At first, “scary numbers” seems ridiculous. Then you realize we live in a world where otherwise meaningless numbers (also known as “money”) are, because of their emotional effects on others, scaling up to the whole society, legitimately fear-inducing.
I think it's funny that 90% of the arguments I hear people having day-to-day, especially in the political realm but also in general, are literally just semantic arguments. Things like "yeah, I'm fine with someone being trans, I just don't think they should call themselves <insert-gender>" or, inversely, "calling someone <insert-gender> when they want to be <insert-other-option> is highly offensive". Like, yeah I guess so, if specific words just have that much power over your life...personally, I just care about what the intention/meaning behind someone's entire point is. Like when my mother used to call my Sega a Nintendo, I knew what she meant...no reason to focus on the semantics.
To tie back to your point. People give so much power to words, and numbers are a bit more abstract but the same can be said of those as well. I care very little that someone else has 250bln USD, however I care very much if they are using that (or have the power) to inordinately effect/shape society.
Wittgenstein thought lots of philosophical arguments were semantic ones when he wrote the TLP. He would later abandon this idea after two world wars in Philosophical Investigations.
Have you ever had to put in a 6-digit code from an Authentication app, you have 10 seconds left before it renews and you know if you type fast enough without any entry mistakes and no number discalculia you'll make it in time and if you don't well it's fine you'll get another number but you know you can make it if you just focus and in those few seconds getting those 6 numbers right is the goal and you feel anxious that you might not make it..
“The Americans” doesn’t get enough love as one of the top shows of the past decade.
The darkness sneaks up on you. The people who start out seeming like James Bond characters end up carrying the full intolerable weight of their lies and destructive actions. People who looked like side characters are followed up with entire life stories in the shadows.
One of the best endings of any show I can remember. It answered the biggest question of the show (concerning Stan) so well, and the ending was both surprising and fully earned. Masterful television.
Got introduced to Rufus Sewell in 'The Man in The High Castle'. He played an SS commander. Most intimidating and frightening presence on the screen - without raising his voice and no (direct) acts of violence. Great actor.
He is indeed an extremly good actor .. wasted in some earlier US productions that bought him in for the Shakespearean Gravitas (pissed away by poor scripts in Eleventh Hour) .. but a shining light in various UK productions such as Petruchio in ShakespeaRe-Told.
I never finished The Americans but The Shield had the most perfect ending possible for that show and it was amazing! Worth checking out for anyone who has not already seen it.
FWIW I absolutely love The Shield, one of my favorite shows. The Americans is better. But it was also hard to get into, and I stopped a few episodes in the first time. It gets much better the more the story goes on.
As a fellow The Shield-lover, I highly recommend you try to finish The Americans.
I couldn't agree more. It was masterful, and had an enormously shocking ending emotionally - in multiple ways, including the Stan ending, though I'm sure we're both talking about something else.
Btw, funny enough, on rewatches, I actually focus more on the one big Stan question that isn't answered (and, in fact, is actually asked to him for the first time). I'm happy it was never resolved, though I keep wondering if there's some clue that they are hiding in there that will resolve it for real one of these days :)
That last part is the miracle. So many shows start out strong, and are just dogshit for the finale. Does anyone really believe that Severance will manage this trick? Would love to be surprised and mistaken, but they're just throwing crap at the wall to see what will stick, and that only lasts so long.
critics say that, but its viewership is low compared to other dramas. Usually when I tell people that it's one of my favorite shows, their response is that they've never seen it.
^ compare the viewership. The Americans was getting fewer than a million viewers in its final seasons, Lost regularly got over ten million. You can't easily chalk it up to just the fact that Lost was on network; The Last of Us was getting more than 10x the viewership of The Americans and it was on HBO. While The Americans is very critically acclaimed, it is not as widely watched as it really should be.
There must be a disconnect between viewers and critics, because viewership declined over its entire run. Compare that with a true masterpiece like Breaking Bad which saw viewership consistently increase over the course of its run.
Pretty rare for any show to increase in viewership year over year. Breaking Bad had monumental word of mouth towards the end. Better call Saul dropped year over year but was still fantastic.
The Bureau is an even better spy show IMO though I loved both. Something about how low key and realer The Bureau feels makes it more intense. It felt like The Wire to me though completely different shows.
The Bureau is excellent. One of the few shows where the hacking is relatively realistic (as opposed to magic to advance the plot). The Wire is an apt comparison.
Le bureau des légendes was a great series from start to finish! I honestly enjoyed all of the characters, even when they seemed a bit manipulative or cold.
I am enjoying the form and structure but still uncertain about the substance.
I do hope they have a narrative arc planned with a satisfyingly metaphorical conclusion and will not, like certain other shows in a similar genre, meander from one surrealist allegory to another because additional seasons were ordered. The only truly exemplary production I can name in this vein being the sole season of The Prisoner (McGoohan, 1967-68).
Remember when "Battlestar Galactica" spent four seasons telling us that the Cylons had a plan, but it turned out that the writers never had any idea what it actually was?
Counterpoint; JMS had the five seasons of Babylon 5 planned out but, fearing cancellation, tried squeezing wrap-up storytelling from the fifth into the tail of the fourth, and the narrative compression is palpable, it feels super rushed. Then they did get renewed and the resulting final season feels disconnected and flabby.
There was a surge in viewership as they tried to tie up the story prompting the renewal of the show. But way too late. That they were able to pull off season 5 with the scraps and missing major cast members is kind of impressive. Perhaps indicative of what it would have been like had it been produced piecemeal
Also, credit where credit is due that Babylon 5 is almost exclusive in that era in terms of almost every episode having at least something that contributes to the main plot.
