Severance (Apple TV+)
- Thread starter iRelate
- Start date
I avoided pretty much every post in this thread but I just started this show and i'm 2 episodes down and already hooked. Wow, I love to see a show with this much intrigue. I haven't felt this way about a show like this since season 1 of Westworld. But season 2 of that completely pushed me away so I am hoping this show continues to pull me in and make me think.
SockMonkey
Staff member
I just watched it all in two days. That last episode. I had to keep pausing it because I could feel my heartbeat in my head.
Okay I just watched the episode where they stumble upon the room with the
and it was the first episode where I was like "Okay... why is this so goofy all of a sudden?", like kind of cringey almost. BUT I still have faith this was only small detour and we'll be back on track to gripping mystery in the next episode.
goats
I mean between the lambs and the biblical paintings, I wouldn't count on the show not becoming much more strange and metaphorical, there seems to be a very allegorical religious undercurrent that I can only see getting more prominent.
I was screaming when he was taping that picture back together and
As long as it doesn't get to be like LOST where it's like "Ha ha everyone is dead the whole time" or something unearned.
SCREAMING at the REVEAL
As long as it doesn't get to be like LOST where it's like "Ha ha everyone is dead the whole time" or something unearned.
He/Him
I doubt it'll go that far. After all, they aren't stuck on an island. I'm sure it will get weird/weirder though.
Okay I finished the season. What a RIDE. I am so glad I decided to totally legally and not at all through other means check out this AppleTV show. This show is an innie trapped on that damn platform, otherwise everyone would be talking about this.
If they muddy up season 2 and ruin it for me like Westworld was ruined for me- I will be so upset. Damn, what a show.
If they muddy up season 2 and ruin it for me like Westworld was ruined for me- I will be so upset. Damn, what a show.
Sorry but…
...
…
…
EVERYONE WAS NOT DEAD THE ENTIRE TIME ON LOST!!!! It’s a huge misconception about the ending of the show that they quite clearly dispelled in the finale of that show. Everything that happened on the island, happened on the island. I repeat: They weren't dead the entire time, everyone who died throughout the run of the show died, and those who survived the final showdown on the island in the finale went on to live the rest of their lives off screen. What wasn't real were the "flash-sideways" the show introduced in the final season. The flash-sideways were revealed to take place in a sort of afterlife construct the characters created to find each other again after death.
The finale focused more on the metaphysical and religious aspects of the show yes, but it was a great way of wrapping up the themes and character arcs of the show - redemption, rebirth, can you ever fully forgive yourself for your sins? The big questions LOST consistently wrestled with on both a plot and character level were dealt with in the finale - the "sideways" as a plot device were not always the most elegant, but it was effective in giving the characters a chance at genuine catharsis and rebirth, after all their losses and mistakes and missed opportunities that marked their time both in the flashbacks and their time on the island, whether it was Jack wanting to fix everything and never letting anything go (and destroying his relationships in the process) or Locke constantly searching for meaning and a purpose in his life only to ultimately become a pawn in the game between two gods.
It was inevitably impossible for LOST to create an ending that could please everyone, especially given the many years of hype built up around its ending. But it's admirable that Damon and Carlton swung for the fences and crafted an ending that wrestled with the biggest question of them all - what happens when we die? - rather than going down the laundry list of questions people had about the show. The show had already actually answered a lot more questions than people gave it credit for too (the polar bears were a part of the Dharma Initiative's experiments in adaptability research, the whispers were the souls of people who died on the island, the numbers had several explanations throughout the show - they were the serial number for the hatch, the Dharma Initiative's Valenzetti Equation which predicted the end of the world and the numbers for the final candidates to take over as protector of the island after Jacob - take your pick). The answers weren't always the most exciting or satisfying but they made sense within the context of the show and usually could be interpreted in multiple ways - both scientifically and metaphysically, though by the end of the show, LOST leaned more heavily on the "faith" part of science vs faith, which I guess comes with the territory when you are dealing with ancient gods and cults and ghosts and an island with healing properties and immortality. All of which were introduced many seasons prior in the show's run, so they were hardly unearned by the end.
