The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Severance' Episodes 1-3 Recap

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Joanna and Van sit down to discuss the twisted and intriguing new show on Apple TV+ called 'Severance'. They pick apart the show's influences and creative decisions as to why this show is a must-watch. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Van Lathan Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twice a week, Van Lathen and Rachel Lindsay dissect the biggest topics in black culture, politics, and sports on their show, Higher Learning. They discuss the most important and timely conversations while also frequently inviting guests on the podcast and occasionally debating each other. Check out Higher Learning on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three burner gas grill. or get $50 off the select Weber Spirit Grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights

that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. Good sleep is everything. That's why Ali's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L-Dianine for both kiddos and grown-ups.

So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help. You're racing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Ollie Sleep Solutions for the Whole Family at Ollie.com. That's OLLLY.com. Hello, my name is Mark S. And I have, of my own free accord, elected to undergo the procedure known as severance. Welcome back into the prestige TV podcast feed.

I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me today, one of my favorites. I can't pick like one favorite. I'll say one of many favorites. It's Van Lathen Jr. Hello, Van, how are you? Hi, that's what parents do when they know that it's a lie. They say one of many favorites?

They say, hey, they go, which one is your favorite kid? See, I've had the conversations with parents because all of my boys and stuff, they have a favorite kid. They have a favorite kid. They like the kid they like the most. I know that I'm probably your favorite, but you are my loving twin sister and you will never ever,

we're the Luke and Leia of really the Ringer, and you would never, ever, ever let anybody else know. That's okay. I get it. That's what we have to do. There are a lot of other shows coming up in this feed, just so people know. Not all of them will feature Luke and Leia Skywalker,

but we've got a bunch of stuff next week. There's so much TV dropping. I know that Bill and Mallory are going to be covering Super Pumped, the Uber show that's on Showtime. Chris Ryan and I are going to be wrapping up Euphoria, the finale after the finale airs. We'll be checking it on Monday. We're going to be covering the dropout,

the Elizabeth Holmes Grift show that's on Hulu. There's just like a ton of stuff. The Prestige TV Podcast v is going to be jammed with content for you guys. But we are here today this Friday, this beautiful Friday morning to talk to you about a new Apple TV Plus show, Severance. But first, by the time you're hearing this, the first three episodes will have dropped on the platform.

We're going to talk about all of them. Good news about hell, half loop, and in perpetuity. So you want to make sure that you were caught up all the way up through episode three, lest we spoil something for you. That is what we're going to talk about. This is a workplace comedy slash paranoia thriller. Six of the nine episodes are directed by Ben Stiller. And Adam Scott is here with a cast of a million stars to

make us feel comfy about work. We have a lot of things to get to, we have a lot of things we want to talk to you. But I want to start first by just asking you, Van, what was your experience watching these episodes? Was the show what you expected? Did you enjoy your experience? Okay, so I didn't really know what the premise of the show was

before we went into it, which I saw a commercial that explained the entire premise. Oh, after? You haven't seen this commercial? No. Yeah, after. After. I saw it after, which I'm assuming that this commercial did not exist.

prior to the premiere episode because it would be one of the most assonine things to ever do if it did exist. Because the premiere episode of the show to me is just masterfully done because

you don't know what's happening but you know something that's happening. And God damn it, Joe, I love being in that world. Yeah. I love being in a world. You know what? Reminds me of, you remember Sanjou DiPero? Remember when you

didn't quite know what was going on. If you guys don't know what San Juan Giroo is, I talk about it every time I have the opportunity to. It's the single greatest episode of television ever to me. But whatever, it's a Black Mirror episode. But in San Juano, you think that you're in a regular world, said back in the 1980s, and they start saying things that lets you know

that there's something different about where they are, but you don't know. I love being in that situation. And the entire first episode of this show, which is the good news about hell, you're there and you don't learn until the end exactly what the premise is and exactly what sort of the machinations of this world are.

The basic premise of the show is that these workers at this shadowy omnipresent corporation, the Lumen Corporation, have opted in to have their work life brain and personality severed from their outside life and brain so that they have no memory of their outside life when they're inside the office and no memory of what happens inside the office when they're outside the office. And this leads to a lot of interesting questions about philosophical questions and work-life balance and all of that. And I think it's a really, really especially

interesting time to talk about something like that in the time we are now where so many of us, not all of us, certainly, but so many of us are working from home, have been working from home. that work-life balance blur is very real, realer than it's ever been before. So I think this is a really deeply interesting time to talk about this. But yeah, I mean, Black Mirror is a great comp for this show because the best episodes of Black Mirror just are exactly that where you're thrown into a world and you get to figure out a world that's not wholly different from your own. the speculative fiction sort of space where you find out what the rules are as you go. And that can be done like super clumsily in some cases where someone just sits there and tells you. And then it can be done more subtly and masterfully.

And what I love about these first few episodes is we get a couple of different opportunities to learn the rules of this world, whether it's via like orientation for a new employee in the form of the character, Howley, play. by Britt Lauer, or outside the world, whether it's like an awkward dinner party or an awkward first date or whatever it is, there are these conversations where we're learning so much about the world, but it's baked into a forward moving plot. And that's really hard to do because there's a lot of rules and questions and little tiny details of this space. Did it ever feel like you were being sat down for a lecture about the rules or did it all feel like natural and folded into you? I only did it not feel like I was being sat down for a lecture about the rules. It created the first episode, in my head, an existential dilemma.

