We missed Severance (2022) release for obvious reasons. But we discovered it just recently, and it’s very good.
Idea#
Severance tells starts with a story of a man, who works for this corporation, Lumon. It’s unclear what the company is doing, but it has a very distinctive approach to their employees (not all, though): their work memories have to be separated (severed) from their personal memories. So at work, they don’t remember who they are. At home, they don’t know anything about their job.
I found this idea to be fascinating.
It’s what I myself been thinking about for decades now! For me, it’s just so very difficult to distill this personal me thing from my work. As much as my professional life affects my personal life entirely. It’s just who I am.
- Without taking great care of some things in personal life, my work would become very different.
- Without being able to implement something design-wise or computers-wise in my personal life, it would become very different too.
See my visual self-presentation for that.
This TV series is only started (only the season 1 is being filmed), but I hope this story would get unfold.
Aesthetics#
On a separate note, I just like to mention the whole visual aesthetics of the show. It’s beyound good. I’m struggle to formulate this style, it’s some old tech 80s vibes set in a modern environment. To me, it feels very Apple-ish too, for this clean aesthetics. I would say, this TV series is worth watching for aesthetics only. But the idea of the whole series is what got me curious to watch the show.
By the way, the location of filming is the Bell Labs’ office:
The Bell Labs Holmdel Complex in New Jersey stood in for Lumon HQ.
