Category Archives: Reviews

Severance Season 2: A Worthy Wait

Time kills momentum.

Television, more than any medium, suffers when stretched too thin, when seasons arrive years apart and audiences move on. Severance had every reason to stumble into that trap.

Instead, its second season does what few long-awaited returns manage: it justifies the wait.

Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller pick up where they left off, not trying to recapture the shock of Severance’s first season but deepening the unnerving world they built.

Gone is the sheer novelty of the original’s unnerving conceit—workers literally severed from their outside lives, trapped in a corporate labyrinth where every move is a mystery.

We know the rules now, but that doesn’t mean we’re comfortable. If anything, the show doubles down, letting the walls close in tighter, the questions pile up higher, and the stakes grow more disturbing.

From the start, Severance establishes that it won’t be taking the easy route. No immediate answers, no hurried reunions, no forced exposition.

Instead, the season leans into its eerie rhythms—long silences, measured stares, sterile halls that feel colder than ever.

The direction, still helmed in part by Stiller, moves with a precision that borders on hypnotic. You feel trapped inside Lumon, even if you’re watching from your couch.

Adam Scott’s Mark remains the quiet center of the storm, his restrained performance anchoring a cast that continues to deliver career-defining work. Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, and John Turturro find new layers to Helly, Dylan, and Irving, each unraveling in their own ways as the corporate nightmare around them tightens its grip.

Patricia Arquette, ever the scene-stealer, shifts between menace and something even scarier—an employee who believes, truly, in Lumon’s vision.

But it’s the sheer audacity of Severance that makes it feel vital. In an era where prestige TV often retreats into formula, this show remains weird, precise, and staggeringly confident.

Scenes unfold like fever dreams—unsettling but calculated, absurd yet deeply intentional. The humor, bone-dry and perfectly timed, breaks the tension just enough before plunging you back into the abyss.

Some moments make you laugh, some make you shudder, and some make you think, Are we sure Stanley Kubrick is dead? Because this is pretty brilliant.

If there’s a complaint to be made, it’s that Severance can’t quite surprise in the same way its first season did. The mystery isn’t new, and the slow-burn storytelling demands patience. But that’s the trade-off: instead of spectacle, you get depth. Instead of easy shocks, you get a creeping, existential dread that lingers long after the credits roll.

Few shows justify their years-long waits. Severance does.

It may not have the immediate gut-punch of its debut, but what it does have is something rarer: a second season that doesn’t just extend a story but enriches it.

And in today’s television landscape, that feels like its own kind of miracle. In or outside the real world.

The Death of Television


Streaming killed television.

Not long ago, we basked in a second golden age of TV. Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Sopranos, The Wire—stories built to last. Networks fought for viewers, but they also fought for legacy. HBO owned Sunday nights. FX thrived on grit. AMC became an empire on the back of a chemistry teacher in his underwear.

Then came Netflix.

In 2007, it introduced streaming, revolutionizing content consumption. Entire seasons arrived at once. Appointment television disappeared. Binge culture took over. It worked—at first. Now, every platform follows the same model. Paramount+, Max, Hulu, Disney+. Content floods in, washes over audiences, and vanishes.

Streaming’s rise coincided with traditional TV’s collapse. In July 2023, for the first time, broadcast and cable viewership fell below 50% of total television consumption. Broadcast viewing dropped 5.4 percent, cable plunged 12.5 percent, while streaming surged 25.3 percent year-over-year. The numbers tell the story. TV as we knew it isn’t just shrinking; it’s evaporating.

Seasons shrank. Time between them stretched. A six-episode series now takes two years for another six. By then, momentum is gone. So is the audience.

Writers stopped writing, forced instead to “break story” for months with no guarantee of a second season. Actors drifted between projects, waiting for green lights that never come. Shows, once built to last, became disposable. Mindhunter. GLOW. 1899. Gone, not because they failed, but because an algorithm decided they weren’t worth the cost.

The business changed, and with it, the art. Binge culture gutted anticipation. No more week-to-week debates. No more watercooler moments. Just a weekend of consumption, then silence. By Monday, the next thing arrives. Stories aren’t told; they’re dropped.

Meanwhile, networks withered. Prestige TV—the kind that made HBO a powerhouse—got swallowed by mergers, budget cuts, and tax write-offs.

But television isn’t dead yet.

If the second golden age taught us anything, it’s that audiences reward patience. They invest in long-form storytelling. They build relationships with characters, not algorithms.

So how do we fix it? Slow down. Tell bigger stories again. Give shows time to breathe. Bring back the week-to-week model that kept people talking, debating, anticipating. Make TV an event again, not just another piece of disposable content.

Streaming won. But television isn’t lost — it just forgot what made it special.