Tell me about your existential dilemma. I wondered which world was the real world to him, which world did he really want to be severed from? because it seems to me that his life at Lumen is full of friends and full of authority and full of purpose. And his life on the other side, it's drabber. You can't hardly see anything. They're having dinners with no fool

where people are actually just like talking shit to him. And so throughout the whole thing, I'm looking. And before I knew what the show was actually about, I was like, wow, I'm thinking to myself, oh, well, his life at work. Well, he's one of those weird guys that loves being at work, because his life at work seems to be a lot better than his life at home. Then they kind of dropping on you that he's actually living to completely different lives. And I'm like, what's real to him? So I think they rolled out, it's always the best way to do it, they rolled out the rules in the world with putting

the viewer, or at least the Van Lathan viewer, in a dramatically unsure place. They didn't do the single worst scene in Exposition Ever is actually in the Dark Night Rises. This is the single worst scene of Exposition ever. Do you remember it, Joanna? Is it Taliel Gould talking about, is it talking about getting out of the pit? What is it? No. It's the clean slate.

Remember when the guy turns around and it goes, the Clint Slate, you mean the piece of technology that allows you to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Motherfucker, why would you say that? Like, you would never say that. Like, you guys just didn't understand how to, you guys are doing too much in the movie, right? So that's bad exposition.

This is good exposition where you're actually rolling out story and the exposition is happening as you peel back the layers of fat. Yeah, and it does. It's not trying to disorient you. Like, there are some shows when they throw you to something like this where they are trying to purposely keep you completely off balance. And what this show starts with, it starts

with a really striking image of the Helly character like sprawled out on a conference table. And we find out that they all start out this way because I think later John Totoro's character is like, when I woke up on that conference table. So they all start like, you don't have to do that.

You have to throw a person on a conference table, but this is how this all starts. You know, and like, and it starts with the Who Are You? That's the question. And we don't know who she is. She doesn't know who she is. That's the space we're in. And I think what's really brilliant about this show, and we'll get into like the things it reminds us of.

But what's really brilliant and different about this show is that we've got two POV characters sort of operating together and it odds each other. Or three, if you count Adam Scott as two different characters. But like when you think about something like Eternal Sunch on the Spotless Mind, which is one of my favorite movies. And like. Did I hurt you by By bringing up that movie? So good. But like

Rip your heart out. When you think about something like that movie, like Jim Carrey is your clear POV proxy through that whole movie. You're with him all the way. In this, we've got Adam Scott inside and outside who we're with because for a couple of reasons,

one, he's Adam Scott and we're like used to going into the office with Adam Scott. That's a that's a casting. choice that's really smart. But then you've got the character of Helly, who's this new character. So through her, we're learning the rules of the office. And not only that, but the two of them are at odds with each other.

But we're only going home with Adam Scott. So far, these first three episodes, we haven't gone home with really anyone else. And so it's not like each, it's not like that lost inspired model that so many shows are chasing where each episode is centered on a character. You don't have like the Helly episode and the Earth. of episodes and like that. It's not really like that. It's like, we're with Adam Scott, but we've got this Helly character. We're learning a little bit more about her outside in episode two, but not much. And that's just really different. And not only that, but our two sympathetic

POV characters, Adam Scott's character of Mark and Britt Lower's character of Helly, are actively at odds with each other. He's trying to keep her there. She's trying to leave. We like both of them. He's not the creepy bosses but he's still, they're like, their purposes are at it. And it's, that's just so, like, that's so, that's just a really distinct kind of

tension to enter into a show. Do you know what I mean? They make one person to me. Oh, the two of them? So they're both half a person that makes one person to me. I thought about this. She, okay, so it's interesting. She starts off and she

doesn't know who she is, but she knows who she is. It's like she doesn't know who she is, but she knows who she is. She knows she doesn't want to play the game. She seems to have more sense of knowing who she is

than anybody else there. I'm sure that they all went through kind of the same thing, but she's revealing in a very specific way. I don't know if Hellie Helly's Audi. I think she's underestimated or over

estimated. I'm not sure which way to do it herself. Him being so sure of everything that's going on, not even so sure of everything that's going on. But so would you say that he's been pacified in some sort of way? He's so indoctrinated into everything. He only seems like half of a person. She always seems like half of a person. Her skepticism, along with his acceptance, seem to,

make a full 360 character. Because like, when, like, when they're talking and stuff like that, he is very gently telling her, hey, you're fucked. And she's very gently telling him, you're a slave. And so they're swirling up. And I feel like the combination of the two of them is going to produce some new ideas for like each one of them. So I kind of looked at them as like almost the missing part of them.

one another. And so, even though I'm much more, much more, uh, identify with heavily because, shit is weird. Like we're down here and looks like it's the 70s. It's like, what the fuck? We guys expect me to just work here every day and not know what's going on. It's like a, it's like a weird, weird thing. But um, so yeah,

the, their two POVs, I feel like are the driving force like of the show. No, I love that. And I think I hadn't, I hadn't thought about it that way. And of course it's like, it's baked into a premise we kind of understand. Again, a promise that we like have, if we're parks and recreation fans or party down fans, like a premise that we've seen Adam Scott navigate before, which is like an office, a work romance, you know?

And it's like, we're not sure that that's what this is, but that's a familiar setup that they're using to give us something a little different and much creepier. Wow. You're an inquisitive one. I don't want to be in there, do I? You're learning that you do. Hey, when we heard you were coming here, it was like a miracle.

It's amazing what you're doing. I want to talk about some of the things that this show reminds you of, and it's a really long list. Are you ready? I am. Let's do it. All right. So a show that you and I both spent a long time recently talking about, which is Loki.

And there's a lot about the, this office phase. the same thing. And the TVA, like design-wise, you know. Both of them, I think, are drawing off of the madmen pool. So there's all of that. Eternal Sunshine I already mentioned the Good Place, Dev's Westworld office space with their like TPS reports and like, what are we even doing here? Sort of vibe.

Brazil. The Truman Show. Dollhouse. And that just might because of one of actress. And then the conversation, like 70s, Paranoia Thrillers. and 70 paranoia thrillers is a genre that I really like. It's the genre of one of our shared favorite comic book movies, Captain America The Winter Soldier.

