This review contains minor spoilers.
Is it strange to be this excited about reentering the austere and foreboding world of Severance? Maybe, but what belies those alienating, amazing aesthetics is an intellectually curious story that is also darkly funny, driven by real humanity, and possibly the saddest on television.
Yes, it’s been three years since Severance burst through the white noise of streaming’s content glut. It wore its influences on its sleeve — Jacques Tati’s Playtime meshed with Terry Gilliam’s Brazil as told by Charlie Kaufman or George Orwell or maybe also Phillip K. Dick – yet despite its reference points, Severance also felt wholly and confidently its own. The premise asks: What if you could divide your personal and work memories, such that your self at work has no memories of your personal life, and your personal self no knowledge of what you do at work? Benevolent biotech pioneers Lumon Industries advertise their Severance Procedure as the ultimate work-life balance, but it’s immediately clear that the company is abusing its power under such a setup. And while Severance is often a scathing satirical portrait of corporate America, it resonates because it is, at heart, a story about four people who have chosen to have less time on earth by giving life to a subjugated version of themselves.
After such a lengthy hiatus, the challenge for showrunner Dan Erickson and producer/director Ben Stiller is how to follow up a stellar first season with a second one that balances mystery with answers to the show’s central questions. What actually happened to Mark’s (Adam Scott) wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman)? What are our four beloved macrodata refiners…actually refining? What is Ms. Cobel’s (Patricia Arquette) personal interest in Mark? What goes on in the testing floor? What the hell is a revolving? And, beyond all: What do goats have to do with all of this?
Fans need not worry. Severance Season 2 may be even better and more intriguing. It oozes the same confidence as Season 1 while expanding the universe and coloring its characters with interesting new shades. The creative team understands that it’s important to bring resolution to questions, but that doing so means figuring out how to further the mystery through character-driven plotting. Season 2 also starts to capitalize on some of the inherently weird narrative possibilities of the Severance Procedure. In short, it’s fun – and scary – as hell.
It’s also a lot to take in. Sam and John, Screen Speck’s resident Severance dorks, were eager to discuss the six Season 2 episodes provided for critics. Below is their ever-merry conversation.
Samantha M: I’ll cut to the chase and say that I’m loving Severance Season 2 even more than Season 1, and in a nutshell, I think it’s because I appreciate the ways in which the universe has expanded and become even darker, while still feeling like it picked up right where it left off. I trust this writing team and the producers, but I think my big worry coming into Season 2 was that it would take a few episodes to get back to the core four, or that the show would lose its narrative propulsion from the finale by wiping the innies’ memories entirely and separating them for too long. I didn’t want it to suddenly get too plot-driven and forget that, as much as we love the mystery, we care about the characters and their journeys more.
But within the first couple of episodes, those fears pretty much vanished because Stiller and Erickson clearly understood this as well. Season 2 is even more focused on the four macrodats and their needs and desires, which centers Severance in more emotionally complex ways. We obviously love Mark and love Adam Scott’s performance, but seeing all four outies now makes me downright giddy. It edges us closer toward answering some of the show’s questions, but more importantly, we’re venturing deeper into what makes these people tick – what they care about.
John Brown Spiers: I think I was less concerned about quality control and more worried about literally every single thing happening to every single character on the show. Is Dylan secretly an alcoholic absentee father on the outside? How can innie Irv possibly convince outie Burt that the two of them were meant to be together, ideally in a room full of real plants? What the fuck is Lumon doing to Miss Casey? And there was also some drama with Helly and Mark, if memory serves. But when it became clear that the show’s Big Three (i.e., Ericksen, Stiller, and Gagné) were all coming back for S2, all my meta-concerns went up in smoke like a Harmony Cobel shrine. Those guys could film the phone book and I’d watch. Especially the Kier phone book.
60% of the way through the new season, I think we need to put those three in charge of Television. Severance Season 2 pulls off the coveted-as-fuck double feat of enriching its own universe while deepening all of the mysteries and questions propelling its narrative engine. There’s no shortage of shows – even on Apple TV+! – that sacrifice the latter in service of the former. It’s also very easy for a storyteller to focus their attention on expanding mystery without bringing their audience any closer to those pesky, elusive answers. So far, the new season of Severance feels like it’s pushing us toward answers to some of the big Season 1 questions – “What is the testing floor,” anyone? – at the same time that it’s also raising a (apologies for using a TV insider term) veritable shit-load of new ones and keeping us at a tantalizing, Lumonesque distance from them.
Having said all that, I wonder how well you feel Severance is managing this dance of world-building and question-answering.
SM: So this is something that I have always felt Severance was exceptional at. The world-building always felt seamless, very show-not-tell. There’s obviously some exposition that we get, especially in the earliest episodes of Season 1, but the Helly character serves as such a good introduction to the world of Lumon. And the world-building also feels like a slow blossom. It sneaks up on you, really. It’s why the finale fires on all cylinders: you realize you’re so well-attuned to how Severance works that you’re just completely immersed alongside the characters. But what I like so much about Season 2 is that we know all of the rules now, and the narrative is allowed to just play with them, twist them, and shuffle them all around to mess with your head.
