YOU’RE GOING BACK TO MISSOULA, MONTANA!!!
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Does anyone watch Severance? I really enjoy it and I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone talk about it here
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I loved it. I makes me happy that there’s this weird, confusing, and humane tv show with a huge budget. It looks beautiful (French-Canadian cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné doing phenomenal work). I particularly love Tramell Tillman and Britt Lower. Two actors I’d never seen before.
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Yeah I enjoyed it quite a bit too. The season finale was so good and I’m still thinking about a lot of the themes the show grapples with. It’s good stuff, sad I don’t get to look forward to each new episode though.
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Yea she’s doing amazing work. The episode she directed (the seventh one; the one focuse on Gemma) was excellent but what’s crazy to me is that I think that was her first time directing anything. At least, I can’t find evidence to the contrary. What an excellent debut
And yea, it’s a great mix of actors - I really like the two you shouted out as well. Even with the actors I’ve seen in plenty of other things e.g. Adam Scott, Christopher Walken, they’re doing things that I haven’t really seen them do before, which is exciting
Severance has been fantastic, I feel like we haven’t been talking about it almost out of assumption everyone else is watching it and probably loving it, or maybe like, it’s one of those shows that you want people to experience without burdening them with your expectations.
I’ve been pleased at how it’s managed to stay coy about some plot points as well as just not beating around the bush with other plot points. It’s really snappily paced and it respects its audience to either get it or trust that the mystery needs more time to unravel. Like, I think a lesser version of the show would have had (cw suicide) Helly R trying to hang herself with an extension cord be like a season 1 finale twist. The version of the show we got is going to put that in Season 1 episode… 2, I think. It’s in episode 3 if not.
Really shows that the creators and producers actually put in an enormous amount of thought in both respecting the premise enough to explore it and put it under scrutiny and let parts of it explode, all while still plotting out an interesting drama and mystery. Like, is it infidelity if your wife falls in love with your severed self? It’s very fascinating how complicated the show’s internal debate around the personhood of an alternate, internal, but entirely independent self has become. I think writers and showrunners with less respect for their audience wouldn’t have been able to bring the overall show to the level it is on. While of course also still being charming and often funny too of course.
It’s odd to see an honest to goodness big boy Science Fiction having such mainstream appeal and impact, and like @Punzai said it’s also fantastic to see it all look so freaking good too. And the overall visual direction on all levels has been phenomenal too. The Company Aesthetic of it all and the weird anachronism everywhere is fascinating and funny too.
As for the casting, well, idk what more needs to be said. It’s touching and sweet that Christopher Walken and John Turturro have apparently been friends and known each other for so long but have never collaborated so closely, and what a way to do it. I mean… even us with the woke mind virus who would perhaps normally be irked by the idea of a straight actor playing a gay character (sidebar, looked it up just now and though Turturro seems to be straight, apparently Walken is bisexual! Interesting), it’s hard to argue with how perfectly they portrayed these gentle refined old queens.
Also speaking of casting, real ones will know the intimidating mountain of a man with the worst haircut in Season 2, Mr. Drummond, is portrayed by Icelandic American Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, who was the lead in the quite good Icelandic murder mystery Trapped, about a grisly murder which occurs in a remote Icelandic fishing village. Ok, fine, I’ll admit I only know about it because a friend of mine married an Icelandic guy (now rising star in the Icelandic music scene) who I think contributed uncredited to the music in some way in Series 2 and they told me it was good. But Ólafur is great. In Series 1 of Trapped he is always having a nice glass of milk before bed and I loved that for him.
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I realised today that I really appreciate that it doesn’t try to be edgy or shock but when something shocking does happen (like Drummond’s death in the finale) it actually has impact.
Also, in the finale when Helly R and Mark S are talking in the dark, the close-ups on their faces lit with green and blue are stunning.