And so that sort of like on the run can't really trust anything. No one's really on the run yet except for PD, right? But like that's sort of what's happening here. There's adrenaline pumping piano music happening. I think the score is really incredible. Theodore Shapiro did the piano. piano score. And it's just like, it's, that piano score is giving me a lot of that 70s conspiracy thriller

feelings. Are you a fan of the 70s paranoia genre, man? I don't think I've ever heard it described as that until now. What movies would fall under to this? So the conversation or like seven days of Condor or those like just like a bunch of like Robert Redford movies where, you know, like. Would blowout count? That's not the set of.

I mean, yeah, yeah. That's like a mystery, the throat of the thrill. The paranoid thrill usually has more to do with, like, either a corporation or the government. You know what you mean? And it's just like there's something really shadowy going on. You're in the middle of it.

You're the every man in the middle of it somehow. You know what I mean? Like the firm. The firm. I was about to say the firm. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the firm. So I definitely like the firm.

I definitely like movies like that. I would say, I had never thought about it as a genre, but I love films like that. Yeah, and then I think that early aughts surrealism, that like Eternal Sunshine, being John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman, Michelle Gondry, David O'Ressel sort of stuff, and then the office comedy.

And it's trying to do like all three of those at once and they should clash, but they don't. And I think a lot of that has to do with casting, like John Totoro doing the most with both a comedy role and as someone who is, helping to shore up this shadowy establishment, you know, with his devotion and adherence to detail. I mean, I just think, I think the tone that they nailed here is really a tough one to nail

and shouldn't work and does. What do you think? One of the first things I wrote now was this is the Loki sequel. Nice. Yeah. It feels like you're in the same world. Yeah. You have a disjointed sense of time. Time doesn't make any sense.

You're experiencing two time in two completely different ways. ways. These people seem to be variance of one another. You know what I mean? Like the first thing I was like, this is a Loki sequel. Then one of the coolest things,

it's just, it's just cool. It's like almost living in the alien world. Like, when I watch Star Wars, I think, hey, you know, these motherfuckers can travel at light speed,

but they don't have TV. You know what I mean? They don't have an iPhone. They don't have, like, you know what I mean? They're living in huts in the desert and shit, yet they have this, yet they can arc a laser. So whenever you have the combination of these high technological ideas with seemingly

something stamped in time from a world to go, it gives you this ethereal, otherworldly type of sense that in and of itself draws your curiosity out of your body because you're thinking to yourself where if they're so high tech and they know how to do this stuff, why are they using dot matrix printers and shit? You know what I mean? And Loki had that in the same way. Yes, almost everything that you said, especially when you talk about the paranormal,

what did you say, the paranoia thriller? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something else that heightens that is the calmness and the weirdness of the longer-tenured, loomid employees that we meet throughout the thing. like everyone seems to be lobotomized in a way that makes you think either they lost a fight with themselves,

either they were once helly, or they're so knowledgeable that they're pure evil and that there's something going on. And it's so deliciously off-putting that it works to also ratchet up kind of what's going on to the show. I think the best example of that is the Millchick characters played by Trammell Tillman,

who's like, who's the guy who comes in and is like offering waffle parties or like here's a melon plate or let's do this team bonding exercise. Like the pleasant menace in a character like that. And then just like clever little things like that they have a place in this office. It's called the break room. And it's not where you go and have coffee. It's where this guy goes to break you by making you recite a litany of, you know, asking for forgiveness for your sin. You know, it's like, yeah, that eerie calmness.

And that I think that, I think that aesthetic that you're talking about, I think it's called retrofuturism, where it's like it's a futuristic thing, but everything, they're using these like old clunky computers and stuff like that. And it just, it gets, it, it unsettles you. Absolutely, that contradiction, that tension. And I think the production design is doing so much work in the show. Like, the ceilings are really low in these offices that give. gives you that just really stifled, suffocated feeling.

The greens and the blues, which should be calming, but are not. And they shot a lot of this in real places. There's a building in New Jersey called the Bellworks Building, and that's where they shot a lot of this. You know how all the Marvel shows look the same because they're shot in the same hotel in Atlanta? This is like the Bellworks building in New Jersey. And then like some like,

some like housing developments in upstate New York. Like the fact that Ben Stiller, because Ben Stiller's got this like upstate New York fascination, um, escape at Donnamora was like an upstate New York show. That's something that Chris pointed out when he and Andy talked about on the watch. But like the, when you do a,

a futurism show and you use old real world locations, that just adds so much more than like a completely CGI confection sort of, space. I just, I love that. You know what I mean? That establishing shot of where he lives. Yeah. With all those houses bunched together. You look at that and you think, that place can't exist. Like you look at that and you go, wait a minute.

So there's a place where all of these houses are bunched together and don't jump in comments, you guys, I'm from South Badd Rouge. I've been to the projects before. I know that there are different housing projects. and they look, but that looks so specifically unlivable to me. Like, it looks like if you had the money to afford one of those, why would you want to live stacked on top of people nestled into that little thing like that? But it's real, right? And so you wonder, it makes you wonder, that establishing shots a great choice

because it makes you wonder what that lifestyle is like, right? What that must be? And we see little hints. Hey, it's him and this neighbor lady who is Patricia Arquette and she's encroaching on him by putting her trash can in the wrong place. It's these little bitty inconveniences that his life on the outside seems to actually be made up of. His life on the outside seems to be about these tiny inconveniences that are mounting and mounting and building. So I think that's another reason why the retrofuturism thing works

is because the future when you see it on screen sometimes can be jarring. You're like, oh shit! Look at that. He just teleported himself somewhere. Star Trek, Jesus. But if you do it in a place that is a little soothing, it's a little bit more intriguing in a way.

