It’s hard to break away from ‘Severance’ Season 2

“Severance” Season 2 (Apple TV Plus) requires a viewer to buy into the show’s three distinct purposes. Those who are into all three will love Season 2, those who are only into one aspect will find it a frustrating exercise in style over substance.

Dan Erickson’s bleakly yet gorgeously set-designed series returns from a three-year hiatus by still being: 1, a puzzle-box mystery about the purpose of the Lumon corporation; 2, a satire of cubicle workplace absurdities; and 3, an examination of what would happen if a brain were to be split into two distinct compartments (non-work and work).

Il-Lumon-ation

(SPOILERS FOLLOW.)

I’d recommend rewatching the Season 1 finale before embarking on these 10 episodes, as the new Outie knowledge in the minds of our heroic Innie office-drone quartet – Mark S. (Adam Scott), Helly R. (Britt Lower), Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) and Irv B. (John Turturro) – inspires their actions in Season 2.

---

---

Season 2 has episodes that edge toward the worst impulses of the puzzle-box genre, particularly the slow-moving “Woe’s Hollow” (4), where the quartet is on an outdoor winter company retreat and they (and we) are never given a clue how or why. Mark’s and Helly’s venture into a department on their floor that specializes in goat husbandry likewise has that air of “Look how smart and weird our show is.”

But when “Severance” is good, it’s great, and for the second-straight season it produces an excellent finale, the Erickson-penned, Ben Stiller-directed “Cold Harbor” (10). Erickson spells out the Innie-Outie transition rules clearly via Miss Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who we learn – in another slow episode (8, “Sweet Vitriol”) – invented the Severance process but had credit stolen by the corporation.

In a cabin where the indoor living room triggers the Innie brain and the outdoor patio triggers the Outie brain, Mark S. is able to talk to himself via camcorder. Thus the rules of the grand-finale action sequence – where Mark S. intends to rescue his kidnapped wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman, veteran of the similar “Dollhouse”) from Lumon – are set up: Mark S. (as with all severed employees) will have his Innie brain on his own floor, his Outie brain on the other floors.

And so we get an emotional action-adventure sequence that flows smoothly because we’ve received good instruction from Erickson and Stiller. The most powerful moment: Innie Mark S. sends Innie Gemma to safety outside the floor (thus turning her into Outie Gemma), but he’s not joining her; he’s going back for his workplace love, Innie Helly R.

Mind(s), body, spirit

If “Severance” was about clones or replicants, like most stories of this type, it’d be no problem for Gemma; she’d go home to Outie Mark S. But Innies and Outies share a body, so – as with “Dollhouse” – a tragedy of absence and longing hangs over “Severance”: Someone is always waiting for someone else to get home, literally or metaphorically.

That tragedy potentially expands to outright loss in the cases of Innie Dylan G. and Irv B., whose Innies contemplate “suicide” (only their Outie would live on), in both cases triggered by an unrequited romance — which admittedly is a cliched and unhealthy message. (Still, it is fascinating to see how Dylan G. is immediately drawn to his Outie’s wife.)

But “Cold Harbor” features dialog that underlines the show’s core theme. We assume Innies might simply kill themselves (retirement is a painless ceasing of existence) since they find themselves in a world of 100 percent office work; Helly R. even describes it as “hell.” However, as Mark S. says to his supervisor: “You thought because you only gave us half a life we wouldn’t fight for it?!”

The actors have more of a challenge than the “Dollhouse” cast, because they are playing not merely dual roles, but subtly dual roles. Erickson’s message is that people will tend toward their true nature, even if the environment (nurture) is different. So not only does Scott, for instance, look exactly the same as an Innie as when he’s an Outie, he has the same personality and values. Yet we can tell who is who.

Probably the most different pair of roles goes to Christopher Walken as Burt G., whose Innie is a sweet guy and whose Outie is a contract killer. Knowing he took a wrong turn in life, Burt G. signed up to be a severed employee so some part of him could be a good person and get into Heaven.

