“This dystopian nightmare is, ultimately, an optimistic series”

Season 2 of the series played by Adam Scott is available on Apple TV+, with an additional episode every Friday. Criticism of the business world and questioning of human nature, the analysis of its creator Dan Erickson.

VIs your professional life getting you down? Forget her! In Severance, fascinating metaphysical thriller, a surgical procedure allows employees of a multinational to dissociate their professional memories from their personal memories. As soon as they cross the threshold of Lumon Industries, people, as the employees are called here, lose all notion of their identity in the private sphere. Conversely, at the end of the day, as soon as they get out of the elevator, they become outies and only have data related to their intimate life in mind. Until the day when the people rebel and seek to understand who they are on the outside… Deciphering a relentless critique of the corporate world by its creator Dan Erickson, as its season 2 begins on Apple TV+.

The nightmare of office life

“The idea of ​​surgical dissociation came to me a few years ago. Stuck in a food job, I dreamed of being able, in the evening, to forget everything about my painful days. It was only when I considered the fate of the other me who would emerge from the procedure, trapped in a cycle of endless toil, that I understood that my idea was in fact a dystopian nightmare. »

An anti-capitalist thriller

« Severance is a parable about the systematized dehumanization of workers. However strange it may be, the series is nevertheless based on authentic testimonies from office workers, who told me how their employers pushed them to keep a low profile, not to talk about their private lives, to keep everything to themselves. information about their current work — the less the worker knows, the easier it is to control. »

Professional vs. respondent

“We live in a time where our professional lives spill over into our private lives. Teleworking, video meetings, smartphones… have served as a Trojan horse for the world of work. Severance transforms this societal problem into an existential suspense: the people should they seek to merge with the outies… or to kill them by taking up all the space? »

A metaphysical vertigo

« Severance also questions the impact of society and our experiences on what we become: the people, locked in offices, almost deprived of human experience, are they the same beings as the outies, who have a social life? What separates thenot in of one of the main characters, Helly, a rebellious employee, of her outie, tyrannical boss? I don’t always have answers, on the contrary, the more I advance in my scenario, the more questions I have! »

Here but elsewhere

“The universe of Severance is almost surgical, all straight lines and symmetries. Lumon’s basement is a pale maze, the outside world covered in snow and shrouded in darkness. Ben Stiller, who produces and directs the series, had the idea of ​​adding a retro-futuristic aesthetic to bring something familiar, therefore a little reassuring, and create a slight disconnect with our reality. »

Better to laugh about it

“Even more than the tragic potential of this story, I love its absurdity. It’s a satire on the world of work and its most ridiculous aspects. The Lumon executives, with their managerial newspeak, turn out to be pathetic. THE people, who try to behave like humans, are by turns hilarious and upsetting. However distressing it may be, Severance est in fine an optimistic series about their desperate quest for humanity. »