So much so that Star Trek had to pivot TNG and DS9 from problem of the week formulaic writing to something similar.
I honestly loved that. Season 4 is so fast-paced and devoid of all the filler that was common back then. I also loved the long good bye of season 5. So many characters get their own epilogue episode.
> meander from one surrealist allegory to another because additional seasons were ordered
This is how I find many shows made in the last ~20 years, but changing out "from one surrealist allegory to another" for various other things. Heroes, Jericho, Battlestar Galactica, House of Cards, hell even Downton Abbey... I would add the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones but I couldn't get through a season of either. I never saw Lost but I think it's the same kind of thing. I'm going to catch flak for it but I thought the same about Stranger Things.
All of them had a good pilot and/or first season, but then the rest of the seasons.... definitely came afterwards.
In Breaking Bad only the general idea, the main character turning from protagonist to antagonist was there from the beginning. They filled in the middle part as they went along.
That's not really a comparable narrative arc though. Breaking Bad is a character drama, not a mystery box structure. With only some limited exceptions, which clearly were planned out in advance of their resolution, the driving question of Breaking Bad is "what are the characters going to do", not "why/how did that thing happen".
I will never forgive Lost (which I originally watched in real time) and almost always wait for shows to conclude now before giving them my time.
Nonetheless, I'm enamored by Severance. The attention to detail by the show runners is amazing[1]. It's absolutely gorgeous to look at[2]. It's downright funny at times. I've re-watched the entire first season and there's so many details I missed the first time through. I will likely be satisfied even if it doesn't answer all its questions, but I have a feeling it will.
[1] BTW, the first eight chapters of The You You Are were released on Apple Books yesterday in both eBook and Audiobook form (read by the author).
[2] I watch in a home theater on a 120" 2.39:1 screen. I love that recent shows are being released in scope (see also Silo).
Hah, I hate the theater-wide trend. Most people are watching on 16x9 screens and it's so annoying that TV directors refuse to take that into account and shoot taller to use the whole damn screen. It's seriously non-trivial to get a wider setup than that for normal living-room use. And there's not even a wave of TVs on the way like when people started moving to 16x9 from 4x3. It's just a bad side-effect of prestige and money moving to TV from motion pictures.
Especially when you consider that the real snob format for many is IMAX which is taller anyway.
I don't understand why TV shows are shot in anything but 1.78. There's what, maybe 1% of watchers on wider screens? 2.00:1 or even 2.20:1 seem like a reasonable compromise, but 2.39:1 is insane.
They could at least shoot it open matte (maybe not as easy in 2.39 to do) so that those of us who want to mask to 2.39:1 can enjoy it that way w/o losing anything important while most watchers wouldn't notice the difference.
Here's the thing I don't get about post-finale annoyance at Lost -- how does the lack of plot resolution impact all of your enjoyment previous to the finale?
You still enjoyed thinking of all the plot points after the second to last episode, no?
And after the end of the first season?
Those moments existed independent of how it ended.
Sure, people having an issue with the ending and plot threads is maybe a reason not to start watching it now (I'd say it's still worth it...), but behaving as though somehow the ending invalidated all the realtime enjoyment is weird.
I went into Lost thinking it was sci-fi, but in the end, it was all fantasy. So for me, Lost never really answered its core mysteries and that was before it threw in the whole purgatory flash-sideways stuff. I did actually start to lose interest because it felt like the show was stringing us along, but hung in there for answers. Instead I felt like all I got were narrative dead ends and then a conclusion where most of them die. It was immensely unsatisfying.
(I'm reflecting back now on 15 year old memories. I'm actually surprised to learn it aired from 2004-2010. Gosh, I remember this as being a show from the 90s.)
It's also not like there were a lot of options for other shows to watch at the time. I'd never stay with a show like Lost today. I punted on Yellowjackets as soon as it started bringing fantasy into the story.
You have to know that how a series wraps up is important to its viewers. A great or terrible finale can make or break how a show is later perceived. The Lost finale was the most disappointing of any show I've seen.
Great finales I recall are The Americans and Justified.
A terrible last book chapter or poor movie ending can ruin all that has come before for me. When deciding whether to read a book, I'll read the last chapter first. Spoilers don't ruin good stories for me. But bad conclusions do. And Lost's conclusion was just terrible. I'd rather it have been canceled.
It's not like I need literal answers for everything. I love Mulholland Drive. But I felt like Lost spent six seasons just jerking me around.
I think this is a Type A enjoyer vs Type B enjoyer thing.
To me, if I enjoy every episode but dislike an ending... I still enjoyed 99% of the series.
Because, as I was watching each of those episodes, I was having fun.
It seems super unhealthy to retroactively go back in time and say 'That expression of glee on my face at the time wasn't actually happiness, because I just didn't know the ending was going to suck.'
> It seems super unhealthy to retroactively go back in time and say 'That expression of glee on my face at the time wasn't actually happiness, because I just didn't know the ending was going to suck.'
That's reading a lot into my words. There were no expressions of glee on my face as I watched Lost. I was hanging in there for answers because the mysteries were the only part of the show I found interesting. Conversely, I'm really enjoying Severance as it comes. I'll likely be happy however its finale turns out to be. I really enjoyed the bizarro world of Scavengers Reign and am sad it was canceled after one season. Lost didn't float my boat, and then ended terribly on top of that. Again, $0.02, and I won't make any judgements about your mental health. :-)
p.s. I'm glad you enjoyed Lost and hope I haven't yucked your yum.
It's a reason not to re-watch or even talk much about or recommend the show. Compare to something like Babylon 5 (plotted out well in advance) where a rewatch is rewarding because now you see extra significance of so many more early things. It's the complete opposite - everything interesting is now LESS interesting.
