Work sucks, I know
The second season of Severance coincided with my reintegration into the corporate world. Like Mark Scout, I made a career decision last year prompted by the lure of clocking in, clocking out and watching my bank balance mysteriously get larger than it ever has before.
Unlike Mark Scout, I didn’t have a chip inserted into my brain that split my consciousness into two separate people; one that goes to work and knows nothing but the world that exists in the 9-5 (or in my case, the 8-4) and one that chills on the outside, oblivious to the other’s pain but happy to accept the fruits of their labour.
Instead, I have to be present for eight hours as my ‘innie’ (unfortunately played by me) sits in an open plan office with felt cubicle dividers, long hallways, overhead fluorescents and the feeling of slowly suffocating on recycled air and bureaucracy.
Perhaps that’s why I’m still grappling with my feelings on this season, a season of ups, downs, Innies and Outies, baby goats, child labour and the sowing of Eagan seeds.
But for now, allow me to slide down the self indulgent rabbit hole of equating my life to Severance in recapping my experience with the show week to week.
Here’s how it started…
Friday 17th January, Episode 1 - ‘Hello, Ms. Cobel’
It’s the end of my first week on the job and everything seems exactly how I expected it to be. I learn some names, I make a friend and we have lunch together every day at 12pm. Mark, on the other hand, Tom Cruises through the winding halls of the severed floor in search of his colleagues. He’s got some wild tea to spill from the Overtime Contingency – where are they? Milchick gets a promotion and Lumon tries to reclaim the narrative of the Macrodat Uprising, resulting in a fabulous claymation propaganda video that’s not dissimilar to the online training modules I have to do as part of my onboarding.
Friday 24th January, Episode 2 - ‘Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig’
The end of week two. Still haven’t done any work, but no one seems to care. My mind is free to try to figure out the timeline of Season 2 as Milchick says something about it being 5 months since the OTC. Perhaps it’s a comment on the corporate grind; time flies when you’re hitting buttons on a keyboard and not seeing the light of day. Dylan interviews at a door factory, Helena films a YouTube apology for her [Innie’s] gala outburst and the team, through Lumon bribery, find themselves back together on the severed floor. Money talks, and it somewhat makes up for boring work.
Friday 31st January, Episode 3 - ‘Who is alive?’
I learn I’m actually spread across two departments and therefore won’t be getting the same flexible working arrangements as everyone else on the project. Boo. Meanwhile, Mark and “Helly” discover the Mammalians Nurturable department run by Brienne of Goats (real name Lorne, played by Gwendoline Christie), Dylan gets visitation rights and Mark gets brain surgery in his basement. I try to wrap my head around the work that I’ll be doing in this fixed term role; it seems, in essence, to be changing a few lines of copy in an email stream.
Friday 7th February, Episode 4 - ‘Woe’s Hollow’
The vintage five-days-in-the-office routine starts to drag and some Severance escapism is in order. I tune in as a work excursion (known as an ORTBO) goes awry with fables of woodland masturbation, encounters with creepy doppelgängers and some campfire theremin played by a child who might be a robot? Mark and “Helly” have an adult sleepover and Irving violently outs Helena, who’s been undercover bossing, getting fired in the process and ending the ORTBO. It’s more eventful than my week at the office, but then, so are most things.
Friday 14th February, Episode 5 - ‘Trojan’s Horse’
Valentine’s Day hits after an exhausting week of pointless meetings, interdepartmental politics and an office baby shower for some person I’ve never met and won’t miss. Over on the severed floor, the Innies have a funeral for someone they will (Irving), Dylan discovers directions to the Exports Hall (the one Irving’s Outie has been painting this whole time), Milchick has a disastrous performance review, and Mark has a flash…back? Forward? Sideways (see Lost)? Then, something happens that I don’t think would’ve happened had I been in a more exciting job – Milchick becomes my favourite character.
Jame Eagen in the finale
Friday 21st February, Episode 6 - ‘Attila’
I find neither the time nor the will, at least during this contract, to shop for anything remotely nutritious, so I sign up for Dinner Twist. Irving finds himself in a similar position but is fortunate enough to be invited to a curious dinner at Burt and Fields’ place. The food and drink looks delicious, but not as delicious as Burt’s implied naughty background. And on the subject of life’s pleasures, Mark and Helly consummate their Innie relationship. That puts the score at Innie Mark = +1, Outie Mark = +1 seizure.
Friday 28th February, Episode 7 - ‘Chikhai Bardo’
I hot desk in a different building and get a glimmer of hope that life as a cog doesn’t have to be so…coggish. There are actual windows here with views of greenery, and someone has a movie poster wall like I had at my last job. The week ends with a brilliant bottle episode that gives Gemma (Dichen Lachman) the chance to shine, and important flashbacks shed light on the marriage Mark has postponed grieving. Very good, very moving.
