‘Severance' Asks: What if We're Not Paranoid Enough?
As the second season of 'Severance,' the lavishly surreal series on Apple TV+, comes to an end, faithful viewers may be left with an unshakable unease. The show is about many things — work, grief, elaborate cut-fruit buffets — but this season proved especially interested in the unsettling notion that you can never truly know the people you love the best and trust the most and that some of them may actually mean you harm.
Now is a time of great paranoia, and an ambient feeling of distrust is being manifested in the streets, at the polls and on our screens. Spy films and secret-identity thrillers have long been genre staples, but the recent crop, including 'Severance,' is conspicuously concerned with a particular anxiety: the creeping fear that you can never truly know anyone, possibly including yourself.
'Severance' follows a quartet of employees at a mysterious company who've had their consciousness split into two identities: innies, the people they are at work, and outies, the people they are everywhere else. If its first season was an extended, absurdist riff on the notion of work-life balance — the outies carried on obliviously while their innies were consigned to a fluorescently lit, purgatorial office — the second season expanded the show's concerns to explore the ways in which people often aren't who they seem or profess to be.
Some innies were covert outies, while some outies were at war with their innies. In one story line, a woman cheated on her husband with his innie. One of the season's great reveals — spoiler alert if you haven't yet watched the whole thing — involved the emotional fallout when the main character, Mark S., realized he'd had an intimate encounter with a woman he thought was his office romance but was, in fact, the malevolent future head of the company. (Thanks to the mechanics of the show, those two people inhabit the same body.)
All this reflects our national dilemma, in which we're experiencing our own kind of bifurcated daily reality. We seem fated to follow every election from now on by looking across the partisan divide and wondering: Who are you? And how could you? We don't trust each other. We don't even believe we know each other. Maybe you thought you knew your kindly next-door neighbors until one day they unfurled a MAGA flag on their front lawn. Or perhaps you thought you knew who President Trump was until he decided to gut the Department of Veterans Affairs or threaten to annex Canada.
It's a destabilizing realization — that people who once thought they were involved in a common project, informed by common ideals, are living in different realities. And there don't seem to be any ready political remedies. While we muddle through, there's a fascination and perhaps even a comfort in seeing these anxieties reflected in the fun house mirror of our entertainment.
The 1970s were a similarly fertile period for paranoid thrillers, with movies like 'The Parallax View,' 'The Conversation' and 'Three Days of the Condor' (recently remade as the limited series 'Condor'). But those films pointed to the apprehensions of a different age, telling tales of vast, complicated conspiracies that played out at the highest levels of power — perhaps not surprising, given the real-life revelations of vast, complex conspiracies, whether Watergate or the efforts to cover up clandestine military actions in Cambodia.
In our mutually mistrustful moment, the enemy is not — or at least not only — a vast unseen conspiracy; it's our office colleague, our neighbor, our spouse. In 'Black Bag,' a new espionage film starring Michael Fassbender, a spy suspects that there's a turncoat in the ranks and that it may be his beloved wife. In 'The Agency,' an espionage series also starring Mr. Fassbender (a master of bloodless opacity), a C.I.A. operative becomes chillingly expert at ensuring that no one close to him knows who he truly is.
'Black Doves' delivers Keira Knightley as the seemingly benign wife of a government minister who has lethal weapons hidden in her clothes drawer and a lethal vocation hidden in her past. On 'Special Ops: Lioness,' an operative goes undercover to become the best friend of (then falls in love with) the daughter of the person she must kill. The recent readaptation 'Ripley' and the reboot of 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' reimagined their stories as parables about the perils of opening up to those closest to you — a mistake that can leave you distrustful, despondent or dead.
Perhaps we've become too culturally cynical to be titillated by whispers of official malfeasance in the halls of power (that familiar cry that the conspiracy goes 'all the way to the top!') given we're busy screaming that idea at one another online. Or maybe we've been numbed to vast conspiracies by the sheer abundance of theories on offer — Kate Middleton's body double, microchips in vaccines and the truth about the mysterious death of Jeffrey Epstein. Lacking a shared public reality, we've started to doubt our private ones.
The McCarthyite Communist scare of the 1950s was another time when paranoid thrillers turned their eyes on our fellow citizens — an era whose vibe, notably, is once again rearing its head. On the political stage, that era ended only when national figures stood up and decried Joseph McCarthy's efforts to wield cultural distrust to political ends.
On 'Severance,' reintegration is the painful but necessary process by which people restore their split personalities into one functioning consciousness. Such a resolution, no matter how painful or how necessary, is hard to envision for us in real life. For now, we're left to eye one another suspiciously while we enjoy our weekend viewing and worry that, until now, maybe we haven't been paranoid enough.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Juliana Canfield Lands Female Lead In Warner Bros. Action-Thriller ‘F.A.S.T.'
