Severance isn’t a show about quitting your job, it’s about burning it down
1. Take a moment to tally the things you’ve given up for a paycheck. Ever had to miss a birthday? A wedding? Ever have to leave a loved one who is grieving or sick simply because you could not afford to choose them over the job? Has it ever felt like a choice?
2.Severance, the Apple TV Plus show created by Dan Erickson, follows the workers of the Micro-Data Refinement department of the fictional Lumon Industries. No one knows what that means, including the workers, who just parse through a matrix of numerals and delete the numbers that “look scary.” Their work is top secret, and all of them have undergone a procedure known as “severance,” their minds split in two. Their work selves have no knowledge of their lives once they punch out. This means that their work personas — dubbed “innies” in common parlance — are effectively new people, who only know life inside Lumon. One workday bleeds into the next, with only an elevator ride to separate them.
3. Now consider all the times you’ve ordered a coffee at Starbucks using words you wouldn’t use otherwise. The times you’ve referred to as a work of art as “content,” or “intellectual property.” The life hacks for getting through as many podcasts or books as possible. Every time you’ve promised to “circle back” on a conversation. Who taught you to do that?
4. Mark Scout (Adam Scott) is grieving. His “outie” — the Mark that exists outside of Lumon — lost his wife, Gemma, in an accident. Severance, he explains to those who ask, is a way to deal with that loss. It’s eight hours he doesn’t have to think about Gemma, or anything at all. Some argue with him and say the practice is exploitative; pundits on TV bat the merits of the procedure back and forth. It all exhausts him. He gets
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