People aren’t just laughing at corporate culture in ‘Severance’ Season 2. They’re pushing back

By Leah Asmelash, CNN

(CNN) — There’s a moment early on in Season 2 of Apple TV+’s workplace drama “Severance” where character Harmony Cobel is at a crossroads.

Cobel (Patricia Arquette) stands in front of the future boss of Lumon, the company she has dedicated her life to. She’s just been offered a promotion, one that she rejects in an effort to advocate for her old job. She wants to finish what she started, she says, voice steady and unwavering.

Her boss, Helena Eagan (Britt Lower), is set to inherit the company. For reasons not revealed until later in the season, Helena denies Cobel’s wishes and reminds her to be grateful for what the company has already given her.

“I think you’ve overestimated your contributions,” Helena says, her tone almost menacing. “And underestimated your blessings.”

Her words are a slap in the face for Cobel, who is later revealed to be the creator of the company’s premier “severance” technology, which cleaves employees’ memories into two distinct personas that keep their work and personal lives separate. And looking back on the second season of “Severance,” which concluded its record-breaking run Thursday, that moment between Cobel and Helena underscores a consistent theme through the season: As a worker, you are disposable.

“Severance,” which follows a team of “severed” workers led by Mark S. (Adam Scott) as they try to uncover the truth about the company they work for, returned after three years for its second season. And coincidentally, it met audiences at a time of economic upheaval.

An unsteady job market has contributed to rising scrutiny around large corporations, also a driving theme of the season. Now, the show reflects reality back to us, revealing the eerie ways modern corporate culture has become a villain.

Audiences are rejecting corporate culture

The first season of “Severance” debuted when “quiet quitting” was becoming a popular trend, as workers — fresh off going through the mental stress of a worldwide pandemic — drew more explicit boundaries between work and home.

This season came at an even more fraught time. In 2023, highly publicized strikes by the United Auto Workers union, Hollywood writers and actors, and airline workers against their respective corporations led to the largest number of work stoppages in America in more than 20 years.

More recently, as threats of an impending recession mount, US-based employers are tightening their belts, cutting more jobs in February than any other February since 2009, spurred in part by the massive layoffs of federal workers being carried out by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Even those who are working may feel stuck. Anti-corporate sentiment has grown in recent years, including a period following the pandemic when so many Americans left their jobs, it was dubbed the “great resignation.” Now, amid a cooling job market, employees across the country are seeking new jobs at the highest rate since 2015, according to Gallup, and overall satisfaction with employers has hit a record low.

It’s fitting, then, that people can’t seem to get enough of “Severance.” It’s a significant departure from series about corporate culture that tend to either be episodic pursuits à la “Suits” or grounded comedies like “The Office.”

Unlike these other popular shows, where the workplace might act more as a backdrop than as an opposing entity, “Severance” confronts the exploitative nature of giant corporations, veiled by dangled benefits like free food and company retreats. Who hasn’t been placated with corporate platitudes or company swag when advocating for concrete change?

One online resource advises companies to offer free snacks, beverages and even lunchtime yoga when pay raises aren’t possible. “Severance” not only highlights the absurdity of corporate culture, it emphasizes the illicit underbelly. Everything is in service to Lumon, and Mark S. and his team now see that.

The workplace woes highlighted on “Severance” have audiences drawing parallels to their own jobs. Social media is filled with quips and notes about the agonizing ways in which the show nails the corporate experience. Details like melon-only fruit parties and branded finger traps are just the beginning. One person online compared being severed to code switching at work; another compared it to switching between a public work social media account and a private one.

The popularity of this season of “Severance” points to a shift not just in television, but in our society: People aren’t just laughing at corporate culture anymore, they’re pushing back.

Season 2 mimics reality

The fictional Lumon’s exaggerated corporate environment is intentional. Series creator Dan Erickson and his team studied the ways corporate and government whistleblowers have been treated by these entities in real life — dissenters are first fought, and then made to assimilate, Erickson noted. They used that information to form the basis of the second season, he told The Hollywood Reporter, as Lumon responds to the planned breach by the four main employees in the first season’s finale.

“It always struck me as a very specific kind of manipulation,” Erickson said ahead of the second season’s premiere. “At the end of the day, a company like Lumon wants to be the good guy, and there’s the sense that even this rebellion — they take credit for it.”

Throughout this season, as Lumon attempts to squeeze as much work out of its key employee Mark S., we see the ways workers at every level are treated like kitchen rags, wrung dry and tossed aside. Beyond Cobel, Milchick (Tramell Tillman), another manager within the company, is treated similarly, forced into an impossible role and thanked with underhanded compliments that steadily, if the tension in his jaw is any indication, raise his blood pressure.

At another point, Lumon begs for the return of one employee (Irving, played by John Turturro), only to call for his murder once he begins to ask uncomfortable questions about the company’s plans.

The critiques “Severance” poses against corporate culture shouldn’t obscure the show’s thesis: that your fellow workers are a saving grace. Throughout the second season, the characters of “Severance” must rely on each other to fight Lumon. Indeed, when they don’t, things fall apart (just see Dylan G.’s remorse at dismissing Irving’s instincts).

The arc mimics reality. Before the UAW announced its strike in 2023, President Shawn Fain had to first explain the decision and announce the vote. Fain was clear in his thoughts that a strike was the best way forward; his remarks to the union rail against the billionaire class and the abandonment of auto workers.

“Nobody is coming to save us,” Fain said at the time. “Nobody can win this fight for us. Our greatest hope — our only hope — is each other.”

Mark S. might as well have uttered those same words himself.

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