Krystian MajewskiI‘m torn on Severance. It‘s good filmmaking for sure. But also I don‘t really care which girl the protagonist ends up with. The thing that make the show remarkable for me was the philosophical implications of the Sci-fi premise. And that gets more and more diluted by the show‘s esoteric fantasy lore and melodrama.
The worst possible choice by the writers in S02 was to make Mark „the chosen one“. The show was powerful if you considered the horror that what happend to the protagonist would be possibly happening to lots of people all the time. But by making the the protagonist special the scope of the world has suddenly shrunk to just a handful of people. And that‘s just not as interesting anymore.
Honestly, the thing I‘m wondering the most is - has Ben Stiller ever actually worked in an office before? Or is this just what happens when a priviledged Hollywood Millionaire is freewheeling when forced to imagine what office work is like?
simjnd@krystman IMO it's not as much about the girl he ends up choosing as much as the innie choosing himself over his outie: asserting himself, his existence, his power and his importance. The end scene with the two girls is a device to communicate that non-verbally. It's a great conclusion to a very long character arc. The end of S1 was MDR taking the biggest risks to go outside, and see outside. At the end of S2 it's the opposite, when it's finally within his grasp, he chooses to stay.
@simjnd Yeah but stay to do what exactly? Is he going to live at Lumon now? This is a absurd idea that only makes sense if you buy into the "Love conquers all"-romantics of his relationship with Helly. Which again, I don't care about, that is not why I started watching this show. Neither do I care about whether his wife gets out or not. The stakes of S1 were striking at the core of the Severance tech and it's implications. S2 is about Lumon doing mundane supervillain stuff.
@simjnd I thought innie vs outie tensions were explored a lot more thoughtfully with Dylan in this season. I'd rather watch a show that digs more into that.
@krystman I think the commentary by the director at the end of the episode explained it pretty well, he doesn't have a plan, but he stayed even if it means only living 10 minutes longer. He took that chance instead of disappearing now. It's very emotional and irrational but that what makes him even more human, because humans are not as logical or rational creatures as we like to think. He went from an obedient puppet to someone who will fight for his life at ANY cost.
@krystman That's how I interpret it at least. But I agree I was disappointed with the reveal about what Cold Harbour and all the mysterious work is.