Sunday Morning! “Severance”

While reminiscing about some of the older regulars at the dive bar I used to frequent (and about myself, to be fair), an image went through my head: a lab rat in a cage pushing pedals for food and drinks. It occurred to me that the rat isn’t in the cage because it drinks more water or eats too many food pellets. On the other hand, though, it’s not getting out of the cage if it practices self-discipline. For the most part, its behavior doesn’t matter.

I realize that’s a pretty trite image (we’re all rats in cages, maaaaan!) yet it comes to my mind when thinking of self-destructive behaviors and individual choices, probably because of the famous “rat park” experiment that seemed to show lab rats would keep pushing the button for heroin as long as they were kept bored and unfulfilled. We simply don’t understand the capacities of most animals, nor of our fellow human beings, and the implications of gaining that understanding might be too troubling to consider. Often times, who you are is simply a matter of where you are.

A friend once told me, in regards to why he drank so much every night after work: “The truth is I’m really bored.”

This week, I watched the streaming series “Severance,” a surreal depiction of four very likeable human rats in a very unstimulating corporate cage pushing buttons; whatever it is they’re doing is unclear and absurdly abstract. What the company, dubbed Lumon Industries, does is a guarded secret. In fact, due to a sci-fi brain implant, the four have no memories of life outside of work. Their work persona is a totally separate existence that gets paused each day when they leave the office. Ostensibly, this is because they work with top secret information. But nothing they’re doing seems to have any more meaning than pushing pedals for food pellets, so it’s unclear what exactly they might reveal to others. Their life outside of the office has its problems and affinities. However, their corporate overlords seem to be manipulating that realm as well.

In other hands, this might be a bleak scenario — and it is that as well- but the show’s creators (Dan Erickson, and directors Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle) seem to be inspired by a sort of Charlie Kaufman sensibility, in which things are a bit skewed and absurdity often bubbles up to the drab surface. Zach Cherry plays the overachiever Dylan, whose high level of productivity has won him uninspiring incentives such as sets of Chinese finger traps and “waffle parties.” John Turturro’s Irving seems the most stuck on rules, until he becomes enamored with the artist Burt (played by the always singular Christopher Walken) who creates company propaganda. The newest worker, Helly (Britt Lower), is the most clearly clued in on how terrifying all of this is, while the focus of the series is on the newest manager, Mark (Adam Scott), who is trying to keep order in his department, while his outside self is harboring a former co-worker who seems to have escaped the implanted programming and gone rogue.

In keeping with the Kaufman sensibility, the offices of Lumon are more than a bit anachronistic. The set design and computers seem to be frozen in the 70s, while the corporate ethos recalls Henry Ford or Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. The fictional company was founded, presumably in the early 20th century, by a family called the Eagans, and we seem to have reached the point in which the original figures of a cult have been followed by the founders of a religion: less in the sense of going from Christ to Paul than Hubbard to Miscavige. What Lumon Industries actually produces is totally unclear, but by the end we’re pretty sure the workers themselves are the main product.

So, why in the world would anybody agree to work in such a place? In the case of Mark, the answer is grief: his wife was killed in a car accident and burying himself in this kind of work is a sort of sanctuary from his pain. He can’t deal with the reality of his life without her and, well, some guys would rather get “severed” than go to therapy. I have mixed feelings on how these streaming series tend to rely on grief as a trope that imbues characters with instant “depth”; life isn’t confusing and painful enough without someone dying? And I’m not sure a sensible person still wouldn’t run screaming from an alternate existence in which they can’t ever leave the office, no matter how much pain they’re in.

And, maybe, I should digress for a minute to talk about my real problem with these streaming series, which seem to have become the central storytelling form of this era. Whenever I watch a series like “Severance,” I can’t help but ask: Why couldn’t this be a movie? Aside from economic reasons, of course, why is this an 8-hour series, instead of telling its story in 1-2 hours? Most movies hew to a three-act structure, and these series quite often take that structure and simply extend the second act to excruciating lengths. The first episode or two dumps information on us, and the last episode is action-packed; but everything else is a slog. In the case of “Severance,” it sort of works because these are people whose lives are a slog of endless repetition. But I found some of the middle episodes as hard to get through as, well, a working day. It could have been a movie and still convey that corporate work sucks.

Nevertheless, I will say the final episode really messed me up- I spent the next day in bed, in fact. You see, the Mark character was once an academic teaching history, until he lost his wife and buried himself in stultifying work to flee the pain. Which, on one hand, is a little ridiculous. On the other hand… a decade ago, I was an academic teaching history, until I lost my marriage, and I buried myself in stultifying work to escape the pain. People will say “Work won’t love you back,” but sometimes you don’t want it to; sometimes, you want it to make you hurt in a different way than you’re already hurting. So, maybe, it’s not that absurd.

But if these series are going to over-rely on the grief trope, maybe they could finally bury the idiotic cliché where every middle-aged person who is no longer married lost their spouse in a tragic accident, since it’s more “sympathetic” than divorce? Sometimes, they’re still alive and just cease to love you, and it feels like they died. Or, like some part of you died.

And, sometimes, pushing buttons gives you a reassuringly false feeling of control while you’re coming up with a Plan B. Who the hell are we to judge lab rats anyway?

And so, what are YOU watching, reading, playing, pondering, or working for this weekend?