In 2022, Apple was three years into its streaming experiment and still trying to find its footing. Aside from Ted Lasso, the tech giant hadn’t released any breakout hits. And while a few sci-fi shows like For All Mankind and Foundation had fans, they weren’t exactly mainstream success stories. Then everything changed when Apple took a bet on an unknown showrunner (with backing from an A-list actor) to create something revolutionary.
Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller didn’t just change Apple TV with Severance, which firmly established the streamer as the home for groundbreaking new sci-fi. They also delivered a perfectly timed anti-work masterpiece at exactly the right time, tapping into the cultural zeitgeist with a perfect season of television that still hasn’t been surpassed (even by the show’s own very good second season).
Severance is easily Apple’s best TV series
While both seasons of Severance are phenomenal, it’s hard to describe how expertly Erickson’s first nine-episode season conveys the despair of the “work-first” attitude prevalent in modern society. Erickson, who worked in a literal door factory while writing early versions of the series, takes that attitude to its most literal extreme: imagining a dystopian future where companies surgically split their employees’ consciousness to create an “innie” who knows only work and an “outie” who has no idea what their own job entails.
The series opens with Helly (Britt Lower) waking up on a table in one of the company’s main offices. Waking up at work already sounds disastrous, but like Helly, audiences learn from the disembodied voice of fellow innie Mark Scout (Adam Scott) in real time what being a Lumon employee means for her: a lifetime of all work and very little play. Naturally, Helly does not vibe with the new life her outie has chosen for her and does everything in her power to escape.
The line between personal and work has grown increasingly blurred over the years, further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced us to reckon in real time with how little consideration is given to workers and their lives, as long as the numbers go up. This way of thinking drives Helly to be fundamentally opposed to anything and everything her bosses at Lumon try to get her to do.
Yet every time Helly rages against the machine, she remains trapped in the system. Each time she tries to escape, she is forced back into that sad, narrow corridor. Her outie wants her to be there, creating a truly odd juxtaposition where, despite sharing the same body, Helly is wrangling with her own psyche for control. It’s a little like arguing with yourself over whether you should get takeout, only with much more dire circumstances.
Though there is a level of attraction to such a literal divide of work and pleasure — Mark uses the severance program to avoid the grief of the death of his wife years before — it comes at a great cost. In an attempt to create a healthy work-life balance, Lumon and those who choose to be severed have instead condemned their inner selves to lives devoted to work, pursuing goals they neither understand nor chose.
This leaves us with several compelling questions that the nine episodes of Severance’s first season try to answer. Who is real? Is it our outer selves who agreed to take on this severance procedure, or is it the innie that’s been condemned to a life of toil? Is there really a true divide?
Through Helly’s acts of insurrection, she stirs something in her fellow innies that those in charge at Lumon (all of whom, notably, are not severed) can’t fully suppress. Even before Helly, innies like Mark, Irving (John Turturro), and Dylan (Zach Cherry) had a vague interest in their outer selves. By the time Helly starts pointing out the imbalance between their lives, rebellion (big and small) is all but inevitable.
Severance season 1 unfolds as a maze of shifting identities, false starts, red herrings, and untrustworthy narrators, with each episode leaving you feeling as though your emotions have been tossed into a blender. The series is disorienting by design, constantly keeping you guessing about what’s real and whom you can trust, all while building to a mind-blowing cliffhanger finale.
Severance’s second season is just as tantalizing as the first, but feels less cohesive overall, spending more time with the outies and Lumon’s inner workings. Although those elements are compelling, some storylines introduced in season one — like Burt and Irving’s strange but sweet relationship — fizzle out in an unsatisfying way. Season 2 is still very good, with some high highs and few lows, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the masterpiece that was Severance season 1.