Really impressed with the discipline of the Severance writers not to string out uninteresting (or less interesting) mysteries unnecessarily like so many shows do. The time lapse/five months, what happened to the Outies, whether there was really a public revolution, etc. Set up in episode one, address adequately in episode two in a way that actually moves the plot and allows it to move forward organically but keeping the larger puzzle box mysteries alive.
I'm waiting to see if they ever address the idea that the innies should have had psychotic breaks long before. How would someone whose entire existence is trapped in a windowless dungeon staring at a computer screen with no sleep ever survive? I like the show, but this keeps nagging at me.
I assume this is something baked into the process: that somehow, they're able to partition off anything that would have that extreme, if understandable, a response to those working conditions, or else it would be untenable.
I had a different read on Jost. He seemed like a waiter who was trying a little too hard to entertain the table, because they told him it was grandma’s birthday.
Your line about tv has always stuck with me every time I approach watching one of these revivals:
"Successful shows are a product of a specific moment in time of the lives of the people making them, the people watching them, and the characters whose stories are being told."
I'm not sure what the key ingredient is but revived animation (Futurama, X-Men, Beavis & Butthead, and likely the upcoming King of Hill) seems more malleable in replicating success than their live-action counterparts.
That's a good line, obviously written by a very smart person!
And a lot of that, I would say, is that animated characters don't age, and that they're often a bit disconnected from the time period in which they debut. It's obviously not a factor at all for Futurama, and the only obviously 90s thing about either X-Men cartoon is the fashions. I don't recall if I ever watched the Beavis & Butt-Head revival, and the original there felt more directly linked to the time period, so I don't know how Judge made it work in a new era where no one cares about music videos and stupid boys are stupid in different ways.
SPOILER FOR SEVERANCE S2/E2: Helle enters the elevator, but we don't know if she is severing en route. In the reunion in E1, she was unphased when Innie-Mark said that he realized he was married. Since she kissed him, I thought she might have been sad but she didn't react, which made me wonder if the S2 Innie-Hellie is really faking it.
In episode 1, don’t they spend 2-3 seconds showing her grasping around for the power switch to her computer? I thought that was a fairly direct tell about it not being Helly R (for whom only an hour or so would have passed since she last turned it off)
Ooh interesting, I didn't think of that when I watched E1 but now that you mention it, I can remember the exact scene. I wasn't entirely sure it's the outie infiltrating the group but you're right, that moment seems to be direct proof of it.
I think the horse farm is another rock climbing Shatner-hobby-thing. I interviewed Shatner for a small alt-weekly about 20 years ago when Has Been came out, and he talked about a horse farm he owned in Israel where Israeli and Palestinian kids could play together (!)
Yeah, the legend (if not something that people have outright said on the record) is that Shatner would only agree to do Generations if 1. He got to ride a horse, and 2. They filmed it at his horse farm, so he would get paid for that on top of his acting salary.
The solution, in theory, would be to make horses be part of the climactic confrontation with Malcolm McDowell, and to make the Enterprise bridge be his Nexus fantasy. But even that has a couple of problems: 1. TNG already did that in the episode with Scotty, and 2. Kirk's fantasy wouldn't have just involved him being back on the Enterprise, but him being a younger man on the Enterprise, and serving alongside younger versions of buddies Spock and Bones. Nimoy and Kelley didn't want to appear in Generations (the opening sequence on Enterprise-B was half-heartedly retrofitted to involve Scotty and Chekhov instead), and we were still decades away from even vaguely convincing de-aging technology, so it just would have been a much older Kirk, alone on the bridge. Which is still better than him living on a horse farm, but nonetheless flawed.
Great list by the way - I’d put III and IV over First Contact and JJ’s one, but it’s exactly right. (Perhaps “Chain of Command” would’ve made the best TNG movie.)
The Pitt is great. Feels like it would work better as a binge, but at the same time i am always waiting and excited for the new episode, so i guess the model it's working. Hope it gets the recognition it deserves with the Emmys, as i think it would help the show. Noah Wyle is so good on it.
Having just finished watching Section 31, I think in time it will be at the very bottom. It has maybe one good scene and mostly incoherent. Cinematography also needed some brightness.
At the least the other bad ones (Nemesis, Final Frontier, Into Darkness) had a couple of good moments each and still cared about the main characters.
P.S. It’s worth checking out the director’s cut of the first Star Trek movie. Not top notch or Wise’s best work but a big improvement.
A huge improvement! The story was incoherent in the original cut. Also, the remaster replaces special effects in a way that is not at all bothersome. You can actually see what’s going on the V’ger cloud now and get a sense of scale. I saw it in the theaters when they released this newest version and it really looked and sounded great. I rate this version easily in the top 5, and now with a coherent story, it FEELS the most like Star Trek.
