He is completely thrown when he meets his “innie’s” boss Harmony (Patricia Arquette) at the party going by the name of Mrs. Mark, attending a book reading as his “innie,” discovers the author of a book about control and humanity that he had been secretly reading at work is actually his brother-in-law. The performances and delivery style, with the camera flipping back and forth among the three characters wandering the real world as their “innies,” is fabulously shot and wonderfully acted. The final episode, particularly the last 15 minutes, defines edge-of-your-seat tension with each passing scene.
The big plan is full of nail-biting tension It all comes to a head in the explosive finale. When Mark meets new co-worker Helly (Britt Lower) who goes to drastic measures to unsuccessfully convince her “outie” to remove her from this horrifyingly monotonous existence, he starts to see more and more signs that something is amiss.Īs various events occur, Mark, Helly, co-workers Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Irving (John Turturro) shockingly discover that Lumon can activate an “innie” in the outside world if necessary through something called “overtime contingency.” Thanks to Helly’s passionate determination and hatred of her existence there, they figure out how this is done and concoct a plan to release their “innies” into the real world for just long enough to reveal the truth to the public. The tension begins to build in this moment, slowly progressing through each episode. While Mark’s “outie” doesn’t know who Petey is, he can’t shake the feeling that this guy’s for real. The fact that Petey seems conscious of both his “innie” and “outie” is puzzling. Triggering his doubt is a former colleague and work friend Peter (Yul Vazquez), who approaches his “outie” in the real world to warn him of…something. By and large, it’s like you’re two different people, one of whom is a prisoner to the other.Īs Mark goes through the motions in his mundane day-to-day job, working in a nondescript room doing seemingly nonsensical, monotonous microdata refinement work on an ancient computer, he slowly begins to question what’s really going on. Inside the office, you look and even, to some degree, act the same aside from confusion about your actual identity.
There are no distractions: You don’t know about your sick family members, troubles with the spouse, worry about kids (or even if you have any), or that you live alone. Likewise, when they hop on the elevator and rise to the severed floor, the “innie” is activated and they completely forget who they are in the real world. Once they get into the elevator and head down to the lobby of the Lumon Industries building, their “outie” portion of the brain kicks in and they forget everything about the office. No severed person ever takes their work home with them. The Severance program is promoted as the ultimate way to achieve a healthy work-life balance. In the beginning: The ultimate work/life balance In participating, Mark hopes he will be better able to cope through a workday by forgetting about his sorrows for eight hours, then return to normal life with his family and friends where he can continue to grieve and take things day by day.