TV Review: Severance Season 1 (2022)

Severance Season 1 (2022) created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller

Mark S. (Adam Scott) leads a team of Macrodata Refiners at Lumon Industries. He works in a sub-basement with three other employees in a room too large for their four connected cubicles. They have all undergone the Severance treatment, separating their work and home lives by surgically implanting a device in their heads. Mark comes to work as his "outie," who removes any identifying possessions and heads down an elevator. At one point on the elevator ride, his perspective shifts and he is his "innie," a worker who knows nothing of his outside life or even anything about the outside world. The innie-version has no memories of sleeping or eating or family or possessions. The team works at a seemingly mindless job of sorting sets of numbers on old-fashioned (at least to viewers' eyes) computers. Mark has just become the leader of the group after Peter has left. New employee Helly R. (Britt Lower) arrives to fill out the team. She has a hard time accepting the whole situation and is highly resistant to practically everything. Mark is uneasy about the situation and starts to explore more of the floor, finding other employees with similarly baffling tasks.

Mark Scout (the outie-version) has recently lost his wife and took the job at Lumon as a way to deal with the grief. It has not worked well and he's become curious about what actually happens in the company. Severed employees arrive at different times so they don't run into each other at work. Lumon is a very large, high-tech firm that has a lot of control of their employees and even in the town where they all live. The town is called Kier after Lumon's founder Kier Eagan (Marc Geller), an enigmatic genius of the Steve Jobs variety. Kier lived a hundred years ago but left a lot of information and guidance for the company, including founding principles that are incorporated into the work life. Mark's outie-world is rather odd too, with a pregnant sister whose husband is a self-help guru who is more like Jack Handey from Saturday Night Live than Steven Covey from Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Mark's Lumon manager (Patricia Arquette) is also (unknown to him) his next door neighbor. She has a different name and initially it is unclear whether she has had the Severance treatment or not.

The set-up of the series is very intriguing and introduces a lot of interesting questions about what is going on at Lumon. The Severance situation seems like an ideal solution for leaving work stress at work, though it does not play out that way as the series progresses. The innies are, for the most part, very unsatisfied with their lives that are only work. They don't even discuss sports or movies or tv shows or weather or any normal topics. Occasionally they speculate about their outie lives but they have no real consolations other than corporate swag and occasional treats. If they misbehave, there's a punishment room that seeks to correct their attitudes and behavior. In the town, many people protest Lumon in general and Severance in particular as a violation of human rights.

I really enjoyed the first half of this season. The situation is fascinating and figuring out what is going on is satisfying even when inconclusive. The last episode stumbles a bit with plot twists, revelations, and actions that just aren't plausible even within the world of the show. The actors do a great job with their characters and I did care for them but I have the impression that the overall story has not been thought out in detail. It reminds me of Lost, which was really great in the first few seasons but started falling apart under the weight of its own premise. 

Also, I wonder if the pseudo-profound brother-in-law character is in the show to make the rest of it seem more profound. The morality of the Severance procedure and the relationship between the innies and outies is fascinating and well worth working out. Do they constitute two separate persons? Is the innie a slave and the outie a master? Can they really develop different personalities? Those ideas and issues are more interesting to me than surprise twists about the other characters' outies.

Not really recommended. I am tempted to watch the second season to see if they work things out but I borrowed this season on DVD from the library and don't think it is worth subscribing to Apple+ for just one series that may be unsatisfactory. By the time season 2 comes out on DVD, I may have forgotten too much detail from season 1 to appreciate it fully.