This dystopian office drama 'has the same magic, but more puzzling'

Apple TV+'s surreal workplace show was a hit when it debuted in 2022. Now it's finally back – and there's a lot to savor, from the intriguing storytelling to the layered performances.

In the second season of Severance, a character spends hours practicing how to put on a paperclip correctly (apparently there is a right and wrong way). Other characters discover a room full of goats in their office building, while outside the office, someone discovers a working phone booth on the street, as if it were a common occurrence. Yet viewers of the show’s first season — one of the most exhilarating and imaginative shows in recent years — know that its bizarre world can also resonate with anyone bored at work.

The show perfectly balances the real and the surreal, telling the story of four employees of Lumon Industries who sort numbers floating on a computer screen and choose to implant a chip in their brains, cutting their memory in half. People who work inside an office, called introverts, have no idea who they are outside the office, while their outside colleagues, or extroverts, have no memory of their workday. Identity crisis doesn't begin to describe it. Dan Erickson, the show's creator be inspired When he was a struggling screenwriter, he wished his tedious office gig could pass by as if it never happened, and the idea that he could shut down his brain is particularly resonant in our age of information overload.

This twist on the familiar office show premise is a great hook. But the real magic of the series, and the secret to its success and critical acclaim, is how well it establishes our emotional attachment to the characters in Lumon's macro-detail department, who now realize they've made a terrible mistake. The cast makes them so believable that it's easy to root for the grief-stricken widower Mark (Adam Scott), the fussy and lovelorn Owen (John Turturro), the rebellious Haley (Bree Lore) and Dylan (Zach Cherry), an office drone, resonate. It seems unfortunate until it isn't. Some episodes change radically between seasons, but this is a seamless continuation that works the same magic, with even more mind-bending twists.

The storyline picks up five months after the events of the cliffhanger we last saw, when Dylan remained at Lumon Industries, struggling to hold a switch that allowed three others outside to briefly access their working memories. Mark discovers that his wife Gemma may actually be alive and is an unknown person he met at work. Irv is an artist and for some reason has files on Lumon employees hidden in his apartment. Most shockingly, Haley is Helena Eagan, the heiress to the Lumen fortune, who underwent a “severance package,” as the process was called, in a public display of confidence in it .

They return to the office with all this knowledge, but now the storytelling becomes trickier and more interesting. From the beginning of the show, we see the world of introverts and extroverts and thus learn more about the characters than they do about themselves. But this season we're not as certain about some of the characters' motivations as we were before or as we thought. What is their game, what are they hiding, and are they as united as they seem? Each serves as an unreliable narrator, at least for a while, subtly adding to the suspense.

Some things are the same. Scott is still heartbreaking as extroverted Mark, who is so heartbroken over the loss of his wife that he agrees to cut off ties with her to avoid the pain of the memory of a period of time in the day. As the disillusioned Nerimark, his sarcastic rebuttals to his boss are surprisingly clear.

Lorre, now playing a more layered character, plays Hayley/Helena, who leads an incredibly complex double life, with perfect subtlety. Turturro has never had a better role or a better performance, showing that there is fire behind the seemingly bland Owen. He's still in love with former Lumon employee Burt, played by Christopher Walken, who delivers Walken's lines with delightful authenticity. No one can make a dinner invitation that starts with “We've got ham” sound the same. Trammell Tillman returns as Lumont boss Mr. Milczyk, whose smile is creepier than ever. Ben Stiller directs with visual flair, contrasting the dark, snowy outside world with Lumont's claustrophobic, blindingly white maze of corridors.

Most differences cannot yet be revealed. Beyond that, we learn a little more about Dylan's family, and we discover that it's possible to find a secret place to have sex inside Lumon's office. Guest actors slip in and out with ease, including Gwendoline Christie, Merritt Wever, Bob Balaban and Alia Shawkat.

Apple TV+ only sent out 6 of the 10 episodes to critics, so I couldn't comment more on the final stretch of the season even if I wanted to. But midway through, the story takes a turn and involves chips in employees' brains, and while that raises the stakes, the storyline isn't as compelling as it should be, at least not yet. Too much science fiction could ruin the show’s perfect balance.

Too little attention has been paid to the cult-like side of Lumen, with everyone viewing its 19th-century founder Kier Eagan as a prophet and his company manuals as religious, quasi-biblical. file. That was just the beginning of it all, as employees always addressed Milchik deferentially as “Mr. Milchik,” as if they were elementary school students addressing their teachers. No matter what happens in the final few episodes, there's a lot to savor, including the perfect disdain in Nene Mark's voice when he says, “Praise Gere.”

The first two episodes of Severance Season 2 were released on Apple TV+ on January 17, with new episodes released weekly.