But I think that the show visually, I think one of the things about this show visually is visually the show is telling so much story without dialogue. The camera is doing so much storytelling here. It's almost as if there could be long periods of silence and you know exactly what the team is trying to say. It really works in that way. I mean, long walks down hallways is like a big part of this,

like of the work side of this. And it's not just that opening where we follow. Adam's got for a really long time through the hallways, but also in a later episode when he's walking down narrow or darker hallways. And it just like gives you that rat in a maze feel. And there are a few overhead shots like, you know, Halley on the conference table, but a few others that make this place look, I don't know, like a game board almost or like a or a maze in a lab and they're all rats in there. And it's just like, you know, have you ever had, Have you had an office job?

Yes. Yeah, me too. Yes. Yes, I've had an office job. I've had a couple. I think having an office job was a test of what a scamp I could be, scamping around. You know? So like the first office job I had is Capricoran programs.

Will we be Jeff? Shout out to Jeff Burke. Me and Jeff Burke would be the office scamps. you know, we would scamp it on down. You know, we'd leave, go for, it was a very small office. It was like six of us. It was a place out in Burbank that used to make these little clip shows.

We all got to produce our own shows and write our own shows. We'd go around telling people we were television producers. We were, but not in any real way, right? And, like, I learned how the dynamics of an office actually worked. I learned what it was like, because it was an overseas company with a Los Angeles office. I learned what it was like the day. For not us, we could give a fuck about anything other than trying every single lunch spot in Burbank.

That's all we cared about, right? Yeah, yeah. We could give a fuck about anything like that. But the management, the executives that would be in there, one or two people would get really fucking fired up whenever the people from England would come. Because it was so important to them. And we knew that they would be fired up, so we would fuck with them. and like all of that stuff about the office is why I love office comedies because think about a place that you have to be every single day for all of that time you do crazy stuff there you have sex with the people there you you fucking uh you make friends with the people there and they're your best friends because you see them every single day and you talk about different shit you do whatever you fall in and out of love with these coworkers that you have you

You guys go through a month where you're super tight. Something goes wrong. You're down for a couple of weeks. You get over it. So inherently, I think there's a lot of drama in them. That's why I think taking that genre and turning it on his head for the show is resonating so much with me. What about you? What was your office job experience like?

I've been in a couple. I think my most sort of soul-sucking office job was I was a temp in New York for, I think it was Morgan Stanley. Like some investors. Just I was like 18. and it was just like a bunch of investment bankers and me not knowing how to use the fax machine in any given scenario and just like and you just sort of like try to make it up because you have because every single fax machine I mean I'm sure that temps now don't have to deal with this because who uses a fact machine anymore but like the the terror of the fax machine because every single fax machine is different and if you're a temp bouncing around and you just have to pretend I guess you could ask for help but that's not my style and you just have to like pretend you know what you're doing in trial and error anyway what I think is so interesting about doing this show right now, and I alluded to this before, is that those office dynamics that you're talking about, the more enjoyable ones of like, you fall in love, you find cool spots to eat, like all that sort of stuff.

And I've experienced that too. And even the annoying soul-sucking ones, there's a nostalgia for all of that, a certain nostalgia right now when people are like, there's a great freedom in working from home, which again, not everyone has been doing, but a lot of people are doing this pandemic. There's a great freedom in working from home. But then you miss, you even miss your annoying co-worker. You even miss the person who, like, wanted to talk to you about what you did over the weekend. And the last thing you want to do is talk to them.

You know, you miss these characters played by John Totoro. You know what I mean? And you're just sort of like, there is this weird nostalgia for that right now. And I think what's interesting is that to give us this sinister workplace show during a time that I just read about this day. I didn't know it was called this. but they're calling it the Great Resignation, like the Great Depression, but the Great Resignation.

I know a lot of people are quitting their jobs, but like I didn't know it was this big. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, four million Americans quit their job in July of 2021. In one month, four million Americans quit their job. People are leaving their jobs because the pandemic has revealed a lot of truths to people about how they feel about, you know, office life or work life or whatever is. A lot of people are in a questioning phase of their lives right now in terms of like,

and that's from top to bottom. That's top corporate. And it's also like every server I know quitting their job, every barista I know quitting their job. And not everyone has the luxury to quit their job, but like there's a lot of people quitting their jobs and just being like, I'm going to figure it out. But it can't be this. Whatever this is, it can't be this. And I feel like that's an emote, that's a jolting current running through this show, even though we're seeing a couple of these severed. workers look like they're passive and pleasant.

When we meet a character like Petey, Mark's work best friend who he doesn't recognize the office played by the great Yule Vasquez, who I love. And he's like, listen, Mark, you and I have tried to get out before. Like we've tried. You've tried. You don't remember it. But you've tried. I've tried.

Yet then we cut back to Mark, as you said, before docile, servile, back in this spot. And that sort of tension between the rebellion and the resignation is such an interesting mix for this show specifically right now in terms of how people are thinking about their jobs. It also gives people a technology where they can split the baby, right? When you can quit your job but actually not have to quit your job. And so to me, I look at that as being very fascinating in two ways. Number one, it's so interesting what you said about like people's perceptions of who they are and their workplace situations during the pandemic. Because they're a lot like the people at Lillman.

They realize that there was or they were realizing that there was something bigger than them, something a little bit insidious that was over them, that was kind of sucking their human life force out of them in a way. and that was the structure of society that we've kind of created, right? We went through this intense time of worshiping all essential workers and going through all of this stuff with them and then after that it was just fucking over. It was look, get your asses up

the rest of you guys and get your asses back to work. Go out there and put your life on the line by running into all kinds of people every single day so that I can have my burrito. You know what I mean? And people were just like, people just looked around and they were like, they looked at their situation and they went, it's just got to be more to it than this. It's just got to be more to it than this.

This can't be the thing. I'm not saying that there's not another thing. And I'm not saying that we don't miss those people. And hopefully we can learn how to better appreciate the people that work for us, around us, and with us. But they're just looking around going, this can't be it. And I feel like that's what hellie's doing. Hellie's like, you mean to tell me that every day I come in here, I do this, I don't know really why I'm doing it. I don't know really what the purpose of this is.

