#106. 'Severance' (Plus Some Other Stuff)
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This is a short, no-banter Patreon lightning-round bonus episode with just Sonny and JVL, since Vic is still out sick and they're taping back-to-back shows; there's no opening check-in, just a straight run through three topics. First up is the Thor: Love and Thunder teaser, where Sonny (mostly a defender of Taika Waititi, crediting him for the What We Do in the Shadows TV series even though he disliked Jojo Rabbit) and JVL (who loved both Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit's "goofy Hitler") disagree on Waititi's on-screen goofiness but agree Marvel is smartly building around Chris Hemsworth's surprisingly strong comic timing, with Sonny still preferring the more Shakespearean Kenneth Branagh-era Thor. Second, they dance on Netflix's grave after its first-ever US/Canada subscriber loss: JVL argues the company is like a 1990s big-box retailer that saturated the market at a loss expecting to cash in later, and Sonny lays out three structural problems — no foundational IP, an insanely expensive binge-and-dump release model that doesn't build buzz, and genuinely bad creative judgment (passing on CODA, greenlighting a flood of mediocre originals) — while both worry a Netflix collapse could hurt below-the-line Hollywood workers who've benefited from the streaming boom. The main event is Severance on Apple TV+, which Sonny loves and rates on par with the mystery-of-identity structure of Mad Men's first season, praising Ben Stiller's direction (especially a tracking shot that stays locked on Adam Scott rather than showing where he's walking) and arguing it resolves its mysteries far better than Lost ever did; JVL, having watched only the pilot, likes the meticulous production design (down to the characters' watches) but frames it as a "puzzle show" whose central unanswered question — what does the Lumon company actually do, and why sever workers at all — leaves him cold, while Sonny counters that it plays much better as a philosophy-of-personhood show about what you owe yourself if you could offload eight hours a day to a version of you that will never remember it.
From the show notes
On this week's Patreon-exclusive bonus episode, Sonny and JVL discuss Thor and Taika, Netflix's demise, and the buzzy Apple TV+ show Severance.
Full transcript
Sonny00:00:00Oh, hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Sonny Bunch along with J. V. L., Jonathan V. Last. Vic is still out. We're taping back-to-back episodes, so he's still out. We're giving him the whole week off. We want him to get better in his sanitarium. Just a reminder, Sub-Beacon available through Patreon. That's where you're listening right now. You will only ever be able to listen to this episode on Patreon, so tell your friends if they're like, hey, what's that great show that you listen to? Why can't I hear this episode about Thor, Love and Thunder, Netflix's downfall, and Severance on my iTunes feed? You gotta go to subbeacon.com. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe. Tell your friends. Don't forget about Sub-Beacon Merchandise Store at tpublic.com. JVL, we're doing a quick lightning round here. We're doing a quick lightning round. First topic, Thor, Love and Thunder. Teaser trailer out now. What did you make of it?
JVL00:01:07I mean, I would sign up for a Thor and Korg buddy cop movie, but that does not appear to be what this is. It appears to be a Guardians of the Galaxy movie with Thor and Lady Thor in it.
Sonny00:01:21Yes.
JVL00:01:22Lady Boy Thor. I don't...
Sonny00:01:24Natalie Portman with her jacked arms. That's what everyone's talking about on the internet. Her sculpted biceps.
JVL00:01:32I guess. I don't know.
Sonny00:01:35I forget. Did you like Ragnarok?
JVL00:01:38I loved it. Loved it. I love everything Taika Waititi does.
Sonny00:01:42That is so fascinating to me because I find him insufferable.
JVL00:01:46I love him.
Sonny00:01:47I quite like... So the best thing he has done, in my opinion, is the What We Do in the Shadows TV show. The TV show, not the movie, which I found almost unbearable, even at just 80 minutes. It was a total slog for me. But the TV show is amazingly entertaining, I found. And he's the creative mind behind that, so I have to give him credit for that. But anytime he is on screen or anytime he is making a feature film, I find him to be vaguely unbearable. Like Jojo Rabbit, I hated. I did not like.
JVL00:02:23So I didn't like Jojo Rabbit. I didn't like Jojo Rabbit either. His goofy Hitler. I enjoyed things about it. His goofy Hitler was the best part of Jojo Rabbit. And there were things about it I liked. I thought Ragnarok was great.
Sonny00:02:36I just prefer the Kenneth Branagh interpretation of that character, which I think is. I just I like the kind of Shakespearean operatic sense of it as opposed to the goofy.
JVL00:02:53So, look, I agree. I agree. However, this was all born of Marvel discovering what they had in Chris Hemsworth.
Sonny00:03:02That he's funny.
JVL00:03:03And when you discover that this guy is, I mean, he's not just like, oh, he's funny. He's really funny. And so, you know, like you adapt your your system to the players you have. Right. If you've got a guy who is a cannon for an arm and he reads defenses, he stopped being a run first team. And yes, you throw the ball. Right. You can't look. It's just it would have been crazy to waste his comedic talent. I get it. I get it. You know, I would bet anything that that is why the character took the turn it did in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That it was not part of the plan. It was only when they realized that this guy that they had cast to be Thor was was the best comedian in the whole MCU. Which is saying something because Chris Pine is also a very funny guy. Chris Pratt. Sorry. Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt is a very funny guy. Paul Rudd is a very funny guy. I mean, they have they have people who can do comedy.