The enjoyment is capped at the initial run; a better-plotted show rewards you much more over time.
Let's not pretend Lost didn't explain anything. There were certainly plot holes, but there's also a ton of concrete explanations and information you get but don't have at the beginning of the show.
I mean, two of the biggest: smoke monster and hatch.
With Lost, I knew they had no direction in mind, and that bothered me. But I also knew that whatever they were doing, they were doing a damned entertaining job of it.
I didn't feel like the terrible ending ruined the fun I had with the first five seasons, but I did believe they had a direction in mind through most of it. What I remember bugged me most was that sometime quite early in the show, probably season one, the writers "promised" that they had an ending and explanation for everything, and that it explicitly wasn't going to be a cheap cop-out like "it was all a dream". Which, as it turns out, was either one or two lies by my count.
Honestly, I'm really enjoying that uncertainty and I couldn't image how entertaining it'd be. It certainly has a special place in this current "Zeitgeist" where video games are played by various generations and people calling each other "NPC"s as insult. There's this massive scale of contemporary enterprises, they all would like to retain that image of being young and full of empathy, while also standing above the law. Have you ever talked to some superior at a company and left with this empty feeling that made you recognize all of this unwillingness to change? Severence just hits that spot and frames it nicely into humor, yet still doesn't laugh about it. I question a bit the addition of the latest department in episode 3 and just hope they can stick the landing with such decisions.
> The only truly exemplary production I can name in this vein being the sole season of The Prisoner (McGoohan, 1967-68).
It cannot be another Lost. The Severance mystery box has an anti-plutocracy, humanist foundation. It would be really hard for them to not make it satisfying.
I agree, but I think that's a higher bar than "not being satisfying", which is what Lost was (putting it very generously). Fans often get carried away with mystique of mystery boxes and anything short of an orgasmic existential experience would be a letdown, but that doesn't mean in an absolute sense it would be an unsatisfying or bad end.
It was really good at building up a mystery over the course of the first season, but I've been a little disappointed in the second so far.
The pacing's become glacial; the first couple of episodes worked mostly to undercut the dramatic significance of the events of last season's finale.
And I feel like the way that the satire is slowly being replaced by self-serious "lore" is hurting the show; it was very funny and disturbing to see the way the innies are "raised" in a cult and view the CEO as a kind of Messiah (and observe the parallels to real-world corporate culture); Lumen really being an evil cult - as opposed to just an evil company - in "reality", feels less satirical and more ham-fisted.
The ending of the most recent episode suggests promising things to come at least.
I think season 2 will end up doing a lot tbh. It got great reviews from critics and they allowed critics to watch the full season before reviewing, which isn't as common. Usually it's only one or two episodes. It makes me feel like they had a big story that they wanted to be witnessed in its entirety for the critics.
It did the thing I hate, which is a cliffhanger climax, and instead of picking up the thread where it left off and providing resolution/denouement, it just sort of ... resets?
The gold standard, IMO is something like the TNG episodes "The Best of Both Worlds" pt 1 and 2 -- an end-of-season cliffhanger that rewards you returning to the show by telling you what happens next!
I think the lacuna here is meant to add to the tension and mystery, but I agree that the new season has started off frustratingly slow. You gotta wrap up stuff to move forward with a plot, otherwise it's all just treading water for the sake of atmosphere.
Counterpoint: I don’t think it was a reset (after watching more of season 2), I think it was supposed to look like a reset intentionally, but it won’t end up being one.
It becomes much clearer in episodes 2 and especially 3. They strongly and directly start picking up the pieces of the season 1 ending and carrying it through. Without spoiling anything, episode 3 (of season 2) had some massive movements I wasnt expecting to see until later in the season (at soonest).
I thought it pretty directly started from the cliffhanger. It took three episodes (at a much faster clip than Season 1 episodes) to deal with the consequences of that cliffhanger, but that's the nature of the severance procedure itself, half the characters can't directly talk to the other half.
> Lumen really being an evil cult - as opposed to just an evil company - in "reality", feels less satirical and more ham-fisted.
Agreed. The 'banality of evil' horror of the first season was the show's strongest point.
Sadly, I expect it will eventually suffer from the same thing that torpedoed Lost:
1. Fans are originally attracted by the mystery and unexplained.
2. Those same fans then clamour for explanations.
3. Then when the show explains things, it loses its mystery and/or people complain the explanations aren't good enough.
To me, the only winning plot move is not to play: drip just enough teasy but mysterious stuff that nothing is ever explained, but everyone stays on the edge of their seats.
Then it can be incredibly successful, and people can bitch about the finale 30 years from now.
Absolutely agree and surprised it’s not getting mentioned in this thread with all the complaints about Lost. Most people don’t realize Lindelof did learn a lesson with Lost and corrected it with The Leftovers. One of the most under appreciated and amazing shows ever.
Patriot is indeed criminally underrated. I knew about "pipe speak" [1] before the show [2]. But it turned my partner on to it, and so we speak a lot in it to this day for fun.
One of the best things I've ever seen and I watch quite a lot of TV and film. I'm really only making this comment so that a passerby will see this abundant confluence of support for the show and decide to try it out on a whim. Just a fantastic absurdist, surrealist comedy that's also well-acted and well-written.
I was very happy with how Patriot ended though - it's probably heavily influenced by where my head was at when I watched it but it left me deeply affected for days, and it's the only show to ever do that.
Yes! I think the name put a lot of people off, but it’s super good. Really makes you appreciate breakfast and the integral principles of the structural dynamics of flow as a nice bonus.
