Josh Minton: We are ready to talk about Severance and really get into it. But we have a special guest we'd like to introduce always welcome in the Red Room, Mr. John Thorne; how are you, sir?
John Thorne: I am doing great. It is good to talk to both you and Scott at the same time. How nice is that?
Scott Ryan: Yeah. And I guess one could say all your friends are here.
John Thorne: Well, well, yeah, I guess you're probably right about at least,
Scott Ryan: That wasn't meant to be a put-down, that's what they say in the Red Room. And I know John gets that reference. There may be people at home who might think, oh my God did he just say John really has no friends? No, that's a line from Twin Peaks.
John Thorne: I know that millions of people are listening and all of them are my friends.
Josh Minton: When you can turn a Twin Peaks line into a pun and then it sounds like an insult that's master-level Twin Peaks knowledge right there. Well, John, if you don't mind, how about you give us a very brief overview of the mechanics of what this show is at the highest level. We've already done a kind of nonspoiler introduction, but let's really start to get into the details here, if you don't mind.
John Thorne: Well, you're talking to John's outtie so I don't know anything about it, sorry. Severance is a television series that's on Apple TV+. The first season has aired is that there is this company called Lumon industries, and there are people who work at this company who can choose if they want to go through a procedure called severance. And when they do that, they have this chip installed inside their brain, so that when they come into work and they get in the elevator, all their memories of their home life, are removed completely. So they have no idea of who they are outside of work. And so all they do when they get there is they know the people that they work with and that they have some idea, some vague sense really of what their job is. Essentially it's sort of a computer data type work and they don't really even have a sense necessarily of the bigger picture of what their job is. They work I guess like a nine-to-five type of job with their coworkers and then when they leave work, they get back in the elevator, and all their memories of their outside life return, but their knowledge and memories of their work-life completely disappear. So their outer self known as an Outtie in the show does not know anything about what they do at work, has no memory or awareness of their coworkers.
Scott Ryan: Let me interrupt you because you said something that I find interesting already. You said some of the workers can choose. Do we know that's the truth? Are we certain that there are workers there that do not have to go through severance? Now I'm not talking about Patricia Arquette. I'm talking about workers, not management, but workers?
John Thorne: I don't know. It was implied and maybe there was some dialogue having only seen the series once. So unlike when we talk about Twin Peaks, pretty explicitly, I've only seen the series...
Josh Minton: I feel like they, they do say that it's a voluntary program.
Scott Ryan: But who says that? So I don't know that I believe that, I mean, why do you guys think that? I don't remember.
John Thorne: I recall there was some discussion about the severed floor or the severed section of Lumon implying that there were non-severed sections of the company. I don't know for sure, Scott, you may be right, but I do seem to recall that at least early on there was this implication anyway, that there were severed and non-severed workers there. That may be something they've kind of moved away from and you're right, it isn't true, but I think they did imply it.
Scott Ryan: We'll see, I think while someone in the press may have implied this.
John Thorne: No, it was in the show.
Scott Ryan: Well, no, I'm saying to the outside world, not the press in our world, it's just, I'm talking about in the series. This is just a guess on my part. There is no one who works there, that's a worker, again, I'm not talking about the upper management, that is not severed. That would be my statement, which I thought was interesting when he said that because we haven't seen other people, like when they walk around that building is empty.
Josh Minton: Yeah, I don't know John I'm with you. I've kind of always assumed that it was a voluntary program. And I do think that that was hinted at in the Pilot.
Scott Ryan: I want to say it is voluntary, but it could be you wouldn't work there if you didn't do it; it's voluntary to work there.
Josh Minton: Are all the people in the Christopher Walken area, are those people severed?
John Thorne: They are on the severed floor. Don't forget. They're all on the same floor. Even though there is one department that's separated from the other that you have to walk down this maze of hallways to get to the other department, they've all gone through the elevator apparently, or multiple elevators that get you to this floor. I think you do see the main character Mark walk into the lobby and he goes in he's in the building. He goes to a locker. He puts his personal belongings that would be part of his outer self into a locker. He passes a guard, who is on the floor before he enters the elevator where the severance process is activated. And then he goes to work. And in the process of going down the elevator, he forgets his outer self. So I assume the guard is not severed because he didn't go down that elevator. I assumed that the other people who were walking around in the lobby and who are maybe taking an elevator up or just working in other offices on that upper floor lobby floor are not severed. They didn't go through an elevator.
Josh Minton: And the doctor in the episode we just watched at the beginning of the seventh one, I think it was titled "Differential Jazz," the doctor doesn't seem to be separate and she was an employee. Right?
John Thorne: We're really getting into the minutiae.
Scott Ryan: It's a good first bit though. Yeah. I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying any of us are right or wrong. I'm just saying as far as the debate within the show, I have a theory that there is no one else, that it's those four. And then it's the people in the Christopher Walken department. And that's it.
John Thorne: I think you're onto something there because the interesting thing is we rarely see many cars in the parking lot of this giant company, at least, you know, from the establishing shots that we've seen so far it looks like there not many cars there. There are not many people inside. So that struck me too, while I was watching it is, how many people really are in this building? And maybe it's just exclusively this smaller group that is being probably experimented on. And so as the story progresses, we see these various characters begin to question what they're doing, where they are, and whether or not what is happening outside of work. We follow the main character Mark. We only see his outer self, and he has various reasons for having gone through this procedure, cause he's been through a tragedy, his wife was killed in a car accident. He's undergone some trauma and he's decided to escape into severance to get away from it. But he starts to question whether or not he should have done that, and then of course there is some conspiracy storyline that starts to unfold, that there are people who are watching him outside of work. And there are people who have escaped severance and have been able to reintegrate themselves, their outer and inner selves. So all of that is the plot that is bubbling around the characters as the story progressed.
