Forever on the Clock

Work-life separation, whether you like it or not.

in 1953, in an early indication of the anti-capitalist, anti-authority themes that would define his work for decades to come, Philip K. Dick published the short story “Paycheck.” In it, a man named Jennings wakes up with no memory of the past two years and no idea of the work he did in that time for Rethrick Construction. He agreed to have “his mind washed clean” after finishing the job, he acknowledges, but his current self doesn’t know why his previous self made that choice. Was it out of fear? Eventually, with no ability to communicate with the Jennings who was, the Jennings who is must acquiesce: “Maybe it wasn’t so bad, after all. Almost like being paid to sleep … It was like selling part of himself, part of his life. And life was worth plenty, these days.”

Dick’s nearly 70-year-old warning against corporate secrecy and the individual erasure that comes with it is given thrilling, disturbing new life in Severance on Apple TV+. Although creator and showrunner Dan Erickson hasn’t publicly cited “Paycheck” as an inspiration, Severance sits under the sci-fi icon’s long shadow. This confident, stylishly directed first season is a pressure cooker of obfuscation and surveillance set in a time and place left purposely vague. Big bad corporation Lumon Industries could be anywhere because the conditions that make its abuse of workers and its corresponding financial success possible are everywhere. How could the promise of work-life balance be used against you? What would powerlessness drive you to do, and what would power?

For answers, look to Adam Scott as Lumon employee Mark, who is alternately bemused and blank and furious and indignant when he is suddenly thrust into a management role. Scott’s good-natured handsomeness and easy grin, his genial, polite exterior, are a veil across his fraught, selfdoubting interior. When the series begins, it’s Mark’s voice, crackling through a blue intercom speaker in a green-carpeted room, that explains to new coworker Helly (Britt Lower) what she has gotten herself into. Like Jennings in “Paycheck,” Helly has no memory of accepting a job at

Lumon Industries or agreeing to its requirement for employee “severance,” a procedure that divides work and personal memories in one’s brain.

The second episode shows that procedure in grotesque, A Clockwork Orange– esque detail: a slit in the scalp, a drill through the skull (the bone dust is a particularly jarring detail), and a chip inserted deep inside. Severance is spatially dictated, meaning one can’t access personal memories at work or work memories after leaving the floor at Lumon. One’s “outie” version may have a family and hobbies, but the “innie” self can’t remember any of those details—nor can it recall ever leaving the Lumon Industries building. “Am I dead?” Helly asks Mark. The question looms over the show.

It’s unclear what Mark, Helly, and their colleagues Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Irving (John Turturro) actually do in the macrodata-refinement department (MDR). They’re not allowed to talk with other departments about what they do, either. Maps of the compound, with its mid-century–meets–iMac commercial aesthetic, are banned. Characters offhandedly mention loyalty tests. The “break room,” reachable only through a menacingly narrow hallway, is where employees are mentally tortured for stepping out of line.

The sole source of comfort to be found is wellness director Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), who assuages innie employees’ work concerns by telling them how strong, powerful, and unique their outie counterparts are; the tree in her office is one of the only organic beings from the outside world the innies will ever see. Overlooking all this strangeness is a faceless, voiceless Board, which speaks through girlboss representative Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander); the zealous Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), whose home life hints at an obsessive personality; and the nefariously cheery employee handler Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), who redefines the concept of a dance battle in a standout episode.

But what is all this for? Erickson & Co. provide just enough information for rampant theorizing; a series of paintings depicting different versions of an employee uprising, and how it suggests a malleable truth decided by the Lumon higher-ups, will definitely spawn a Reddit thread. That restraint is aided by director Ben Stiller and cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné, who gave the miniseries Escape at Dannemora its chill. Through whip pans of the labyrinthine white hallways and warmly lit close-ups of characters’ faces during their agonizing reeducation, they build an atmosphere of oppressive righteousness that weighs upon Mark and the rest of the MDR crew. Severance is shaped by the question, Why do we do what we do? Its most patience-testing element is its presentation of helplessness—life as determined by the irreversibility of our past actions. Its most rewarding is its suggestion that ingenuity and hope are uncontainable, irrepressible qualities inherent to our humanity. The dissonance of this kind of story airing on a tech giant’s streaming service can’t really be reconciled, and viewers looking for all the answers by season’s end will be disappointed. Put aside those qualms, and the mercurial, affirming Severance is in contention for the best new series of 2022. ■