Same for me. Severance is probably the best show of last decade. The last time I had such an engrossing experience was while reading 1984.
My other two are:
- Shogun (The depiction of 1600s Japan is so real)
- Resident Alien (Funny and heartwarming to see an Alien getting accustomed to life on Earth dealing with complex human relationships with their flaws)
PS: I am sad to exclude Parks and Recreation which ran from 2009-2015 so probably considered outside of last decade.
Interesting. I thought the premise had potential, but found the writing unbearable. There were major plot holes in the universe they created withing the first 10 minutes. It just didn't make sense. The dialogues and acting was bad on top of that. Didn't even finish the first episode. That being said, the series has OK ratings and was renewed several times, so it might be me not giving it a fair chance.
You should give it a try and watch the S1 entirely. Based on your comment, it seems like you are watching it with a different lense. It is not a drama or thriller where you'd look for holes. It is about perspective of someone who is new to this world trying to blend in.
I found Shogun the show to be relatively disappointing, after having read the book before. The book has a lot of nuanced explanations of people's motivations and philosophical/intelligent dialogue that the show just skips over, since they wanted to cover a huge tome in just one season.
This series deserved to be 2X longer to cover those imho.
Revive it? It was a complete story and ended where it wanted, as far as I can tell. I loved it, but can't imagine how it would continue in a meaningful way.
Agreed. I think "The Americans" is still at the top of my list for the last decade then it's a tossup between "The Leftovers", "Severance" and "Mr. Robot".
Edit: I forgot "Andor". Easily the best Star Wars thing since the original 3. I like how it shows the hubris and infighting of The Empire and how that leaves openings for the resistance. Feels like a very real look into the workings of an authoritarian regime.
Americans is great-- a little uneven because there is a lot more of it then say, Patriot, but also a typically underrated show. Superb cast (they were actually married) and a great take on the material. They could have made them goodie two shoes who subverted their mission; they could have made them sinister spies. Instead they made them people.
"Or perhaps you find my politics a bit strong for your taste?" was some of the best television I had ever seen in my life, easily up there with the best lines from Breaking Bad or Anthony Hopkins' monologues in West World. The build-up to that moment was masterfully done. I got goosebumps at that crescendo.
Mr. Robot had one of the craziest endings I have ever seen in a show. I'll admit I had a tough time watching it around S2 because so much was unexplained, and I felt like I was going insane.
So glad I stuck it out though, I still think about it.
I’m routinely pulled out of it for a moment to appreciate how genuinely interesting and thought-provoking the writing is compared to what I’ve been seeing for years now.
Maybe I watch the wrong stuff, but I’m glad I gave this a chance. It’s so fun.
I'd add in The Bridge - original Swedish version with subtitles - is another of my favorite shows. The Nordic Noir genre has mix of intellectualism and misanthropy that I love in shows (including Severance).
I enjoy shows where I get completely engrossed in the world and the story. I love shows that I can fall in love with again on a rewatch. And I want to have lingering thoughts about it when it’s over.
True Detective S1 (2014) is perfect television, but is too old for the last-decade list.
+1 for both Andor and Arcane (although I would probably do a +10 for Arcane given how amazing it was inside the genre even not knowing anything about the background story)
Not familiar with all the other shows mentioned, but strong upvote for Andor. Possibly the best Star Wars anything. It's a shame that people might not give it full credit for the drama it is because of the Star Wars association.
Having caught a few episodes since it ended, I think the real tragedy of LOST is how good each individual episode was in comparison to how terrible the overall planning was. It was engrossing during the episode, but any time spent outside that trying to tease out meaning or clues was just wasted time. Ostensible foreshadowing was really just "wouldn't it be cool if?" with no further thought behind it.
I'd argue that quality actually makes it an amazing show to binge. It wouldn't "work" in the current climate of one-episode-per-week with bountiful time to analyze and Internet sleuths/theorists often coming up with better plots than the actual writing in each next episode, but Lost promises high quality episode after high quality episode for you to, well, just get lost in.
For anyone who hasn't seen it: you're in for a wild ride. Don't look up spoilers.
When it first aired, people definitely did that on the internet.
I'm of a firm opinion that there are two very different kinds of Lost viewers -- ones who care about the characters first and plot second vs ones who only care about the plot.
Personally, I took it as 'We're getting to see these things through these characters' eyes and how they react.' And we probably wouldn't have given a shit about the plot, if we hadn't actually cared about the characters first.
Lost did characterization very well. (Helped by an insanely talented cast!)
Meh. Saw it at the time. After season 2 I certainly got lost, but not “in it”.
The plot always thickens, back then there was the promise/hope that “everything will be explained”, but then the show ended with sooo many loose ends and inconsistencies. Utter disappointment, I’d like my time back please.
Hehe, I'm essentially the only person I know who loved the ending.
I appreciated that it was a tribute to the characters we'd grown to love, and also kind of a middle finger to the plot bits that didn't line up perfectly.
I'd rather watch a show with plot gaps and great characters than a perfectly plotted show with middling characters.
From is quite fun too. It is extremely similar to lost in its vibes and writing style. For the record I think both of these shows are not good shows, but are definitely entertaining shows.
Scavengers Reign is an amazing, 10/10 show and it's so depressing we'll never get a second season. I miss my telepathic dead wife salamander addiction metaphor.
And speaking of old goodness, The Wire, possibly the best TV series ever. And with the 1080p re-release, I’m going to claim it’s younger than 10 years old.