I don't know, I have so many questions about it, but I just have to do it every day. I have to do it every day because it's best for me, a me that I'm really not even in tune with. Like, I don't even really know myself enough to know whether or not this is good for me or not. You know what I'm saying? And so I feel like there are a lot of parallels to how a lot of people feel about being in the workforce, being in an American and world society right now is like, am I doing something for my job that is fulfilling and energizing to me? A lot of people out there probably feel severed. So for them to actually do it, it's just really fucking dope. And I'm not going to lie.

scary. Like the show is a little scary. It's like it's essentially asking a question, which is one of the most profound questions that you can ask, and I said this on the podcast that me and Mal did about about peacemaker, but it's like, do you really want the truth? Yeah. Do you want the answer to the question? Or do you just want, like I said, on the peacemaker pod?

do you just want an easier question? And so like I'm watching this and the whole time I'm just, I just dig the entire thing. I'll tell you, it's a stressful watch. This is a stressful show to watch. I'm not even going to lie. Like there's some light moments, but I even have all kinds of questions. It's like,

why Melon? Why not give these motherfucker a pizza? Would pizza break them out of the severance? Like, why waffles? Jesus, the trigger. Well, Mesa's so creepy. There's all these arbitrary rewards. not arbitrary rewards, but like the reward and punishment structure is not tied to anything in the external life, right? It's not you're going to get a bonus so that you can buy yourself a new car

or whatever on the outside because your outside life doesn't matter to your inside life. So it can only be a waffle party that you get to experience here, a mugful of finger traps that sit on your desk, some caricatures that pile up in your drawer, you know what I mean? Like all this sort of like Why would that be the prize? Yeah, exactly. It's just so many questions. But it's perfect. Why would that be the, yeah. It's like perfectly meaningless.

Or like my, the thing that gave me the strongest creeps in their actual break room, not the break room, but their actual break room, there's a vending machine that takes tokens where you can buy aluminum products to eat. And there's a jar of tokens, but you're only allowed two tokens a day. Right. So you're not paying for the snacks, but like there's a limit, but I guess it's an honor system. And it's like you could just put snacks in your brick rooms for your workers. But instead they've invented this whole structure around it.

And it cooks their brain so much so that when Petey, who's another unreliable narrator for us, right? Because like his whole noodle is cooked as he's like blurring his outside life and his inside life, something like that. When he winds up in the convenience store at the end of three, I need some tokens. He needs tokens. He doesn't know how to function without these, you know, the way that the office has trained him to function. Right. And it's chilling, chilling. I want to talk a little bit.

You mentioned before when you're first watching episode one, you're not sure. Maybe the question is like which mark is happier or which mark is better situated, the one who's blissfully unaware underground or the one who's grappling with dinner parties with no food in them, like above ground. And Adam Scott in this interview he did for GQ with Tara Ariano says something really, I thought that was really interesting. Because like we understand Mark's motivation to sever. It's because his wife has died and he's got this grief. And similar to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you break up with someone, your heart is broken, you erase them so that you don't have to process this grief. But it's interesting because Adam Scott sees it a little differently. He says Marcus decided that he's not going to move on from this grief.

He just doesn't want to feel it all day. So he's going to leave for 10 hours a day or whatever. So he doesn't have to deal with it. It's almost like the grief is all he has left of his wife. So he doesn't want to let go of it. He wants to wallow in it as long as he can. So it's not just about avoiding grief. It's actually about prolonging the grief.

He doesn't, you know, his sister says at some point, like, I'm not sure this is the same as processing it. She's asking him if he's, like, still seeing this therapist. The thing is he does not want to process it because processing it means moving on from it. and moving on from it means moving on from his wife, and that's not something that he's prepared to do. So he's put himself in jello, like he's put himself in stasis so that he can have his cries in the car

because it means that he's still close to his wife in some way. I find that really interesting. What do you think? I just got kind of sad. So I understand that very, like, directly. Like, my dad's rope is up. up here right now. And my dad died last year or whatever.

So my dad's rope is up here. My dad was a cowboy, so he's a lariat that he would use. It was so funny and fun to watch him use the lariat. If you guys have never seen somebody who's really good with the lariat that can like rope everything, you think it's bullshit. You think it's bullshit. But I once saw my father ask one of my uncles to stop drinking. And he was like, it's like, you've had enough.

And he stopped drinking. My uncle got mad and it looked like it was going to be a big deal. And my dad took the rope and, like, grab the Hennessy bottle out of his hand, inject it. And the whole family laughed and he diffused it. Wow. Like, he was telling him, like, you're too drunk. Like, stop, like, chill out. He's like, nah, I do you're all right.

He got tense in my phone. And all of a sudden, like, I look over it. And I'm like, outside looking through the window and the fucking bottle, like, jerks out of everybody's laughing. I all see my dad with a cigarette in his mouth pulling. in a bottle on up the grass toward him, right? So I have that rope right there. And like, I think all the time, like, should I put the rope away? You know what I mean?

Like, you know, I walk in here. I got the LSU helmet on the first, on the top shelf. The rope's right there. Every time I see the rope, I think about my dad, right? And there's this little almost indescribable moment of pain. And, and like, you're like, fuck, man. If you put the rope away, do you, like, put him away? Are you saying it's better to have forgotten him?

I would never sever. I want to remember these great podcasts that I do with you guys. But like when I, you know, like when I think about stuff like that, these are real questions and like it's a, it's an interesting way to go about it. And, you know, we talk about this like when vision tells Wanda, what is grief, if not love, persevering? And you're like, God damn, vision. You're spitting. You know what I mean?

So I don't know, I don't know. It's a, it's, and obviously this is my father, it's his wife. So this is a crushing grief, but that's a breaking grief. That's somebody that you had, the dynamics are different, right? That's someone that you have prepared to spend the rest of your life with. You know, there's this little weird deal that we make about our parents that we never really want to talk about. but, you know, it's one that we've made. It's one that they've made, too, to be honest with you.