Josh Minton: The elevator that you mentioned, is a passageway that's not just a philosophical conversion that happens there. It's a technological one and it's a moral one. So that concept within the show operates on all three of those levels simultaneously. And those characters undergo essentially a moral, philosophical, and technological conversion every time they enter the severed floor. And that is fascinating. I never even thought that concept could be done on TV.
Scott Ryan: Not that we have to get into specifics, but just to set the table, I'm curious if both of you have had a job in real life that you truly hated?
Josh Minton: Yes, John?
John Thorne: Well, I mean, there were jobs I had that I was like, I should be doing something else, which is why I quit. I don't have one now.
Scott Ryan: When I walked into the building of Time-Warner cable and McGraw Hill, walking up those steps both times I was on the second floor was horrible. I mean, just that walk in the morning, you just feel it suck out of you. I don't know a damn thing about the writer of the show, but I think he had a job he really hated.
Josh Minton: That’s different than a job actively out there to enslave and try and kill you. Severance is taking it to a different level.
John Thorne: I think that's one extreme we can talk about; hating your job, and that maybe some of the impetus for how the show came to be. But I think a lot of people have worked at an office gone in every morning and worked with coworkers in cubicles and it grinds you down a little bit. I didn't hate it, but I didn't always want to be there. I wanted to be outside of work, but had to be there and had to kind of go through the motions of what that work entailed and the various obligations you had to that work and so that grinds you down a little bit, and I think everyone can relate to that. Whether you hate your job or just have one of those kinds of jobs. The British version of The Office explored that idea; they would frequently cut away from these mundane things that were happening. People making copies or people standing around a water cooler. And the implication was that it was dull. It was a dull place to be, even though the show was funny.
Josh Minton: It's interesting, the timing this show came out, I'll call that peak COVID, which did something to the workplace that has never happened before. The office office building was second only to hospitals in terms of the dread and the danger around dying, literally dying, when you walk into these places. And I feel like Severance just grabbed that emotion and put it right into the show.
Scott Ryan: But that is a complete coincidence. So I just heard Ben Stiller on a podcast with Dana Carvey and David spade. It's about Saturday Night Live. I don't remember the name of the podcast, but he said that he bought this script six years ago, and it's taken six years to do it. They were just about to film the pilot when COVID hit and it shut down. I don't think they even filmed a lick. They were just prepping and it shut down and then came back and they filmed during covid. The concept of the show was written six years before.
John Thorne: The creator of the show is Dan Erickson. The show was somewhat inspired by the movie Brazil, which is one of my favorite movies of all time byTerry Gilliam. Brazil is sort of a 1984 ish kind of story, but the main character goes into this sort of bureaucracy, this workplace where he's almost like a government employee and a lot of the people around him have very tedious work, and he dreams of being a hero and a fantasy to escape the tedium of work. That's a part of the tale. And apparently, that was some inspiration for the show. And I think Dan Erickson said that Ben Stiller was what steered it away from some of the craziness of Brazil because a lot of crazy things had happened and wanted to focus more on the characters and emotions.
Scott Ryan: Ben said what drew him to the pilot was that these people had the normal office banter of any office, but that they didn't know what they did.
Josh Minton: So they had nothing to small talk about their lives.
Scott Ryan: And he just said, he liked the idea that you had office workers who didn't know what their actual job was. And he said that's what drew him in just the idea that you would go to work and not know what you did.
Josh Minton: By the end of the season, they still don't know what their job was.
Scott Ryan: Josh throw out a topic from Severance that you would want us to discuss.
Josh Minton: Let's talk about the psychology of separating your home life from your work life. I work in tech and we talk a lot about life balance (and not work-life balance). There is no work-life balance. There's only life balance and work is a facet of that. So what happens when human beings remove the element of their productivity from their psychology? What does that do to people? And I think that the show does explore that. So let me ask you (Scott), in the job that you hated the most, if you could have severed yourself, would you have done it?
Scott Ryan: And I didn't expect to have to answer that question, which might be stupid. I should have considered would I ever have severed myself from it? I don't think I would have, because that job was soul-crushing for me. What I used to say, and I think everyone will enjoy this analogy, is my job was to stand under a pipe of vomit and the best part of the day was if you could only be vomited on half of you, that's what I used to say. When people ask them what I did for a living, I said, I stand under a pipe of non-stop vomit.
Josh Minton: Customer Service.
Scott Ryan: So the only thing that kept me alive was my sense of humor, fooling around with my coworkers, just like they do. That's one of my favorite parts. I wrote my first book there.
Josh Minton: So, that fed your art.
Scott Ryan: Yes. So it was me who kept me through that, which I think is an interesting concept. What do you think John?