True Detective S01 seems more cultural for a time, rather than a good story. It's a very drawn out, non-interactive (meaning you can't figure anything out) detective story that's really more of a convoluted buddy cop story with lots of time skipping around. One cop is unlikable and the other is weird (nihilist). The best part is the title theme song and the main character actor performances. My wife and I think it's some kind of nostalgia for when there was nothing better on. Nic Pizzolatto was writing up until 2019 and the subsequent seasons weren't lauded. Probably because he's not that great of a writer.
Disagree. All True detective have some plot holes. Yet all the seasons are still in highest tier of the genre. Every season has very different setting. Because its series very much about mood people were upset after season 1 that instead of rural occult mystery they got casino gangster corruption. But if you accept its all completely separate mini series each season is pretty good on its own.
It started off as one of the best tv shows ever. Each season after that made you think it couldn't sink any lower, Game-of-Thrones-season-8 style. I think season 4 might actually have been trying to make fun of the first season, though I have no evidence for it. I do not accept seasons 2 through 4. I reject them.
It's fine, it's wrapped up enough. Watching it is totally worth it, and it won't leave you hanging. The authors were saying that a third season would've pursued a different storyline anyways.
Definitely The Americans as mentioned above, also The Expanse, The Man in the High Castle, Slow Horses (especially the panoramic London drone shots), Preacher (in which both Tom Cruise and a sewage treatment methane reactor violently explode for their own independent reasons), Babylon 5 (relaxing the last decade constraint), LEXX (a soft porn space opera), Farscape (with real MUPPETS!!!), A&E Network's "A Nero Wolfe Mystery" (with Maury Chaykin as Nero Wolfe, who was also just as grumpy in War Games), and Wilfred (both the original rough edgy low budget original Australian version, and the well produced clean cut American version with Elijah Woods).
Also anything with Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale, who was Claudia the KGB handler who liked playing PacMan in The Americans, Mags Bennett the ruthless head of the marijuana and moonshine smuggling clan in Justified, a fictionalized (or was it???) version of herself "Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale" in Bojack Horseman, records supervisor Camilla Figg in Dexter, and Ranger Liz in Cocaine Bear ("I'm sorry. Where'd the bear go?"), and a Canadian maple syrup smuggler in The Sticky. Such a wide range and prodigious rap sheet!
The Complete Margo Martindale Timeline | BoJack Horseman
Eddie Izzard putting in a serious character acting role as an Irish Traveler ner-do-well who essentially steals a Florida suburban identity. With Minnie Driver as his just out of prison addict wife.
Working at a startup before product-market fit can feel like this.
You don’t know why the work is important, but it must be done so we can at least discover whether it was important. You may not get that information, but you can take comfort in assuming someone does have it.
You’re mostly disconnected from your previous life.
There is a guy in the next office feeding baby goats, and your reaction is: “Yes, it makes sense that we’re also exploring feeding baby goats.”
People come in as blank slates and you’re grateful to have their companionship in the shared madness.
I find this more likely in a large corporation. In my experience, in a startup I know what we're trying to accomplish even if I don't know how we're going to do it, yet. I have a lot of control in a startup and I'm wearing a lot of hats which gives me visibility into how things are going.
By contrast, in a corporation you're handed a small piece of the puzzle and you're not sure how it's important or if it's really necessary and you're reliant on others in far flung parts of the company to relay how things are going.
I kind of think that people who haven't worked in a large corporation probably don't get Severance on a visceral level like those of us who have do.
Startups can be as siloed and prone to messianic cults of personality as large corporations do. It would be themed differently from Severance, sure, but there are other shows that tackle that.
> Startups can be as siloed and prone to messianic cults of personality as large corporations do
Oh, probably more prone to messianic cults of personality than large corps. But as you say there are other shows that tackle that angle. I don't think it's a secret that many tech startup founders have sociopathic tendencies and delusions of grandeur. I've certainly seen that close up even in tiny early-stage startups that never ended up going anywhere.
to me it isn't about burnout, etc. To me the show is a metaphor for "nothing personal just business" - for how people may turn off that human personality inside them and do whatever is "just doing my job/following the order".
Undergoing the severance procedure and having your "innie" work at Lumon is exactly akin to having your own personal slave. The innie does all the work, the outie collects the paycheck. The outie controls whether the innie lives or dies, since the innie literally does not exist outside of work.
I guess another part of the tradeoff is that you're giving up a significant part of your life time-wise. The number of waking hours experienced by the outie would be substantially reduced (presumably around 40 fewer hours per week). Overtime would really suck, especially if unpaid. From the perspective of the outie, working overtime would be exactly equivalent to the company taking away additional hours of their life.
yes, that sounds also reasonable. Like a good piece of art it allows a range of interpretations. At the same time it being Ben Stiller, i see his absurd comedy treatment of whatever serious interpretation we come up with, Space Force on [dark and heavy] steroids.
That’s funny because I thought they captured it perfectly. Cults can be blissful places; the experience and friends I’ve made amidst the madness I’ve experienced in startups made me stronger in the end.
Yeah, to me the show was much more about how every modern real company secretly wished they could sever their employees, and how much they'd abuse that power dynamic if they actually had it.
Are there any fan theories of what the work is they’re doing?
My bet is on lumen “renting” part of their subconscious to train a computer, while their conscious minds see a sort of projection of the training, and the act of selecting the numbers has a mirror effect on the part of the brain they’re renting, affecting the model training. But that may be a little too “current events” focused, and the writers may have something totally different in mind.
My theory is kind of the inverse. Their technology has the ability to "take over" the mind and implant a new personality but maybe at the current level it's unsophisticated and all they can do is make a "clean slate" of a person with some basic motor, language and other socialization skills.
"The work" is then not about training a computer model but seeing if they can induce a reaction into a person. That is, they're trying to refine their mind control program.
