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cimoreneI enjoyed Severance up to the end. Great plot and acting and all that. Fantastic visual design.
I had no idea from the Tumblr gifs I saw before we watched it that the guy from Parks & Recreation was the main character; it sort of looked like an ensemble show? But he's so much the main character that the entire CGI credit sequence is images of him going through like... a high-tech sort of James Bond title sequence visualization. He's not as awful as the generic white male protagonist often is though, or else it's just that there's enough screen time for other characters. I didn't really mind it (much).
The plotting out of the various little cascading coincidences in the individual and overall plots was beautiful, and the various little reveals were pretty good, I think.
I was expecting, however, for the season 1 finale to have another BIG chunk of clue, if not a partial reveal, of what it is the data refiners (or all the severed workers as a whole) are actually doing, and that didn't happen. Unless I missed a large hint that's going to pay off early in season 2 I guess?
But it seems like an ominous sign. It's a lot easier for a first season of a show with a big conspiracy to come out looking brilliant and omniscient than to keep it up, and so many times over the years it's turned out that they were actually Mystery Box writing (that is, they didn't have the answers planned). Alias, Lost, and Orphan Black come to mind. If they've started writing this show without having DECIDED how the company is making their money, why they isolate their memories, AND what it is that they're doing... then that's actually bad writing, IMO, regardless of the interesting start. I might go so far as to say shitty writing.
They haven't given me any other reason to suspect they haven't planned it out, mind. Everything looks great so far. It's just that the way hints and mystery payoffs are presented is fairly traditional so far and it really would have made sense to give us more clues there because it's... central to the underlying logic of the universe, in the way the more on-screen relevant issues of the characters' personal backstories (the dead wife, the surprise heir, the married guy) are not, even though those things have a bigger emotional and visual impact. Like... ideally, I think, the plot would have managed both.
Maybe the line about making "the whole world Kier's children" was their idea of that clue: obviously this can't be a sincere proposal to employ the entire world, because that would just be so logistically implausible..., so is it a hint that they are really a cult more than a for-profit company, and their primary aims are ideological and not economic at all? Is this a plan to install brainchips in everybody, without hiring them, and for a reason that therefore has nothing to do with secrecy? But the problem with this theory is that... I feel like it's not a big enough clue.
As always, I will keep watching until such point as I become 100% sure they're talking out of their asses and don't know the answers to the mysteries themselves, at which point I will stop watching with extreme prejudice and remain bitter forever. Fingers crossed that won't happen again!
I had no idea from the Tumblr gifs I saw before we watched it that the guy from Parks & Recreation was the main character; it sort of looked like an ensemble show? But he's so much the main character that the entire CGI credit sequence is images of him going through like... a high-tech sort of James Bond title sequence visualization. He's not as awful as the generic white male protagonist often is though, or else it's just that there's enough screen time for other characters. I didn't really mind it (much).
The plotting out of the various little cascading coincidences in the individual and overall plots was beautiful, and the various little reveals were pretty good, I think.
I was expecting, however, for the season 1 finale to have another BIG chunk of clue, if not a partial reveal, of what it is the data refiners (or all the severed workers as a whole) are actually doing, and that didn't happen. Unless I missed a large hint that's going to pay off early in season 2 I guess?
But it seems like an ominous sign. It's a lot easier for a first season of a show with a big conspiracy to come out looking brilliant and omniscient than to keep it up, and so many times over the years it's turned out that they were actually Mystery Box writing (that is, they didn't have the answers planned). Alias, Lost, and Orphan Black come to mind. If they've started writing this show without having DECIDED how the company is making their money, why they isolate their memories, AND what it is that they're doing... then that's actually bad writing, IMO, regardless of the interesting start. I might go so far as to say shitty writing.
They haven't given me any other reason to suspect they haven't planned it out, mind. Everything looks great so far. It's just that the way hints and mystery payoffs are presented is fairly traditional so far and it really would have made sense to give us more clues there because it's... central to the underlying logic of the universe, in the way the more on-screen relevant issues of the characters' personal backstories (the dead wife, the surprise heir, the married guy) are not, even though those things have a bigger emotional and visual impact. Like... ideally, I think, the plot would have managed both.
Maybe the line about making "the whole world Kier's children" was their idea of that clue: obviously this can't be a sincere proposal to employ the entire world, because that would just be so logistically implausible..., so is it a hint that they are really a cult more than a for-profit company, and their primary aims are ideological and not economic at all? Is this a plan to install brainchips in everybody, without hiring them, and for a reason that therefore has nothing to do with secrecy? But the problem with this theory is that... I feel like it's not a big enough clue.
As always, I will keep watching until such point as I become 100% sure they're talking out of their asses and don't know the answers to the mysteries themselves, at which point I will stop watching with extreme prejudice and remain bitter forever. Fingers crossed that won't happen again!
