Severance Season 1 Episode 1: Good News About Hell Recap

March 21, 2022April 21, 2022 ~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

This is a recap of the AppleTV+ series Severance, season 1 episode 1. My review of the season is HERE.

Severance is ostensibly a series about work-life balance, but while it’s a complex, layered show, there’s very little balance involved. A little juggling, maybe, by some of the characters who haven’t been through the severance procedure, which splits memories into a work life and a home life, with no meeting of the two minds. But there is no way for two halves who can’t communicate with one another to negotiate anything like balance between them. Instead, this is a show about choices, connection and self awareness, in a controlled environment that tests the characters as if they are lab animals.

This distinction between the work self and home self as two halves of the same whole who don’t and never will know or understand each other is introduced and explored in episode 1 when Adam Scott’s Mark finds that his best work friend Petey has left his job at Lumon Industries. Mark is promoted to Petey’s former position on the spot and told to acclimate his own replacement, Helly R (Britt Lower), who has just undergone the severance procedure. The corporate philosophy that humans are replaceable, programmable plug and play resources is illustrated within the show’s first few minutes. The flaws in this sort of thinking are also exposed.

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Severance Season 1 Review- Minimal Spoilers

March 16, 2022April 7, 2022 ~ Metacrone ~ 3 Comments

This is a review of season 1. You can find detailed episode recaps at the tag HERE.

Severance is an AppleTV+ series created by Dan Erickson and executive produced and directed by Ben Stiller. Season 1 consists of 9 episodes. Production has already begun on season 2, which will be 10 episodes (if IMDB is correct). This review was written after viewing the first 5 episodes, but only includes minimal spoilers for the first episode.

Adam Scott stars as Mark Scout, a widower who takes a job on the “severed” floor of Lumon Industries, a giant corporation with a cult-like following. Yes, it’s on the streamer brought to you by the cult of Steve Jobs. Sometimes, Apple is shameless. I say this as the parent of one of their lifelong devotees, while typing on a Macbook. Full disclosure- my laptops have all been Macbooks. I am also a fringe member of a corporate cult or two.

Because Mark’s work involves corporate secrets, he agrees to go through the severance medical procedure, in which a chip will be implanted into his brain, bifurcating his memories into two separate personas: one that can only access his time at work and another that only surfaces outside of his job. In addition to benefitting the corporation, the procedure will supposedly improve Mark’s work-life balance.

This has unforeseen consequences.

Severance is a cerebral science fiction dark comedy that, like its main character, has two personas. Much of the show takes place at the Lumon offices, on the windowless “severed” floor, located deep in the basement. This side of the show is a surreal, retrofuturistic psychological horror-thriller filled with characters who only know the world of the Lumon offices, which they aren’t allowed to leave, because they are “severed” personas, the Winter Soldiers of office drones. The walls are bright white, the fluorescent lights are always on and the hallways seem to go on forever, with only a few doors. Other than white, the main colors are the artificial turf green of the carpets and the blue of the men’s suits.

It’s stunningly but subliminally oppressive, in the way the clinical feel of the dentists’ offices of my youth let me know there was no point in resisting what was about to happen there.

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Snowpiercer Season 3 Episode 3: The First Blow Recap

February 18, 2022February 18, 2022 ~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

Episode 6 begins with an epic train battle as the two engines vie to outmaneuver each other in a rail yard that gives them dozens of parallel and crisscrossing tracks to work with. While the engineers and their commanders battle it out, the resistance and loyalists down the line on each train also join the fight.

Recap

Wilford (Sean Bean) has the voice over:

“I was born for battle, built for it. Sometimes in battle a perfectly crafted plan gets compromised. A true general comes up with a better one right there on the spot; working without a net and sticking the landing to thunderous applause… There’s a moment in a fight when that first blow lands and everything stops. And in that flash of clarity, you know who you are. I’ll push as hard as it takes to get my engine back. Snowpiercer, 1,023 cars long.”

