Quirky conspiracy-style sci-fi thriller about employees of a company who are psychologically "severed" so their lives outside of and at work have no knowledge of each other. The first season of Severance was plotted so nicely, I was surprised when it ended on a cliffhanger to discover it was a series and not a miniseries drawing to an ending in 8 episodes.
The second season unfortunately tries to be grander in scope, by moving much more of the action out of the office and to a wide-ranging variety of other locations, but succeeds only in being flabbier in terms of storytelling, talkier, slower-moving, and harder to follow, seemingly less interested in worldbuilding and than in contrived "intrigue".
They also start to show the first sign of tired storytelling: bringing in romantic relationships for "drama", as, for instance, the company inexplicably lets an "innie" (an employee's at-work personality) meet with his "outtie's" wife, leading, predictably, to a two-person love triangle between the wife and the two personalities. Which is an interesting idea, but really, was this necessary to the plot? It seems a lot of people (or at least, the entertainment industry believes a lot of people) find romantic tension for its own sake innately entertaining. I don't. It seems like filler, as does a fair bit of what goes on this season.
A lot of the surrealism seems much less intriguing and much more forced this season, too. Would any company who was merely using an employee with the intent of discarding him when he was done with his tasks go to the trouble of having a marching band on hand to parade through the halls to celebrate his task completion? Why wouldn't they just discard him? Some quirkiness is strange and engaging, as we saw in season 1; some is just strangeness for its own sake. By the end of the last episode of S2 it descends to almost being an action movie, with a series overlong and to me perfunctory-seeming fight and action sequences.
At this point, I feel like this series first two seasons could have been a 2-hour movie, instead of 28 hours of television. Or at least, they could have kept the first season to a miniseries, wrapped it up at the end, and it would have been classic television. For now, it's another "Lost": Started great, got flabby when the writers realized they'd have to solve the mysteries they created. There's something to be said for writing the whole story in advance before you start production.
If the second season had just been as good as the first, I could easily have recommended this series. But it wasn't, and I can't.
I see that critics far and wide have hailed the second season as some sort of masterpiece. Sometimes I think I was born on the wrong planet.
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