Severance & serialization

spoiler free, but please catch up soon, I want to talk about it!!!

At the time of publication, the season 2 finale of Severance is just about 12 hours away from airing, and believe you me, I am currently counting down the hours.

from AppleTV+

Perhaps in the dark depths of the pandemic five years ago, when the craving (and frankly, the need) for binge watching was at its peak, the idea of weekly releases felt luxurious to the point of haughtiness. What could be superior about a show that made you wait when the act of waiting was interminable, was omnipresent, was the content of our days anyway?

A few years out now, we’ve come to some interesting conclusions about the way we consume our shows as a culture. For one, there’s been a trend towards a middle ground of batched releases—as in Outer Banks and Bridgerton’s episode drops in two parts, or the ridiculous Love is Blind release schedule of 6 initial episodes, then 3 the next week, then 2, and then 1 final reunion.

Shows that release like this try to get the best of both worlds, but this hinges on there being such a dramatic cliffhanger that you can leave your audience feasting on the tension for weeks. I don’t think OBX and Bridgerton had enough juice for this kind of break—I completely forgot what was happening by the time the next episodes rolled around. Love is Blind was a whole different beast with social media airing the drama of the show before all the episodes could be released, but I digress.

The proliferation of remote work has certainly decreased the amount of workplace small talk needed in the world, which means you can kind of get to the conversation about the show whenever you get to it. Keeping up with a weekly release isn’t a social requisite as it was back in the Game of Thrones days.

And yet, the weekly release seems to have come back into style recently. The buzz about a show can be sustained for longer if the suspense is drawn out, and I think a formulaic show like White Lotus is leaning heavily on that assumption right now. I’m waiting to see if the slow burn will lead to a major payoff (I’m a little doubtful this time around, but we’ll see).

One show I know pays off in its weekly releases is Abbott Elementary. You’ve heard me gush about this show in my 2023 and 2024 end-of-year watchlists, but I’ll take another chance to do it here. The nostalgia of a weekly 30-minute sitcom is something that will always tug at my heartstrings. I don’t keep up religiously but get a pep in my step every time I remember there’s a bit of that joy waiting for me when I sit down to eat lunch.

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Severance is something different. The precision of the production of this show means I truly need a week to digest each episode—a week is also the perfect amount of time for fan theories to run a full life cycle of birth, growth, triumph, and decay on Reddit.

The acting, the cinematography, the whole lot of it is great, but the momentum is truly sustained by the strength of the writing. There’s no need for gimmicky cliffhangers when the story is meant to be serialized, to be paused and considered by the community at distinct intervals.

I’ll follow up on this point at the end of this year, so be sure to catch up then, but if you’re just picking up the series for the first time, try and pace yourself accordingly; wait at least a few days between episodes if you can. Don’t dig too deep on Reddit or TikTok because you will be spoiled, but let me know what you’re thinking as you go. There’s nothing quite like experiencing the contours of a story together, and I cannot wait to see how this bit of Severance concludes and what all the people in my life watching simultaneously will think it means.