When Apple announced their appearance on the streaming market, there was palpable excitement amongst media fans. Allowing filmmakers and creatives to play with big budgets to create vibrant, energetic stories nearly totally liberated from network executives was a concept unfamiliar within the media zeitgeist. That excitement soon deflated after AppleTV+ launched in 2019 and it appeared they would market these productions minimally, barely registering on the general public’s streaming seismometer, leaving productions to generate word of mouth.
One such production was the Ben Stiller-directed series Severance, a psychological thriller in which a company named Lumon Industries allows workers to ‘sever’ themselves from the outside world, disassociating from their “outie” lives so they can work as “innies” without the burden of their personal lives. To put it briefly, Severance was excellent, exhilarating TV and the sort of sci-fi adjacent fare that nurtured a devout audience to the tune of 14 Emmy nominations and appearance as #1 on several critics’ Best Of 2022 rankings.
Critical acclaim and a cliffhanger ending will nearly always encourage recommission, but for all their foibles as a production company, Apple appears to back their creatives. As such, a second chapter was greenlit before general audiences could respond to the show. After production delays due to the Writer’s Strike of 2023, this second season took nearly three years to reach audiences but good things come to those who wait
Season one left us with more questions than answers. The group of Lumon workers, known as MacroData Refinement, that the series follows – Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower) and Irving (John Turturro) – became unsevered after colleague Dylan (Zach Cherry) activated the “overtime contingency“, resulting in their Innie selves taking back control of their Outie bodies. Innie Mark, at a gathering screams “she’s alive” as he realises that Lumon employee Ms. Casey is the thought-to-be deceased wife of his Outie; Innie Irving awakens to his Outie painting hellscape versions of Lumon’s hallways; and Innie Helly awakened to her outie at a party, where she soon realises that her Outie is the daughter of Lumon CEO Keir Egan.
Season two opens with Mark entering Lumon five months after his outburst. A highlight of Severance season one was its cinematographic flair and season two not only appears to instantly continue this but surpass it. As Mark exits the elevator – the shifting depth returning to resemble his severed state – and into the blindingly white hallways of Lumon, the camera whips around him in high-speed akin to a GlamBot, before following Mark as he races through the hallways searching for Ms. Casey, his friends and colleagues. Adam Scott does his best Tom Cruise sprint as the camera tracks him turning corners with barely a pause at the apex. The editing is smart and seamless enough that the exhilarating two-minute-plus scene is spliced to resemble a one-take. It also serves to highlight just how much Mark – and subsequently his colleagues – are trapped as innies within the maze of Lumon, their role in the company as mysterious and as opaque to them as it is for rats being conditioned by scientists.
Mark, unsuccessful in locating Ms. Casey or his friends, emerges back into the eerily luminous office space to be greeted by three new colleagues: Mark W (Bob Balaban), Gwendolyn (Alia Shawkat) and an unnamed Italian man in a suit. Each are from different sections of Lumon, broadening the audience’s knowledge of the inner workings of the company. Gwen mentions the statues of CEO Eagan are animatronic in her section of the company in comparison to the stone statues of Mark’s division, while the Italian man humorously mentions his statues were brooms with plates. The mysteries surrounding Lumon’s role within Severance spring forth as robustly and as quickly as they are uncovered. As soon as you think you’re on the wavelength of understanding the machinations of Lumon, or even Severance as a concept, you find yourself as discombobulated as the innies of Lumon.
What is particularly striking about Hello, Ms. Cobel is how unscrupulously amusing the episode is. A forgotten aspect of Severance season one for this writer was its sense of humour amidst the thrills and cerebral plottings. The appearance of the title of the episode, for instance, elicits a grand chuckle, while an animated stop-motion scene – complete with a voiceover cameo from an A-list Hollywood star that is best experienced firsthand – that details the five months that occurred on the outside is a sheer delight. That this wittiness also occurs in fine balance with the more eerie sensibilities of the show is testament to Stiller’s skill and experience as a director, but also lies on the shoulders of a game cast. Cherry, in particular, is a hoot as he stresses out amidst a tirade of expletives and astute observations about Lumon.
New pawns on the Severance chess board are newly promoted Seth Milchik (Tramell Tillman), who takes over from former floor manager Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) after her interactions at the end of season one, alongside Miss Huang (Sarah Bock), a teenage assistant to Milchik who appears to have usurped the newly disappeared Ms Casey and has as foreboding a presence as the twins in The Shining. On top of continuing plot mysteries such as that of Irving and his love interest Burt (Christopher Walken), a new mystery that is yet to unfurl its tendrils is that of Helly, whom we now know as an Eagan, as she lies to Mark about her time on the outside. Ms. Cobel has also vanished from the story at this moment. Arquette is expected to return but her presence is missing just about enough for the episode to feel the vacuum. That said, even if Ms Cobel should not return, the show is such a blast of high-concept cerebral mischief that it may work without her.
The best shows don’t allow for easy answers to be guessed about their diegesis. Severance keeps these cards so close to its chest that it is almost impenetrable to predict, and has no doubt got several surprises in store across the next nine episodes. If the rest of Severance season two is as shrewdly funny, as sinister and as thrilling as its first episode, Hello Ms. Cobel, audiences should be prepared for this season to be one of the strongest sophomore television efforts in recent memory.
Severance Season 2 streams weekly on Apple TV+.
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