Sev­er­ance and the myth of work-life balance

In the last cou­ple of years the ongo­ing dis­course sur­round­ing the aspi­ra­tional work-life bal­ance has explod­ed, with the pan­dem­ic lead­ing to re-eval­u­a­tions of work and play seep­ing into main­stream dia­logues. As we’re con­tin­u­al­ly remind­ed: we all have the same 24 hours to work hard, earn mon­ey, and sub­se­quent­ly work hard­er to earn more mon­ey. With the pan­dem­ic putting a strain on liveli­hoods, the time to exist out­side of work has only become plagued by the anx­i­eties of employ­ment. Ben Stiller’s new show, Sev­er­ance, asks whether a bifur­ca­tion of the brain would offer any solu­tion to this dilem­ma. More­so, is the lived expe­ri­ence of total sep­a­ra­tion between life and work a dream or a nightmare?

The Apple TV+ show from the mind of Dan Erick­son revolves around a team of data input­ters – Mark (Adam Scott), Irv­ing (John Tur­tur­ro) and Dylan (Zach Cher­ry) – work­ing on an office floor. All the Lumon Indus­tries employ­ees have under­gone a sev­er­ance pro­ce­dure: the input of a brain chip that splits the work­ing self (the innies) from the out­side world self (the out­ies). As they enter the ele­va­tor each morn­ing and exit to leave each evening, they switch between innie and out­ie states, each hav­ing no con­cept of what the oth­er is like or doing with their lives. It is the epit­o­me of an impen­e­tra­ble work-life bound­ary. But when new arrival Helly (Britt Low­er) rejects life as a dead-mind­ed work­er, the work­force begins to reassess the true nature of their work-life relationship.

On a bad work­day, the idea of being able to turn off work mode sounds like heav­en, but Sev­er­ance expos­es how this hard-set divide can become hell­ish for the innie trapped in a nev­erend­ing work­day. The cen­tral quar­tet of innies spend their days in an office cubi­cle void of day­light, on ass-numb­ing chairs. The per­ils of cor­po­rate drudgery are the norm and moti­va­tion comes in the form of mun­dane perks like Lumon-brand­ed erasers, fin­ger traps, and the promise of a waf­fle par­ty (it has to be seen to be believed!) if they have a suc­cess­ful quar­ter. The incen­tives are as tedious as the end­less stark white cor­ri­dors of the build­ing that resem­ble a rat maze.

Sev­er­ance deploys famil­iar­i­ty – office romances, a dis­taste for the high­er-ups, bru­tal­ly min­i­mal­ist office cubi­cles (there is some incred­i­ble set design) – to ground its astute insights into cor­po­rate cul­ture. But tears begin to appear in this work­place frame­work with Helly’s frus­tra­tions and a mes­sage from, Petey (Yul Vasquez), a pre­vi­ous­ly sev­ered work col­league of Mark. Petey is try­ing to warn Mar of the insid­i­ous intent behind the sin­is­ter biotech cor­po­ra­tion he works for.

Scott’s per­for­mance is mag­ic here, essen­tial­ly play­ing two entire­ly dif­fer­ent per­sonas that are grad­u­al­ly merg­ing into one man at odds with every­thing he’s ever known. Inside Lumon, they all bow down to the revered Kier Egan whose demand for sub­servience is enforced by Ms Cobell (Patri­cia Arquette) and Mr Milchick (Tramell Tillman).

Unsev­ered, Cobell and Milchick piv­ot from agree­able to unfor­giv­ing with fright­en­ing speed. Along­side the pair, some employ­ees also hold up this sta­tus quo, like Irv­ing who is such a stick­ler for the rules that he has mem­o­rised com­pa­ny pol­i­cy and takes new recruits around the office with the astute com­pre­hen­sion of a muse­um guide.

Union­is­ing is impos­si­ble, rules are law, and inter­de­part­men­tal friend­ships are for­bid­den. The lat­ter is test­ed when a con­nec­tion between Irv­ing and Burt (Christo­pher Walken) teeters towards some­thing more: a bud­ding office romance that has both of them will­ing to aban­don the employ­ee code of con­duct. As we learn more about each employ­ee through water­cool­er small talk, it becomes clear sev­er­ance has mate­ri­alised as a cop­ing mech­a­nism for some of them. Mark, for instance, agreed to the pro­ce­dure after los­ing his wife. The show’s nuance is two-fold: this rela­tion­ship with work sets one half of the self free but impris­ons the other.

As rebel­lion bub­bles inside the walls of Lumon like brew­ing office cof­fee, the show delves into unset­tling ter­ri­to­ry. There is a deep intel­li­gence to this intri­cate, Kauf­man-like sto­ry­telling that refus­es to spoon-feed easy answers to any of the inter­wo­ven plot points. For instance, pre­cise­ly what these pro­tag­o­nists are work­ing towards – by sort­ing encod­ed lines of data into unnamed files by their emo­tion­al response to the num­bers – is unknown, but a gut feel­ing says it’s malev­o­lent. Sev­er­ance demon­strates how emo­tion­al­ly drain­ing mun­dane office life can be and in doing so paints Lumon in the same glossy, crack-cov­er­ing exte­ri­or that coats our real-world cor­po­rate culture.

Although con­cep­tu­alised five years ago, this propul­sive, idio­syn­crat­ic show arrives with a strange­ly time­ly sting. In our cur­rent cli­mate, the work­place has under­gone sub­stan­tial trans­for­ma­tion in the pan­dem­ic and Sev­er­ance is all too aware of the real­i­sa­tion that the work-life bal­ance is unsta­ble. The show, quite unin­ten­tion­al­ly, feels like a response to the fact our bed­rooms now dou­ble as offices and the bound­ary between work and home has shrunk indef­i­nite­ly. Sev­er­ance posits that the dream of a tru­ly sep­a­rate work-life bal­ance may, in fact, be a nightmare.