in the writer who wrote the prison episodes of Andor, so that seems promising

kinda curious how/why they're spending $20m per episode

those kaypro ii monitors aren’t cheap these days

Alia Shawkat is notorious for her method acting, forcing the production team to create the severing technology for real