Macrodata Refinement

I am enjoying the form and structure but still uncertain about the substance.

I do hope they have a narrative arc planned with a satisfyingly metaphorical conclusion and will not, like certain other shows in a similar genre, meander from one surrealist allegory to another because additional seasons were ordered. The only truly exemplary production I can name in this vein being the sole season of The Prisoner (McGoohan, 1967-68).

Be seeing you

(spoilers)

It was really good at building up a mystery over the course of the first season, but I've been a little disappointed in the second so far.

The pacing's become glacial; the first couple of episodes worked mostly to undercut the dramatic significance of the events of last season's finale.

And I feel like the way that the satire is slowly being replaced by self-serious "lore" is hurting the show; it was very funny and disturbing to see the way the innies are "raised" in a cult and view the CEO as a kind of Messiah (and observe the parallels to real-world corporate culture); Lumen really being an evil cult - as opposed to just an evil company - in "reality", feels less satirical and more ham-fisted.

The ending of the most recent episode suggests promising things to come at least.

I think season 2 will end up doing a lot tbh. It got great reviews from critics and they allowed critics to watch the full season before reviewing, which isn't as common. Usually it's only one or two episodes. It makes me feel like they had a big story that they wanted to be witnessed in its entirety for the critics.

I think people are hoping it doesn't end up like Lost where so many of the quirky details ended up completely unexplained in the end.

> meander from one surrealist allegory to another because additional seasons were ordered

This is how I find many shows made in the last ~20 years, but changing out "from one surrealist allegory to another" for various other things. Heroes, Jericho, Battlestar Galactica, House of Cards, hell even Downton Abbey... I would add the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones but I couldn't get through a season of either. I never saw Lost but I think it's the same kind of thing. I'm going to catch flak for it but I thought the same about Stranger Things.

All of them had a good pilot and/or first season, but then the rest of the seasons.... definitely came afterwards.

"'Severance' creator has whole series mapped out: 'There's a plan for where it's all going'"

https://torontosun.com/entertainment/television/severance-cr...

We'll see how that goes.

It did the thing I hate, which is a cliffhanger climax, and instead of picking up the thread where it left off and providing resolution/denouement, it just sort of ... resets?

The gold standard, IMO is something like the TNG episodes "The Best of Both Worlds" pt 1 and 2 -- an end-of-season cliffhanger that rewards you returning to the show by telling you what happens next!

I think the lacuna here is meant to add to the tension and mystery, but I agree that the new season has started off frustratingly slow. You gotta wrap up stuff to move forward with a plot, otherwise it's all just treading water for the sake of atmosphere.

> but still uncertain about the substance.

Honestly, I'm really enjoying that uncertainty and I couldn't image how entertaining it'd be. It certainly has a special place in this current "Zeitgeist" where video games are played by various generations and people calling each other "NPC"s as insult. There's this massive scale of contemporary enterprises, they all would like to retain that image of being young and full of empathy, while also standing above the law. Have you ever talked to some superior at a company and left with this empty feeling that made you recognize all of this unwillingness to change? Severence just hits that spot and frames it nicely into humor, yet still doesn't laugh about it. I question a bit the addition of the latest department in episode 3 and just hope they can stick the landing with such decisions.

> The only truly exemplary production I can name in this vein being the sole season of The Prisoner (McGoohan, 1967-68).

I definitely see Twin Peaks in the same realm.

It cannot be another Lost. The Severance mystery box has an anti-plutocracy, humanist foundation. It would be really hard for them to not make it satisfying.

In Breaking Bad only the general idea, the main character turning from protagonist to antagonist was there from the beginning. They filled in the middle part as they went along.

That's what the Lost creators claimed though, and we all know how that went.

aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_box_show

I will never forgive Lost (which I originally watched in real time) and almost always wait for shows to conclude now before giving them my time.

Nonetheless, I'm enamored by Severance. The attention to detail by the show runners is amazing[1]. It's absolutely gorgeous to look at[2]. It's downright funny at times. I've re-watched the entire first season and there's so many details I missed the first time through. I will likely be satisfied even if it doesn't answer all its questions, but I have a feeling it will.

