Title: Severance
Rating: 5 Stars
One of the results of living through the pandemic is that work life balance has shifted for many people. Many have shifted to either purely virtual or part time virtual. Working virtual has many advantages. Avoiding the commute time alone saves people many hours a week. Not having to wear professional attire saves both time and money. It’s much easier to integrate those personal tasks (getting that plumber to come when your shower breaks) that inevitably bleed into your work day.
There are costs though. The idea of a 9 to 5 shift is kind of disappearing. I know people that get caught up in a work task and when they look up at a clock it’s eight in the evening. Microsoft just recently posted a study identifying a third work peak for virtual workers from 6 PM to 8 PM. Not having that physical break between home life and work life means that, inevitably, work stress will bleed even more into your personal time.
What is the perfect work life balance? It appears that that’s the question that the series Severance starts off trying to answer. By the end of the season, it became much more than that.
Although there are several major characters, the one that we spend the most time with is Mark (Adam Scott). Some time ago, his wife perished. Inconsolable and looking for at least a partial escape from his grief, Mark signs up for severance with the Lumon corporation.
There is work at Lumon that is considered so secret that extreme measures must be taken. Such workers voluntarily agree to be severed. A chip is implanted in their head. Once they take the elevator down to their work area, all knowledge of the outer world is erased. Similarly, when they take the elevator up at the end of their shift, all knowledge of their work (their inner world) is erased. Their personal selves and their professional selves have no knowledge of each other. Theoretically, the chip implant is irreversible.
When we pick up, Mark has been working at Lumon for some time. Someone has just left his small team and Mark has been promoted to manager. Since they’re down a person, they bring on a fresh severed named Helly (Britt Lower). There is also the grizzled veteran Irving (John Turturro) and the competitive go-getter Dylan (Zach Cherry).
It is an interesting question. On the surface, it doesn’t seem to be an absolutely horrible idea. There have definitely been some times in my life where my work took over my life, much to my own detriment. I’ve lost sleep. It’s affected my eating. It’s affected my personality. It’s affected personal relationships. An argument can be made that, during such periods, I’d have been happier not having all of that work stress.
However, think about the life of the ‘innie’. The only thing they know is work. They know nothing of what happens when the elevator door closes and then reopens the next morning. They’re not even aware of sleeping (at one point Mark tells Helly that, if he feels relaxed in the morning, that he infers that his ‘outie’ must have gotten a good nights sleep). They have no idea if they’re married and have children. They have no idea what their ‘outie’ likes to do. All they know is work.
And they really don’t even know their work. Mark’s group is called Macrodata Refinement. Their job consists of gazing at screens of numbers and identifying the ‘scary’ ones. That’s it. Those of us who have worked for very large corporations can relate to their futility of trying to find some purpose in such a seemingly inconsequential job.
Lumon tries with all of its might to infuse some sense of purpose to their employees. Their founder is lionized and idolized. They have compliance documents that read like nothing more than theological doctrine. Having suffered through numerous vision, mission, goals, and objectives documents, I can relate to the vacuous grandiose statements in the Lumon compliance documents.
Since the ‘innies’ have no concept of the outside, they have to be motivated internally within the workplace. They are awarded with coasters, dance parties, and waffle parties. In the early episodes, due to his competitive nature, Dylan is especially motivated by such trifles. I can’t even count the number of t-shirts, mugs, certificates, and tchotchkes that I received over my thirty plus year career. Most amusingly, when I was working on an Army program, they handed out pull-string vibrating grenades.
Lumon intentionally keeps the various departments segregated. Even worse, they propagate absurd rumors about the various departments. In particular, there’s a rumor that members of the Optics & Design team once violently massacred the Macrodata Refinement team. This naturally leads to profound distrust and no communication between the various departments. My own experience backs this up. Even though we all worked for the same company, there were many times when organizations that should have been cooperating were actively sabotaging each other. Especially since I spent my career in IT (considered an overhead organization), other organizations looked upon us as useless, conniving, or worse.
The head of O&D, Burt (Christopher Walken), retires in an episode. This is especially significant for an ‘innie’ because it is equivalent to their death. Once Burt goes up the elevator, he will never descend again. Inner Burt will never exist again. His farewell speech is a hilarious combination of retirement and eulogy. Having attended many retirement parties, I could relate.
Eventually, Mark’s team begins to rebel against the system. They explore the labyrinth of the Lumon campus. Many mysterious rooms with murky purposes are unearthed. They even discover a way they can exist, at least for a while, in the body of their ‘outie’. What will they discover when they are above ground? Who are they really? What do they want to achieve?
Since it’s so new, I won’t spoil it. Let’s just say that Season 2, when it eventually arrives, is poised to address larger questions such as Lumon’s true purpose. It appears that there’s much more to Lumon than a small group of people sitting in a large, sterile room looking for scary numbers.
Although it started off pretty slow, by the end of the series it had caught fire. It was entertaining, exciting, innovative, and addressing large important questions. I’m definitely looking forward to Season 2.
dorkenstein 