Severance
Overview
Severance is a 2022 science fiction psychological thriller television series created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle. The series stars Adam Scott as Mark Scout, an employee of the mysterious Lumon Industries. The series is set in a dystopian version of the present day. Lumon has invented a procedure called "severance," which surgically divides an employee's memories between their work life and their personal life. When an employee is at work, they remember nothing of their outside life. When they are at home, they remember nothing of their work life. Mark is a severed employee who works in the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) department, where he and his colleagues spend their days staring at numbers on a screen and sorting them into bins. They do not know what the numbers mean, or what they are doing. Mark is grieving the death of his wife, and he chose severance as a way to escape his pain for eight hours a day. The series follows Mark and his colleagues: Helly (Britt Lower), a rebellious woman who wakes up on a conference table with no memory of who she is; Irving (John Turturro), an older man who is deeply committed to the company; and Dylan (Zach Cherry), a sarcastic, competitive man who loves the perks of the job. They discover that Lumon is hiding dark secrets, and that the severed floor is not what it seems. The series is a meditation on work-life balance, identity, and the nature of consciousness. It is a slow-burn, atmospheric, and deeply unsettling thriller. The series ends with a cliffhanger: Helly is revealed to be Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumon's CEO, and she has been sent to the severed floor as a PR stunt. The innies, the work selves of the characters, have taken control, and they are about to expose Lumon's secrets to the world. Severance was a critical success, winning two Primetime Emmy Awards for Main Title Design and Music Composition. It was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series. The series is one of the most acclaimed and talked-about shows of the 2020s. A second season is in production.