[1] BTW, the first eight chapters of The You You Are were released on Apple Books yesterday in both eBook and Audiobook form (read by the author).

[2] I watch in a home theater on a 120" 2.39:1 screen. I love that recent shows are being released in scope (see also Silo).

One of the greatest gifts Lost gave us is that every showrunner now knows what NOT to do when building a puzzle box show.

Mrs. Davis from Lost creator Damon Lindelhof was a great recent example of that lesson having been learned.

(Shame about Westworld though)

Remember when "Battlestar Galactica" spent four seasons telling us that the Cylons had a plan, but it turned out that the writers never had any idea what it actually was?

That's not really a comparable narrative arc though. Breaking Bad is a character drama, not a mystery box structure. With only some limited exceptions, which clearly were planned out in advance of their resolution, the driving question of Breaking Bad is "what are the characters going to do", not "why/how did that thing happen".

> meander from one surrealist allegory to another because additional seasons were ordered

As a satire of office work, that would kind of track; a version of Parkinson’s Law.

Counterpoint; JMS had the five seasons of Babylon 5 planned out but, fearing cancellation, tried squeezing wrap-up storytelling from the fifth into the tail of the fourth, and the narrative compression is palpable, it feels super rushed. Then they did get renewed and the resulting final season feels disconnected and flabby.

Point of order. They were cancelled.

There was a surge in viewership as they tried to tie up the story prompting the renewal of the show. But way too late. That they were able to pull off season 5 with the scraps and missing major cast members is kind of impressive. Perhaps indicative of what it would have been like had it been produced piecemeal

Here's the thing I don't get about post-finale annoyance at Lost -- how does the lack of plot resolution impact all of your enjoyment previous to the finale?

You still enjoyed thinking of all the plot points after the second to last episode, no?

And after the end of the first season?

Those moments existed independent of how it ended.

Sure, people having an issue with the ending and plot threads is maybe a reason not to start watching it now (I'd say it's still worth it...), but behaving as though somehow the ending invalidated all the realtime enjoyment is weird.

Also, credit where credit is due that Babylon 5 is almost exclusive in that era in terms of almost every episode having at least something that contributes to the main plot.

So much so that Star Trek had to pivot TNG and DS9 from problem of the week formulaic writing to something similar.

It's trivial for writers to not be able to live up to the expectations of a huge number of dedicated fans.

> Lumen really being an evil cult - as opposed to just an evil company - in "reality", feels less satirical and more ham-fisted.

Agreed. The 'banality of evil' horror of the first season was the show's strongest point.

Sadly, I expect it will eventually suffer from the same thing that torpedoed Lost:

1. Fans are originally attracted by the mystery and unexplained.

2. Those same fans then clamour for explanations.

3. Then when the show explains things, it loses its mystery and/or people complain the explanations aren't good enough.

To me, the only winning plot move is not to play: drip just enough teasy but mysterious stuff that nothing is ever explained, but everyone stays on the edge of their seats.

Then it can be incredibly successful, and people can bitch about the finale 30 years from now.

I went into Lost thinking it was sci-fi, but in the end, it was all fantasy. So for me, Lost never really answered its core mysteries and that was before it threw in the whole purgatory flash-sideways stuff. I did actually start to lose interest because it felt like the show was stringing us along, but hung in there for answers. Instead I felt like all I got were narrative dead ends and then a conclusion where most of them die. It was immensely unsatisfying.

(I'm reflecting back now on 15 year old memories. I'm actually surprised to learn it aired from 2004-2010. Gosh, I remember this as being a show from the 90s.)

It's also not like there were a lot of options for other shows to watch at the time. I'd never stay with a show like Lost today. I punted on Yellowjackets as soon as it started bringing fantasy into the story.

You have to know that how a series wraps up is important to its viewers. A great or terrible finale can make or break how a show is later perceived. The Lost finale was the most disappointing of any show I've seen.

Great finales I recall are The Americans and Justified.

A terrible last book chapter or poor movie ending can ruin all that has come before for me. When deciding whether to read a book, I'll read the last chapter first. Spoilers don't ruin good stories for me. But bad conclusions do. And Lost's conclusion was just terrible. I'd rather it have been canceled.

It's not like I need literal answers for everything. I love Mulholland Drive. But I felt like Lost spent six seasons just jerking me around.