Friday 7th March, Episode 8 - ‘Sweet Vitriol’
After a frustrating four days of admin and project management I take annual leave and escape to Margaret River, prioritising the latest episode of The Traitors over Severance. I think Ben Stiller knows, as he delivers the most nothing episode of the season. Cobel goes ‘home’ to Salt’s Neck, a seaside town that Lumon flooded with ether before abandoning. We learn she’s the inventor of severance and potentially not the baddie we thought she was. If it paid off this season, maybe this information would’ve hit harder. But it doesn’t.
Friday 14th March, Episode 9 - ‘The After Hours’
I get a stomach bug and spend the majority of the week off sick. It’s wonderful and much needed, praise Kier. Mark concurs, chucking a sickie before Cold Harbor is completed and putting a roadblock in Lumon’s ultimate plan. Milchick is refreshingly non-toxic about it – is his hero arc on its way? Gretchen confesses her ‘infidelity’ to Dylan’s Outie, Burt drives Irving and his dog to the traino, and Miss Huang completes her Wintertide Fellowship work placement. She wasn’t a robot after all; just a child who learns that growing up and entering the workforce isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. One empathises.
And here’s how it ended…
21st March, Episode 10 - ‘Cold Harbor’
As the season ends, I fear not having a thematically relevant show on which to close out the work week. Severance consoles me by delivering a (mostly) satisfying finale. Mark S, under the instruction of his Outie, Devon and new ally Harmony Cobel, completes Cold Harbor. Helly creates a diversion, Dylan again guards an entryway from Milchick, and Mark frees Gemma — just not the way she, or we, would’ve wanted. Goodbye Drummond, hello Innies doing it for themselves. I lament the loss of my Friday night ritual but find solace in the fact that there’s still a couple weeks left of The White Lotus. I also can’t help making associations with Twilight as Mark and Helly run hand in hand in slow mo.
Please enjoy each opinion equally
What I like about this season is the exploration of Innie identities and their inevitable rebellion against not just Lumon, but the other powers that be: their Outies. The you you are at work is a person, and it is your responsibility to ensure they have a decent time while they’re earning you an income. It’s the point that hit home the most for me because it’s something I am currently failing at, and if I could make a video recording to show to my Innie, I would apologise. As such, I absolutely love Mark’s conversation with himself in the last episode and Adam Scott’s performances in carrying it out. His ignorance in thinking his Innie would be easy to talk into something is a powerful look at self-respect; at least learn your work wife’s name, dude.
I also enjoyed the exploration of Lumon’s tentacles of control extending beyond the severed floor, and just how little regard this cultish company has for any of its employees. Gemma is important for a time, as is Mark, as are Cobel and Milchick, but despite their different levels, they are exactly as expendable as each other, each one a sacrificial baby goat not lucky enough to be named Emile.
Other highlights include the beguiling opening credits, upswing in lore (springboarded by ‘Woe’s Hollow’), Milchick’s loquacious defiance, Lumon’s corporate media assets (including the paintings, offensive as they sometimes are), Choreography and Merriment as a department and Ben Stiller’s dad rock proclivities for The Who and Alan Parsons Project.
What I don’t love about season two is its unevenness. It feels like Erickson et al. were trying so hard to up the dramatic stakes this season that they let all the intrigue fall by the wayside. It’s a tall order, I admit, to expect them to maintain the mystery while they’re also trying to satisfy the hunger of a slew of new fans that jumped on the train a bit later, but it did impact my viewing experience and it felt, at times, a little soapy.
I also struggled with the treatment of some of the characters. Reghabi seems so instrumental in the earlier episodes but then promptly vanishes, to be replaced by Cobel at the eleventh hour. And Cobel spends most of the season driving her little VW Rabbit (it’s a white rabbit, get it?) and having a tell-don’t-show backstory episode forced on her. Milchick is heavily set up to have his own rebellion but instead, falls back into the exact same role he inhabited in last season’s finale. And it feels like the only character who has any real growth is Dylan (both versions), good for him but not great for viewer-character relations.
My final (petty) gripe is the lazy use of Gwendoline Christie in fighting a big dude again. We’ve seen it already and we’ve loved it. But leveraging residual Thrones sentiment is cheating, and I expect more from a show like this.
Verdict
☆☆☆½
Watching Severance while feeling like an Outie in a corporate trap designed for Innies was particularly immersive this year and I think, once the dust settles on both my contract and the show’s second season, more objective feelings will reveal themselves. Ben Stiller has promised a swifter arrival for Season 3 so the frustration over another cliffhanger should at least be soothed more quickly. Overall, while I didn’t feel as fanatical as I did at the end of last season, I did appreciate the water cooler talk to take to the office while I do my mysterious and important work.