Sonny00:03:59Robert Downey.
JVL00:03:59Robert Downey Jr. is very fun. Right. Yeah. Don Cheadle. Don Cheadle is very funny. Anyway, this doesn't look it looks confused. Maybe it's just a teaser trailer. Right.
Sonny00:04:10I think they were. I think they I think there was a little bit of panic in putting this out because people were people kept talking about how there's no teaser trailer. This movie is coming out in like three months. We haven't seen image one from it. They're like, I got to get something out there.
JVL00:04:23But Chris Hemsworth, he's funny.
Sonny00:04:25He's got he's got goat chariots. Lady Thor. Yeah. I don't know. I like it.
JVL00:04:32I don't know.
Sonny00:04:32I don't know. I am. I'm not. I'm not super excited because I again, I actually didn't even hate Ragnarok. I just don't like I don't like that iteration of the character very much. And if I don't mind Chris Hemsworth being funny, Chris Hemsworth is very funny in the Kenneth Bronick Thor. That's that's the thing that like I've always found vaguely frustrating about this discourse is that like that is a movie where he gets to be funny, but also serious and trading all of that for being like the guy who starts screaming when he's going to get his haircut in Thor Ragnarok. Rub me the wrong way.
JVL00:05:06Just rub me the wrong way. I get that. But it fits the whole vibe of the movie. It fits with the Jeff Goldblum. I mean, because look, it's a Jeff Goldblum movie more than a Anthony Hopkins movie. Yeah. Right.
Sonny00:05:20Yeah. Problem. Okay. All right. But Netflix, you get to dance on a grave. Go.
JVL00:05:26So I have been saying for years that Netflix is wildly overvalued and that it was clear that they were basically doing what the big box stores did to retail commerce throughout the 1990s, which is saturating marketplace in an attempt to drive out all competition by selling stuff basically at a loss. Assuming that once they commanded the entire marketplace to themselves, then they could make money by raising prices, which has been the Netflix model. And they were subsidized by an insane valuation of, you know, whatever, 49X or whatever their profit loss ratio is. And it's all coming crashing down. They just had loss of subscribers in the US and Canada for the first time. Uh, ever, I think this is on top of a slowdown last quarter and another projected loss next quarter. And, uh, you know, also, it turns out that everything they do sucks. Yeah, everything they do sucks. And it isn't just like, oh, there's competition is that there's competition and all of the competition is better. All of it. Peacock is better. Maybe Paramount Plus isn't. I don't know. But Paramount Plus at least gets you NFL games. You can watch, you can watch the NFC on Paramount Plus as shitty as that is. Right. Or is it the AFC? Well, so that's even pretty good. Uh, HBO Max is far and away the best of these services. Disney Plus has a lot to recommend it. Uh, if you got kids, Apple, Apple Plus is fine. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's the most artistically ambitious of the, of the services.
Sonny00:07:20We'll talk about this in a minute. Cause we're going to talk about.
JVL00:07:22It's just Netflix blows and I am happy to see it falling apart a little bit. Uh, except for one thing, which is that if Netflix starts not being able to do a volume business, I mean, they're responsible for like half of the productions in Hollywood right now. What's going to happen to this industry, right? I mean, the Netflix years have been boom years. In many ways for people out in the business, especially at the level of like writers.
Sonny00:07:58Well, well, they've been, they've been a boom business for, they've been a boom business for a very specific subset of like mega creators, right? Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy, those guys who have gotten their $200 million deal. Sure. They, uh, the way they have treated writers has been not ideal. Um, they, they do not, they do not. Part of the problem is a lack of consistent output of product. Part of the problem is you, once you get signed to one of these shows, you're on it for longer than you would have been, you know, on like a network show, you're doing fewer episodes. So there, there are money issues there. But another one, a friend, a friend, a friend of mine was talking about how after they are done writing a show, Netflix kind of lets the writers go. Right. So instead of having them around on the production side of things, watching how things. Instead of having them sit around watching how the shows get made, instead of building the next generation of like producer writers, right. You just like, they just go away and they don't, they don't learn that next step. That's a real problem for the industry. I, an economist friend was saying, you know, Netflix still has $180 billion market cap. They should buy somebody. They should, who should they, what streaming service should they buy to consolidate?
JVL00:09:11They should buy Twitter.
Sonny00:09:12They should buy, well now they should buy, they should buy, you know, they should buy HBO Max, right? What if, what if they bought Discovery, HBO Warner? Media Discovery, you know, put it, put that all under the Netflix, uh, umbrella there. There's a big problem with this. So, so Netflix, Netflix is number one, a number one problem is that it has no IP. This is, it has no foundational franchise. Stranger things is good, but like that's run its course. Those kids are too old. Uh, they, they waited like three years between seasons. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a real, it's a real mess over there. Um, so that's, that's problem number one. No IP, even if they solve that problem by say buying, let's say they just bought Warner brothers, paid $20 billion for Warner brothers and brought all the DC stuff and all the Harry Potter stuff over. Even if they did that, the problem that Netflix really has is that their, their business model, their release schedule model, which was their big selling point at the beginning, we're going to release an entire season of TV in a week and people will binge it.