$0.02.

Hah, I hate the theater-wide trend. Most people are watching on 16x9 screens and it's so annoying that TV directors refuse to take that into account and shoot taller to use the whole damn screen. It's seriously non-trivial to get a wider setup than that for normal living-room use. And there's not even a wave of TVs on the way like when people started moving to 16x9 from 4x3. It's just a bad side-effect of prestige and money moving to TV from motion pictures.

Especially when you consider that the real snob format for many is IMAX which is taller anyway.

It's a reason not to re-watch or even talk much about or recommend the show. Compare to something like Babylon 5 (plotted out well in advance) where a rewatch is rewarding because now you see extra significance of so many more early things. It's the complete opposite - everything interesting is now LESS interesting.

The enjoyment is capped at the initial run; a better-plotted show rewards you much more over time.

I think this is a Type A enjoyer vs Type B enjoyer thing.

To me, if I enjoy every episode but dislike an ending... I still enjoyed 99% of the series.

Because, as I was watching each of those episodes, I was having fun.

It seems super unhealthy to retroactively go back in time and say 'That expression of glee on my face at the time wasn't actually happiness, because I just didn't know the ending was going to suck.'

Let's not pretend Lost didn't explain anything. There were certainly plot holes, but there's also a ton of concrete explanations and information you get but don't have at the beginning of the show.

I mean, two of the biggest: smoke monster and hatch.

Both get definitive answers.

I honestly loved that. Season 4 is so fast-paced and devoid of all the filler that was common back then. I also loved the long good bye of season 5. So many characters get their own epilogue episode.

> It seems super unhealthy to retroactively go back in time and say 'That expression of glee on my face at the time wasn't actually happiness, because I just didn't know the ending was going to suck.'

That's reading a lot into my words. There were no expressions of glee on my face as I watched Lost. I was hanging in there for answers because the mysteries were the only part of the show I found interesting. Conversely, I'm really enjoying Severance as it comes. I'll likely be happy however its finale turns out to be. I really enjoyed the bizarro world of Scavengers Reign and am sad it was canceled after one season. Lost didn't float my boat, and then ended terribly on top of that. Again, $0.02, and I won't make any judgements about your mental health. :-)

p.s. I'm glad you enjoyed Lost and hope I haven't yucked your yum.

I don't understand why TV shows are shot in anything but 1.78. There's what, maybe 1% of watchers on wider screens? 2.00:1 or even 2.20:1 seem like a reasonable compromise, but 2.39:1 is insane.

They could at least shoot it open matte (maybe not as easy in 2.39 to do) so that those of us who want to mask to 2.39:1 can enjoy it that way w/o losing anything important while most watchers wouldn't notice the difference.

With Lost, I knew they had no direction in mind, and that bothered me. But I also knew that whatever they were doing, they were doing a damned entertaining job of it.

> (Shame about Westworld though)

Oh man, don't remind me.

I agree, but I think that's a higher bar than "not being satisfying", which is what Lost was (putting it very generously). Fans often get carried away with mystique of mystery boxes and anything short of an orgasmic existential experience would be a letdown, but that doesn't mean in an absolute sense it would be an unsatisfying or bad end.

Counterpoint: I don’t think it was a reset (after watching more of season 2), I think it was supposed to look like a reset intentionally, but it won’t end up being one.

It becomes much clearer in episodes 2 and especially 3. They strongly and directly start picking up the pieces of the season 1 ending and carrying it through. Without spoiling anything, episode 3 (of season 2) had some massive movements I wasnt expecting to see until later in the season (at soonest).

I thought it pretty directly started from the cliffhanger. It took three episodes (at a much faster clip than Season 1 episodes) to deal with the consequences of that cliffhanger, but that's the nature of the severance procedure itself, half the characters can't directly talk to the other half.

I didn't feel like the terrible ending ruined the fun I had with the first five seasons, but I did believe they had a direction in mind through most of it. What I remember bugged me most was that sometime quite early in the show, probably season one, the writers "promised" that they had an ending and explanation for everything, and that it explicitly wasn't going to be a cheap cop-out like "it was all a dream". Which, as it turns out, was either one or two lies by my count.