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Snowpiercer Season 3 Episode 2: The Last to Go Recap

February 8, 2022March 7, 2022 ~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

Episode 2 brings a grand Snowpiercer wedding along with the introduction of Wilford’s latest scheme to stop Layton. In order to protect the resistance from Wilford and Kevin, Ruth makes a surprising decision. Layton researches his vision of New Eden and gets to know the newcomer after she wakes up. The pirate train must choose between returning to Alice-piercer and visiting the final research site.

It’s a happy, happy day for the train cakemaker, but I’m starting to wonder if everyone has been forced to do shifts in compost.

Recap

Ruth (Alison Wright), still hiding out in First Class at -12°, gives the opening voice over this week:

“When the cold comes for you, the blood stops running to your limbs. It pulls up inside to keep your organs warm. My first love taught me that. An off-shore roughnecker, he was. Tall and lean and tough as wet leather. He’d say, ‘Ruthie, your smile keeps me warm, so be sure to wear it till I’m home.’ Next the cold comes for your mind. And after that, your will. And yet, still, the heart fights on… He left me too soon, my roughneck love. His rig went down, with every man aboard. I know my smile kept him warm as he floated, all alone. Just as I know our hearts will be the last thing to go on Wilford’s train, 1,023 cars long.”

😭 😭 How dare you invoke Ruth’s first love. She’s thinking about how cold and alone he was when he died and comparing it to how cold and alone she is now.

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Snowpiercer Season 3 Episode 1: The Tortoise and the Hare Recap

January 29, 2022 ~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

Welcome back, passengers! It’s time to reboard the train for Snowpiercer season 3. This season, you have a choice between riding Mr Wilford’s Snowpiercer, powered by the leaden Big Alice engine and turned into one long, cold prison camp, or Layton’s 10 car pirate train, powered by Snowpiercer’s original engine, running fast and hot with a rebel skeleton crew on the lookout for Melanie Cavill and warm spots on the Earth’s surface where survivors could eventually settle outside the trains.

Where Season 2 Left Off

By the end of season 2, Wilford (Sean Bean) had outmaneuvered Layton (Daveed Diggs) and convinced the people of Snowpiercer to hand control of the train back over to him. Wilford locked Layton and Ruth (Alison Wright) in the compost recycling car as punishment while he decided what to do with the rest of the rebels and senior staff. Though Wilford has his own cult of personality, he envied the loyalty Layton’s people continued to show toward their deposed leader and set about winning them over rather than executing or imprisoning them.

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Snowpiercer Season 3 Trailers and Preseason Promotional Media Roundup

January 20, 2022January 23, 2022 ~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

*Continuing to update this post over the weekend.*

Snowpiercer season 3 premieres on TNT in the US on 1/24/22 and then on Netflix internationally the next day. As in the first 2 seasons, episodes will air weekly and there appear to be 10 episodes in the season. Metawitches recaps of seasons 1 and 2 are HERE. I’ll add links to recaps for season 3 as the season airs and of course they’ll be featured on the home page. Snowpiercer was renewed for season 4 when production wrapped on season 3. Production on season 4 has already begun.

Let’s start with TNT press releases and videos, then move on to photos, articles and analysis. The season 4 renewal announcement also included a reminder of how season 2 ended and a preview of what’s to come in season 3. Daveed Diggs’ video announcement follows the print announcement:

LOS ANGELES – July 29, 2021 – TNT’s just celebrated the wrap of season three production on its hit drama series “Snowpiercer” with the announcement of a season four pickup. Produced by Tomorrow Studios, “Snowpiercer” seasons one and two are currently available to binge on the TNT app, with season three set to premiere on TNT early next year.

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Creamerie Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot Recap

January 8, 2022January 9, 2022 ~ Metacrone

Creamerie, a new half hour, 6 episode dark comedy from New Zealand, takes place eight years after a plague kills all the men, when women have had time to rebuild society in their their own image. Alex (Ally Xue) and her sister-in-law Jaime (JJ Fong), who run a local organic dairy farm, and Jaime’s best friend, Pip (Perlina Lau), who works for the mayor, live together peacefully, even blissfully, in a small utopian community modeled on Wellness philosophy. The mayor, Lane (Tandi Wright), is positively evangelical about ensuring the Wellness of her constituents, down to the most intrusive details of their lives.