LOST was really and truly a victim of being 15 years ahead of its time, as I don't think it would be viewed as "confusing" if it was a streaming TV show today. Streaming audiences are conditioned to analyze and pick apart every tiniest bit of clue from a show and that started with shows like LOST and The X-Files that didn't have the benefit of Twitter and Reddit and all the various other ways people engage with TV discourse now. Fan message boards, IMDb, etc were still in their infant stages and didn't really fully enter the mainstream until the final seasons of the show.
Poor Damon and Carlton tried to run a massive blockbuster hit show with 24+ episodes a season for its first 3 years with episodes airing while they were still writing it too, while these streaming shows now have 8 episode seasons with all of its episodes fully produced by the time the first episode drops. It's a completely different way of making TV that Damon and Carlton were also a part of championing for by negotiating their way to 16 episodes a season for its final 3 seasons.
The shows that have come in the wake of LOST, whether it's Yellowjackets, Severance or Westworld etc, can only wish to have the consistency and level of execution LOST had by the time they are at 100+ episodes. Which we all know they won't get since that's not how the industry operates anymore. Even the post-LOST shows that have ended since, such as Fringe, Game of Thrones, Heroes or The 100 haven't managed to end as gracefully and thoughtfully as LOST did either. So this reputation LOST still has as the gold standard for "bad genre TV finale" is so unfair, especially given the amount of stuff they actually did right for the people who actually paid proper attention to the actual text of the show.
Me spending my night writing an unnecessarily long-winded and probably unintelligible to most defense of LOST in an unrelated thread? It's more likely than you think!
…
…
EVERYONE WAS NOT DEAD THE ENTIRE TIME ON LOST!!!! It’s a huge misconception about the ending of the show that they quite clearly dispelled in the finale of that show. Everything that happened on the island, happened on the island. I repeat: They weren't dead the entire time, everyone who died throughout the run of the show died, and those who survived the final showdown on the island in the finale went on to live the rest of their lives off screen. What wasn't real were the "flash-sideways" the show introduced in the final season. The flash-sideways were revealed to take place in a sort of afterlife construct the characters created to find each other again after death.
The finale focused more on the metaphysical and religious aspects of the show yes, but it was a great way of wrapping up the themes and character arcs of the show - redemption, rebirth, can you ever fully forgive yourself for your sins? The big questions LOST consistently wrestled with on both a plot and character level were dealt with in the finale - the "sideways" as a plot device were not always the most elegant, but it was effective in giving the characters a chance at genuine catharsis and rebirth, after all their losses and mistakes and missed opportunities that marked their time both in the flashbacks and their time on the island, whether it was Jack wanting to fix everything and never letting anything go (and destroying his relationships in the process) or Locke constantly searching for meaning and a purpose in his life only to ultimately become a pawn in the game between two gods.
It was inevitably impossible for LOST to create an ending that could please everyone, especially given the many years of hype built up around its ending. But it's admirable that Damon and Carlton swung for the fences and crafted an ending that wrestled with the biggest question of them all - what happens when we die? - rather than going down the laundry list of questions people had about the show. The show had already actually answered a lot more questions than people gave it credit for too (the polar bears were a part of the Dharma Initiative's experiments in adaptability research, the whispers were the souls of people who died on the island, the numbers had several explanations throughout the show - they were the serial number for the hatch, the Dharma Initiative's Valenzetti Equation which predicted the end of the world and the numbers for the final candidates to take over as protector of the island after Jacob - take your pick). The answers weren't always the most exciting or satisfying but they made sense within the context of the show and usually could be interpreted in multiple ways - both scientifically and metaphysically, though by the end of the show, LOST leaned more heavily on the "faith" part of science vs faith, which I guess comes with the territory when you are dealing with ancient gods and cults and ghosts and an island with healing properties and immortality. All of which were introduced many seasons prior in the show's run, so they were hardly unearned by the end.