EXCLUSIVE: Succession alum and Stereophonic Tony nominee Juliana Canfield has landed the female lead opposite Brandon Sklenar in F.A.S.T., the action thriller from Warner Bros. Character details for Canfield are under wraps. In the film, marking the feature directorial debut of veteran DP Ben Richardson, a former special forces commando is tapped by the DEA to lead a black op strike team against CIA-protected drug dealers. More from Deadline 'Severance' Breakout Dichen Lachman Joins Rob Savage's Supernatural Horror Film For Universal & Atomic Monster 'The Cat In The Hat' Team Defend Warners' Decision To Shelve 'Coyote Vs. Acme': "We Are Lucky To Do Art In Our Profession But We Can't Lock Ourselves In A Basement" WBD's David Zaslav, Gunnar Wiedenfels Break Down Split That Will See Standalone Companies "Free And Clear" For M&A Script is by mega TV producer Taylor Sheridan, who was commissioned by Warner Bros prior to his current overall deal with Paramount, with the latter granting Taylor's request to render services, within Paramount's exclusive window. David Heyman and Jeffrey Clifford will produce for Heyday Films, along with Sheridan and Jenny Wood of Bosque Ranch Productions. Warner Bros. Pictures President of Production Jesse Ehrman and EVP of Production Kevin McCormick are overseeing the film, which will be released in theaters on April 23, 2027. Coming off of her first Tony Award nomination for her role in 2024's Broadway hit Stereophonic, Canfield previously portrayed Jess Jordan, the assistant to Jeremy Strong's Kendall Roy, in HBO's Succession, winning two SAG Awards as a member of the ensemble. She can also be seen in Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story, the FX series Y: The Last Man, and Peacock's The Calling from David E. Kelley. Canfield made her feature debut opposite Julia Garner and Michael Stuhlbarg in Kitty Green's #MeToo drama The Assistant and has also been seen in Marshall Curry's Oscar-winning short film The Neighbors' Window. The Yale MFA grad is repped by Brookside Artist Management and CAA. Best of Deadline 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More Men of Steel: Every Actor Who Has Played Superman - Photo Gallery 'Michael' Cast: Who's Who In The Michael Jackson Biopic
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Teyana Taylor, Ben Marshall, Zach Cherry & Kam Patterson Join Netflix's Kevin Hart Comedy ‘72 Hours'
Teyana Taylor (Straw), Ben Marshall (Saturday Night Live's Please Don't Destroy), Zach Cherry (Severance) and rising stand-up comic Kam Patterson (of Kill Tony fame) are new additions to Netflix's Kevin Hart comedy 72 Hours, the studio has announced. Character details are under wraps, but we understand that the project marks Patterson's feature debut. As previously announced, Marcello Hernández and Mason Gooding will also star. More from Deadline Juliana Canfield Lands Female Lead In Warner Bros. Action-Thriller 'F.A.S.T.' 'Severance' Breakout Dichen Lachman Joins Rob Savage's Supernatural Horror Film For Universal & Atomic Monster TKO Group Taps Netflix Public Policy Vet Dean Garfield For Newly Created Government Affairs Post 72 Hours follows a 40-year-old executive who hopes to save his flailing career by joining a group of twentysomethings on a wild three-day bachelor party, after he's inadvertently added to their group text. Tim Story (Think Like a Man, Ride Along franchises) is directing from a script by Kevin Burrows & Matt Mider and Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg. Producers on the project include John Davis for Davis Entertainment; Hurwitz, Schlossberg and Josh Heald for Counterbalance Entertainment; Hart, Luke Kelly-Clyne & Bryan Smiley for Hartbeat; Will Packer; and Story for The Story Company. John Fox and Jeremy Stein are exec producing for Davis Entertainment, along with Dina Hillier for Counterbalance, Vicky Mara Story for The Story Company, and Kayla Stamps for Hartbeat. Taylor is repped by WME; Marshall by WME, Mosaic, and Ziffren Brittenham; Cherry by CAA, Edna Cowan Management, and Felker Toczek Suddleson; and Patterson by WME, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Fox Rothschild. Best of Deadline 'Bachelor in Paradise' Cast Announcement: See Who Is Headed To The Beach For Season 10 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Kevin Williamson 'Loosely' Based ‘The Waterfront' On His Dad's Criminal Past: 'He Paid The Price'
More than 25 years after launching Dawson's Creek, Kevin Williamson is taking audiences to another body of water in one of his most personal projects yet. With Netflix's The Waterfront, premiering Thursday on the streamer, the series creator revealed that he was 'loosely inspired' by his family and his late father, 'a fisherman who got into a little trouble smuggling some drugs on his fishing boat.' More from Deadline 'The Waterfront': Netflix Reveals Premiere Date For Kevin Williamson Drama 'The Waterfront' Trailer: Coastal Family Turns To Drugs To Save Empire in Kevin Williamson Drama 'Nobody Wants This' Creator Erin Foster Talks Season 2 Timeline, Leighton Meester And Adam Brody Together On Screen 'But it was really small time stuff,' he noted to the New York Post. 'He was caught and arrested. He paid the price.' 'He always said, 'Wait till I'm dead.' But I do know my dad has a big sense of humor and I'm sure wherever he is, he's happy knowing I did this show,' added Williamson. Despite the patriarch's checkered history, Williamson remembers his father as 'the best man ever, and so I was like, 'how did such a good man take a left turn?' I feel like we're in a world now where everyone has a side hustle….Everyone's trying to survive and they're doing what they can just to pay the bills. I really wanted to tap into that struggle.' In The Waterfront, things spiral out of control when the Buckleys turn to drug smuggling in attempt to save their once-thriving North Carolina fishing empire. The series stars Melissa Benoist, Mario Bello, Holt McCallany and Jake Weary. Best of Deadline 'Stick' Soundtrack: All The Songs You'll Hear In The Apple TV+ Golf Series 'Stick' Release Guide: When Do New Episodes Come Out? 'The Buccaneers' Season 2 Soundtrack: From Griff To Sabrina Carpenter
