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Page 16 Shelton-Mason Journal Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023
Review: ‘Severance’ is a nightmare of modern tech
continued from page
megalithic headquarters for the Ea-
gans’ company, Lumon Industries,
but also to the point that various area
locales are named after their family.
Beneath the towering Lumon In-
dustries building lies a labyrinthine
subterranean workplace facility of
oversized offices stocked with oddly
antiquated desktop computers, and
even more voluminous production and
manufacturing spaces, that manage
to feel both industrial and clinically
antiseptic. .
The cubicle drones of what Lumon
calls its “Macrodata Refinement” divi-
sion crunch numbers they don’t une
derstand, for reasons they’re never
told. Meanwhile, the labcoat-clad
engineers and developers of Lumon’s
“Optics and’Design” division churn
out everything from painstakingly
detailed corporate propaganda art-
work, bordering on religious idolatry,
to seemingly random tools and trin-
kets, with no clue as to their possible
broader purpose.
Lumon seems to produce every—
thing and nothing, and its employees
are forbidden from making maps of
their own workplace’s virtually end-
less hallways, whose motion—sensing
lights ensure those halls grow darker
the longer they’re disused. A pair of
wandering workers discover an iso-
lated department staffed by a single
employee, whose sole function is to
feed baby goats.
Lumon is so secretive, it’s
360.898.248l l www.hcc.net
pioneered a “severance” program that
separates its employees’ working and
nonworking memories, so employees
can’t remember anything they do at
work, and when they’re at work, they
can’t remember any aspect of their
lives outside of Lumon.
Should I have led with that exis-
tentially terrifying premise?
“Severance” feels like the dark
dream of modern tech executives
come true. What better way to pre-
clude the complaints of worker bees
who want to telecommute from home
than to ensure they forget all their
workplace miseries as soon as they’re
off the clock for the day?
The show’s aesthetic reads at
least partially like a satire of the
Steve Jobs era of Apple - ironically
enough, given the streaming service
that’s hosting it —— while also drawing
from the zeitgeist of the 1970s and
’803, as well as a Soviet Bloc coldness.
Sci-fl author Philip K. Dick, whose
stories became the basis for “Blade
Runner” and “Total Recall,” would
have loved how “Severance” plays
with the nature of how memory af-
fects identity. The Lumon employees
are depicted as becoming practically
different people at work, versus at
home, to the degree that one dis-
gruntled worker plots against her off- .
hours self, who in turn treats her own
workplace self like a slave, and less
than human.
The cast is impeccable. Adam
Scott transforms his comically se-
date bewilderment from “Parks and
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006':
.C‘o
O.
l
‘1
t
Recreation” into a depressed yet re-
signed weariness that I suspect will
feel uncomfortably familiar to those
who have weathered stretches in
their lives when simply waking up
was a slog.
Patricia Arquette is as compelling
and forbidding as Cate Blanchett’s
Galadriel, in playing the core charac-
ters’ ruthlessly duplicitous boss, and
Tramell Tillman is intimidatingly
insincere in his plastic positivity as
the floor supervisor for the “severed”
employees.
This is the first role I’ve seen Till-
man in, but his fixed grin and artifi-
cially forced casualness are chilling
recreations of every middle manager
who makes a performance out of
wanting to be his workers’ “friend.”
Britt Lower delivers another
standout performance from an actor
with whom I was previously unfamil-
iar, as the appropriately nicknamed
“Helly,” a new hire in Lumon’s Macro-
data Refinement division, whose war
between her “innie” and “outie” selves
takes on nationwide political stakes
when her secrets are revealed.
John Turturro and Christopher
Walken are deservedly known for
their dramatic excesses as actors, and
while their characters share a humor-
ous meticulousness in “Severance,”
the mutual attraction that grows
from this trait is understated and
genuinely moving, especially when.
they’re confronted with the implica—
tions of “retirement” for “severed”
employees, whose workplace selves
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essentially cease to exist.
What’s most harrowing and hi—
larious all at once is how the show’s
most absurd aspects are also the
most grounded in the emerging reali-
ties of too many modern workplaces.
Lumon’s approach to HR fully quali-
fies as psychological torture, which it
pairs with patronizing “rewards” for
jobs well done, from desktop trophies
to “office parties” that merely under-
score the amount of time employees
spend in the office.
Be warned that “Severance”
juggles multiple mysteries, enough
that even an attentive viewer might
require a scorecard to keep them
straight, and its first season con-
cludes on a cliffhanger.
But what’s been hinted at has been
more than enough to keep my inter-
est engaged, and what’s disclosed by
the end of the first season makes it
worth your while to watch it more
than once.
Moving onto the reader participa—
tion portion of this column, the post-
New Year winter months are always
a bit lean for new onscreen entertain-
ment, and that looks to be especially
true this year. So, just as you help—
fully chimed in with your preferences
about whether I should watch more
big-screen or streaming content, so
too will I now ask for your sugges-
tions about any films or TV shows in
particular that you believe I should
be watching.
With any luck, we might both dis—
cover something fun and new.
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