I've just finished watching the first two seasons of the Apple TV series "Severance." Apparently, the creators are working on a third season. I have some thoughts so far and would like to share them.
I should warn you right off the bat that this blogpost has spoilers, some of them major. So you continue reading at your own risk.
I recommend it
It's a good show. It's suspenseful, with plot twists that aren't too predictable and that are mostly good for the story (but more on that below). The main characters are complicated. The good people have faults, and the bad people have virtues.
It is intense and hard to binge watch. I could watch only one or two episodes at a time before having to stop. I think that's probably a good thing.
The season 2 finale is a bit gory, and in a way that seems gratuitous, though I can see the argument that it's not.
Two seasons might be enough
Season 2 ends on a cliffhanger that invites and probably anticipates another season. But I can see the argument for letting it be. Mark and Helen running back into the Lumen workspace as everything is falling apart, while Ms. Casey/Gemma yells for Mark to come back--that's the type of enigmatic storytelling that could be ruined by another season that explains what happens next. Unanswered questions can be a good thing.
Maybe "ruin" is too strong a word. One thing I'm really worried about isn't a third season, but a fourth, fifth, or sixth season where things get ridiculous, where the story becomes convoluted and eventually stale and formulaic.
Maybe the creators have an endgame in mind. If so, then more seasons might not be a bad thing.
The Ms. Casey/Gemma plot line seems forced
To call the Ms. Casey/Gemma plot line "forced" is almost to say the entire series is "forced." Season 1 arguably builds up to the plot line, and season 2 is pretty much all about it. I'd bet that most people who watch the series come away believing that the plot line is the main point. Maybe the creators also think so. Maybe they built the series to have that plot line. If so, then it's not "forced," but integral to the whole point of the show.
But I can't escape the feeling that the plot line is an evasion. It seems, to me, to function as a plot twist that doesn't jive with the rest of the show. Instead of being a show, in part, about a man who grieves the death of his wife, it becomes a show about a deus ex machina like rescue from grief. His wife isn't dead. She's being held captive, and he has to rescue her.
That, to be clear, makes for a fascinating story. But it seems to be "cheating" a bit.
Lost opportunity
This show, again, is a great watch, and I do recommend it. But it's not the show I wanted it to be.
The show might have been different. The main characters are "severed." They undergo a procedure that makes them forget their real lives while at work and forget their work lives while they live their non-work lives. That could've been a deep dive into the compartmentalizing those of us lucky enough to have regular employment are tempted, even required, to do. The show could've highlighted the contradictions and complications that such "severing" brings.
Instead, we get a story about an evil corporation doing indubitably evil things, all in service to what appears to be a weird cult. That's an interesting story, I admit. And it helps answer the question about why a corporation would go to the trouble and expense of "severing" its employees.
But it's not exactly what I was expecting or wanted.
I'm now hearing echoes of a lit professor I had in college who admonished us to interpret the work we were actually reading. I paraphrased, but he said something like, "if you want it to be something else, then write your own book."
Still, I would've liked something different.
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