The characters talk about feeling things when they group numbers for binning. So the task is about refining their projection system, to induce a particular emotion or reaction, in a controlled way, over and over to dial in the technology.
From season 1, there's lore of MDR going crazy and killing a neighboring group. This could be when their experimentation malfunctioned or was too sloppy in some way and induced a killing frenzy.
I have no idea what "cold harbor" is though, or why Mark S. is so special among the other innies.
Agreed with your theory overall, but wasn’t that lore of “MDR going crazy and killing a neighboring group” revealed in s1 to be fabricated entirely, with each group having their own version of that lore against other groups? E.g., the optics and design group had the exact opposite version of the lore as MDR, down to paintings depicting the events being the exact same, but with swapped badge colors that indicated the aggressor.
Just a theory on my part, and I'm trying to build evidence from clues in the series, so you might be right.
We know that there's a lot of unreliable information because Lumon is actively trying to deceive everyone but my take on that was that there was a significant event that actually did happen, some group going crazy, that Lumon needed to rationalize with some narrative in order to address it.
Just to list some events after re-watching some of season 1:
* s1e3 Dylan talks about O&D staging a coup but Mark assures everyone that there was no killing
* s1e5 Irving intercepts a print job that was sent to their print station "by mistake". The picture shows people with green badges (O&D) attacking people with blue badges (MDR). Immediately revealed to be a subterfuge attempt ("you ran a 266 on Irving B." Cobel to Miltchek)
* s1e5 Dylan finds a painting in O&D depicting the same picture that Irving saw on the printer
but with the attackers as blue badges and the victims as green badges ("The Macro Data Refinement Calamity")
So this very well may be subterfuge by Lumon to keep the groups separate.
I read it differently initially, that the printed copy was altered from the original painting and that the original painting was the "true" version, but I think your take is probably more consistent. If Lumon can erase memory then there's no need to keep institutional knowledge about past events that no one remembers.
Some other tidbits of information:
* s1e2 and s1e5 Irving hallucinates black goo while in front of his terminal. I believe as soon as he stands up or backs away from his terminal, the effect goes away.
* s1e3 Natalie is shown on tv talking about a "workie" getting pregnant while severed
* s1e5 Devon goes to a house to give birth and meets someone who's severed. I think the house or property is owned by Lumon (but I'm not sure?)
So, I suspect Mark S.'s sister, Devon, might be the severed employee who got pregnant while severed, though I'm not sure how this fits into the larger narrative if true.
Also, I might be reading too much into it but there's clues sprinkled around about immortality and "Kier speaking through people" that might be support the theory of them trying to resurrect Kier. There's a scene where Cobel gets Petey's chip with a line that says "that's Petey".
So far the series has delivered and I trust the writers, so I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.
My theory is that all the severed employees are doing various maintenance tasks to keep the floor functioning. Like the hospital in Yes, Minister that is closed to the public but has 500 employees, all of them overworked.[1]
Take O&D for instance, their full time job appears to be to just create art and handbooks used on the severed floor. Perhaps all the departments are like that. MDR could be doing some sort of ongoing maintenance for the severed system itself, like emotion or memory control of the employees on the floor.
I believe the "point" of the severed floor is not the actual work that's being done, but the act of keeping them occupied while they are experimented on. Besides Mark S and Cold Harbor, I believe there are hints of other experiments being run. The dreams Irving B has during work seem unique to him, and it's uniquely affecting his outie as well. I also believe recent events in Season 2 with Dylan G could be the start of another experiment.
I thought the wife was oddly emotional during that scene with Dylan G. While I agree it would be odd to see your SO's innie, the way she was in awe and full of emotion just seemed very intense. Like seeing a long lost lover or those first date jitters. Probably overthinking things but I thought it was odd.
My take was that she's dissatisfied with her marriage with her outie husband who seems detached and a bit wayward, whereas the innie has purpose and drive and finds her awe inspiring.
I'm almost certain it's going to turn into a love affair with deep questions - is she cheating? Well, on paper, no, but it's obviously more nuanced than that.
That + the whole concept must be just uncanny to face in real life as opposed to just being aware of it.
It is one thing to know “my husband goes to work, but there he simply doesn’t remember anything outside of work, and vice versa at home”, and another to see it for yourself and realizing “holy shit, this is actually just another entirely unrelated brand new person occupying the body of the husband i live and raise children with for half a day.”
Not even mentioning all the potential implications that might have crossed her mind after facing it in reality. That person is nothing like my husband in any way, where did that new person come from, were they just born out of nothing? Could they potentially unknowingly get switched with my husband outside of the workplace and what would that mean? What happens to that person if my husband quits the job?
My hunch is that Lumon is working on trying to transfer minds into new bodies and/or bring deceased people back to life, namely for the immortality of the founder. I think the MDR numbers stuff is somehow related to getting severed individuals to map memories somehow, hence their association with different feelings.
This is also my running theory. Cult-like structure focused on elongating legacies via body replacements and consciousness transfer - MDR being a testbed or something for emotional stability and processing or something of the sort.
It's been suggested that Mark S is adjusting the neural nets for a robot replacement of his wife. This supported by a few MDR UI screenshots showing acronyms that reference Kier's 4 fundamental tempers: Woe, Frolick, Malice and Dread.
My opinion is that the work they are performing it's not the point of them being there. It's about testing the limits of the exploitations of human beings.
Best I can figure is that it's some form of cryptography. The "severed" thing would be to compartmentalize even more what the underlying work is, the outties are clueless, but even the innies don't get to know what they do because the work is encrypted. They're able to perform it because another part of their brain is severed even more, and just performs the raw algorithm work of decrypting/sorting.
