Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Severance’ On Apple TV+, A Ben Stiller-Directed Series That Takes Work-Life Balance To An Extreme

It has been many, many years since we’ve had an everyday job at an office, and we’re not sure if we’d ever go back. The overhead fluorescents, the soul-sucking cubicle or open seating, putting up with your co-workers lame jokes or other quirks… ugh. But what if there was a procedure that made you forget about your work life as soon as you left the office, and you forget about your troubles at home when you come back?

SEVERANCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We hear a voice say “who are you?” repeatedly. A woman is sprawled out, face-down on a conference room table.

The Gist: The woman wakes up, hears the demanding voice and wonders where she is. She tries to leave the room but can’t. The voice immediately realizes that he needed to do a more friendly preamble before asking her the standard questionnaire.

We then cut to the massive parking lot of a huge office building. Mark (Adam Scott) is sitting in his car sobbing. He walks into the building for Lumon, the company he works for, and goes to the “Sever’d floor”. In the elevator down, his face changes and he walks down the long, sterile hallways to his office with a bit of a smile on his face.

He works in the Macrodata Refinement group with the equally chipper Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Irving (John Turturro). He’s shocked when his good work friend Petey (Yul Vazquez) isn’t there. But he finds out quickly when his boss Milchick (Tramell Tillman) takes him to Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who is in charge of the floor. Petey has been let go, and now Mark is made the supervisor of the department.

His first task is to orient a new intern named Helly (Britt Lower) to the Sever’d floor. It doesn’t go well; she throws the phone speaker at his head. But she eventually understands and sees a video of her explaining that she voluntarily had a procedure that severs the memories of her work life from her home life. When she’s on the Sever’d floor, she has no idea who she is on the outside, and when she’s outside work, she has no idea what goes on on that floor.

Outside of work, Mark gets a card from the company explaining the cut on his head, with a restaurant gift card for an apology. He lives in a nondescript townhome complex with his sister Devon (Jen Tullock), mostly forlornly drinking in the dark, staring out the window, and calling his neighbor Mrs. Selvig when she puts her garbage can in his spot on the curb. One night he thinks he sees a suit-wearing guy lurking by his house, but isn’t sure.

He goes to the restaurant from the gift card, and Petey sits down. Because it’s outside work, Mark has no idea who he is. Petey, who seems to have un-severed his work and home brains, tells Mark that there’s more to Lumon and the severance procedure than what people see, and it’s pretty bad stuff. The company is after him, so he gives Mark a card that has an address that has the start of the explanation, if he chooses to go to that address.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The slow, dystopian vibe of Severance, created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller, definitely has a similar vibe to the series Devs, with a bit of 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s mid-century starkness mixed in.

Our Take: Severance is certainly a slow burn; you learn a lot in the first episode, but it seems that Stiller gives the episodes a lot of breathing room to envelop you in the dystopian environment of Lumon before diving into the heart of the story.

We see this in two instances: Mark walking through what seems like an infinite maze of hallways to get to his office, and Helly trying to exit to a stairway only to find herself back in the same hallway. Could each of these scenes have been cut down by a third? Sure. But we get what Stiller is trying to do here.

He’s trying to create an environment that’s sterile, flooded with fluorescent light. The mid-century aesthetic adds to the starkness. The outside world is cold and grey. It’s designed to make you uncomfortable, and the pacing designed to lull you into a bit of a sleepy state. Once Mark takes Petey up on his offer to find out what exactly is happening with the Severance project, we’d imagine things will pick up.

The only major performance we didn’t see in the first episode was Christopher Walken, who plays a worker named Burt. We have no idea what he does, but we’re looking forward to seeing his performance because, well, Christopher Walken in a weird, stark, dystopian story pushes all our buttons. But Stiller has been able to assemble a fantastic cast, with Scott giving a surprisingly affecting performance, given that he’s the only one we see at both work and his personal life (at least for now). His toggle back and forth is subtle but well-defined.

What we’re curious about is why the “topside” version of Mark is so solitary and depressed. We’d imagine it’s an affect of the severance procedure, but we’re curious to see just what his life might have been before getting the implant.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: We see who Mark’s neighbor, Mrs. Selvig is, and she has a very familiar face.

Sleeper Star: Hard to say John Turturro is a sleeper, but his take on Irving shows yet again that he’s got one of the wider acting ranges out there. Irving is not only officious but goofy at the same time.

Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Severance holds a lot of promise, even after a slow-moving first episode, mainly because of the fantastic performances and because Stiller has created a world that makes us curious as we are shifting in our seats with extreme discomfort.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.