John Thorne: I would definitely, absolutely not sever myself because the outside self was the motivator to get through the work I was doing. And I will tell a story. I'm sure you can relate to this, Scott. It sounds like you may have already had a similar story. As you mentioned, writing your book. I can remember distinctly. This was after Twin Peaks had been on TV in 1990 and 1991. I was at work and I had had someone who worked in England. We had, you know different parts of the company all over the world and they really, really came down hard on me for something. I can't remember what it was. It was petty, and it was just something that I was like why am I putting up with this? And that day, I applied to go back to graduate school in television and radio. And because I decided that I'm getting out of this. I'm going to become a better writer and learn more about television. And that combined with the fact that Twin Peaks had been on, put me on this trajectory for Wrapped In Plastic and then leaving that job. I can remember calling Southern Methodist University cause they had a TV radio program here in Dallas that day, and saying, I'm interested in joining your graduate program and they were like, we'd love to have you. And I got all the information and I went and I did it, and that's why I have a Master's Degree.
Scott Ryan: Very interesting. So do you consider that person to be one of the most important people in your life?
John Thorne: No, I think he's one of the least important people in my life.
Scott Ryan: But it's just interesting. I mean, that person changed your life.
John Thorne: He motivated me at that moment. I think I would've met Craig Miller would have done Wrapped In Plastic, whether or not I was going back to school or not. I happened to also feel like, okay, I want to know more about how television is made and it was sorta like a breaking point. Do you know what I'm saying? It wasn't like it was, oh, I was fine until that happened. Do you know what I mean? It was like the straw that broke the camel's back kind of thing, not to get off the hot topic here, but I think it allows us to talk about all our shared experiences of working in a corporate world and how, and why Severance appeals to us all because we can relate to these characters. But you know, the interesting thing is sort of flipping the question around a little bit is the characters have volunteered. Apparently, the characters have volunteered to go through this procedure. The company has not forced them to now we may learn more after this season, we don't know. But so far from what we see the characters, there's something in their outside life that they're unhappy about. The main character Mark is certainly unhappy in his outside life. He's trying to escape that by going to this place where he doesn't have to remember it. The reverse is sort of the case for me and I think for everyone else's, when you were at work, you wanted to remember your outside life. You didn't want to forget that. Maybe there are some people who do have unfortunate lives outside of work. And I've heard of this situation where people immerse themselves in work because they don't want to think about their bad marriage or the problems they have outside of work or whatever they might be. And so they escape into work to forget or remove that part of themselves. So I can't relate to that. For me, outside life was so much more interesting than inside life. And so I couldn't wait to get back home and watched Twin Peaks or read a book or go out with friends or whatever. And, and those are the things I thought about while I was at work.
Josh Minton: Well, there's a lesson from nature here. You know, when the cell needs to specialize in a certain way, it divides itself. And that new cell becomes a specialized version while the original cell does the same thing. So this ability to vivisect ourselves and dedicate a portion of our psyche to labor for a corporation and the other portion of our psyche, for whatever personal purposes we have, from a company's perspective, that's the best of all worlds, because they’ve got you without this influence from your outside life. You're not talking about your wife, you're not talking about any of that stuff. You're trying to figure out what those numbers on the screen mean, how do they make you feel?
Scott Ryan: Again, I think John's bringing up a really interesting point. Is it voluntary? And of course, yes, it is in the fact that Mark chose to do this. But the more interesting point is, do any of us have a choice? We really don't. We have to live. We have to eat. So you go there and that's what's interesting about the show is do the poor actually even have a choice? You have to give over whatever your corporation wants or they're going to take your house and you won't eat and you won't live. And so it's voluntary in the way that you check the I agree box on your Apple update.
Josh Minton: That's a great point. I will bring in one other element around the voluntary piece. In the language that the people who are protesting severance use, they use anti-abortion language in the show. The idea of, “You chose to bring this life into the world and you've sentenced it to a life of slavery. You, you brought this identity into the world. You're responsible for it. You're a horrible person.” That's the vernacular that's used against severance. So I would say that that adds an element of credibility to this being a voluntary program. But it's also very interesting how that anti-abortion language is applied in the show.
John Thorne: You know, I think you're touching on one of the most fascinating things about the show, which is the fact that the inner and the outer selves are not equal. The outer self has more power than the inner self. So there's the inner self, the person at work who's been severed, who cannot say, I don't want this anymore. People who are outside can choose that they no longer want to do that. They can say, I want to stop. I'm not going to go through this anymore. But the inside people have no choice and they really are second class. They really are almost slaves. We could use that terminology or serfs or endangered servants or whatever. But they, truly are victims of their outer self. And I think that's a fascinating part of the show. Let's talk about the character Helly, who's one of the most fascinating characters. We don't know a lot about Mark's three other coworkers. We know a little bit about them, but not too much. We only really see them from Mark's perspective. So at work, Helly is one of those characters who has been severed as she came into work. And the severed version of Helly does not want to be there. And she tries over and over again to get out. And to one point even willing to kill herself rather than be in this situation. And we find out later that Helly is actually an heir to the company. She's the daughter of the company's President or owner of the company. And she has chosen, for perhaps political reasons, to go into severance so she can prove to stockholders how great this situation is. And so the inner Helly is extremely unhappy, to the point where she's willing to kill herself to literally end her life if it means ending her outer self’s life. And the fascinating dynamic here between essentially two different selves. I mean, in a way, and I don't mean to get into Twin Peaks, but we're talking about two halves. We're talking about one half and another half and maybe not a good and evil, but a separate personality. And this inner personality is subject to the whim of the outer personality. And you start to sympathize with those inner selves, perhaps more than the outer selves. And in Helly's case, you're really rooting for the inner self because the outer self is kind of a bad person. And that's fascinating; they haven't explored that much and I look forward to what happens in season two with that.
