'Severance' review: Season 2 gets down to serious business
WHAT Season 2 of "Severance"
WHERE Streaming Friday on Apple TV+
WHAT IT'S ABOUT Before he was stopped by Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), Dylan (Zach Cherry) activated the Overtime Contingency, allowing the "innie" Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower) and Irving (John Turturro) an extended glimpse of their "outie" lives in the first season "Severance" finale.
In this long-awaited second season, they have to deal with the consequences of that glimpse. So does Miss Cobell (Patricia Arquette), who was fired, and Helly who learns her "outie" is Helena Eagan, the direct descendant of sinister Lumon founder Kier Eagan. Meanwhile, Mark's role as head of Macrodata Refinement (MDR) is key to an important Lumon Industries initiative called "Cold Harbor."
Innie? Outie? Our four so-called "refiners" are "severed" when at work — which involves sorting numbers based on four "tempers" (woe, frolic, dread, malice). This means they knew nothing of their lives outside Lumon (but do now)..
MY SAY Back in 2022, "Severance" made a plausible bid to become the best series on TV — made slightly less plausible by the fact that "Better Call Saul" and "Succession" were still around. That first season had brains and beauty, a great cast, rich characters and a propulsive story that even made sense at times. Ruling over this luminous, twisted world were big, plangent ideas about human consciousness, identity, free will, memory and the meaning of life, or at least workplace life. There were also baby goats, pineapples and Mr. Milchick's dead-eyed stare, all perfectly seasoned with an unfiltered fire hose of profanity from "innie" Dylan, the character who seemed to speak for the rest of us confounded "outies."
Above all, "Severance" was fun, and funny. There was a mystery to unravel, but the showrunners had their priorities straight. Let the fans have a good time first then get to the serious stuff.
Yet all parties must end, and this one largely has. With the sophomore season, "Severance" is getting down to business, and probably had no other choice in the matter. The challenge before any so-called mystery-box show — "Lost" being the best-known example — is that mystery part, as in what does all this stuff actually mean? Is it leading anywhere or nowhere? Like Mark and Helly wandering the corridor maze of Lumon, are we, too, on a wild-goose chase? Logic and resolution start to take precedence at this stage of a mystery-box show's life because they have to.
But logic isn't a lot of laughs and other than the season opener, this second season isn't always either. Purposeful, and at times plodding, this second seems to know where it's going, but refuses to make any missteps in the process. The logic can be of the pretzel kind. Now that the Macrodata Refinement Four know something of their outside lives — and vice versa — we too have to keep a scorecard of what we/they know. The characters we thought we loved (Helly, Irving and, yes, Mark) maybe aren't so deserving of our affection after all. This confusion does set up a clever plot twist or two throughout the first half of the season but further scrambles the scorecard. That's probably the whole point (keep us/them off balance). Except, what is the point anyway?
Like "Lost" all those years ago, "Severance" now has our full attention. We want to know what happens to Helly and Mark — all four of them. We care about the others along with their "outie" doubles. And goats aside, the abiding mystery still hints at something consequential. Perhaps "Severance" will get around to a genuinely profound insight into our own fraught life and times.
Perhaps. If only this second season weren't so self-serious about the whole process.
BOTTOM LINE Still good, just not nearly as much as that remarkable first season.