But the rest of Lumen just seems like some bizarro "there's a spaceship hiding in the tail of the comet" cult.
They’re sorting people according to the four tempers of Eagan - woe, frolic, dread and malice. The buttons are labelled accordingly, using two letters on the show but one letter here.
I had to explain to the missus — who’s never worked in a large enterprise — that the environs of Lumon and the apparently pointless and meaningless work is entirely realistic. She didn’t believe me.
She never had to “massage the numbers” to make them less scary to someone in management.
In refining A39672:14BF61 (Dranesville) in 00h 05m 34s 215ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
4⃣7⃣8⃣0⃣1⃣
3⃣7⃣4⃣1⃣1⃣
4⃣3⃣3⃣1⃣2⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 0x3890 : 0xE193C5 (Labrador) in 00h 06m 29s 468ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
7⃣3⃣9⃣9⃣6⃣
4⃣4⃣8⃣1⃣5⃣
4⃣3⃣5⃣4⃣4⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
Here at Viridian Dynamics, we appreciate our employees. Our Waffles Classic and Waffles Fun Edition are especially popular among Viridian Dynamics workers, with an 87% satisfaction score and only negligible hair loss.
I enjoyed the show a lot. I think it sparks an interesting discussion. I was surprised to see Ben Stiller was the director, but I think he's doing a steller job. I am fine with the pace of the show being slow and the story is more compelling because of it IMO
In refining 0x4CE9EC : 0xDA94D1 (Le Mars) in 01h 14m 32s 457ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
5⃣4⃣3⃣6⃣0⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 3F727D:F5AFC2 (Siena) in 00h 09m 32s 072ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
0⃣3⃣5⃣0⃣5⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 163037:2F8AF2 (Kingsport) in 00h 04m 55s 807ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
1⃣0⃣2⃣3⃣6⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 8AAC36:4EF23C (Le Mars) in 00h 04m 45s 714ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
7⃣0⃣2⃣3⃣8⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining ADCC45:AFD88B (Kingsport) in 00h 09m 59s 316ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
1⃣2⃣0⃣6⃣6⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 3EEF2:8F2D39 (Kingsport) in 00h 03m 16s 543ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
8⃣1⃣7⃣2⃣5⃣
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8⃣6⃣0⃣1⃣9⃣
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6⃣7⃣9⃣8⃣1⃣
#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 4F214C:4F69E (Moonbeam) in 00h 03m 34s 153ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
4⃣2⃣4⃣8⃣9⃣
7⃣7⃣1⃣7⃣2⃣
0⃣8⃣8⃣4⃣8⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 994F25:43EC2 (Moonbeam) in 00h 32m 44s 534ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
4⃣8⃣8⃣0⃣3⃣
0⃣1⃣4⃣2⃣6⃣
2⃣6⃣8⃣2⃣6⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
The themes of alienation, the parallels to classes and the methods in which people use to divide people so that they won't unite and revolt, as well as challenging pre-established hierarchies and the methods that are used to justify them and indoctrinate is so poignant. Mix that classical analysis with the modern corporate environment that is so sanitized and faux empathetic for self-interest, and you have a masterpiece.
In refining 0xCA8BB5 : 0xBAC270 (Kingsport) in 00h 12m 21s 522ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
1⃣5⃣7⃣2⃣9⃣
2⃣1⃣8⃣5⃣0⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
I have no idea what I was supposed to do except "collect the bloating numbers". That was fun.
In refining D4AA9:3ED787 (Narva) in 00h 06m 05s 719ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
9⃣5⃣3⃣7⃣4⃣
9⃣3⃣6⃣7⃣2⃣
5⃣8⃣6⃣2⃣9⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
I only watched Severance Season 1 last month. I'm actually glad I didn't have to endure the 3 year wait for Season 2. It is an outstanding show and well worth the watch. There are two things that I find interesting about a lot of media:
1. How much of it is nakedly anti-capitalist and many people don't seem to recognize that. Severance is incredibly anti-capitalist and damning of the entire corporate world. It paints the corporate world as soulless and disconnected from reality. The bizarre perks like the wellness sessions, getting to know you, the music dance experience and the waffle party are a searing indictmment on any corporate team-building experience; and
2. How much media is anti-imperialist and we have no problem identifying that the resistance to that are the "good guys" and the authoritarian state are quite clearly the "bad guys" yet, again, people can't seem to see that in real life. The classic example of Star Wars, which George Lucas has explicitly stated that the Rebellion was based on Vietnamese resistance to American imperialist ambitions [1].
Milchick in "Defiant Jazz" lives rent-free in my head. The work is mysterious and important.
I guess for the first one you weren’t around to enjoy the exact sort of nonsense in insane, soulless soviet bureaucracies. To me it doesn’t really seem anti-capitalist, it’s more anti obscure, sprawling, inhuman and unintelligible authoritarian power structures. Cults and philosophers have been inventing those long before anyone thought up capitalism.
In many countries it is the case. The dystopian behemoth corpocracy of the USA is a unique blight. Other developed capitalist economies are usually much more regulated than the US, resulting in larger emphasis on worker protection, worker rights and better anti-trust practices.
In refining 7B2A3F:54A7D (Nanning) in 00h 05m 49s 815ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
5⃣6⃣4⃣8⃣5⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
When my wife and I saw this in the series I said "This must be what Apple people think computing on non-Apple platforms is like." And she said "Yeah, pretty much."