Making the most of their second chance

This is a poignant appeal of “Severance”: the idea that we could have a second chance, and also that we deserve it because – as Our Lady Peace sang – we are all innocent. This is clearly evident with “Dollhouse’s” dolls, who are childlike blank slates until the personality-of-the-moment is implanted, but not as immediately clear with “Severance’s” Innies.

A great scene in the finale reminds us of their isolation, though, as Helly R. and Mark S. speak of place names they’ve heard (apparently the non-severed employees let some things slip): “Delaware,” “Europe,” “Zimbabwe.” Sounding like grade-schoolers, they surmise that “the Equator” must be a building, or perhaps a continent.

While “Severance” doesn’t do implanted personalities like “Dollhouse,” the show encourages us to think about our natural states of curiosity and creativity and how those are pushed aside by accepted societal forces like factory schools and corporate jobs – particularly cubicle work in the case of “Severance.” There’s who we truly are, and there’s who we’re forced to be.

In fact, until the season finale, it’s not clear what Innie Mark S. does. It turns out his intuitive movement of numbers into a box on his screen is the creation of a program for 25 distinct Gemma brains, or something like that. And unless I missed something, it’s still unclear what the jobs of Helly R., Dylan G. and Irv B. are.

Lumon-al space

As noted by critics and scholars, “Severance’s” style and vibe are built upon liminal space. (This video analyzes it well.) It’s undeniable that this is a purposeful aesthetic – as is the “Suspiria”-esque use of red lighting in the finale, as Mark must get his hands bloody in order to defeat the villains. And it’s not wrong that “Severance” will show up on lists of the great liminal-space TV series.

However, Erickson doesn’t lean into liminal space as a theme, only as a style. (Indeed, his out-of-time tricks, like having the workers use 20^th century computers, made me wonder if time travel factors in. When style unnecessarily muddles a story, that’s not good.)

Once the evocative sets – the four (and later three) desks in the middle of an unnecessarily large green-carpeted room, and the maze of white corridors that would cause paranoia in the directionally challenged – are built, the story isn’t about the nothingness of Lumon but rather the substance of Lumon. We’re constantly thinking about the purpose of the Innies’ work, and the finale does indeed tell us that Mark is unknowingly contributing to the Gemma experiments.

So “Severance” is about substantial – if sometimes mundane, in the case of middle managers and corporate climbers – evil, rather than the resigned and peaceful melancholy of the liminal spaces of a dying corporation. (Instead, these are purposely designed spaces in a thriving — if evil — corporation. Like “Severance” itself, Lumon is deliberate.) This might be inevitable in an ongoing TV series. Liminal-space movies (“The Shining”) and TV miniseries (“The Langoliers”) don’t keep us there forever; we know there’s a stopping point.

With an ongoing TV series — especially this one, where (in theory) 100 percent of the Innie’s life is spent on one sprawling Lumon floor – it would become too much if we were trapped in a liminal space without an end point. “Severance” has not announced how many seasons it will run. This, of course, allows Apple to cancel it whenever if ratings are low; or have it run forever if ratings are high. Both possibilities are perhaps scarier to viewers than the show’s sci-fi concepts themselves.

The revolution will be televised

The mix of “Severance’s” three states – puzzle box, satire, and human nature by way of weird science – can be jarring. But despite pretentious boring stretches, Erickson knows how to turn it on in the season finales. In Season 3, the revolution will be in full swing on the severed floor, and – since “Severance” seems to be popular – it’s a safe bet it will be televised.

IMDb Top 250 trivia

• “Severance” ranks No. 93 on the TV list with an 8.7 ranking.
• Scott pulls off the impressive feat of topping his beloved sitcom, “Parks and Recreation,” which stands at No. 132 with an 8.6.
• The season finale, “Cold Harbor,” rightly tops Season 2’s ratings with a 9.6. It’s a notch short of the Season 1 finale, “The We We Are” (9.7).
• Although I think it’s a better show, “Severance’s” progenitor “Dollhouse” isn’t as popular, coming in at 7.7.