I once had a customer service experience with an Apple phone that was so Kafkaesque that I bought a Pixel the same day. I'm not saying that the Pixel is good or that you should think it's good or that Apple is evil or anything like that. It just occurred to me that it was within my power to never have this particular experience again. I can have other bad experiences, but when I realized I could consign this particular one to The Void I leapt with ravenous hunger.

I had gotten an iPad right about the time Severance came out, and at least at the time you got a year of AppleTV which was the only place to see it. It has weirdly good shows - Severance is one of the best shows ever made, For All Mankind kills, but the roster is relatively small. It's kind of a weird play, overall; a creature from a strange era where everyone seemed to think they could Be Cable for some reason. It punches above its weight but I can't subscribe to all this motherfucking shit.

Severance is a science fiction show about a company that can bifurcate your consciousness into a Work Self and a Public Self. Weirdly, that is the most simple thing about the show, which feels like if you set a cyberpunk story in the modern day. I literally had to stop watching after a few episodes just to rest my mind; I was too into it. I guess it's a puzzle box type show, and I'm definitely curious about the boxy puzzleness of it all, but the show is executed so well - such a quiet malice throughout - that I can't really play with it while it's on. It's so well cast and performed that you can see somebody you watched for seven fucking years in another show, and it never occurs to you that they're an actor in Severance. It feels like voyeurism, like a True Thing, which makes it's incredibly savvy combination of humor and horror hit like brass knuckles.

(CW)TB out.