Enjoying The Pitt but it does seem to take quite a bit of dramatic license in this ep. My mother passed away rather quickly over 2 years ago after a long decline from a major stroke, at a large hospital with likely better funding than The Pitt. She didn't stay in the ER, she went to critical care immediately, but there was no attending physician constantly checking in and there was no nurse stationed in the room (I haven't seen that approach in any ER or hospital, even in really well-staffed ICUs). Considering Noah Wyle wrote Ep 4 I'm not surprised by the license taken but it's very TV.
However, I can personally attest that if you are an adult complaining of chest pains in Urgent Care, they will rush you in for tests quickly (hopefully you too were just suffering severe heartburn). I didn't know they're judged on that response time.
The decision of the four to remained Severed is an interesting one. I’d like to watch it again to better understand the weight they gave it, but it doesn’t seem like a simple decision.
They are given the chance to walk away from this hell, a big motivation from the first season. The only person with any reason to want to stay is Inny Mark who wants to find his wife. Dylan and Irving’s motivation seems less so. Kudos to Alan for the perspective that Helly could be a fake now, although I’d like to see it again to see how familiar she is. She certainly could have been briefed on their relationships as the Corp animation shows they monitored everything.
What they never address is something Irving brings up at Burt’s retirement which is that once severance ends, the Inny essentially dies. It seemed like there was an opportunity here to explore the concept of consciousness even under operation and the willingness to survive even under dire circumstances. That would have played as a greater motivation to me for Dylan and Irving than anything else.
Dylan’s outie seemed to not know what was going on with the innies. He was fired from his job without *really* being told why (just that his innie was violent), struggled to find a new job, then got his severed job back. Him returning made sense to me.
Irving on the other hand, I agree I don’t understand his motivations though it seems from s1 that outie Irving is trying to expose something and maybe that’s why he is willing to go back. Plus there was that mysterious pay phone call.
I haven't watched the Jeopardy situation you speak of, but it reminds me of Mikey Day's hosting duties on Is It Cake, which, to be fair, deserved all the snark he gave it.
Really impressed with the discipline of the Severance writers not to string out uninteresting (or less interesting) mysteries unnecessarily like so many shows do. The time lapse/five months, what happened to the Outies, whether there was really a public revolution, etc. Set up in episode one, address adequately in episode two in a way that actually moves the plot and allows it to move forward organically but keeping the larger puzzle box mysteries alive.
Agreed. Without spoiling anything else, there is similar discipline throughout the season as other questions are asked.
I'm waiting to see if they ever address the idea that the innies should have had psychotic breaks long before. How would someone whose entire existence is trapped in a windowless dungeon staring at a computer screen with no sleep ever survive? I like the show, but this keeps nagging at me.
I assume this is something baked into the process: that somehow, they're able to partition off anything that would have that extreme, if understandable, a response to those working conditions, or else it would be untenable.
The outtie and innie have the same physical body though, so I’d argue the innie is getting sleep even if they aren’t mentally aware of it.
agreed and unfortunately the Silo team didn't take this advice
I had a different read on Jost. He seemed like a waiter who was trying a little too hard to entertain the table, because they told him it was grandma’s birthday.
That works, too. Regardless, he's flailing.
I’m enjoying him. It’s a fun diversion and he doesn’t bother me.
Your line about tv has always stuck with me every time I approach watching one of these revivals:
"Successful shows are a product of a specific moment in time of the lives of the people making them, the people watching them, and the characters whose stories are being told."
I'm not sure what the key ingredient is but revived animation (Futurama, X-Men, Beavis & Butthead, and likely the upcoming King of Hill) seems more malleable in replicating success than their live-action counterparts.
That's a good line, obviously written by a very smart person!
And a lot of that, I would say, is that animated characters don't age, and that they're often a bit disconnected from the time period in which they debut. It's obviously not a factor at all for Futurama, and the only obviously 90s thing about either X-Men cartoon is the fashions. I don't recall if I ever watched the Beavis & Butt-Head revival, and the original there felt more directly linked to the time period, so I don't know how Judge made it work in a new era where no one cares about music videos and stupid boys are stupid in different ways.
I meant to say "This line of yours" (not "this line") and credit you. Edited it now! lol
I know you knew. I just thought you were being cheeky.
At least the King of the Hill reboot is aging up the characters, but not by as much time has passed since the of the original run.
SPOILER FOR SEVERANCE S2/E2: Helle enters the elevator, but we don't know if she is severing en route. In the reunion in E1, she was unphased when Innie-Mark said that he realized he was married. Since she kissed him, I thought she might have been sad but she didn't react, which made me wonder if the S2 Innie-Hellie is really faking it.
In episode 1, don’t they spend 2-3 seconds showing her grasping around for the power switch to her computer? I thought that was a fairly direct tell about it not being Helly R (for whom only an hour or so would have passed since she last turned it off)
Ooh interesting, I didn't think of that when I watched E1 but now that you mention it, I can remember the exact scene. I wasn't entirely sure it's the outie infiltrating the group but you're right, that moment seems to be direct proof of it.
I for one don't get to watch Severance until sometime over the weekend.