LOST was really and truly a victim of being 15 years ahead of its time, as I don't think it would be viewed as "confusing" if it was a streaming TV show today. Streaming audiences are conditioned to analyze and pick apart every tiniest bit of clue from a show and that started with shows like LOST and The X-Files that didn't have the benefit of Twitter and Reddit and all the various other ways people engage with TV discourse now. Fan message boards, IMDb, etc were still in their infant stages and didn't really fully enter the mainstream until the final seasons of the show.
Poor Damon and Carlton tried to run a massive blockbuster hit show with 24+ episodes a season for its first 3 years with episodes airing while they were still writing it too, while these streaming shows now have 8 episode seasons with all of its episodes fully produced by the time the first episode drops. It's a completely different way of making TV that Damon and Carlton were also a part of championing for by negotiating their way to 16 episodes a season for its final 3 seasons.
The shows that have come in the wake of LOST, whether it's Yellowjackets, Severance or Westworld etc, can only wish to have the consistency and level of execution LOST had by the time they are at 100+ episodes. Which we all know they won't get since that's not how the industry operates anymore. Even the post-LOST shows that have ended since, such as Fringe, Game of Thrones, Heroes or The 100 haven't managed to end as gracefully and thoughtfully as LOST did either. So this reputation LOST still has as the gold standard for "bad genre TV finale" is so unfair, especially given the amount of stuff they actually did right for the people who actually paid proper attention to the actual text of the show.
Me spending my night writing an unnecessarily long-winded and probably unintelligible to most defense of LOST in an unrelated thread? It's more likely than you think!
Sorry but…
...
…
…
EVERYONE WAS NOT DEAD THE ENTIRE TIME ON LOST!!!! It’s a huge misconception about the ending of the show that they quite clearly dispelled in the finale of that show. Everything that happened on the island, happened on the island. I repeat: They weren't dead the entire time, everyone who died throughout the run of the show died, and those who survived the final showdown on the island in the finale went on to live the rest of their lives off screen. What wasn't real were the "flash-sideways" the show introduced in the final season. The flash-sideways were revealed to take place in a sort of afterlife construct the characters created to find each other again after death.
The finale focused more on the metaphysical and religious aspects of the show yes, but it was a great way of wrapping up the themes and character arcs of the show - redemption, rebirth, can you ever fully forgive yourself for your sins? The big questions LOST consistently wrestled with on both a plot and character level were dealt with in the finale - the "sideways" as a plot device were not always the most elegant, but it was effective in giving the characters a chance at genuine catharsis and rebirth, after all their losses and mistakes and missed opportunities that marked their time both in the flashbacks and their time on the island, whether it was Jack wanting to fix everything and never letting anything go (and destroying his relationships in the process) or Locke constantly searching for meaning and a purpose in his life only to ultimately become a pawn in the game between two gods.
It was inevitably impossible for LOST to create an ending that could please everyone, especially given the many years of hype built up around its ending. But it's admirable that Damon and Carlton swung for the fences and crafted an ending that wrestled with the biggest question of them all - what happens when we die? - rather than going down the laundry list of questions people had about the show. The show had already actually answered a lot more questions than people gave it credit for too (the polar bears were a part of the Dharma Initiative's experiments in adaptability research, the whispers were the souls of people who died on the island, the numbers had several explanations throughout the show - they were the serial number for the hatch, the Dharma Initiative's Valenzetti Equation which predicted the end of the world and the numbers for the final candidates to take over as protector of the island after Jacob - take your pick). The answers weren't always the most exciting or satisfying but they made sense within the context of the show and usually could be interpreted in multiple ways - both scientifically and metaphysically, though by the end of the show, LOST leaned more heavily on the "faith" part of science vs faith, which I guess comes with the territory when you are dealing with ancient gods and cults and ghosts and an island with healing properties and immortality. All of which were introduced many seasons prior in the show's run, so they were hardly unearned by the end.
LOST was really and truly a victim of being 15 years ahead of its time, as I don't think it would be viewed as "confusing" if it was a streaming TV show today. Streaming audiences are conditioned to analyze and pick apart every tiniest bit of clue from a show and that started with shows like LOST and The X-Files that didn't have the benefit of Twitter and Reddit and all the various other ways people engage with TV discourse now. Fan message boards, IMDb, etc were still in their infant stages and didn't really fully enter the mainstream until the final seasons of the show.
