Every morning you heave on your armour and steel yourself for the office. The real you is in there somewhere, but in disguise, peeping through your carapace like a warrior through his visor. In the evening you slip out of your workday persona, much as you part with your shadow at dusk.
Or maybe it’s the other way round. After all, the office is where you spend many of your waking hours; it may linger in your reveries after you clock off. For some people it is less a trial than a refuge. Who’s to say whether the home or office version is the authentic you?
The friction between domestic and professional life has powered many of the finest TV dramas. Tony Soprano throttles mobsters and wrangles teenagers. In “Mad Men” faithless Don Draper slinks back from Madison Avenue to his brooding wife. But the split-personality syndrome, common to wage-slaves everywhere, is depicted supremely in “Severance” (the finale of its second season airs on Apple TV+ on March 21st). Its madcap genius is to turn this daily bifurcation into neurological reality.
For the uninitiated: employees on the “severed floor” of Lumon Industries, a cultish mega-corporation, have a chip implanted in their brains that cleaves their consciousness in two. Their “outies” have no knowledge of their stints at work, their “innies” no memory of their outside lives. In effect the innies never leave the office. The first season introduced Mark (played by Adam Scott, pictured), who chose to be severed after losing his wife. He and his colleagues in “Macrodata Refinement” (mdr) stage a rebellion against their spooky managers.
Fans may have questioned how much further the show could push its zany premise. Season two’s answer is: mind-bendingly far. Short-circuiting the severance process, some innies glimpse their outie selves, and judge them—as you might if you stumbled on your own life afresh. They wonder why they were condemned to the limbo of the severed floor—just as everyone wonders, now and then, how they wound up where they have. Lumon’s corporate lore grows ever more outlandish. The external world, off-kilter in season one, turns downright dystopian.
Part of the show’s triumph is the tension it generates amid the surrealism. Viewers want to know what happened to Mark’s wife, what Lumon truly does and why it keeps a herd of baby goats. The cast, which includes Christopher Walken and Patricia Arquette, is terrific. Above all, “Severance” shines in the distorted light it sheds on the quotidian drama of work.
Take the psychogeography of the office. In some ways the Lumon workplace is deranged. The architecture is part Soviet monumentalism, part Silicon Valley hubris. The delightfully retro stylings include antiquated computer terminals, blazing fluorescent lights and nightmarishly endless corridors. The severed floor has a “break room” where staff endure marathon re-education sessions. In the wellness centre they are soothed with upbeat snippets of their inscrutable outie lives: “Your outie is skilled at kissing…Your outie can parallel park in less than 20 seconds.”
Yet the set-up is also uncannily familiar. People linger in indecision at the vending machine. Confidences are shared in the kitchenette or washrooms. The elevator is a shuttle between worlds. Likewise the corporate rituals are bizarre but recognisable—stilted parties, excruciating team-building events, measly perks and opaque quarterly targets. Performance reviews can last six hours.
Meanwhile “Severance” captures the quirks of office relationships, all the rivalries, alliances, flirtations and suspicion of other departments: the MDR team are rumoured to carry their young in pouches like kangaroos. In bleak circumstances, Mark and the others find friendship and a narrow but deep intimacy. The show conveys the awkwardness of running into a manager in down time, and the mini-bereavement of quittings and firings (since when a severed worker leaves, their innie expires).
Naturally, this screwball, sci-fi satire omits some aspects of work today. Lots of jobs are more rewarding than the drudgery of macrodata refinement. Some bosses are actually nice. “Severance” isn’t very interested in salaries or money. And the pandemic chipped away at the innie/outie barrier; people eavesdropped on their spouses’ Zoom calls and found they were living with a stranger. Still, this is TV’s most insightful commentary on the absurdities and consolations of office life. “Work is just work,” Mark says. “Right?” Wrong.■
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