I think the horse farm is another rock climbing Shatner-hobby-thing. I interviewed Shatner for a small alt-weekly about 20 years ago when Has Been came out, and he talked about a horse farm he owned in Israel where Israeli and Palestinian kids could play together (!)
Yeah, the legend (if not something that people have outright said on the record) is that Shatner would only agree to do Generations if 1. He got to ride a horse, and 2. They filmed it at his horse farm, so he would get paid for that on top of his acting salary.
The solution, in theory, would be to make horses be part of the climactic confrontation with Malcolm McDowell, and to make the Enterprise bridge be his Nexus fantasy. But even that has a couple of problems: 1. TNG already did that in the episode with Scotty, and 2. Kirk's fantasy wouldn't have just involved him being back on the Enterprise, but him being a younger man on the Enterprise, and serving alongside younger versions of buddies Spock and Bones. Nimoy and Kelley didn't want to appear in Generations (the opening sequence on Enterprise-B was half-heartedly retrofitted to involve Scotty and Chekhov instead), and we were still decades away from even vaguely convincing de-aging technology, so it just would have been a much older Kirk, alone on the bridge. Which is still better than him living on a horse farm, but nonetheless flawed.
Great list by the way - I’d put III and IV over First Contact and JJ’s one, but it’s exactly right. (Perhaps “Chain of Command” would’ve made the best TNG movie.)
I think a Mondays Severance chat would be excellent - here's me only reading the newsletter today!
The Pitt is great. Feels like it would work better as a binge, but at the same time i am always waiting and excited for the new episode, so i guess the model it's working. Hope it gets the recognition it deserves with the Emmys, as i think it would help the show. Noah Wyle is so good on it.
Having just finished watching Section 31, I think in time it will be at the very bottom. It has maybe one good scene and mostly incoherent. Cinematography also needed some brightness.
At the least the other bad ones (Nemesis, Final Frontier, Into Darkness) had a couple of good moments each and still cared about the main characters.
P.S. It’s worth checking out the director’s cut of the first Star Trek movie. Not top notch or Wise’s best work but a big improvement.
A huge improvement! The story was incoherent in the original cut. Also, the remaster replaces special effects in a way that is not at all bothersome. You can actually see what’s going on the V’ger cloud now and get a sense of scale. I saw it in the theaters when they released this newest version and it really looked and sounded great. I rate this version easily in the top 5, and now with a coherent story, it FEELS the most like Star Trek.
Usually takes me a few days to catch up with Severance because nobody else at home wants to miss it! It’s just too good.
Tramell Tillman is amazing. Had no idea who he was before seeing this show.
I'm loving Severance. So many mysteries but I can trust Stiller et al to let us know what we need to know. More Milchick is fantastic.
Have you listened to the podcast?
Enjoying The Pitt but it does seem to take quite a bit of dramatic license in this ep. My mother passed away rather quickly over 2 years ago after a long decline from a major stroke, at a large hospital with likely better funding than The Pitt. She didn't stay in the ER, she went to critical care immediately, but there was no attending physician constantly checking in and there was no nurse stationed in the room (I haven't seen that approach in any ER or hospital, even in really well-staffed ICUs). Considering Noah Wyle wrote Ep 4 I'm not surprised by the license taken but it's very TV.
However, I can personally attest that if you are an adult complaining of chest pains in Urgent Care, they will rush you in for tests quickly (hopefully you too were just suffering severe heartburn). I didn't know they're judged on that response time.
The decision of the four to remained Severed is an interesting one. I’d like to watch it again to better understand the weight they gave it, but it doesn’t seem like a simple decision.
They are given the chance to walk away from this hell, a big motivation from the first season. The only person with any reason to want to stay is Inny Mark who wants to find his wife. Dylan and Irving’s motivation seems less so. Kudos to Alan for the perspective that Helly could be a fake now, although I’d like to see it again to see how familiar she is. She certainly could have been briefed on their relationships as the Corp animation shows they monitored everything.
What they never address is something Irving brings up at Burt’s retirement which is that once severance ends, the Inny essentially dies. It seemed like there was an opportunity here to explore the concept of consciousness even under operation and the willingness to survive even under dire circumstances. That would have played as a greater motivation to me for Dylan and Irving than anything else.
Dylan’s outie seemed to not know what was going on with the innies. He was fired from his job without *really* being told why (just that his innie was violent), struggled to find a new job, then got his severed job back. Him returning made sense to me.
Irving on the other hand, I agree I don’t understand his motivations though it seems from s1 that outie Irving is trying to expose something and maybe that’s why he is willing to go back. Plus there was that mysterious pay phone call.
I haven't watched the Jeopardy situation you speak of, but it reminds me of Mikey Day's hosting duties on Is It Cake, which, to be fair, deserved all the snark he gave it.
Mikey Day is a great fit for Is it Cake; he really seems to understand how silly and ridiculous the whole concept is.
I really enjoyed this weeks episode and I’m glad that we got a quick answer as to whether Milkshake was lying or not.
Guilty on being shows! I have watched both The Pitt and Severance episodes and realized I needed to return to your newsletter to read your thoughts!