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Yea. I was already having the thought that Severance is very respectful of its viewers and their time, but this comment got me thinking about other instances where it elevated itself to the show that it is rather than succumbing to traps that a worse show would have. For example, in the season 1 finale, I think it would have been very easy for Devon to just not believe innie Mark.
The amount of trust that the show has built with its audience is great. My sister and brother-in-law are the two other people I know who watch and with whom I chat about the show. They’re very into the theorycrafting and trying to figure out the mysteries. I’m not not into that, but I think I’m generally more content going for a good ride and seeing how it all plays out. The relationship between the show and the audience is a great boon to both of us because they trust that their theorizing isn’t all for naught and I can enjoy the show because I trust that the writers know how to land the plane
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I think what is also remarkable is that this is pretty much Dan Erickson’s first real tv show he’s done. His credits are about 3 things.
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i like to imagine a righteous gemstones x severance crossover. danny mcbride being shown around lumon, he thinks they’re just a weird new culty christian sect. “i dunno i think they’re mormon or somethin’.” judy wants to get her husband severed for some reason. that kind of thing.
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Just watched Adolescence (TV series) - Wikipedia and I don’t know what to think. Its pretty amazing and also extremely stressful.
only men seem to move the plot forward, the women are there to support the men, and every male actor with speaking lines (bar two arguably) exhibit the toxic traits the show is criticising and I can’t work out if they were written like that consciously on purpose, or written like that merely because men wrote the script so those traits unconsciously were in the script, or acted like that because men acted the script.
Also the two main male actors are absolutely jacked which could be a coincidence. Considering the point of the show though it seems like to much of a coincidence.
Some examples - The cop is extremely bolshy and fucks up an interview because of it, and also threatens a confession out of another kid.
The juvenile detention centre guard mansplians the womans psychs job to her face.
The security guard at the hardware store is super confrontational.
I don’t know if the writers intended for the audience to read ALL men - online and offline - as the problem, or just online misogynists like Andrew Tate as the problem. Was the chatting juvenile detention centre guard chatty to serve as a distraction to increase drama, or mansplaining to make a point about misogyny?
There is a male teacher who is new and feckless and his class is rowdy and there is a male teacher who is strict and yells and his class is well behaved and was that on purpose?!?! Every male performance is like this.
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To the surprise of no one, the new season of love on the spectrum is amazing, even if only because of Adan and his father
Just FYI your spoiler tags are messed up 
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what did you think of the finale?
white lotus is a show i only ever “half-watch” (in the background on the exercise bike or when doing work), so take this with a grain of salt but i found this season to be even more hackneyed and ham-fisted than usual. i’ll refrain from further acerbity in case you or anyone else liked it, but i left that episode with a really bad taste in my mouth.
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Haha yes, that jumped out to me immediately too. Great stuff
I thought Season 3 started out promising, but all the plotlines fizzled out by the end and were more predictable than those in past seasons
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I have mixed thoughts, but I am on the side of liking this season overall. I’ll certainly watch a fourth season. I had some issues with season 2 as well, but saw nothing but praise for that season. I think that feedback loop may have led to the bigger-is-better mindset behind season 3 (seriously there are like 90 characters). I’ve seen a little more criticism toward this season and I’m hopeful we might get some course correction out of it. For me, season 1 is still the strongest. Season 2 lacked season 1’s bite, season 3 had the bite but lacked the cohesion.
Watching the season finale was one of the most stressful TV-viewing experiences I’ve ever had, so that speaks to how invested I was.
I think the easiest way to talk about the show is to power-rank the plotlines. I’ll just blur the whole thing to be safe:
The storyline that I felt was the strongest was the three women (MAGA, Actress, and Carrie Coon, as the internet has named them). It’s been apparent for some time now that Mike White’s greatest strength seems to be writing women, and so this was just a feast. Other storylines got repetitive quickly but running counter to that, I could watch these women gossip about each other for the entire show (which kinda surprised me because I have a visceral aversion to Real Housewives). I also liked the exploration of how friendship can be scary, especially as we age, because our friends see our real vulnerabilities.