But I don't know. But even that, it's like a very human thing. It grounds the show to me because there's a lot of whimsical shit happening in the show. And a lot of times, sometimes, like, you brought up devs, right? Once again, devs, which is, if you guys haven't seen devs, if you can get through it, because it asks you to do some heavy lifting, I would say that you guys should check it out. all grounded in the exact same thing, the most human feelings we can have,

that feeling of fuck, I lost it all. And we go through creepy tech guy, the whole nine thing. But that thread keeps you, keeps bringing you back to the show. I think that they're doing a good job of establishing that, while also making me wonder if that was his motivation for doing that.

By the way, I'm sorry going off on a tangent about that. No, no, no, it just struck me. But it also makes me wonder if that was his motivation for doing that, obviously now I'm wondering what was everybody else's. Exactly. You know what I mean? Like, why did Haley want to do this?

You know what I mean? Like, why did everyone else want to? Like, why did Pedy initially want to do it? Like, what was everybody else's motive for doing that? Because obviously, they can't find that many people, which is why not very many people work in Lumen. So in order to do it, I would have to wonder. what everybody else's motivations for it were.

And I think that when you have characters like Dylan or played by the great Zach Cherry or John Totoro's Irving or we meet Christopher Walkins' character as well, Bert, like what a flex to have a show like this and like we've seen Walkin barely just a little bit. I wonder what the deal is. Yeah.

Like he just, there's got to be something that's coming. Like that's, I mean, I'm not doing. I'm not mad about it, but think about the fucking cast, man, walking, Patricia Arquette is just hopping in and out of the show. Like, Patricia fucking Arcad is just hopping in and out of the show. I mean, she's got a lot more to do than Christopher Walken does. I'm like, Jesus Christ. Yeah, exactly. But I think that those questions.

So, like, you know, a question that I have, whenever a new shows comes out, the question in this, like, massively crowded jam-packed landscape is, is this a show that's going to catch on? on? Is it going to be a show that's going to break wide? You know, this show was enormously well reviewed by critics, but that doesn't necessarily mean a lot of people are going to watch it, especially on a platform like Apple TV Plus, which not everyone necessarily has unless they held onto their Ted Lasso subscription. Do you know what I mean? And so are people going to watch a show when I want the, you know, apparently their schedule to start filming season two next month. So, you know, it's going ahead. But I still want to show that I think is this good to do well, obviously, right?

And so when I ask myself, like, what is it that makes a show catch on and do well other than it airing on HBO on a Sunday? And like a big answer is this idea of a mystery show. Like that's the hook that so many people get caught on these days, whether it's Mary V's Town or Yellow Jackets, this idea. this idea of like, yeah, this idea of like a, um, the, not, the, the Reddit detective sort of show where someone can like freeze frame. And this show has those elements that comes out of like the lost legacy where you've got like a map. Like we find a map in an episode and a map that you can freeze frame and pour over, uh, if you're someone who likes to do that on Reddit.

Yeah, exactly. Like that stuff is there. But sometimes those shows, those. like mystery box detective shows, if the answers you're chasing are just very surface level of like what's happening here, that's one level of engagement.

But if the answer is like, if the question is, who the hell is John Totoro's Irving and who is he outside and what brought him here? What would bring someone to do something like this? And we only know that answer for one character right now.

That's a kind of so, that's like an, as you said before, existential, philosophical question that we're chasing, would I ever sever? I mean, that's why Eternal Sunshine is a movie that I've rewatched a ton of times on a movie that I love because it's a, it's a question, would you ever do this? Would you ever erase someone from your brain and heart? And it's a question that would probably have different answers depending on the month, day, year that you watch this movie. And I think that's because it's such a profoundly human question. And maybe some people are like, no, I never would. But really, on your worst day of your

worst breakup, would you not consider erasing someone just to erase that pain from your life? You know what I mean? And this idea that Severance gives us of in the pilot episode, we watch Mark cry in his car, get an elevator, the camera does that really cool pull focus move so that we know that like the switch has been flipped. But then he finds the wet tissue in his pocket. You know what I mean? Like that stuff is still there. And then PD says to him, he says, you carry that hurt with you down there.

You just don't know what it is. And I thought that was real, that hit me really hard. And this thing that Dan Erick and Erickson, who created the show has talked about this show is like something that about the intention, the way we intentionally hide certain parts of ourselves from ourselves. Right. Exactly. The denial, the shove it down, push it away. I don't want to deal with it right now. And how that will almost always, or I actually want to say always, come back and bite you in some way. And you're going to end up bleeding out of your nose in a convenience store. In a convenience store, you know, because you didn't deal with your shit. Yeah. Like it, and also this show is, so it's interesting that this show is in upstate New York, right? And it's interesting that we're talking about Andy Collins. because Andy Kaufman gets there, then he goes, you know, he's gone overboard before.

Do you want to say Charlie Kaufman or? Andy Kaufman, Jesus Christ. He's done it too, though. Yeah, he does. Leave that in. Leave that in, Steve. Don't take that out. I got confused Andy and Charlie right there.

Charlie Kaufman. You guys like that's Synecatee, New York? Connectedys. Yeah. Okay. Jesus Christ. Yeah. All right.

You watch that movie and you go, okay, Charlie. I don't really want to go. I don't want to know. This is too him. like you get to you watch Connected and you're like, I have no hope now. You know what I? You know what I mean?

It's, and it's a workplace thing as well, to a degree. It's like, that's him really putting it out there just the frailty of everything. So there's a point, if you haven't seen Schenectady, Charlie Kaufman movie, I think it's like 2007, 2006, 2008, maybe. He's directing here. Go watch it.

