anyone seen SEVERANCE yet?

one thing i found v stressful was that the manual seemed like it was very convoluted & illogical, like sometimes you’d have to flip through many pages/chapters just to find a logical next step in a sequence. fuuuuuck that lmao that would be a) hell and b) a nightmare

your outies are very observant

Is that a line of dialogue I missed?

Apologies for the persistent link posting but: https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-feast-of-severance

I do absolutely love the show, but I do not like the opening credits. I find them very DO YOU SEE? and the animation style reminds me of beloved children's programme Morph, but without the charm. Maybe they'll grow on me. I mean, obviously I get the hilarity of them mirroring "could a depressed person do this?" but I feel they're actually not a great ad for the show itself, because the show is a lot subtler than that.

The reverence for the only book they have feels like something I've read before, but I can't remember what. Maybe the cod latin words in the closet in The Handmaid's Tale?

So they’re kind of a cargo cult?

amazing finale

there is some wild theorizing going on on this thread lol. sorry, but nothing happened with the baby.

i love the opening credits they look cool

same

theme song is great too

re: ricken's book, I have thought before it'd be kind of funny if aristotle, plato, aristophanes etc. were really like, the jordan peterson and dane cook of their times. and all the works of the good thinkers didn't survive. we were left with just the dregs!

I don't think Ricken is a con man necessarily, I think he really believes what he's peddling. Definitely wants to succeed and have a following, but he's way too doofy for it to be a calculated thing

the line that keeps returning to me was the lady who was sharing her book mumbling "I think I need to change my name again"

龜 otm

I don't think Ricken is a con man necessarily, I think he really believes what he's peddling

oh yeah for sure, my description is a reflection of how if i knew someone like that irl i would wanna strangle them daily

the woman who shared her book with mark in the last episode is my favorite character

Of course.

So they’re kind of a cargo cult?

― Anita Quatloos (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, April 11, 2022 8:03 AM (four hours ago)

yeah, but instead of a coke bottle it's a bunch of yogi tea bottles with "your infinity in you is the reality in you" printed on them

Brad also otm

I can watch this show and accept these people are looking for something in their lives and they've got this legitimate or forced naivete that draws them to Ricken and his book

but if I was around them daily, I would probably go insane

Mark's sister being able to kind of smile and nod or roll her eyes a little when her husband gets all goofy makes me think she's got an amazing mental filter that just lets her concentrate on having this kind but doofy husband while ignoring all the trappings of his writing. She's got the intentional conscious severance the Lumon corporation would kill for

a bunch of yogi tea bottles with "your infinity in you is the reality in you" printed on them

namaste

Aap kaise hain?

I just binged this.
It's like someone made a show out of everything I love, except maybe they got Adam Scott's face a little bit wrong. (I'm convinced they're doing something there, it's messing with me).

The LUMON stuff is like the best bits of the Dharma Initiative and also this interactive alt-reality game thing that was on in San Francisco ages ago called the Jejune Institute.

BTW if you want to try MDR go here: https://lumon-industries.com/

Patricia Arquette is just so watchable, she's great, kind of weird that the last thing I saw her in was Gypsy-Rose's mother DeeDee in 'The Act' who was spaced out a lot of the time. When she whips out the little drill at the funeral to get the chip, omg.

That last episode, where they were supposed to be doing THE MISSION to TELL EVERYONE and yet Mark kept getting delayed by everything, like some neverending dream / The Unconsoled.

I kind of wanted them to test the pattern-recognition software/whatever it is even more - do their clothes not have care labels etc? - if they were banned then presumably the outies know about not being able to send messages between selves? - I thought Helly would scar herself with a message (not that it would really have helped in her case). That time she tried to smash through the window I didn't immediately get that she was trying to force her outie to look at the paper she'd written on.

this interactive alt-reality game thing that was on in San Francisco ages ago called the Jejune Institute.

they actually made an awful show out of this

was that season 2 of The OA? i enjoyed the first season of that but never finished s2

When Outie Irv is looking at the map/where he lives, is the actual town called Kier? Do they live in Lumon worker housing?

