S1 and the first half of the S2 was good, but at that point the show is already started to lose it’s pace and focus on storytelling and then the worst had happened – out of nowhere flashback episodes arrived and killed the show. seriously it was a massacre of my hopes and trust that i put in severance. i’m a big fan of the way Leftovers used a mysterious event to explore human traumas, grief, psychology, cults and so on. there no answers or explanations, the show isn’t about event, but characters and the way they deal with the new world.
severance was good in those things too. the reasons behind outies decisions to become severanced and the way innies deal with their “life” was fascinating to watch until the answers have happened and using best Losts practices they happened via flashbacks and only to make more questions and suddenly all previous stories became irrelevant before its majesty Theories.
i was afraid of this eventually would happen because it was to many clues for it with all those kier cult, strange and mysterious characters and so on, but i’m still so disappointed.
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I watched the first episode of series 2 and was thinking the same. Shall I bin it off and watch something else?
Even more unpopular take. I don’t like season 1 either and the entire premise would have been better as a movie.
If you REALLY pay attention to the first half of season 1, nothing happens. And I don’t mean it’s a “slow burn” I mean the plot and character arcs do not advance at all until the end of episode 4.
Season 1 could have been an amazing 3hr movie with the fat cut out and a concrete ending.
I just automatically assume anything currently running on TV is some substandard drivel. They haven’t made any good TV since The Sopranos ended.
Yep, season 2 was already a whole season preparing the plots to extend the series forever. No closure at all, no real answer to what was the purpose of having mark’s wife there. It started like a series with many philosophical questions (what’s identity, whats consciousness, etc,) and it has degenerated into a regular scifi show about people fighting a malefic corporation. Same happened to Westworld and ended cancelled.
I’d like to know what recent tv show(s) you think are better than Severance before I judge your opinion.
Got that feeling after 2-3 episodes of s1 and gave up
I watched season 1 out of curiosity and found it interesting but I’m just not big on surrealism in contemporary series. Too often it’s a crutch to keep things interesting and confusing but does nothing to actually advance the story or help answer questions. And at the rate that streaming shows are cancelled or shelved for YEARS between seasons, I just can’t bring myself to get attached to the show.
I’ll give it a second chance after its final season is released.
I’ve been meaning to watch the season 2 finale since it came out. I’ve turned it on several times but haven’t made it past 5-10 minutes. I really liked it at first, but, yeah, about halfway through season two my interest began to take a nose dive.
I enjoyed season 1, and gave up on the show 3 episodes into season 2. I don’t know what it’s trying to be, not sure if they know either.
Thought I was alone in this. The show got too high on itself and pushed more and more mystery but theres no payoff.
The thing with Lost was that we only knew it fucked up when it ended.
Severance is still going on, so there is simply no way to make this statement
This is laughable. Lost had zero direction. Episode to episode they just threw shit at a fan, and tried to squeeze out another season.
Severance already has the ending written. They know where they are going. I think you just have what you think the show is about in your head, and are clinging to it being right
Thought it was just me. Wasn’t a fan if S2.
The problem that I have with Severance is I think at some point Dan Eriksen, Ben Stiller, and the rest of the creatives on staff realized they can’t ever really leave the severed floor for good.
So much of the mystery and the intrigue of the show comes from the fact that most of the characters have very limited information and I think the showrunners realized their audience would be less interested if everyone escaped the severed floor entirely. It makes the story far more limited in where it can go.
In Lost the audience doesn’t have to struggle wondering why they can’t get off the island. In Severance I have to constantly suspend my disbelief to reconcile how this company gets away with disappearing people, not getting busted by OSHA, covering up the actual deaths of current and former employees, orchestrating fake deaths, and convincing non-Severed people to work there but they never have a whistleblower.
there’s one flashback episode and since when does any show give advanced notice that they’re going to do a flashback episode so it doesn’t come out of nowhere?
What questions my dude
Pretty much everything of note has been answered by now directly or indirectly
It’ll give you the TL;DR of it in case you missed it (obviously, spoilers for season 2)
Lumen is using religion to control innies and its all of course manipulative bullshit
As to what is going on: macrodata refinement’s job is basically mapping the human brain so that lumen can use that knowledge along with the technology to be able to inject people into other people’s minds – that was basically what the “big experiment” was supposed to be with the goat – they wanted to see if they could either put a person in a goat’s mind or a goat in a person’s mind.
Its not super clear what their main purpose here is, its either for the people up top to essentially reach immortality by transferring themselves into the minds of others
Or
If the main focus is a wacky-ass attempt in bringing Kier back from the dead somehow by using this process.
Could be both.
That’s it my dude, that’s all the secrets revealed in the series
Now we just need to wait for the third season to see them resolve the story and end the series.
This show has a sense of mystery like lost did sure but unlike lost that was needlessly dragged out (the writers had intended to finish it in season 3 IIRC and it shows) that ruined the show, severance so far seems to be on top of things.