Scott Ryan: And Helly is my favorite, the inner Helly. That was me. Everything she does, that was totally me. I was that employee. I was the troublemaker. I was always pushing management. You know, whatever rule they put down, I kicked it, I pulled it, I pushed it. And the thing about this show is the characters. You've got the employee that fights the power. You've got the employee that just works, the guy with the glasses. He just wants his koozies and his waffle parties. And he's just working. You got the old guy who's turned it into a religion. You know, it's a religious extension, I'm doing something here. And then you've got middle-management. He has no power. He has no authority. He also has to work, which was my problem at my corporation is you'd get this management that was making maybe 25 cents more than me, had no power, so the only thing they really could control over me was to try to belittle me. That's all they could do. And that's where Mark sort of is that he doesn't belittle them, but he is getting pulled, especially with Helly at the beginning where she doesn't want his shit.
Josh Minton: And Mark is a recent promotion because his boss has gone crazy.
Scott Ryan: Petey, I'm assuming that happened within the last couple of days before the pilot, right? One assumes very recently before the pilot.
Josh Minton: So that's in the pilot. All of that stuff is. They dump that on you and the only thing you can learn is about the characters going forward. But then the mystery unfolds through these characters. And that is very Lost-like. We talked about Lost as a comparison in how it approached unfolding the mystery through the characters.
John Thorne: Yeah, we've talked for the last 15 to 20 minutes here about the themes and the idea of characters and what's happening to them on a very personal and interior level. But there's so much more to the show in terms of the larger story that may be taking place of which we are getting only glimpses. We don't know everything like the inner workers at Lumen; we don't know everything that's going on. And so there are forces at play. Part of what makes the show so fascinating, like Lost, is that you get little glimpses of odd things that are happening in the company, or you get some news, like the previous worker Petey who was the supervisor, has made it outside and has some memory of what it was like to be inside. And he contacts Mark outside and there seems to be the implication that there's a larger group at work outside who are trying to help people, almost like an underground railroad, from being enslaved in Lumen to being freed outside. But we get glimpses. We get hints at that. It plays out over the season, but we don't get the answers to all those questions. Again, like Lost, we build to a climax with a lot more questions than we have answers, the implication being that there's a much bigger story at play. We haven't talked about Patricia Arquette, but she plays Mark's boss at work and she's kind of a hard-nosed boss. She's not the nicest person. We also find out that she is Mark's neighbor outside of work and she is not severed. She knows what's going on outside of work and what's going on inside of work. And the implication is she's spying on Mark and has another game at play where she's keeping an eye on him, wary of what may be going on with him, but also perhaps rooting for him potentially. I don't know because it doesn't spell it out yet.
Scott Ryan: That's an interesting thing. This is pure speculation, which is, to me, the most fun part of Severance is right now, we get to think, and we get to dream and we don't know. To you, John, what do you see in the Patricia Arquette character? Where does she lie? Why does she have that altar? Why did she freak out? What would be your speculation on that character?
John Thorne: You're absolutely right, Scott, we are at a place in this story where maybe it will never get any better than this because questions without answers and the answers that we imagined may be better than the ones that they will deliver for us. I certainly hope that they've thought it all through or thought it through a great way. We've all been in this place before where we're watching the first season of a show and it kind of turns out that maybe they don't know where they're going, or they're making it up as they go, and then it becomes less satisfying, particularly if you watch it again. But with the Patricia Arquette character, I guess I would maybe just throw out the idea that she's been passed over or she has a different philosophy than her higher-ups do. And she is subverting perhaps some of what the company is doing for her own ends. And I don't know whether they're nefarious or good, but certainly seem nefarious given the way her character behaves. But nevertheless, she does seem to want to reunite Mark with (big spoiler here) his wife, who is not dead and is inside Lumen. And she seems when she's watching them on a closed-circuit monitor, she seems to almost be rooting for them to make a connection. She's saying, come on, come on. And so, why is that? I don't know. Because she has this altar outside of work, it seems like she is faithful to the concept of Lumen and so is, it is not someone who's trying to subvert it, is someone who wants to support it. And yet she's also doing these hard-to-explain behaviors inside of work. So given those few clues, I tend to think, oh, well, maybe she really believes in Lumen but not the current path of Lumen and wants to see this technology used to different ends. She's obviously at odds with the board who tend to call in and there were some other clues again, having only watched once...
Scott Ryan: Josh, what is your take on Patricia Arquette?
Josh Minton: The first hint that we get is in her name, which is Harmony. What is the opposite of severance? Harmony. So John and I, we've discussed this previously, we both had the same reaction to that scene that he's talking about, where they're engaging in a room and Patricia Arquette is overseeing this thing. And I, like John, had the reaction that she's actually wanting them to break the severance. And I asked my wife and she said no, not at all. Harmoney is against them; she definitely wants to keep them apart; she’s just making sure that they're not getting back together. And so we had a totally different reading of that scene. And it sounds like you (Scott) probably had my wife's reaction to that scene where John and I, we were like, no there's something else going on here where I think she's subverting the severance. And then when I went back and realized that her name was Harmony, I thought oh okay well that does change things.
