to explain why i am so impressed & why i think this show is so genius i'm gonna go back to season 1 and build my thoughts up the same way the show spends so much time building up meticulous details about lumon & each character.

season 1 starts off using the procedure as a metaphor for emotional repression / escapism through focusing on mark & how he's dealing with the loss of his wife. which means it INSTANTLY struck a cord with me! i fucking get it dude! i get wanting to just forget about it for 8 hours a day!

& i know it's not just me. everyone has their own severance procedures; for some it actually is work, for some it's escaping through art, for some it's alcohol or cigarettes or some other horribly damaging & addictive substance.

what makes severance so brilliant is that it says: what if we took the you (key word) that you repress & we personified them as a being seperate from you, even though you're the same person?

this absolutely brilliant concept allows for such a fascinating dissection & analysis of the effects (harmful & otherwise) that repressing yourself can have; even if it's the most convenient way to cope with what's going on.

& this is only half of what makes severance brilliant; the other half is the fantastic angle season 2 takes on the corporate world & the analysis of how corporations are only interested in our inner lives as a way of furthering profits.

learning that the severance program was not only stolen, but stolen from a child they groomed. but not just that ONE child! an entire VILLAGE of children! but not just that village! WHO KNOWS HOW FUCKING MANY!!! lumon didn't even have to be a severance-wielding corporation to convince us that they would go to any lengths & spend any human cost to further their profit margins.

suddenly that poor little girl's appearance in season 2 goes from utterly confusing to absolutely heartwrenching. suddenly you understand milchik's thirst for the power that's always been exerted over him. suddenly you understand why the brainwashed workers think lumon can get away with treating people like animals: because God told them to do it to the Other!

god knows the majority of these people are not ever going to confront the religious brainwashing of lumon enough to question them, which is what makes harmony's story in this episode until cold harbour all the better. but i'll get to that at the end.

i genuinely think the kind of severance "fan" that doesn't think sweet vitriol is one of the best episodes thematically is just in it for the hype moments & aura or because they want to catch up on coworker media.

sweet vitriol is one of the 3 absolutely necessary episodes for cold harbour to have worked as effectively as it did as a finale. of course, the rest of it was good & helped but it just wouldn't have worked without the detail it gives.

i'm not done. notice how i said "one of the best episodes thematically". it's also one of the most beautifully directed, thanks to the absolutely GLORIOUSSS work of ben stiller. give this man every award for best director.

his cold, surgical & precise style is one of the things that has made this show so special. especially the first episode! he sells that lonely feeling of drowning out your thoughts for 8 hours a day so fucking well using nothing but his fucking angles!!! FUCK!!!!!!!!!

what does severance have to say about the power of uniting the inny & outy? why is it so bad that we'd choose to spend 8 hours of our lives in a harmful way? it's our lives, right? so we can do what we want??? & just who are these characters near the end of their journeys?

i'll start with helly because she perfectly represents what i'm talking about. she is both the rebel & the oppressor, groomed into her role as an eagan but all the while yearning to kill everyone who has put her where she is now and stomp on their corpses. when she seperates herself into two, that "other half" gets the chance to show her rage at lumon.

there's a fantastic scene at the end of s2e9 which contrasts the start of it. helena's father makes her eat eggs in the eagen tradition & it speaks volumes to her half existence as an outy. she picks a half-measure between the egg tradition & her own comfort, a compromise that benefits nobody. she boils it.

her father is not happy because what he's trying to achieve isn't there & nor is she, but neither of them can really do anything about it. then there's the end of the episode where helly almost kills her father, & he says he sees the "fire of kier" in her. it's the first time helly has ever shown her true emotions to him, acted from a place of true passion, & that's what her father was looking for.

him, & by extension lumon, want to take that fire and put it towards furthering the goals of lumon. they don't just want perfect slaves. they want perfect slave-owners who love what they do, & that's what makes them so fucking harrowing & uniquely evil. they WILL turn any kind of genuine display of emotion into corporate profit, & seeing it done to a character as beautifully conflicted as helly is really visceral.

there's an argument to be made that gemma is robbed of all her autonomy in the story and reduced to simply "woman who died & suffered" chrissy nolan style trope which could be interpreted as misogynistic, i guess. but when you look at who is inflicting that it is infact a very effective & nuanced way the show gets its thesis about corporations & the "human cost" across which i can only applaud. on top of that i have no doubt she'll become a full fledged character now that she's out of the punishment cube for season 3.

back to her & mark; it uses the initial hook of mark's emotional trauma & develops it into an absurdly intricate & complex mystery, but the core of it all is how fucking BADLY the Big Corporation wants to torture innocent people for the "sake of the company" or whatever bullshit (see: the break room being a torture device to test how far they can take it, and a metaphor for how the lumon goons are trained into submission). severance couldn't be clearer on its stance on capitalism and i absolutely applaud that.

you know how i said there were 3 vital episodes for cold harbour to have been as good as it was? it's because the sequence leading up to & the reveal of gemma's fate just couldn't have worked without you knowing:

• the lumon employees have been groomed into participating
• gemma has been being tested on the entire 2 years (chikhai bardo)
• mark & MDR have been FUCKING unwillingly helping lumon torture her!

another grand instance of the show tripling down with its excellent thesis on how capitalism exploits the people; showing that these escapist impulses & the entire metaphor of the "severance" procedure are not only being exploited to further the company's "profit first" ethos, but that EVEN THAT LEVEL OF EVIL ISN'T ENOUGH FOR THEM!!!

they STILL AREN'T DONE. THEY DON'T JUST STOP AT SEVERING PEOPLE. THEY DON'T STOP UNTIL THEY'VE CREATED DRONES, WORKERS WHO DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT A GREATER PURPOSE IS. ALL THEY CAN DO IS FUCKING WORK!!! & THE WAY THEY SHOW THAT WITH GEMMA BEING GIVEN A FUCKING CRIB?????? & HER OLD FUCKING COAT???????? YOU CAN'T DO THAT YOU JUST CAN'T MR STILLER

so see why i call severance the "best evil show" now? because it really is just EVIL with how sharp & brutally honest it is. cold harbour isn't the only time it got this reaction out of me (nearly every episode did) but it was the strongest.

it knows that many people feel they have no greater purpose in their day to day, that many people do not want to, & it knows that in the day & age we live in, that's a benefit to our system; because capitalism can sell us that purpose, in exchange for everything we are or could be or will be or don't want to be.

so why should we unite with our inny? because otherwise it will fucking die. or maybe it will get the best case & just be exploited for the rest of its life!

it might be hard to deal with that pain which caused you to sever; but would you want it for a lifetime? & when the alternative is realising what you want & pursuing your loves & passions & finally being free & happy?

lumon would kidnap, plunge into depression, enslave, torture, sacrifice, bleed, all in their own ritualistic manner; all for the sake of furthering the passions of the eagans. the drive to exploit, to whip the slave into submission, the sadistic joy at his screams & knowing how you made your cotton money. severance pulls no punches. it is THE best depiction of corporate evil in today's society ever.