But then there was never any mystery. The secret reveal is the core premise of the show.
I thought the purpose of MDR was
Tap for spoiler
to perfect the severing so that anybody (who can afford it, I’d guess) can have their “innie” go through all the negative/bad experience stuff and you don’t have to suffer through it. Imagine how much a company could make selling you the ability to dissociate and compartmentalize all the things you don’t like or that you have a negative response to. Don’t like the dentist, send your innie. Don’t like flying, have your innie to the flying bit, then for you it’s like you stepped on and then right back off the plane. The possibilities are endless.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 1 week ago
The show is telling a story. Revealing the purpose of MDR propels the story. I don’t know what the plan is for the next season but I, personally, am interested to see the ethical debate about innies being “people”. Maybe that will be a plot point in the future.
azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
But there’s no debate out of that universe. They are people. It’s contrived as hell. I don’t care if some of Severance’s dystopian citizens think it’s Fine, Actually, that’s not thought provoking. Lumon is uncontroversially evil.
There’s interesting parallels to neocolonialism to be made and the way it trivializes human rights abuses through invisibilisation, but up to now the show hasn’t been interested in delving into that. Most they’ve done is a surface-level critique of corporate capitalism, mildly interesting exploration of cultish behavior, and lots of unexplained mystery of its own sake with unrewarding payoffs.
When a good mystery is revealed, you’re supposed to go “of course! They basically told us that, I just didn’t pay close enough attention!”. But Severance’s mystery reveals (almost) always come off as cheap thrills drawn out for too long with zero foreshadowing. Ah so Ms Casey is his wife… Okay? And redhead is the CEO’s daughter… Sure? And Cold Harbor is just an iterative improvement on Severance? That’s actually more boring than what was being foreshadowed.
I’ve said it before but without going too far into spoilers, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 does an infinitely job on themes of loss and pain and escapism and mystery than Severance ever did or could. I finished it before the show and the similar themes and love of a good mystery really made Severance’s plot look like a crude children’s drawing in comparison.
stray@pawb.social 6 days ago
It doesn’t matter to me whether there was ever a mystery because that wasn’t the interesting part. “What are they working on?” doesn’t need to have an amazing answer; it could just be accounting for all I care. What matters is who the characters are, what they have done and will do and why. And more importantly, the way it highlights issues with corporations by drawing interesting parallels within the story. Maybe people in real life will be inclined to question their own conditions and be inspired to protest for better lives.
ApollosArrow@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I mean yeah, I thought all the rooms Gemma was in, plus the pregnancy gave all of that away. The company would be one of the richest in the world.