John Thorne: To support that argument, the Patricia Arquette character does go steal a candle from Mark's house, which was a candle that had important meaning to the relationship between Mark and his wife. And she tells his wife to use the candle as if she's trying to prompt the connection there.
Scott Ryan: I just want to pause and say to our listeners, this right here, this moment that you're experiencing, this is why Severance is so good. This is why television that you have to think about and television that happens when you're not watching it is the greatest of all television. Watching boring, straight down the middle TV. I mean, not that every show should be Severance, but our imagination needs shows like it. So, I totally disagree with you guys and I never even thought of it before. I don't think she's rooting for them. She is wondering if this is working? I think they chose Mark; they chose the wife and they want to know if he doesn't recognize her. She goes and gets that candle as a test. It’s not, I hope they recognize each other; it's, I hope they don't. I also have a theory that Patricia Arquette is related to Helly. I don't know, age-wise if sisters would work, but I think that she has been ex-communicated by the main guy who, by the way, I think looks like Matthew Reese. I think Patricia Arquette has been kicked out of that family or something. That's why she was so upset when she got fired because now she lost everything. I think there's a family connection between her and the leader, which now means Helly. Patricia Arquette has a lineage.
Josh Minton: So here's the first question. Now you all, everyone can go back and rewatch the season and we can come back and...
Scott Ryan: ...then decide. I just never thought she was rooting for them. I think she's curious, is this working? So I love that you see different things. That’s the greatest thing you can hope for from television is for people to see what they see. Very interesting. One of the things I just want to throw out is that I love the guy's glasses on the end of his nose. I've never seen that on TV before. Whoever thought that sets his character and he doesn't push them up, he doesn't care and that tells you who he is. He isn't a troublemaker. He doesn't even want to push his glasses up. He's the one that's going for the koozies.
Josh Minton: He's a computer.
Scott Ryan: Yeah. He just wants to work and nothing distracts him even his glasses. You just want to say push those damn things up and it's wonderful. Good job!
Josh Minton: How about the upper management guy who's wheeling the waffle cart in?
Scott Ryan: Ah, what a great actor!
John Thorne: Yeah, I think his character name is Milchick and Trammel Tillman is the actor.
Scott Ryan: I think Patricia Arquette is going to win an Emmy and she should, but if I could give an Emmy to anyone, it'd be to him. He did that dance, it was so creepy.
Josh Minton: We assume he's not severed, right?
Scott Ryan: We assume. But do we have any reason to think he is or isn't, I'm not sure we do?
Josh Minton: He can come onto the severed floor and does Patricia Arquette's character ever come onto the severed floor?
Scott Ryan: Yeah, because she was waiting for him when he came up the elevator; saying come to my office. Yeah, so she does come to the severed floor.
Josh Minton: Yeah. I don't think he's severed. John, do you have an opinion?
John Thorne: No, I don't think he is. He appears to the guy with the glasses (Dylan) outside of work.
Scott Ryan: I think we believe that he knows Dylan outside of work. I mean, they have a relationship.
John Thorne: Maybe, or just has a file on it and knows everything about everybody. I don't know. Again, we're at a place here where...
Josh Minton: ...lots of assumptions.
John Thorne: ... we're making a lot of assumptions. We can make all kinds of guesses. I mean, your guess about Patricia Arquette, Scott, is excellent! Of course, it could easily be that she's she was ostracized from the family and is working. Everything you described makes perfect sense from what we've seen.
Scott Ryan: It's the altar that made me ask why would you have that? Because there is something mystical that this goes back to the 1800s? So there is some mystical aspect to this show.
John Thorne: What if she's reintegrated successfully so that it doesn't work on her. So she goes outside of work and they think she's severed, but she's not. It's just another idea that I’m throwing out there.
Scott Ryan: I think she did take a phone call...
John Thorne: ...yeah, she did.
Scott Ryan: But I guess they could have turned her on. They can be turned on and off. So I guess that isn't proof. That's why I was asking about Milchick. Have we seen him outside? But John is right; we did see him outside at Dylan's house. For a while, I thought maybe he is severed, I don't know. But we’ve seen him out.
Josh Minton: I want to throw out one of my favorite things about this season is they established the scariest character on the show, the Head Of Security, and then they killed him. That is great. And the show is still just as scary, where all those elements that are frightening are still there, but they just showed that this it's not a person that you should be scared of.
Scott Ryan: Right, it's the corporation.
Josh Minton: It's the Lumen Corporation and what they don't care about is what's inside you.
Scott Ryan: Yeah. Very interesting. And let's talk about John Turturro's character and Christopher Walken. We haven't mentioned that at all. Josh, what did you think of their relationship?
Josh Minton: Well, first I love that Christopher Walken's only job seems to be dressing the place up with specific art in specific places. And that is where he and John Turturro connect is through this art. And the initial conversations that they start to have unlock something inside of them. So when we compare this to the scene earlier between the therapist and Mark and are they gonna look at this candle and have this connection? These two people actually did have a connection. And I would argue that it opened up something inside them that has almost allowed them to unsever. That was the impetus for John Turturro's character.
John Thorne: Fear and love open the doors.
Josh Minton: Are we talking about Twin Peaks again?
