#this needed another meta level but c'est la vie

[thesublemon]

the storytelling in severance season two so far is reminding me somewhat of farscape season three. both use a scifi conceit to literally split characters into different selves, and thereby explore their competing desires, particularly with regards to romance, and selfhood by extension.

(spoilers for both)

in farscape season three the protagonist is split into two equal selves. one of the john crichtons is able to resolve two seasons of romantic tension, and be in a happy relationship with his alien love interest. meanwhile the other john, bereft of love, obsessively attempts to perfect the technology that will take him home to earth. metaphorically, it’s a conflict between two versions of home, or selfhood. a self that is familiar, versus one that is alien. john yearns for a version of himself that can have it all: earth and aeryn, past and future, known and unknown. but the myth that underlies the season is icarus, and the folktale is the dog with with two bones. one of the johns does seem like he will get it all, and will even be healed of the scifi-metaphor for pain and trauma that haunts his brain—the neural chip harvey. but it turns out that this perfect resolution is impossible. the john that tries to have it all dies; the john that remains as the show’s main character is the john that has nothing. it turns out that it is not possible to simultaneously change and not change. “you can’t go home again,” essentially. if john is to truly move forward, according to the show, he must confront the reality of loss that is inherent to becoming something new, regardless of whether that new thing involves beauty and wonder (love) or something terrible (pain).

similarly in severance season two so far you have one version of mark who has spiraled downwards without love. and who, as of the most recent episode (2x03 “who is alive?”), is willing to risk himself to get that past love back. this is contrasted with a version of mark who “has everything.” he is not shattered by grief, he has a new love interest, he still has some innocence. like the johns, one mark is obsessively fixated on a former state, and one is able to narratively advance. but the fact that the story of how good the more innocent version of mark has it comes from lumon (“the mark i’ve come to know at lumon is happy”) emphasizes how much it is, indeed, a story. that version has also experienced loss, and suffering, and his existence is, of course, literal corporate slavery. it potentially foreshadows that now that one mark is attempting to “have everything” to an even greater degree, by stitching together his separate selves, that something will go wrong. like farscape with icarus, there are two myths suggested by the show so far: the orpheus and eurydice myth, which doesn’t bode well, and the persephone myth, which could go in a number of directions.

both shows use the season’s credit sequence to express the idea of self-conflict. in farscape, the narration over the season three credits is split into two echoing voices, and its description of the show’s premise becomes divided and confused. instead of john saying he’s “just trying to find a way home”, and to meanwhile “share the wonders i’ve seen” as he does in the credits for seasons one and two, john in the season three narration wonders if he wonder if he should “open the door” to earth, or leave it shut. he starts asking questions: “are you ready?”, “or should i stay?” he starts describing the things he’s seen as both “nightmares” and “wonders”. similarly the credits for season two of severance are full of duality and conflict. there is imagery of gemma on one side, and helly on another. the women flicker and run in opposite directions. meanwhile the two marks simultaneously work together and seem at odds. sometimes one mark pulls and carries the other. but instead of the season two credits ending with the two marks merging, as they do in the first season credits, one mark now attempts to crawl its way out of the other.

in general, both shows seem to use the idea of pain, grief, or trauma as a kind of psychological splitting point. and use romantic love to make the longing and loss (the positive and negative) involved in change more visceral. in mark’s case, the metaphor is pretty literal and immediate—the starting premise of the show is that he has split himself into two consciences because of grief for his wife. in john’s case, the metaphor takes a bit longer to develop. he changes in increasingly dark ways over the course of the first two seasons, and only by season three is it time to physically split him in order to explore the implications of those changes. this difference makes sense based on the type of story that each show is derived from. severance is more of a modern gothic tale, exploring the consequences of repression in an eerie atmosphere. farscape on the other hand, is more of a modern odyssey or wizard of oz, a mythological tale of displacement and change.

i don’t have predictions on specific developments in severance, but i’m interested to see where it goes with the metaphorical framework it’s set up so far. like farscape, it could easily end in a dog with two bones sort of way—by trying to have two contradictory things, mark loses both. and perhaps that will be a necessary nadir on the path to some ultimate stage of resolution. regardless, it’s nice to see a new scifi show making use of the genre’s ability for metaphor in a way that doesn’t (yet) feel boring or underdeveloped, whatever it chooses to do with it.