Severance

I want to take a moment from CD sales to say how much I am loving Severance. I had heard great things about it but had not watched until recently.

Why? Because I resent that there are now all these streaming services! And I drew the line at Apple TV. But the kids just got new iPads and it came with three months free. Yay.

This show is brilliantly done. It should be living proof of what aspiring screenwriters are told day after day: concept is king. This is a genius-level concept—splitting your home-life memories from your work-life—because it is so loaded with drama and humanity.

Can I say that the concept actually occurred to me years ago? But slightly differently. I hate working out at the gym. It’s boring and uncomfortable. So I was wondering if I could just erase each memory of a workout—what would that be like? And the truth is it would be pretty awful. But endlessly interesting to contemplate.

I was a little concerned at the beginning of Severance at the abundance of “mystery bombs.” We know practically nothing about what this crazy company is doing, and of course it is intriguing—but this kind of thing, if unplanned, can quickly go down the toilet.

However, it’s clear the creators worked everything out. And that they’ve learned the great lesson about the solution to any mystery: make it emotional. Because it’s always disappointing to finally learn the answer to a great mystery—but if you replace it with a feeling, we’ll be fine.

I started at the pilot a few weeks ago and now am caught up to the new episodes. Season 2, episode 7, premiering Thursday night, is probably the best directed episode of television I have seen since that Rian Johnson Breaking Bad hour. It was the directorial debut of the show’s ace cinematographer, Jessica Lee Gagné, and I would offer her a movie based on that alone. I’ll bet her agent’s phone is blowing up and good for her!

I also quite like Theodore Shapiro’s score, which has a rarity in this day and age—a theme. However, it seems to be David Shire’s theme from The Conversation.

You tell me:

Anyway, I don’t really care, but it seems pretty blatant.

One other word to aspiring writers: check out the Severance pilot that Dan Erickson wrote quite some time ago. It changed substantially (and for the better), which why concept is king: people (namely Ben Stiller) loved the idea and stuck with it to make it a reality.

It’s way better in showbiz to have a shitty script based on an ace concept than an ace script from a shitty concept.

Eagerly looking forward to more Severance! And bravo to everybody involved.