John Thorne: I can't help it. It's interesting. So John Turturro is Irving and he is attracted to Christopher Walken who plays Bert. They share this interest in art because Bert is the caretaker of the various paintings that they hang up, I don't know where they hang them up cause we never see them anywhere, but apparently they do. And what's fascinating, this sort of gets a slightly different topic, but the idea that maybe there's some bleed-through from the outer personality to the inner personality because Irving is interested in painting. He's interested in these paintings and we find out later that he's painting when he is at home. His outer self is painting an image from inside Lumen. So there's this bleed over that's happening. There is some overlap between the Inners and the Outers. And I'm getting off-topic of the relationship between those characters, but it reminded me of that. I think there's something there and the candle also implies the possibility of that maybe there could be some triggering or something. That's a fascinating thing to explore because, philosophically, then you come up with that idea that, well, if you really did erase your personality, would your personality re-present itself? Would the you that you are come back? That's the title of Ricken's book The You You Are, and even though it's a silly, stupid title, and that's where a lot of the comedy of this show comes in, it's sort of the core idea of the show is can you be separated into two different personalities or do you start to overlap? You started as a Venn diagram and the two circles come back together. That would be something that would be really interesting to explore. I don't know if the show has the time or a tendency to go in that direction, but we're seeing hints of that. And it's just a fascinating idea that if you lost your memories completely, would you still restore yourself?
Scott Ryan: So there's a negative thing that I wanted to talk about and this is going to show my age. I absolutely hated with a fiery passion that they had to put a warning that says someone's going to kill themselves in this episode and it happens at the end and we made it really tricky. So, you're going to be shocked when it happens.
Josh Minton: No, you're not!
Scott Ryan: You just told me and then you end the episode that way, like, oh my goodness. You're kidding. I can't believe she tried to kill herself. And it just made me think that if I ever get to do a TV show (and I think we all that will never happen), on my show, I'd like to say that if you need a warning, don't watch this show. You are consuming art. I'm sick of that. If they made The Sixth Sense today, would they say, warning he's dead? I don't like this idea. It's art. It just annoys me and you can say warning grown-up topics or whatever, but to say someone's going to kill themselves and have that be the end of the episode. It just frustrates me; that really burns me. I'm sure that Apple did that, not the writers of the show. We're all grown-ups and if you can't handle that kind of thing... That's my one complaint about the show. Do either of you have a criticism of the show?
John Thorne: Well, first of all, I agree with you, Scott, it was a trigger warning. Oh, there might be something in here that upsets you and I understand that for some people who may have undergone some similar type of trauma and they're watching a television show; they don't want to relive that. It was well-meaning. But I also agree with you that you just have to turn on the news and see how atrocious humanity can be to humanity and how terrible people can be. And that's the way the world is and we can't just shelter ourselves from that.
Scott Ryan: And before the woke police come and get me, I'm not against a trigger warning, I'm against a specific spoiler trigger. They could've just said there's violence.
Josh Minton: Adult Content. They've been doing it for 40 years.
Scott Ryan: You just didn't have to say suicidal attempt, but go ahead, John.
John Thorne: My criticism is for something that doesn't exist yet, so it really isn't fair at all, but the show upended itself at the end of the season and we can't go back to the way it was. We can't reestablish the show as it was when there's no way those characters can come back and work together in the office. And I think if they try to do that, if they try to go, okay, let's kind of put things back to where they were before, I will be disappointed. It has to move forward in the trajectory from where it is now. So it's not a criticism, it's a preemptive criticism. If anyone out there who's listening, who has anything to do with the show, do not try to go back to work. Keep going forward. Keep moving this story into new territory, because there's so much territory to explore. I will not buy if suddenly Helly and Mark and Irving are back at work sitting in their cubicles. I just can't see that. They would have to bend over backward to make that happen.
Josh Minton: I agree with that. I do have one criticism, and it's self-imposed. The show that really jumped out to me in comparison to this one was Lodge 49, which had a wackiness to it and a comedy that was built into the narrative and woven throughout. But there are very similar themes and elements to this ancient conspiracy, this workplace drama where it all unfolds and there's more than meets the eye, a bunch of really quirky characters. And so my only criticism, early on, was this show isn't funny enough. This show isn’t wacky enough. I'm not getting enough comedy out of this. And I made a comment to Scott. I said the show was not funny at all. And I think this is just my initial watch. Yeah, I know, you're going to argue that the guy with the book is hilarious. It turns out to be really good comedy.
Scott Ryan: And the sister. I think the sister too has a lot of really good lines. We haven't talked about the sister.
Josh Minton: These are people outside the organization.
Scott Ryan: Going to what corporations want; they don't want you to be funny at work. They want you to sit there and work and not have a life and all these things. So it's not directly comedy, but I think Dylan is funny.
Josh Minton: He is funny. John, what do you think about the humor part of it?
John Thorne: Mark's brother-in-law and the outside world writes these self-help books. He's sort of a famous self-help guru and, objectively, if you look at the book, it's just crap. You know, it's just silly statements. It's not well written. It's a junk book. Although I think he, the author, Ricken is his name, truly believes in it. He believes in what he's saying. So they take the character seriously. He's not trying to scam anyone. He believes this stuff, but he's sort of deluded himself to some extent, but anyway, that book finds its way into the work. And so the characters were reading the book without any context at all, which I think is the fascinating element here. And without any context to it, the book becomes very profound to them. And there are sequences where you hear the book being narrated and you hear some of it juxtaposed with their serious take on it. And I find that hilarious because some of the lines from the book are just so absurd. They're absurd and yet they make an impact on the inner workers, particularly the inner Mark. The outer Mark kind of dismisses his brother-in-law as a joke. He's kind of a joke. But the inner Mark who gets out for a brief time in the last episode has nothing but admiration for him. He's profoundly affected by him. The two different selves, where they integrate, or the way they separate what context means. All of us as television critics could look at something and think that it's just absolute junk, whereas someone else might look at it and say, you know what, I get a lot out of this. Beauty is in the eye of the holder, I guess.