The Ratliffs kinda-sorta worked…? For a while, at least. They’re entertaining. The patriarch and matriarch were both way too stagnant. Both are great actors and equipped to give us more. I feel like with Parker Posey’s character specifically, we got the quirky quotable-ness of Coolidge’s Tanya, but without the emotional heft. For a show obsessed with chekhov’s guns, I feel a little conned out of not seeing the family’s reaction to becoming poor.
Saxon’s storyline feels the most complete, which it should because I feel like he got 4 hours of the 8.5 hour runtime of the show. That being said, while I don’t expect a person to undergo a super dramatic change in a week, it’s still pretty nebulous what the change he experienced was, other, than, y’know:
Piper’s storyline makes perfect sense, and her line about being able to tell the food wasn’t organic got a laugh out of me. I can’t hate on it because the way she talks about the Buddhist monastery is pretty much the same way I talk about the entire east coast of The United States.
Lochlan… idk that was quite a ride. And I really enjoyed his parts of the show, but given that his storyline was set up to be along the lines of “is he gonna be more like the men or the women in his family? Duke or UNC?” etc. I feel a little robbed of any sort of clarity on that. I not only don’t know where he ends up but I also don’t know if he feels like he found a resolution. I liked the dreamy ocean sequence.
Belinda was fun to see again. I also really like Natasha Rothwell from Insecure. Her storyline is functional but it feels rushed. I kept having questions about how we were getting from point A to point B. Why did you give up on the greg/gary thing after the hotel manager brushed you off? Why are you never in fear for your life?? Her scumbagging Pornchai is rough, maybe a little predictable, but works. The low point of this plot for me is Zion. Not sure what else to say about him, just really didn’t work for me.
I think the two standout acting performances of the season are Aimee Lou-Wood and Walton Goggins. We can throw Sam Rockwell in there, too. I think this is the case of very talented actors selling a mediocre plot. Like you pointed out, it felt very cliched by the end. Plus, the whole thing is built on pretty tenuous foundation - we know that man “killed [his] father” and “ruined [his] life” but… how? We don’t really get the backstory we need to build on that. Chelsea is up there as far as favorite characters from the season go, but she’s a bit of a bodhisattva (I had to look that word up), not really changing much since she’s relatively enlightened, mostly there for the service of other plots. Ultimately, while their scenes were some of the most enjoyable bits of the show for me, I’m not quite sure what this plot is supposed to be or supposed to say. When they died in the shape of a yin yang
Completely gagged to see Greg/Gary again, but sadly that initial reveal is kinda the high water mark for this plotline. He has to be there for the Belinda plot, but I grew more and more skeptical of his presence as the show went on. I’m especially skeptical after the storyline culminated in… not much. Chloe was fun
Sritala + Fabian. LOVE the representation of one of the core truths of the universe: older Asian women all have immaculate taste in watches. She was always fun when she popped up. Fabian is also okay. They’re both pretty flat characters. I think the absence of a strong hotel manager character ala Armond/Valentina is felt throughout. That center could’ve helped ground a lot of the storylines but instead it seems like each party had their own designated hotel staff to interact with (The women with Valentin, the Ratliff’s with Pam) and we never crossed streams.
Those Russians. Wait, wut? They just… get away with it? That feels… bad. Esp since it kinda runs counter to the Hawaii season where one of the guiding principles is that poors can never get away with bad behavior. On a positive note, Valentin is hot and I would do what Jaclyn did.
Mook and Gaitok… Look it’s cool that we got the kpop stans watching and such, but… oof. Really dull a lot of the time. So repetitive. Yet, at the same time, unmemorable.
Overall, it felt like too many plates for the show to keep spinning
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white lotus season 3 plot lines ranked on how fucking gross i thought they were
five - the blondes
four - the staff
three -walton goggins and aimee lou wood
two -belinda and gregary
one - the ratliffs
put that entire family on a very expensive submarine trip
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