SEVERANCE Season 1
(February 2022)
“The numbers were scary…”
Severance*
takes the idea of work/life balance to its chilling extreme, as we bear witness
to the denizens of Lumon Industries’ “severed floor,” where the employees have
elected to undergo a surgical process that effectively separates the work
persona (who only becomes active and awake at work) from who the individual
actually is in their home life.
Work memories are not accessible when the person is out of the office, and the work persona has no idea what their home life is like (are they married? Do they have kids?).
It’s the kind of scenario that a corporation will absolutely love (no pesky personal problems to interfere with productivity; industrial espionage… what’s that?) but isn’t necessarily beneficial to the employee.
As we see over Severance’s nine-episode season, hopefully only the first of many more…
“I trusted
you, and you abused that trust.
“Your inefficiency and free range chicken roaming is ultimately your responsibility.
“Escort him… to the Break Room.”
It’s odd, going over the quotes I’ve gathered here.
You read them and some are so patently absurd that the overall effect is whimsy.
And while, yes, the absurdist office humor is indeed off-the-wall, it is also, in practice, disturbing.
There are shades of Twin Peaks here, not just in a visual sense, but in the way that the crackpot, occasionally non sequitur humor serves to mask the cold, inhuman horror that lies beneath the cheery, quirky facades.
A worker may
suffer injurious pain or ghastly dehumanization, and no workspace is without
its perils. But whatever your task, dear worker, see that you perform it with
love. Endow in each swing of your axe or swipe of your pen the sum of your
affections, that through me they may be purified and returned. No higher
purpose may be found than this. Nor any higher love.
So join us at Lumon, where no one quite knows what
it is they’re actually doing (even in the office!).
Spend the work days with a truly excellent cast that includes Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, and Christopher Walken!
Thrill to passages of The You You Are, by the one and only Dr. Ricken (Michael Chernus)!
And watch out for the MDE!
Our job is to
taste free air. Your so-called “Boss” may own the clock that taunts you from
the wall, but my friends, the hour is yours.
Severance: A
damning indictment of corporate culture, with all its perks and
incentivizations and sudden terminations.
“Let’s burn
this place to the ground.”
* Brought to us by an excellent team headed up by creator Dan Erickson, and Ben Stiller
(yes, that Ben Stiller), who directed
2/3 of the season.
(Severance
key art courtesy of impawards.com.)
Work memories are not accessible when the person is out of the office, and the work persona has no idea what their home life is like (are they married? Do they have kids?).
It’s the kind of scenario that a corporation will absolutely love (no pesky personal problems to interfere with productivity; industrial espionage… what’s that?) but isn’t necessarily beneficial to the employee.
As we see over Severance’s nine-episode season, hopefully only the first of many more…
“Your inefficiency and free range chicken roaming is ultimately your responsibility.
“Escort him… to the Break Room.”
You read them and some are so patently absurd that the overall effect is whimsy.
And while, yes, the absurdist office humor is indeed off-the-wall, it is also, in practice, disturbing.
There are shades of Twin Peaks here, not just in a visual sense, but in the way that the crackpot, occasionally non sequitur humor serves to mask the cold, inhuman horror that lies beneath the cheery, quirky facades.
Spend the work days with a truly excellent cast that includes Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, and Christopher Walken!
Thrill to passages of The You You Are, by the one and only Dr. Ricken (Michael Chernus)!
And watch out for the MDE!
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