Watch the movie. and then understand places like devs and things like severance and things that are like a little avant-garde and have to do with the human experience, but it wraps it up and like all of these things that we feel like we want and we need, and do we really want? We need them, or are we just looking for ways to pass the time?

You know what I mean? So, but with this movie, it takes you right there, but it doesn't, excuse me, with this show, it takes you right there. It doesn't take you overboard. I'm right there with this. But for that reason, I don't feel like this show is going to be a rising success

because I think right now that we're talking about a show that's going to have a solid audience of very devoted people more than Party Down, Adam, so don't worry, it's going to be around. Party Down was a great show. Great show. This show, at least to me right now, maybe it's a second season, Heat Flamer,

you know. It's not messy enough to get everybody on. It's a little too heady for the people that just want mess. Yeah. And it's probably a little bit too heavy

for the people that just want their workplace sort of comedy drama or whatever. So it's a watch and you also have to pay attention. Like, just say I saw a screener

of one episode. We were, were a little, we couldn't turn the captions on. And so we watched it three times. Because we couldn't turn the captions on. It's not that we don't understand English, it's just that we were more to make sure you don't want to miss anything. The show demands your attention.

And because we couldn't watch the captions, we couldn't have the captions on. We were like, did you get it? Let's watch it again. So the whole thing is, for that, I think the show might not break super wide, but I think it will be a healthy show that's going to be a gigantic

player for award season. I think so. I mean, certainly, like, visually and, like, direction and all that sort of stuff, and as we get deeper in the season, we can think about performance. But I think that when you mentioned Party Down, which was unjustly canceled after two seasons, but is getting a revival, like everything, the stakes are different for cancellation now.

You know what I mean? an Apple TV Plus, especially with their deep, deep pockets, like the stakes for not continuing a show. I mean, I think this is going to get at least, I mean, I know it's getting at least two seasons. But I think, I think that's where Apple TV Plus is where they're like, we're at least going to give you two two plus seasons. And like, they're chasing something that's a little different than just viewership numbers. You know what I mean? They're still in their infancy, this streaming platform. They have one big hit.

And then a couple other shows that have its pockets of fandoms here and there. But you understand what an HBO show is, right? But you don't yet know what an Apple TV Plus show is. And so they're still trying to nail down their identity. And I think they want something like this, actually, that has huge critical support, even if it doesn't have massive numbers. They want both, obviously. I agree.

You know, I think they're chasing that, like, high prestige is sort of what they're chasing. I'm trying to think of a cop is why I'm like I'm going around. I'm trying to think of a cop is because the reason why it's hard to comment to HBO is because all of these HBO shows, HBO's been able to splinter itself. HBO's had the shows that have been like gigantic, huge hits and they also won all the awards. Then they've had the shows that have been like critically acclaimed everyone loved them, but like they weren't gigantic huge hits like six feet under. You know what I mean?

And then they've had shows that were actually. terrible, but everyone loved like True Blood and Autarash. Oh, man. I've been thinking a lot about True Blood, which I show, a trash show that I loved and watched all of. Guess what? The worst show

ever that I've seen every episode of, I loved it. Yeah. What was the old vampire's name? The Super Strong guy? Like, he was the oldest one. Oh, yeah, I don't remember. Because it's a trash show and didn't hold on to anything. He was the best character. Like, he, like, he

was, fuck, that guy was hysterical. I loved him. Anyway, so it'll be interesting to see, I'm trying to think, and I'll, I can't conjure it right now, I will. I'm trying to think of a show, because I get exactly what you're saying, and I think this show can be, and you look, it has some, it has some things going for it. Ben Stiller's a huge name. He's behind it.

People recognize Adam Scott. It's got a great cast, and I think it'll have great word of mouth. But to, to get into that. that real next level of cultural zeit guys, I think it'll be an uphill battle. Yeah, and I mean, there's like, you know, there's like a Mr. Robot comp that might be there. Do you know what I mean?

Where like this robot hit in that way where people cared about it, really, really cared about it. As we take this tour of like what else is on TV right now, I think it's, I think it's worth mentioning a way in which the big trend for this, you know, winter spring, are these fetishization or something like that,

this chasing of these Silicon Valley grifters and these people who have made a ton of money off of unsuspecting people. So if you're thinking about like super pumped the Uber show, we crashed the WeWork show, the Dropout, which is the Elizabeth Holmes show, inventing Anna on Netflix, like all these sort of like grift money-making corporation shows. And I think they reflect the way in which we as a culture are still so deeply locked into

worshipping like billionaire CEOs. Do you know what I mean? The way in which people and the way I say we is not necessarily like you and me, but like the Bezos and the Elon Musk and the Zuckerberg, like all of those figures. They're the gods in our culture. For better or for worse, I would say, I say worse, but, like, that's the truth of our culture. And so for a show to, and this is a, this is a theme that I'm picking up off of our producer, Steve. Hi, Steve, who has been talking to me about the show. Like, Steve has identified this strong religious thread that is running through this show, that there's a lot of religious language, rhetoric, a lot of visuals.

I mean, again, that reminds me of the TVA, but you've got, like, the founder of this company, Kier Egan, the town is named Kier, there's statues to him, there's like big murals to him in here, like the way in which we have revered the like robber barons of old and the tech billionaires now, that that is something that the show is also directly engaging in. What do you think about that, Ben?

I think it's very, very pointed. I think it's a, I think that people are just really interesting. Like, Rockefeller and Carnegie and all of these guys, They thought so much of their fortunes that they gave it all away. They told their kids, you know what I mean? They told their kids, they spent a lifetime making money screwing over people. And then they gave the majority of it away. They told their kids, go get it on your own.

Build your own pile. Yeah. And that's the same thing that fucking, what's the, Buffett is telling the people, like, they get to a point where they make so much money and they realize, hey, life is really not about making all of this money and making these little fifdoms. you guys go do it all on your own, they start to hate what it is that they created, yet we never learned that lesson.

