The Best Show On TV? Matt Walsh Reviews "Severance"
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You know, despite what you may think, we do actually listen to audience feedback around here. And one thing many of you have been saying is that you'd like to see me do more film and television reviews. And specifically, you'd like to know not just what I hate, but what I like. Even though it's kind of more fun to talk about what you hate. But the plan for today is to talk about something that I like. This will be a short video to recommend what is, in my view, the best show on TV right now. In fact, it's not much of a contest. I don't think any other show currently on air even really comes close.

And that show is called Severance. And if you haven't seen the show, I'll make sure not to spoil anything. You definitely want to go into the show knowing as little as possible about it. I'll just give you the basics of the plot. So Severance, produced and largely directed by Ben Stiller, there are other directors as well, is a show following a small group of employees at a company called Lumen. In this fictional world, some sort of technology has been developed that allows a person's consciousness to essentially be cut in half, to be severed.

So when they're at work, working on some very vague and mysterious project down in the basement of Lumen, they don't remember anything about their lives outside of work. And when they're not at work, they don't remember anything about their lives at work. So the work version of themselves essentially never leaves work. The non-working version essentially never goes to work. And that's kind of the setup. I'm not going to say anything else about the plot. There are three things that I like about this show. Three things I think it does really well that many other shows don't do well or don't do at all. So number one.

This is a big one. It's an original story. In a world of franchise films and sequels and remakes, it is possible to still tell original stories. Severance is obviously inspired by things that came before it. It's clear that the guy who wrote this show was a big fan of office space, for example. Severance has a similar view of workplace culture, the kind of mindless, busy work that defines many office jobs. The humor kind of comes from a similar place in many cases.

I'd say it's just as funny as Office Space, much, much darker, more thrilling, but still very funny as well. And this is how it should work. Storytellers should be inspired by other storytellers to come up with new stories that are influenced by, but not directly plagiarizing, what came before. You don't need to attempt a TV remake of Office Space. Just take whatever you love about it,

and inject it into a brand new story. What a concept! And that's what Severance does. It's the same thing I say about all these directors now who say, "Well, I grew up watching Star Wars. I love Star Wars. And so, of course, I'm so excited to be making a Star Wars movie or a Star Wars show in the Star Wars universe." No, if you're an actual talented filmmaker and you grew up watching Star Wars, rather than just making another Star Wars thing, tell your own story that has Star Wars influences, but is not Star Wars. How about that?

I'm kind of at the point now where I will try to watch at least almost any original show or film simply because it is original. Even if they aren't good, I at least want to reward them for trying something new.

And fortunately, Severance actually is very good. Two, Severance deals with interesting ideas, which is another thing that, you know, I wish more shows and films did. When most people talk about the show and the ideas that it grapples with, what they usually will talk about is the commentary on the modern workplace. But that to me is the less interesting theme. That's kind of window dressing for the far more fascinating exploration of human consciousness.

That's what makes the show interesting to me. Severance asks a pretty deep question. It's one of the deepest really, which is what makes you an individual person? What makes you a self? We know what makes you a person biologically, but what makes you an individual? What makes you a self?

Is your memory the only thing sort of holding you together and making you one individual? The show argues, I think pretty convincingly, that if you take one person and you put them in two different settings and you make it so that they don't remember anything about themselves in the other setting, you'll end up with two distinct personalities and value systems and beliefs. And in effect then...

you end up with two selves in one person. And if memory is the one thing holding this kind of precarious Jenga tower that I call a self together,

what happens if my memory is wrong? Like memory is notoriously unreliable. Nobody's memory is perfect, which means that every person's self is based at least partly on a fiction. You are not really the sum total of your experiences, but rather you are the sum total of how you remember your experiences. And that seems to be what the show is driving at. And maybe they're right about it. Maybe they're wrong, but it is, it's an interesting thing to think about. And any show that actually gives you interesting things to think about is a win in my book. I mean,

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Three, finally, Severance is great for a reason that's going to seem very, very simple, and it is, but it is also rare. And that is that in this show, stuff actually happens. And this is maybe the most radical thing about it. The plot moves forward every episode.

Things happen. There are stakes. There are consequences. Each moment in the show leads to another moment. There's a famous video that's worth watching if you haven't seen it of Matt Parker and Trey Stone, the South Park guys, explaining that in a bad, poorly told story, each scene is linked together by the words, and then. You would say, well, this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens. The end.

But in a good, well-told story, in a good movie or a good show, each scene is linked together by the words "therefore" or "but." This happens, therefore this happens, but then this happens, therefore this happens.

And that's just another way of saying that a film or show should be propulsive. You know, one thing should lead to another. The train should be hurtling every moment towards a destination. But many shows and films these days are and-then stories. They just kind of meander. There are no stakes. There are no real consequences. There's nothing in the story that really matters. And it works this way for a reason. It works this way because the studios...

want to milk each franchise for all it's worth. Well, first of all, each thing has to be a franchise and then you have to milk it, which means that nothing can ever actually happen. I mean, Disney notoriously is so desperate to make sure that nothing happens in their films that they've even invented the multiverse so that if a character dies, he can be replaced by an infinite number of replacement versions of himself, which means of course that it doesn't matter if a character dies, he really can't die. So nothing happens, nothing matters. The story just kind of floats along like debris.

Severance, so far anyway, has not fallen prey to that. Each scene is a but or a therefore, and there are physical and emotional consequences to everything that happens. Now,

Now, the show isn't perfect. There are moments here and there that don't work. It follows some threads every once in a while that I don't find especially interesting. As for the wokeness factor, you know, it's always a question. I would say that I'm not going to call this an anti-woke show. It's certainly not that. I do think it's a mostly unwoke show. There is a gay character in the show, but to this point, they haven't leaned into that too much. He's there, but they don't beat you over the head with him.

That might change, I mean you never know, but this is Hollywood after all. The biggest problem with Severance is that it's a show revolving around a central mystery, which is a lot of fun. I mean these kinds of shows are always fun. I can imagine as the writer it's a lot of fun because it allows you to have a bunch of weird stuff happen, and that certainly happens in this show. There's a lot of weird things always happening and you're always being surprised, which is great, again fun to watch.

But the implication is that this weird, like we don't know why this weird stuff is happening, but there is a reason. And so it'll all be tied together in the end and we're going to understand it. So you're kind of like writing this check

that you have to cash later. And if the check bounces, if the answer isn't satisfying at the end of this whole thing, it ruins the whole show. I mean, there are shows that have bad endings where it doesn't ruin the whole show. You can still enjoy the show. But if the whole show is built around a central mystery and then the answer to the mystery is unsatisfying, then it just breaks down everything. There's no reason to watch it anymore. So whether Severance ultimately sticks the landing remains to be seen. So far, so good. And I highly recommend it.

And that's it. I promise that next time I review something, it will be a thing I hate because all of this positivity is honestly making me a little nauseous.