If this is starting to sound dystopian on the order of Brave New World, you’re on the right track. Creamerie also takes cues from The Handmaid’s Tale, Y: The Last Man (obviously), Mad Max: Fury Road, Stanley Kubrick‘s work and the Wellness industry. Creamerie blends these influences into an unpredictable, wickedly funny send up of the modern world while also leaving viewers with hope for the future.

The comedy, which is streaming on Hulu in the US, was co-created by showrunner/director Roseanne Liang (Shadow in the Cloud) and its three main stars, Fong, Lau and Xue. All four previously created the web show Flat 3 together, which is available on Youtube.

Recap

The episode opens on a men’s locker room with Reb Fountain’s cover of What A Wonderful World playing over the scene. As we watch, the helpful ticker at the top of the screen fast forwards through the first 2,920 days of the apocalypse. On day 1, the guys celebrate their team’s victory, until one sneezes bright red blood. By day 14, women in hazmat suits scrub blood from every surface of the room, while outside the men’s bodies burn in a heaping funeral pyre that belches thick black smoke. At day 30, all that’s left of the guys is the funeral pyre, which soon becomes a pile of ashes that then turns into a hill growing grass and a memorial tree.

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Snowpiercer: Every Recap in Order

December 31, 2021February 18, 2022 ~ Metacrone

Links to every Metawitches post about Snowpiercer, in chronological order. New posts added as future seasons air.

Season 1

Snowpiercer Season 1 Episode 1: First, the Weather Changed Recap – Loosely based on the graphic novels and 2013 film of the same name, this is the story of Snowpiercer, 1,001 cars long, which was meant to circle the Earth every 3 months as a luxury rail cruise for the 1%. When Mr Wilford, one of the richest oligarchs in the world, realized climate change was inevitable, he retrofitted the train as an ark. Now this perpetual motion machine holds the last of humanity, divided into a cruel class system, as it plows through the endless winter that has engulfed the entire planet. Mr Wilford’s representative, Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly), brings former police detective Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs) forward from the last train cars where untouchables known as Tailies are kept, so that he can help solve a murder.

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Y: The Last Man Season 1 Episode 10- Victoria Recap

December 30, 2021January 14, 2022 ~ Metacrone

Episode 10, the season, and potentially the series, finale, brings us the Battle of Marrisville vs the Amazons. Beth and Jennifer escape the Pentagon and hide out in Jennifer’s house, while Kim and Christine sleep in a barn. The Culper Ring lets 355 know that they’re still watching her.

As of this writing, Y: The Last Man is a one season show. We love this show and are really hoping someone picks it up. Season 1 can be watched as a complete story, but the ending sets up what are sure to be fascinating season 2 storylines. Y: The Last Man explores human nature in a unique way, far beyond the fact that most of the cast are women. The writing, acting, production design and technical values work together to build a world with a depth that’s rarely seen on television, let alone built in 10 episodes. Showrunner Eliza Clark and her team deserve the chance to show us more of that world.

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Don’t Look Up- Instead, Watch No Tomorrow

December 27, 2021 ~ Metacrone

I considered writing a review of the Adam McKay/Netflix film Don’t Look Up, but I can’t be bothered to review things I dislike. (Here’s a mini review- Don’t Look Up is another expensive, cynical, misogynist, racist, classist “white bros win again, no matter what” film, dressed up as a climate change satire. Not what I was looking for or what anyone needs to watch right now. Or probably ever. Rich, powerful people, stop flaunting your privilege and wealth and competing to see who can be the worst. Get your acts together and actually save the world instead, okay?)

If you are interested in watching a show with similar themes which delivers on its promises, has charming, talented stars, and is an actual romantic comedy/gentle dark comedy-satire, I have just the show for you. No Tomorrow, starring Tori Anderson and Joshua Sasse, ran for 1 season on The CW in 2016 and is currently available on Netflix.

This review was originally written in November, 2016, 6 episodes into No Tomorrow’s 13 episode season, right after we started Metawitches.com. It’s lightly updated.

Recaps for all episodes can be found at the tag. (Listed out of order, because that’s just how I roll. 😉)

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