So idk what you’re complaining about here.
Funny, I’m not sure how unpopular this is. The end of the second season was a bit of a mess and left to many things open.
Upvote for unpopular opinion since Severance has been a smash hit, or so I hear. I have no idea what the viewer statistics are, but people seem to love it. I really liked it and I actually enjoyed the storytelling approach. Anyway, upvoted.
It’s not a good show.
I’ve not seen the show, but I can’t stand mystery boxes and flashbacks. I guess this show is not for me?
Sometimes there’s a reason these opinions are unpopular 🤷♂️
99.8lo 6uddd
The ending of Season 2 genuinely pissed me off so badly. After an extremely slow season, we were finally going to figure out what Cold Harbor was, which was one of the biggest mysteries of the show. And then….we didn’t. We still see it, but we don’t know what it is or what it’s supposed to do. You can’t just hype something up all season not to provide any closure.
And don’t even get me started on Mark >!choosing Helly over Gemma…!<
I agree with you that it’s a good idea not to answer some questions.
Like the Jedi and the force.
Like the book seveneves “The moon exploded.” And they never really go back to why it did because it doesn’t matter why it did.
I don’t think it’s as bad as Lost yet, but all the telltale signs are there. The show clearly lacks a cohesive structure outside of “Sinister weirdness”, and is being hard carried by its cinematic direction rather than it’s plot dialogue. The characters and acting aren’t bad (Milchick in particular is excellent), but there’s very little that’s actually compelling about most of them.
It honestly feels like an average SCP story that got an enormous amount of funding for TV.
I haven’t watched Severance, but that’s the problem with LOST, or any of the other “evolving mystery” style of shows.”
You can only keep the mystery and questions going for so long before you have to tell the audience what is going on. But that would end the show. So the show runners add more and more questions/mysteries/layers until it reaches an absurd point where the show is boxed into a corner of the whole thing either being aliens or the afterlife to explain everything (in a realistic setting, the show can get away with introducing more and more absurd technology in a Sci-Fi series.)
Lost went off the rails because there never was a “there” there. Meaning there was never an underlying universe in which all this made any sense—and eventually the show runners conceded it was essentially an ‘after-death dream’ of sorts.
I’m hoping Severance doesn’t go down the same rabbit hole, but has an underlying explanation that is consistent with whatever universe they’re building. The whole ‘waking up to realize it was all just a dream’ bit is well-worn bullshit.
The Leftovers did explain the mystery at the end. I think it was in the last season. Spoilers: >!Their dimension split in half. No one died. They were just living in parallel dimensions!<
it should have been a short story instead of a tv show with several seasons.
Lesson, don’t watch series. Specially those that are super hyped and only have 1 ongoing season.
I agree.
I watched S1 as it was coming out and it became my favourite tv show. Was super pumped for S2 but I lost a bit of interest when it stopped focusing on their day to day work
Upvote because I disagree.
Upvote for the unpopular opinion. I agree with you 100%, the second half of season two is unwatchable. I hate flashback episodes too. But I thought I was the only one with this opinion so glad to seee someone else agree.
I watched a few episodes and it seemed clear to me right away this was going to be a bit of a Lost situation so I bailed. If it was a limited series I’d have been all over it, but as a smash hit it will now be dragged out until it’s bad and I doubt there will ever be satisfying closure.
It suffered from the same thing many American shows suffer from, the producers realise they have a hit on their hands and become more concerned with making the show drag out as long as possible rather than tell a concise story.
From and Yellowjackets suffered from the same thing. Just full of padding and dragging things out to make what should have been a 2-3 season series, become as long as possible.
I’m convinced anyone saying this has the media literacy of a child.
Lolol no flashbacks allowed!!!! No answers, only mystery!!!!
Completely agree. The show fell off hard.
S1 was genius. S2 was a drag and full of rabbit holes (most of which went unanswered). They’ve dug themselves too deep and I don’t see how they can make the show have any possible redeeming ending
It reminds me of Westworld in that it had the characters break through the premise way too early, and then you have nowhere to go but just getting more and more convoluted and further away from the concept that made it interesting in the first place.
I must be the only one who can’t stand that show. But I really can’t
I thought season 1 was brilliant and shot down this argument every time it came up but I truly felt like it was different this time.
I couldn’t finish season two because it felt like a mystery box. New questions being asked every episode with no resolution.I just don’t know if that mystery box angle works with a multi season show because at some point there is too much going on for even half of it to end in a satisfying way .
Lost nailed it imo just because of how much a fun ride it was even if it was a mess it was ridiculously entertaining. I don’t feel the same way about severance.
Lost is miles and miles better than Severance. Severance has no characters to care about and it’s quirky for the sake of it
>there no answers or explanations, the show isn’t about event, but characters and the way they deal with the new world.