In refining B85232:6772F6 (Nanning) in 00h 01m 10s 208ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
6⃣9⃣2⃣0⃣9⃣
8⃣9⃣6⃣5⃣7⃣
1⃣4⃣2⃣9⃣9⃣
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4⃣8⃣9⃣2⃣6⃣
#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining B52E21:51FC46 (Moonbeam) in 00h 00m 05s 578ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
9⃣5⃣4⃣3⃣7⃣
9⃣2⃣2⃣4⃣6⃣
0⃣8⃣5⃣5⃣9⃣
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1⃣5⃣6⃣8⃣4⃣
#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
It's just some seemingly random text that we can share.
In refining C3551E:7EAEE (Moonbeam) in 00h 00m 00s 838ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
9⃣0⃣4⃣3⃣3⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
Maybe worth collecting these for the AR nerds who'll figure this out:
In refining 9375BA:A9E3A0 (Ocula) in 00h 04m 58s 307ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
3⃣4⃣9⃣6⃣5⃣
7⃣9⃣1⃣4⃣9⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 85C48:EBC647 (Dranesville) in 00h 08m 15s 450ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
4⃣0⃣3⃣2⃣9⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 114E5A:731D4 (Moonbeam) in 00h 07m 51s 064ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
5⃣9⃣4⃣6⃣0⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 2F2F28:11D566 (Siena) in 00h 10m 11s 151ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
9⃣1⃣9⃣8⃣2⃣
6⃣3⃣6⃣6⃣5⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining C5D08C:BD4A4F (Siena) in 00h 42m 41s 884ms I have brought glory to the company. Praise Kier. 8⃣6⃣1⃣6⃣1⃣ 5⃣0⃣1⃣9⃣0⃣ 2⃣9⃣1⃣1⃣8⃣ 7⃣3⃣5⃣6⃣1⃣ 5⃣4⃣1⃣2⃣8⃣ #mdrlumon #severance lumon-industries.com
In refining A8BCB2:3AA3 (Le Mars) in 00h 03m 53s 855ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
5⃣1⃣0⃣5⃣1⃣
8⃣5⃣3⃣5⃣5⃣
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4⃣3⃣7⃣6⃣3⃣
#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining B8223D:126B99 (Minsk) in 00h 03m 38s 135ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
3⃣4⃣4⃣4⃣5⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 777838:FC1ED (Siena) in 00h 07m 56s 773ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
5⃣3⃣4⃣7⃣9⃣
8⃣1⃣6⃣4⃣2⃣
0⃣6⃣4⃣6⃣0⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining BA3FAB:154AD1 (Labrador) in 00h 07m 55s 602ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
1⃣0⃣2⃣0⃣2⃣
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8⃣1⃣6⃣2⃣5⃣
#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 2ECBD2:4F5D8F (Le Mars) in 00h 02m 27s 524ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
0⃣5⃣0⃣0⃣4⃣
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2⃣7⃣2⃣5⃣3⃣
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7⃣8⃣9⃣6⃣3⃣
#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 2126C5:9B4FF3 (Minsk) in 00h 04m 42s 365ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
7⃣9⃣5⃣2⃣1⃣
5⃣8⃣4⃣5⃣7⃣
8⃣8⃣0⃣4⃣7⃣
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3⃣1⃣8⃣3⃣5⃣
#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining 28E5B5:1C48BC (Nanning) in 00h 15m 24s 849ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
6⃣6⃣3⃣0⃣9⃣
4⃣5⃣9⃣8⃣7⃣
4⃣5⃣7⃣0⃣2⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining B83562:ED79E3 (Moonbeam) in 00h 03m 41s 637ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
6⃣5⃣1⃣5⃣4⃣
2⃣7⃣7⃣5⃣7⃣
7⃣1⃣8⃣2⃣5⃣
0⃣0⃣6⃣4⃣9⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
In refining CE94BC:CC1627 (Siena) in 00h 04m 39s 863ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
1⃣1⃣1⃣7⃣2⃣
5⃣2⃣3⃣1⃣6⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
I wonder if the macrodata refinement task in the show (well-reproduced here) is something like the work done by human moderators of Facebook, Twitter, etc? It takes a real toll on them, wading through some of the worst content humanity has to offer. It seems like "severance" could be a way to mitigate the real-world damage to moderators' psyche. And then by further decomposing into tasks like the ones done by macrodata refinement (and other teams across the world, praise Kier), that could limit it further.
... although by forking their identity and imprisoning one of them, it seems likely to do more harm than good. Freedom from Lumon for the innies would be the death of that identity, unless they could find a way to share the physical host.
In refining 6041BA:38C80 (Nanning) in 00h 07m 24s 945ms I have brought glory to the company.
Praise Kier.
2⃣9⃣0⃣1⃣8⃣
6⃣2⃣6⃣4⃣0⃣
4⃣1⃣8⃣4⃣2⃣
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#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
As a Severance aside I hope people know they can get Dr Ricken's "The you You Are" as a free ebook download from Apple. I'm very much hoping to find personal growth tips in it. /s
https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-you-you-are/id6738364141
Why do you blame Firefox over the website? Isn't it more likely that the website creator did something that isn't standards compliant?
When this happens and people switch to Chrome, there's less money/resources for Firefox to continue on and we just keep pushing farther toward a world where developers only need to focus on Chrome. It's a cycle that ends with Google controlling all access to the internet.
I needed to disable the Enhanced Tracking Protection button (under the shield by the https lock icon in the URL bar) to get it to work, but otherwise firefox works fine for me on Linux with this site.
The only plugins I use (as you can see in that screenshot) are Bitwarden and uBlock Origin. Disabling uBlock had no effect. I'd be shocked it Bitwarden were causing it.
I checked the console for errors. There were two warning about deprecated API usage and nothing else.
As a user it doesn't make any difference to me WHY it doesn't work. If it works on one browser and doesn't work on another then I am having a better time with the browser it works on.
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