You must enjoy each fact equally and not show preference. Please don't speak further, or all remaining points will be deducted and the wellness session will end.

This did remind me of the OA actually, and I think that series of the OA reminded me of the Jejune game thing...

jejune institute adaptation was jason segel's dispatches from elsewhere, pretty much entirely curdled by its self-indulgent final episode

i seem like the kind of person who would love the oa but i still haven't seen any of it

i think mark lives in lumon worker housing; not sure about irving

anyone see escape from dannemora? more stiller x arquette that i had no interest in before, but now that i'm faced with a 12 month+ severance absence, am very willing to try

jejune institute adaptation was jason segel's dispatches from elsewhere, pretty much entirely curdled by its self-indulgent final episode

Dannemora was also excellent. Stiller is good at this.

I just realised the wellness room person is Katya "kinky" Kinski from Neighbours

She was also in Dollhouse, which has some similarities to Severance

omg i didn’t even know that was dichen lachman the greatest actor ever

Love this show, and the cast is fantastic - nice mix of familiar faces and relative unknowns.

I don't think I've ever seen the actress who plays Mark's sister in anything else but she's great. reminds me of Olivia Colman a little.

When Outie Irv is looking at the map/where he lives, is the actual town called Kier? Do they live in Lumon worker housing?

yes, and maybe. there was also a newspaper article with a Kier dateline.

Not sure on protocol as it's not even 24 hours since it came out but yeah, if I hadn't seen it I definitely wouldn't be reading the thread yet.

― groovypanda, Friday, April 8, 2022 2:38 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just watched the finale, refrained from looking at this thread until now, well done eephus

Anyway this show is v good

"will she denounce the company at the big speech" tension borrowed from Succession of course, as is the "dissonant plinky piano theme that's the credits but also we play it at Moments"

A lot of things here are borrowed from other shows (besides the general "there are two of me whose relationship is strained" business at the center, the "shadowy board who communicate through a device that turns their voices into some form of static" is ALSO from Counterpart

And yet it all works together as a whole. Although the finale was satisfyingly tense I actually think this show is best when it is slow-paced and weird. "Please try to enjoy each fact equally" is an amazing piece of writing.

i loved the conference calls

the whole thing where arquette has to talk into the speaker but the bosses only talk to the functionary & not arquette

so great

perfect middle management dystopia

I rewatched the first three episodes. Interesting that in the third episode Peter mentions "the place where no one leaves" and soon after the innies start talking about the Perpetuity Wing, leading the viewer to think it's the same thing. I don't think Peter's place gets mentioned again.

i think Peter's place is where Ms. Casey goes, and the subject of Irving's paintings

Makes sense

I'm not going to get super invested in the puzzle box parts of this. Seems like they're just a device to keep the viewer hooked. The show seems much more successful as satire and character study than as a sci-fi mystery.

It reminds me a bit of the Leftovers, where the answers ulitmately were less important than the other stuff in the show.

OTM, although I guess I am allowing myself to indulge in some speculation now that the show is over so as to have a soft landing instead of a crash.

Sorry if I posted this before, but the Testing Floor keeps making me think of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C4PsXoFslM

The painting of the departmental massacre was fucking hilarious

Did someone post the theory yet (apologies in advance) about how Burt and Irving had connected in the past and had to be separated and the myth of the massacre was created to keep them apart?

I had the idea that a revolt had happened in the past and now it was thought best to keep the departments separate so that conspiracies were less likely to form

But yeah, that may have had something to do with Irv's outie's obsession with the hallway

ha I guess there was a parallel in the Lumon people believing all the bullshit from Kier's writings and the innies finding inspiration in Rickon's book

the myth of the massacre was created to keep them apart

this feels too targeted to me but then lumon apparently orchestrated the fake death of mark's wife so who knows

the myth of the massacre to me was just a really effective way of keeping the departments siloed off from each other so they'd never talk. i don't know if i talked about this in previous posts but my favorite thing about this show is it's a straight up depiction of what it feels like to be an office drone