Josh Minton: Yeah, it definitely is. And I'm usually that other guy, John. I'll find stuff, and say, this is incredible! And other critics are saying, what are you talking about? I was reading your Twin Peaks essay in the latest Blue Rose Magazine Issue 16 (get your order right now). And you had a statement in there that really jumped out to me, asking how do you navigate the world when you're essentially separated from your memories? And it just hit me, right here, that's what we're talking about with Severance. These people have been separated completely from their memories and in a much cleaner way than Twin Peaks The Return, but it's the same essential conflict. And I was wondering, John, did that jump out to you, that connection? Obviously, you wrote the sentence, but did it jump out to you with Severance?
John Thorne: Well, now that you mention it, I can make a connection. It's interesting in a way you've kind of reminded me of what I guess will be a very minor criticism of the show is that you have to take it on faith that these characters forget some things but not other things. So these characters are not blank slates. They know how to speak. They know how to recognize other people. They understand concepts. When Dylan finds out he has a son, he knows what a son is. The idea of severance is, how much are they removing? And so that's the conceit. You let that go. You're like, okay, well, we just assume that they've perfected this technology that removes the outer world.
Scott Ryan: I've never thought of this until just now, but the egg bar and the waffle party are ridiculously strange and they find it to be absolutely normal, as if you were at work and someone brought donuts.
Josh Minton: Or when you go to church and they say, here, drink this blood. It seems absurd. Doesn't it?
Scott Ryan: So, maybe it's just that when you get into that world, they accept the concepts and the normal person would say, what do you mean we're having an egg bar? There's no such thing as an egg bar. So the outtie would know that but the innie just accepts it because there's an egg bar. And they don't know any better. So I never considered thinking of why don't they think it's strange, but it could just be they have no idea that this is strange because they don't have that experience.
John Thorne: It's almost like severance does more than just remove memories. It also sort of resets you into sort of a childlike place, where you do accept some things that are naive, you know, like young children believing in Santa Claus. It doesn't seem crazy to them. It's only when you get older that reality comes in.
Scott Ryan: Why does Helly not have that childlikeness? Is that why she's fighting it so far?
Josh Minton: She's the one that screws it all up for everyone. She's the one that brings this swarm on.
Scott Ryan: She's from the family that's doing it. So that is an interesting thing. Why is she not childlike?
John Thorne: That gets to the idea of what was your motivation for going in? So Mark was motivated. He wanted to forget and so deep, deep down, he's like, this is great. I'm here and I'm going to do what I need to do. And you get the sense that maybe the other characters have similar motivations. Whereas, she went in maybe even against her will. She volunteered to go in for the good of the company but she might've been pressured by her father, or she knows deep down that this is a stupid idea but I'm just doing this for profit. I'm not doing it for any other reason, but I'm going to make more money in the end. And so that motivation for going in sort of carries over a little bit. And now she's not a happy person and not an accepting person inside.
Scott Ryan: What are you looking for in season two? These are not expectations because we know when you go into art with expectations, you get burned. But from where we are, where do you see this going?
Josh Minton: I would like to see all of this narrative wrapped up in season two so that season three could be something completely different, like Fargo. This concept (severance) could be applied in multiple future settings like the military or government. Imagine what a Severance season would be like if you were to take it and apply it to these different industries and the ways that we work with one another. I love these characters, but I don't think that they have like a six-season arc. I would like to see this wrapped up pretty quickly so that we can start to, as John said earlier, explore a bigger story of what's happening with this technology.
Scott Ryan: Interesting.
John Thorne: John, do you have any wishes? Well, you know, I slightly disagree. I mean, it's just in terms of what I want to see from the show. I'd like to see these characters for a while. I think there's a chance for layers of these characters to be stripped away or added on and we can see a larger story at play with them. There's a reason why Mark is there. Obviously, there's a conspiracy going on because he thinks his wife died, but she did not die. So they manipulated something outside in order to get her in there with him. So there's this much larger story. I don't want this show to go backward. I don't want in episode three of season two to see Bert, Dylan, Helly, and Mark sitting at their computers going, what do the goats down the hall mean? Let's go find out! I want something else to happen. Mark has the motivation to go back in now because he knows his wife is in there. So, obviously they're going to see these characters return to Lumen, but I almost want to see them infiltrate it now, instead of just going back. The show is sort of re-established that base story premise. I want it to move in a new direction.
Scott Ryan: My wish, I suppose it's kind of similar to John's, it's just a little more specific. I don't want the backstories. It's fine if they did a two-minute on how Mark was severed at some point. That doesn't bother me, but if next season starts and we're back two years or something, I want to go forward, because while that was kind of cool on Lost, it just didn't work for six years. Eventually, you're just like, I'm sick of that shit. And I like that I don't really care who Mark was before or what Helly was like. Don't do time jumps to get around because we have to drag it out. As soon as you get into, “We’ve got to drag it out,” your show is no good. And there's so much and the characters are great. I would be interested in all of them. So you don't need to give me time warp razzle-dazzle.