Poor Damon and Carlton tried to run a massive blockbuster hit show with 24+ episodes a season for its first 3 years with episodes airing while they were still writing it too, while these streaming shows now have 8 episode seasons with all of its episodes fully produced by the time the first episode drops. It's a completely different way of making TV that Damon and Carlton were also a part of championing for by negotiating their way to 16 episodes a season for its final 3 seasons.
The shows that have come in the wake of LOST, whether it's Yellowjackets, Severance or Westworld etc, can only wish to have the consistency and level of execution LOST had by the time they are at 100+ episodes. Which we all know they won't get since that's not how the industry operates anymore. Even the post-LOST shows that have ended since, such as Fringe, Game of Thrones, Heroes or The 100 haven't managed to end as gracefully and thoughtfully as LOST did either. So this reputation LOST still has as the gold standard for "bad genre TV finale" is so unfair, especially given the amount of stuff they actually did right for the people who actually paid proper attention to the actual text of the show.
Me spending my night writing an unnecessarily long-winded and probably unintelligible to most defense of LOST in an unrelated thread? It's more likely than you think!
Okay I love this post. And I do agree, it's stamp on television is very seen still in shows today. I'd actually love to go back and rewatch the whole thing again but it feels so weird to now, as part of the fun of watching it was the fake Oceanic Airlines commercials they'd run, and the spooky tie-in Dharma websites they'd put up with secret codes hidden on them. But anyways -- I just want Severance to lead to satisfying conclusions which actually Lost did do better than most shows- because most streaming shows get cancelled before they ever get to film a real finale and if Apple ever does that here that will be very disappointing.
Yeah, totally agree. I get the apprehension, it's hard to get invested in anything knowing how often shows have ended badly or not gotten endings at all, but I guess it's the journey, not the destination that matters. At least when you consider all the good shows with shitty endings dd. With shows like Severance it can be comforting knowing that it's all headed somewhere for sure, but the slow burn of season 1 and how gradually and confidently they doled out their reveals makes me think they really know what they are doing. And even if the answers end up being "clones", "zombies" or whatever, the guessing and theorizing along the way is what makes it fun - alongside the interesting and complex characters and existential questions the show is pondering about identity and autonomy and capitalism etc.
I think the reaction to the Severance finale and the amount of people who seem to have jumped aboard and binged the show after it ended boosts its chances of getting a proper ending considerably at least. The middle part of the season where it didn't seem to be getting much discussion online and Ben Stiller was pleading people on twitter to stick with it made me a lil worried about its prospects, but hopefully it will ride the momentum it got with its finale into season 2.
Apple TV+ is really on a roll lately when it comes to original shows that could potentially run for years if treated right (For All Mankind, Pachinko etc), which is really refreshing in this day and age of limited series and Netflix' penchant for cancelling shows after 2-3 seasons. I'm worried there will come a point in time where Apple can't afford its boutique, niche TV offerings and instead goes all Netflix and pivots to low cost reality shows and international co-productions instead. But hopefully the reaction to this and maybe a few Emmys later this year will incentivize them to keep serving the type of hardcore TV fans that have been neglected by some of the other streamers lately.
As someone who fell in love with TV thanks to Lost, thank you.Sorry but…
...
…
…
EVERYONE WAS NOT DEAD THE ENTIRE TIME ON LOST!!!! It’s a huge misconception about the ending of the show that they quite clearly dispelled in the finale of that show. Everything that happened on the island, happened on the island. I repeat: They weren't dead the entire time, everyone who died throughout the run of the show died, and those who survived the final showdown on the island in the finale went on to live the rest of their lives off screen. What wasn't real were the "flash-sideways" the show introduced in the final season. The flash-sideways were revealed to take place in a sort of afterlife construct the characters created to find each other again after death.
