Severance

Introducing “The Reintegrators”

[Note: There are no spoilers for Season 2 here.]

It’s been three years since the first season of Severance ended, and now, finally, Season 2 is being released. Here is what the series is about (from Wikipedia):

Employees working on highly classified projects at the biotechnology corporation Lumon Industries are required to undergo "severance", a medical procedure that implants a device causing them to lose all memories of the outside world while working within the basement floors, and having no memories of their work while outside. This creates two separated personalities for each employee: their "Innie" working at Lumon, and their "Outie" living their personal lives.

Severed employee Mark (Adam Scott) leads his coworkers Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Irving (John Turturro) at Lumon's Macrodata Refinement Division. Mark must balance the challenges of managing his department, including the onboarding of a rebellious new Innie, Helly (Britt Lower), and his increasing disquiet at the cult-like Lumon. Mark's Outie must deal with the personal tragedies that led to his decision to become severed, and the sudden overlap of his separate lives when mysteries from Lumon begin to intrude into his Outie life.

And here’s the trailer for the first season.

I love the series. It’s well-acted, well-written, beautifully shot, and deeply imaginative. And it’s philosophically rich, essential viewing for anyone interested in personal identity—and isn’t that everyone?

This post has three goals.

First, I just want to tell everyone that the new season is out. Go watch it!

Second, you can’t appreciate the second season without getting up to speed on the first one. Even if you’ve already seen it, it’s been three years! You can always just re-watch the whole thing. Or … you can listen to me talk about it with my friends. Once the first season ended, David Pizarro and Tamler Sommers were kind enough to invite me on their podcast, Very Bad Wizards, for an extended discussion. Listen to it here:

Finally, David, Tamler, and I have just started a new series for paid subscribers to Small Potatoes (or Patreon subscribers to Very Bad Wizards), where we discuss the episodes as they come out. We just recorded a discussion of the first three episodes, next we’ll do 4 and 5, then 6 and 7, then 8 and 9, then episode 10. We’re calling our series “The Reintegrators”.

Our conversation about episodes 1-3 can be found below. I hope you like it. A handshake is available on request.