Contains mild spoilers for Severance, and medium-spicy spoilers for Sorry to Bother You.
I just finished the fifth episode of Severance season 2. The show is undeniably gorgeous. The colors, cinematography, and framing are all absolutely stunning, and I forgot how wonderfully uncanny-valley the intro animations are.
But my primary complaint about the first season remains in effect, which is that I often find the editing to be tedious. It sometimes feels like the creators are deliberately wasting my time, drip-feeding hints more slowly than the mystery actually actually merits. I think this might be a me problem though, because Severance has helped me realize that I don’t find the tension inherent to the mystery box genre particularly engaging or interesting.
I love a puzzle game—Outer Wilds, Obra Dinn, The Forgotten City, etc.—where it feels like I’m actively solving something. The problem with mystery box TV, for me, is that the mystery will eventually get solved for me, whether or not put any effort into it. In fact, of I do end up “solving” a TV show or movie by accurately predicting what will happen, I usually just feel disappointed. Like, you couldn’t even surprise me? You had one job!
Even so, the beauty of the show and the unique themes are thus far compelling enough to keep me going, despite my disinterest in the greater mystery of “what’s going on in there.”
The parable of Mr. Milchick
On that note, I love what they’ve done with the character of Mr. Milchick in season 2. He’s a perfect distillation of the middle management trap. His brain may be in one piece, and we can assume that he makes more money than his severed colleagues, but he’s also in perhaps the worst position in the corporate social hierarchy:
- He can’t enjoy the camaraderie of the rank and file.
- He doesn’t get the spoils or prestige of upper management.
- And he has little hope of reaching the top, at which point you can finally be your authentic and/or unhinged self, because there’s no one who can tell you no anymore.1
Milchick has the semblance of agency, when in reality he’s only been given exactly enough rope to tie up his subordinates—and himself.
Another phenomenal investigation of corporate hierarchy appears in the film Sorry to Bother You, which manages to encapsulate the entire social ecology of capitalism in under 2 hours. The protagonist goes from unemployed, to a “star caller” hawking missiles, to snorting lines with the CEO. Along the way we get glimpses of life at every rung of the corporate ladder, as well those living outside (but nonetheless dependent on) it.
A+++, go watch Sorry to Bother You. Severance is good too, it’s just not my favorite genre.
Update: S2 EP6 really won me over. It was the first time in the entire series I can remember not being a bit bored for the full duration of an episode. I guess I’m just more invested in the various love triangles/quadrangles than I am in the overall mystery of Lumon/Cold harbor.
Footnotes
-
See: Musk, Zuckerburg, et al. ↩