Like, seriously, we talk about the fact, look, I'm not hating on anybody who's made a bunch of bread. Good for you. We talk about all of these things that are important, but it comes back to the fact that Elon Musk and the rest of these guys are super rich, so they must have the answers. I saw this headline that all of these,

that all of these monkeys were dying as they tried to implant chips inside of their brains. I'm like, you can look it up. Elon Musk is trying to implant chips inside of people's brains. He wants to do the neurolink thing. And maybe one day that'll be a fantastic thing.

I just got to ask myself, poor goddamn monkeys, man. But he seems like he could get away with doing anything because he made the Tesla, which we have one. He didn't even make the Tesla. He just belonged on. to the Tesla that somebody else made.

Elon Musk is my nemesis. Which we have one. So I'm a hypocrite, guys. I'm a hypocrite. We have one. So, but I don't know. And I think to that point, there's another reason why

a show like this works for me. And it's another reason why I show like Dale's works for me is because they're putting us face to face with what essentially we're creating. Like, I used to go on Clubhouse during the pandemic when there was really nothing else to do. And let me tell you something.

Of all the things that almost made Kalika lose all respect for me, me being on Clubhouse all day long, talking to people was the top one. She just couldn't understand why I'm walking up and down the house yelling. No, no, no, no, no, one mic, one mic, one Mike, one Mike, one Mike, one Mike is my turn. One mic is my turn. You know what got me off Clubhouse? What's that? The fact that Elon Musk came on Clubhouse and all of the things.

and all of these people who I really respected would just, I'm sorry, there's no other way for me to say this, I'm from Bat Rouge, just on his dick. And I was just like,

fuck, is somebody gonna ask him about some actual real shit about somebody to ask him? It's like, oh, we're just gonna stop dick riding the entire thing? And I think shows

that make us re-evaluate our relationship to not just these people, but the things that they've created, are very important. And this one, severance is not just a show, it's a process, it's something that you do. So the question then becomes, in the mind of the person who created this and thought that they were doing something good, why did they think they were doing something good?

Who did they have to hurt to get this done? And why are people so protective of it? The question we should be asking all of these guys that we've put up like this. It's what's your actual goal? because if your actual goal is just to make a shit ton of money, there's absolutely no reason why we should revere you. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not something to be revered.

You know what I mean? It's not something, you make as much money as you want, but it's not something to be revered, put it on the pedestal. So I think that that's going to be a question that gets asked in this season as well. Why do people, not just why do people sever? Why did the guy invent severance? Why was that important? Why is Lumen important?

What's really going on? Because I suspect that he invented it or she invented it because there's a lady down there too. I like her seeing her. And it's a Lumen progressive. Let's be honest. Lady CEO in the 70s. That's pretty good. The why was invented was for some nefarious self-serving weird shit.

So you're going to be out there with the protesters. Oh, I'm definitely one of them. It's a weird shit. Yeah, the whole mind collective. I mean, Lincoln, there's a cool political strain to it. Again, that goes back to the 70s paranoia thriller. But we've got this like Kelly N. Conway type figure, this like PR flack for the company who like goes out and does spin on on TV talking about this idea of free choice. You're disrespecting the free choice that these people have made.

And it's this whole free choice fallacy that you see the most in hellie when she was willing to like cut her. open to try to get out of there and only to find herself back there. And this idea that like there's a choice being made that it's her choice, but it's not her choice at the same time. I mean, it's, I think it's dealing with a lot of like really heady, interesting stuff. And I, and I'm excited to see where it all goes. Any other big questions that you have for this season before we go in? No, I think we've covered them all.

I think, well, we've covered them all, but there's a lot of stuff that's still out here. first of all, is PD did? PD died, right? It seems like PD died. Seems like it. Yeah, but it seemed like a couple of times before that it had taken them out. So if that's the case, you can't sever. Reintegrate, reintegrate.

You can't reintegrate. You can't reintegrate. Which that really puts you behind the A ball, right? Like, that's one of my huge questions. If you can't reintegrate without bleeding your brain out of your nose, really looking at a lot of desperate people because what I think is over the course, if I have one theory is that Heli's going to spread like a virus. You know what I mean? I think Heli's going to spread like a virus. I think there are a couple of characters that are going to have some

awakenings. But if we now know that reintegration means dining in a convenience store asking for tokens or walking in the middle of the winter with a coat on or with the pajamas on, the robe, excuse me, yeah. So it's like, it's just a weird situation. It seems like our characters are trapped, literally in a little bit. I want to point to a performance or a character that I, an actor that I haven't shouted out yet, which is Deachan Lockman, who plays Miss Casey, the wellness counselor.

She's, you know, she gives John Titoro's character, Irving, his, like, whole, I'm going to tell you about your outside self, an incredible scene that he's not allowed to emotionally react. to and like all the things she tells him. But Dishin is an actress who wherever she turns up, she is, you know, be it agents of shield or whatever,

she is incredible. She's the best part of Dollhouse, which is like a bumpy show, but she was so good on that show. So I'm just hopeful that we're going to get to see her get to do something really interesting. She's, she's an actor.

Whenever she shows up, I am like sitting up and paying attention. She was great. Yeah. All right. Well, that is it. We did it, I think, for Severance 1 through 3. We're a third of the way through the season.

We will see what else happens. I don't know if we'll be back on this feed to talk about it. I think it's going to depend like how it goes, how our interest goes, all this sort of things. But I hope we can talk about it more. But in the meantime, we'll be back on the broader PrestiCV podcast feed to talk about, as I mentioned before. Euphoria, super pumped, the dropout, Mrs. Maisel, all kinds of stuff. happening for you. This episode, this particular episode of Prestige TV, was produced by the great Steve

Allman. And, you know, you could hear both band and myself on the Ring of a Speed. Poo-Pew! Talking about, I think, Batman for the next couple weeks. So we will be there. We will be there. All right. Bye.

Bye-bye.