Severance 2022 TV Show

Review of Season 1 Oh man, this show rocks. I can't believe it rook me this long to get around to it. This movie's world is established and maintained so perfectly through each choice. The world is first of all maintained through the visual techniques and choices in the cinematography (which was mainly helmed by Jessica Lee Gagné). The whole space of this corporate workplace is so artificial, drab and empty. Just long white hallways and a neat and tidy desk formation that is specifically designed for each worker to be facing away from the other workers in a circular windmill sort of formation to signify the cyclical nature the endless workflow of this company. The colour design is so perfect. This show is mainly defined by these unnatural greens and blues and blinding whites inside the office and the more natural, but similarly dull and dreary blues and certain browns in the outer reality. The cinematography is incredible in general, but there's a certain technique used in many of the episodes while the characters are transitioning from outie to innie or vice versa where the camera shifts in a hard to explain manor. Like the lens changes or there's some sort of zoom technique where the character's face will appear to fully shift into an entire new person. This is done especially well with Mark. You really really can feel the difference between innie Mark and outie Mark and a lot of that is due to the performance from Adam Scott, but also from whatever techniques they used visually. And those elevator shifting sequences wouldn't be the same without the sound design as well. This show has a very recognizable and consistent sound to it. I'll get to the music, but the sound design on it's own is great. The background noises and technological sound design is perfectly and subtly established through just living in these environments. The bleeps, sweeps and creeps all throughout the sound design of Lumon are just great. And the MUSIC. I love the score to this show (done by Theodore Shapiro). I love shows that can immediately make you feel at home in the world of the show with just the simple chord progressions that repeat throughout. This show only has so many main themes that play through each episode, but they're so perfect for this dystopian world full of strange and unfamiliar hallways. It's all done with these off kilter sounding piano notes and this grand mix between 1. futuristic, dystopian, sci fi sounds, 2. jazzy drums and occasional groovy tunes, 3. traditional orchestral compositions and 4. some striking horror inspiration in certain piano compositions. The first episode is a great example of perfect music sequences. We get to know this world of Lumon through the striking visuals and almost whimsical music when we first hear it and then the music all of a sudden nearly fully cuts out when we enter the real world to soak in the sad reality of Mark's dreary life. It's just masterful. I love the music of this show. The third main point I have before getting into my closing thoughts is the actual ideas and writing. This show was consistently thematically engaging. I truly don't know how people create such complex worlds with such a big web of twists and turns while keeping everything pointed towards a central theme. The commentary on corporate corruption was very well executed and done in a completely unique way in this show. This overbearing sense of inescapable complacency was truly visceral. This really felt like a very realistic possibility of a future that we could be heading towards. It's very cynical and sad, but also very much pointed towards taking action. The whole show is a kind of call to action to try in some small way to escape the hands of these corporate powers. I definitely don't think I covered all my thoughts on the writing of this show and I honestly feel like I barely scratched the surface of the dystopian metaphors and ideas, but needless to say, I love this story and I'm finding it hard to really get at what I was thinking through all 9 episodes that I watched throughout a few weeks. It just flowed so well and progressed so naturally in a way that's hard to summarize for me. Of course, this way helped by some incredible acting chops in the entire cast. The main star who I already brought up for his performance was of course, Adam Scott as our protagonist, Mark. Throughout the course of the show, as both versions of Mark started careening towards new discoveries, you could really feel the growing disconnect between these two sides of Mark. This performance was so integral the show and Adam Scott fully pulled it off with a whole range I'd never seen from him before. The whole cast was perfect, Zach Cherry as Dylan, Patricia Arquette as Ms. Cobel, Britt Lower as Helly, they all worked together perfectly, but there's really only a few more performances that I want to focus on. There's no surprise here that John Turturo as Irving was a huge highlight of the show. His performance was so layered as this by the books, goofy two shoes old man who does what he's told with a deep well of buried emotions. His relationship with Christopher Walken as Burt was so charming and cute amidst this disturbing world and you can see the deep seeded fear and sadness in his eyes so distinctly when for example (and this leads to the next actor I need to mention) whenever Mr. Milchick walks into the room, Irving immediately stands up straight and does his best to kiss his ass. This wouldn't be as believable without the immense help from Tramell Tillman. I haven't seen this dude in anything except for a very small role in the latest mission impossible movie and yet his energy and attitude as Milchick made me feel like I was watching a veteran performance from a well established and seasoned performer. The smoothness, the stone faced confidence, the deadness behind the eyes, the foreboding power he has over the workplace. It's all so well communicated in his performance. This is also a sign of great direction of course. Clearly, Ben Stiller knows what he's doing in the director's chair as he seems to be the main director of the show as well as, I'm sure, plenty of input from the show's creator, Dan Erickson. This show just WORKS so well on every level. I want to end on a few aspects that combine the efforts of each point I've brought up so far. The visuals, the sound, the writing, directing, everything. That being the very opening and very ending. The thing that opens every episode is the show's intro and theme. I fully thought I would take this intro in for the first few episodes and then maybe start skipping it by the third or fourth episode, considering it's a bit much for a standard TV intro. I was wrong. I watched the whole thing every time. It's just so addicting. The animation is so stellar, the music is a perfect mood setter, each small detail makes more and more sense as the show progresses. It's really a masterpiece. And then my last point is that last ending. It really felt like everything was built up just for the sequence of events in the last episode. I know most shows should feel like that, but it really was magical in this show. The music pulled no stops with some seriously amazing progressions and beat drops in the familiar themes we had already gotten used to. Every plot twist and story turn was all uncovered and brought back up in this enthralling web of events; this non stop ride of an episode that made me incredibly tense, incredibly satisfied, incredibly curious and eager not only for the nest season, but to rewatch previous scenes with the knowledge of certain reveals. What an incredible season of TV. Maybe I'll eventually bump this up to a 10, but for now I'm giving this a stellar score of 9/10. it would feel weird jumping to a perfect 10 considering not everything has been wrapped up yet. There were also a few miniscule issues like one or two bad sound effects or a thread that took a bit to come around to that I didn't mention for time sake. It's not the greatest season of TV I've ever watched, but it is up there. Great show, highly recommend.