JBS: Without giving anything away, I think your cylinder-firing metaphor applies especially well to the Season 2 premiere. While it’s much more dynamic than the Season 1 finale in terms of pace, 2.1 resets some of those in-universe rules but plays with all of them. It makes us start to question a lot of what we thought we knew about these characters not for the sake of questioning but because we’re constantly learning new things. It’s both a revving engine and a green light: We’re all about to go for a ride.
(One other note: I think it’s very important to count the severed floor itself as a character.)
SM: I love that idea of the severed floor itself as a character, especially because of how malleable the setting is and how it’s used to trap and influence the innies – changing the paintings around, putting in doors to keep them locked in MDR, using cameras to spy on them.
Now: as much as we can, let’s talk some specifics. Performances! They’re so good this season, it makes me angry.
JBS: Emmy Winner Tramell Tillman. Emmy Winner Britt Lower. Emmy Winner Adam Scott. Emmy Winner Zach Cherry. Emmy Winner John Turturro. Emmy Winner Merritt Wever holy SHIT. Because here’s the thing: The membrane is crossed and the outie world is a complete part of the show now. We’re not just following Mark after work; we’re with every severed character wherever the story demands we go: innie and outie, dogs and cats living together. So everyone from MDR is playing two roles. But Severance has upped its ante far beyond just those four; it’s really not an exaggeration to say that as impressive as the acting was last season, it’s exponentially, eye-bogglingly more so now because that crossing means everyone is playing two parts whether their character is severed or not.
SM: Yes, I completely agree. Everyone is doing great work this season, and of course Adam Scott really holds this whole ship together with his central performance. But personally I want to shout out the lesser-known names here. I think Britt Lower, Tramell Tillman, and Zach Cherry all do such exceptional work this season.
JBS: Tramell Tillman blows my mind apart every time he’s on screen. He’s an MVP among MVPs.
SM: I feel that way especially about Lower, who, on the surface at least, is playing radically different personas. There’s a fine line she walks where Helena never falls into one-sided, antagonist territory. She’s described as the “leader in waiting” of Lumon Industries, and Helena’s storyline fills the Succession-sized void in my heart. As for Tillman, it’s almost hard to put into words how seamlessly he blends empathy with his sinister persona. That switch just keeps turning on and off throughout the season. And then Cherry really rises to the occasion with some strong dramatic material in addition to being the funniest character on the show.
I also love the shout-out for Merritt Wever. She hasn’t been shown in any trailers yet and I hope she’s a nice surprise for the audience. Thus far, I would say she has the meatiest part of the guest stars this season. How did you enjoy the guest stars in the episodes we’ve seen?
JBS: I thought they were sev-tastic. Particularly John Noble, who brings to life with aching poignancy some of the most difficult and delicate ethical questions surrounding the Severance Procedure. I also really want to talk about how Alia Shawkat’s character is Maeby Fünke from Arrested Development after a few Bluth-esque wrong turns in life? But I cannot in good faith do so because she’s too talented an actress and too differently funny in Severance for even the most skilled shoehorner, brandishing the strongest shoehorn, to wedge the joke in there. Gwendoline Christie’s might be the most batshit performance of the entire show. Who’s on your dance card?
SM: Pretty much agree with everything you said. Love how batshit Christie is. John Noble’s performance, like Merritt Wever’s, is also incredibly moving. I am gonna shout out Bob Balaban too because he provides some nice comic relief in that first episode.
Any final thoughts you’d like to add as we wrap this up? Perhaps a goat pun or humorous observation? Anything we missed?
JBS: The only even mild criticism I can make about what we’ve seen so far is that the show is juggling a lot of flaming chainsaws and spinning a lot of fine china on very thin sticks. Which is to say that while we meet a bunch of new people and Severance‘s storytelling economy remains as austere as ever, there are a couple of characters who disappear for very long stretches and who I can’t help wondering about, even worrying about. Not in the sense of “What’s going to happen to them?” but in terms of “Can the payoff match the anticipation when we’ve seen them so little?” I know the show has Severance Season 3 in mind & is doubtless storyboarding for well beyond that, but I wonder exactly how they’re going to stick the landing with “only” four episodes to go.
That said: I say “only” because it’s worth remembering how absurdly much happened in “The We We Are,” which also manages to be the shortest episode of the entire show. So I’m not really worried? I have almost as much trust in the people making these show as the macrodats have in Kier Eagan in the pilot episode. Almost.
SM: Honestly what I was left with, after watching these episodes, is just gratitude for how fun this show is. I just have such breathless wonder after each episode and I am so entertained by it in a way that I haven’t felt from television in a hot second. So, dear reader, stay off of Reddit, let the mystery build, let the characters move you, and embrace the lunacy.
Oh – and the new, updated credits are somehow even weirder.
Severance Season 2 premieres January 17th on Apple TV+.
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