The finale focused more on the metaphysical and religious aspects of the show yes, but it was a great way of wrapping up the themes and character arcs of the show - redemption, rebirth, can you ever fully forgive yourself for your sins? The big questions LOST consistently wrestled with on both a plot and character level were dealt with in the finale - the "sideways" as a plot device were not always the most elegant, but it was effective in giving the characters a chance at genuine catharsis and rebirth, after all their losses and mistakes and missed opportunities that marked their time both in the flashbacks and their time on the island, whether it was Jack wanting to fix everything and never letting anything go (and destroying his relationships in the process) or Locke constantly searching for meaning and a purpose in his life only to ultimately become a pawn in the game between two gods.
It was inevitably impossible for LOST to create an ending that could please everyone, especially given the many years of hype built up around its ending. But it's admirable that Damon and Carlton swung for the fences and crafted an ending that wrestled with the biggest question of them all - what happens when we die? - rather than going down the laundry list of questions people had about the show. The show had already actually answered a lot more questions than people gave it credit for too (the polar bears were a part of the Dharma Initiative's experiments in adaptability research, the whispers were the souls of people who died on the island, the numbers had several explanations throughout the show - they were the serial number for the hatch, the Dharma Initiative's Valenzetti Equation which predicted the end of the world and the numbers for the final candidates to take over as protector of the island after Jacob - take your pick). The answers weren't always the most exciting or satisfying but they made sense within the context of the show and usually could be interpreted in multiple ways - both scientifically and metaphysically, though by the end of the show, LOST leaned more heavily on the "faith" part of science vs faith, which I guess comes with the territory when you are dealing with ancient gods and cults and ghosts and an island with healing properties and immortality. All of which were introduced many seasons prior in the show's run, so they were hardly unearned by the end.
LOST was really and truly a victim of being 15 years ahead of its time, as I don't think it would be viewed as "confusing" if it was a streaming TV show today. Streaming audiences are conditioned to analyze and pick apart every tiniest bit of clue from a show and that started with shows like LOST and The X-Files that didn't have the benefit of Twitter and Reddit and all the various other ways people engage with TV discourse now. Fan message boards, IMDb, etc were still in their infant stages and didn't really fully enter the mainstream until the final seasons of the show.
Poor Damon and Carlton tried to run a massive blockbuster hit show with 24+ episodes a season for its first 3 years with episodes airing while they were still writing it too, while these streaming shows now have 8 episode seasons with all of its episodes fully produced by the time the first episode drops. It's a completely different way of making TV that Damon and Carlton were also a part of championing for by negotiating their way to 16 episodes a season for its final 3 seasons.
The shows that have come in the wake of LOST, whether it's Yellowjackets, Severance or Westworld etc, can only wish to have the consistency and level of execution LOST had by the time they are at 100+ episodes. Which we all know they won't get since that's not how the industry operates anymore. Even the post-LOST shows that have ended since, such as Fringe, Game of Thrones, Heroes or The 100 haven't managed to end as gracefully and thoughtfully as LOST did either. So this reputation LOST still has as the gold standard for "bad genre TV finale" is so unfair, especially given the amount of stuff they actually did right for the people who actually paid proper attention to the actual text of the show.
Me spending my night writing an unnecessarily long-winded and probably unintelligible to most defense of LOST in an unrelated thread? It's more likely than you think!
Finally finished and wow! What an incredible show. Props to Ben Stiller, it's absolutely fantastic.
The casting is brilliant and it's been an absolute joy to watch. I'm going to be dying waiting for S2! Still so many unknowns!
The casting is brilliant and it's been an absolute joy to watch. I'm going to be dying waiting for S2! Still so many unknowns!
He/Him
Some people just want answers all at once but then why would you need a season 2? You don't blow the whole wad in one finale.
People were saying it made them look like they didn't have the answers and were just going to figure it out as they go along. But, that's kind of bullshit. I'm like "Have you people never had a cliffhanger before?"
Someone did mention they might've had another episode ready for after this but Ben Stiller though ending it after this episode would be more exciting. Not sure if there's any truth to that.
He/Him
I think some people just don't know how writing for TV works, especially on Reddit. I'm not sure how there would be another episode after this one... other than it's 9 and not the traditional 10 episodes for Apple TV+. There could be many reasons, budget, Covid, etc. I don't think there's a missing episode based on everything presented. The ending, with all of its reveals and moments, screamed season finale cliffhanger