Personally setting up a show with a fascinating mystery at the center and then navelgazing on the characters’ trauma or whatever while completely ignoring your sci-fi premise makes me want to dropkick the TV out of my third floor window.
Never watched Lost so idk but I feel like this show is gonna go off the rails s3
i couldn’t get through season 1…boring.
That one flashback episode is a masterpiece though, and it revealed a lot of new information about the actual plot.
Half agree. I think Severance was better in season 1 but season 2 was still very good
I haven’t seen Lost but did Lost answer most of the major questions about the show in the second season? The best thing about Severence is how they aren’t milking it. Things are constantly happening.
I haven’t seen Lost but did Lost answer most of the major questions about the show in the second season? The best thing about Severence is how they aren’t milking it. Things are constantly happening.
I loved S1 but I can’t get myself to watch the last 3 eps of S2. This entire season felt like a chore. I think I’m done with this show.
They aren’t even remotely similar.
For one Lost had 25 episodes in season one. Severance has 20 through 2 full seasons.
Lost literally lost the plot by season 3 or 4. Way too many characters, way too many plot points. Severance is very much contained within a much smaller universe.
Severance would be at its best if it finished like Patriot on Amazon.
yeah I couldn’t watch beyond episode 5 season 1 because it felt like they were using the mystery box approach. I asked some of my friends if things are tied up neatly by the end of season 1 and they basically said in their own way that some things were answered. I really do hate shows that just drag people along
They realized they had a hit and now plan to drag it for 10 seasons. Thats the vibe season 2 has.
Upvoted because I completely and totally disagree. On both the Severance and LOST points.
Agreed, unfortunately. The pace has been super slow. I also can’t get over the fact of how empty the world feels. It’s convenient that they’re in this dystopic office and it’s meant to have a creepy vibe, but it just feels like a set with so few people milling about there and in other parts of the world.
More mysteries are added with so little payoff. We finally made some progress in the very last episode of this season but by then I was already losing interest. I want to love this show but I don’t. Oh well.
Except Lost they had no plan and it showed, and Severance not only has a plan for the entire story, basically all of the big questions have been answered
I was willing to see how they landed season 2. I liked most of it, but the ending was so mind-numbingly stupid I’m completely out on the rest of the series.
I agree with your general vibe of “good/ original show losing its way”, but not your specific reasons
The flashback episode of season 2 was the best episode of season 2 wtf are you talking about.
Season 1 was fantastic sci-fi satire about office culture.
Season 2 (especially the second half) is Lost in an office building.
The show compounds it’s problems by turning all the old villains into good guys, making all the new villains pathetic, and going out of its way for meme bait. Was really disappointing to see.
Maybe they will turn it around. They’re doing an almost complete turnover of the writers room going into next season. But even if they don’t, much like Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, which started strong before going off a cliff, people will pour apologia all over it and be blind to the issues until it’s way far gone.
This just made me think, are the goats in severance going to end up being like the polar bears in lost?
I actually agree, i found the pacing to be awful in season 2 and the story kept bouncing around outside of the office away from all the characters we love. It really felt like they didnt have a clear plan on how to navigate the story compared to s1.
And dont even get me started on that awful cobel episode where NOTHING happened except mumblings between her and her sister for 5 minutes.
or how useless and painstakingly annoying reghabi was in trying to help Mark but not help and going back and forth with 0 explanation or resolution.
Truly disappointing, there were some stellar episodes but the lows reached far lower than it did in s1
The show was always bad. Popular, but bad.
Like Lost, the entire show is designed to generate buzz & speculation about what’s really going on by pseudointellectuals. The initial premise is interesting which’ll get you through the first couple episodes but the storytelling is nonexistent until the second season where it’s revealed that the story isn’t well thought out
It’s popular because it scratches that human itch that many people have that at it’s worst becomes decent in to conspiracy theory
I gave up 2/3 way through the second season.
No answers, increasingly vague mysteries, and just got signed for 2 more seasons.
Pass.
S2 was was just vastly weaker than S1
Whilst I disagree with your overall view, I do agree that the flashback and random side character episodes were the ones I least enjoyed
But theres so much we still don’t know. Like the water tower, they love showing that thing in the show but have never brought it up.
I genuinely think S2 is a victim of both covid and the writer strike.
I have faith season 3 will be much better.
My Unpopularopinion: Severance is boring as sh*t
I keep saying it reminds me of Westworld. In that it starts off with a really good premise and then just becomes super convoluted and hard to even follow.
I hate watched S1 even though I thought it was insanely mid; like, it was fine, but it wasn’t some grace to media like a lot of people seemed to think. S2 was actually just bad. The premise of the show is really interesting but what “cold harbor” is was evident by like, episode 2 of S1, and the cult aspect of the company both isn’t explained or elaborated on enough and remained a point of annoyance with me in S2. None of the twists or surprises felt surprising and everything just made me dislike the show more as S2 progressed.
Meh. I’ll wait for S3.