Josh Minton: Well, you know your pet peeve about second seasons, when they separate all the characters. John said he doesn't want them to be back at work together, but do we all agree that they should be together? Do not separate them, please.
Scott Ryan: Right, don't do an episode that just has an hour of Helly and then an hour of Dylan. That is a typical second season. Writers and producers love to do that.
Josh Minton: Yeah, don’t do that; it’s lazy writing.
John Thorne: I think they're not going to do that, necessarily, but I do think they're going to separate them. I think they all have motivations to go back in. Helly obviously has the motivation to go back in because her outer self wants to go back in. Mark has the motivation to go back and find his wife. Dylan doesn't really know about his outer self yet, so he's basically still in the same situation. I'm not sure what Irving’s motivation is to go back in, except that it seems like his outer self has all kinds of documentation on trying to uncover the secrets of Lumen. It's very possible that the characters will end up going back in but be reassigned and we will see them in different parts of the company and they may be trying to find each other again. Lost's tactic from season one to season seven always was to separate the characters and most of the plot is them trying to get back together again.
Scott Ryan: So, if you're listening at home and you're yelling at us, “What if their outties don't know?” But the management does know there's no way Patricia Arquette would let those four people get together. It's not just that they don't have the motivation to go in; the corporation knows Helly just screamed it to the entire board.
Josh Minton: They cannot let these people get back together. It's literally a liability to the company.
John Thorne: My biggest fear is that season two opens up and the characters go back to work and they're re-severed and we're back to where we were. They don't remember anything that we all know they went through, which would be a really cheap way of doing this. The show has gotta move forward.
Scott Ryan: Right. I think we've got it. And I think that they will. I believe in Ben Stiller as a producer, and I believe in the writing, music, set design, and costumers. These are all people working at the top of their game and I have faith in the show. I think they'll take us somewhere good.
Josh Minton: I do too. And just from a thematic perspective, this idea of where does love come from? Where does joy come from? These aren't intellectual byproducts. These are things that unite us on the deepest, most fundamental levels of our humanity, and I think this is truly the most interesting conversation happening with this show. And as long as they stick true to that north star, I feel like this is going to be one of the great shows of the 2020s.
Scott Ryan: Well, it really could be, because corporations are given so much power, and there's fewer of them, and they're asking more of workers, and they're firing people, or making them do three or four jobs and still get paid for only one, all those things are there. So these are the buzz of 2022 & 2023. Any final words on the show, John?
John Thorne: Only that I can't think of anything else I'm looking more forward to than season two of Severance.
Scott Ryan: My imagination was lit on fire for nine weeks this year and that was incredible.
Josh Minton: First time since Twin Peaks The Return for me.
Scott Ryan: Yeah, you always wondered during The Return, you wondered…
Josh Minton: …What the hell am I watching? (laughs)
John Thorne: Aren't you glad this was a weekly show and not dumped? I mean, gosh, can you imagine if the whole thing had been there, people would have burned through it in one weekend.
Josh Minton: Bring back the weekly shows. It's enough already with this binging.
John Thorne: Because that experience of talking about it, that experience of thinking about it, is so valuable. You remember the show better that way, too, than having watched it all in one dump. Yeah, and you can always binge it before season two comes out. So you can have that experience.
Josh Minton: I recommend that there is a value in watching the show back to back to back to back after you've seen it the first time. Because you will see commonalities between things that you wouldn't have noticed before, it's important to have that space.
Scott Ryan: Yes. Well thank you for joining us, John, and thank you, listeners. And I want to apologize to our listeners that we didn't cover this show and warn you about it early. I feel like we let our listeners down and then I remember we don't have any listeners, and then I feel better,
John Thorne: But maybe with Severance your listener audience will grow.
Scott Ryan: Maybe
Josh Minton: Well, thank you, John. We really do appreciate it.
John Thorne: My pleasure.
The Guests
John Thorne (@thornewip)
is the Co-Creator of both Twin Peaks magazines, the original Wrapped In Plastic, and the current periodical The Blue Rose Magazine.
John is also the author of the book The Essential Wrapped In Plastic: Pathways to Twin Peaks
and Co-Creator of the In Our House Now Podcast: An Inquiry Into Twin Peaks The Return.
Scott Ryan (@scottluckstory)
is the Co-Creator and Managing Editor of theTwin Peaks The Blue Rose Magazine, Co-Creator of the Publishing Company Fayetteville Mafia Press, Co-Creator of the Red Room Podcast (smart talk about Television).
and author of the following books:
FIRE WALK WITH ME: YOUR LAURA DISAPPEARED
Scott is currently writing a book about how cinema ended after the 1990s.
JB Minton (@joshuaminton)
is the Co-Creator of the Red Room Podcast (smart talk about Television) and Co-Creator of the In Our House Now Podcast: An Inquiry Into Twin Peaks The Return.
and author of the following books:
A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks: One Experience Of The Return
Ey Up! An American Engages With This Is England
Josh is currently publishing the “Small Awakenings” newsletter on Substack (this one) which includes essays, short fiction, a serial novel, and his basement music. He is also working on a book exploring the moral and civic implications of Norman Lear’s prime time television from 1971-to 1990.
On Severance Season One