JVL00:10:18Binge on it because we're actually competing against sleep. We're not even competing against movies or TV, right?
Sonny00:10:25People will binge on it and then they'll talk about it for a week and then they'll watch the next thing and then they'll watch the next thing and then they'll watch the next. The problem with doing that is it is insanely expensive. It is insanely expensive to put together 10 television hours and put them out every week. And they're not just doing it in America. They're doing it in Korea. They're doing it in Germany. They're doing it in Spain. They're, they're spending, they're spending enormous, enormous amounts of money and this does not. Not work. If we've talked about this, this does not work if they have reached, if they've plateaued at 200 million subscribers or whatever, but mostly it just doesn't, it just doesn't make any sense as a way to build the buzz for the things that they have. It is, it's a poor release model in general. Well, the third problem, one more, the third and final problem, as you, as you mentioned, is that Netflix just has terrible taste. They, they do not, they have, they greenlight bad things. They don't know how to greenlight good things. They, they pass on things that, like, you know, why didn't they buy Coda? Why did Apple TV Plus buy Coda, the best picture winner at the Oscars this year? Netflix could have bought Coda at Sundance for $27 million, right? Even if they had bought it, they would have buried it on the service. Nobody would have ever seen it. I mean, I, like, they, they have no idea how they, because they're so algorithmic and because they're so computer oriented and because they're so data driven, they have nobody there who is actually good at developing, uh... high quality artistic products. And so they outsource some of that to Martin Scorsese with The Irishman or Alfonso Cuarón with Roma or the Coen brothers with The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. And those are fine movies. Um, but, you know, that's three titles out of 250 original movies they've made in the last five years.
JVL00:12:14The last year.
Sonny00:12:16I mean, I, I'm just talking, I'm just talking about English language movies. You know, I mean, I like it is they just have they make a lot of crap and most of it's not very good. And it's a it's a real problem.
JVL00:12:31But these things are conjoined, right? I mean, you you cannot at scale. Your quality control can't be good. No, right. Because if if there if there were if there were 50 good ideas for a movie. A year, then we would have 50 good movies released a year in theaters and we don't we don't ever some years someone great years. You might get like 12 good movies, some years you might get five, right? And if you then want to broaden your definition to include economics, a movie that is both good and economically viable, how many of those are exist a year?
Sonny00:13:16Yeah, you know what years are what years are Christopher Nolan, right, and Steven Spielberg
JVL00:13:21making movies and in the Netflix model of we're going to we're going to release again the number of things it just it is it's it's ludicrous and it has always been ludicrous. I would like to think that maybe in the long run this helps sustain the helps save the movie business. I was thinking about actually after we got off the show last week. I was thinking about every everything everywhere all at once. That this is a movie and it's important to see it as a movie because it would imagine how crappy that would look if it would have Netflix it at it. It's much worse than that. It's not like what it would look like everything everywhere all at once. If that idea had come to Netflix, it would have been a series and we would have had ten episodes in each of which we spent an hour in each one of the many worlds shown on it and would have been interminable.
Sonny00:14:20Yeah.
JVL00:14:21Yep. It would have been horrible because of the economic imperatives of streaming to just suck up minutes. And anyway, it's just it's good for it may be bad for people in Hollywood like the line workers that because there's just been more productions because of Netflix, there's been a lot more productions, like just more stuff getting made. And so if you're a gaffer or you're a best boy, like there's just been more work for you. And I hope those people don't get fucked here. Yeah, I probably will. They probably get fucked eventually. They probably will. Yeah.
Sonny00:14:56Anyway, so last and finally, we're going to be talking about severance here. I so I am a big booster of Apple TV plus everything that I watch on Apple TV plus I like more or less. I like I like Mythic Quest a lot. I like Ted Lasso a lot. I like I'm watching Slow Horses right now. The Gary Oldman spy show that is on Apple TV. Plus, it's quite good. And I really like the first season of severance. I even I said this to a friend, I like it about as much as I liked the first season of Mad Men because they're structured in kind of similar ways and you don't realize it until you're done with the season. But both first season of Mad Men and the first season of severance are essentially mysteries where you're trying to figure out who a character is. And I realized that it especially hit home when I was rewatching the I was rewatching the pilot today because I knew we were going to be talking about it. That the first line in the show and this is this is so obvious, I should have realized it the first time around when I was watching it. First line in the show is Who are you? It's a disembodied voice talking to a woman on the table. And while the main character of this show is Adam Scott, he plays he I'll explain it. It is his voice. It is his voice. The main character of the show is Adam Scott. He is not actually who the mystery is about. The mystery is about this woman, Hallie R., who wakes up on the table. You don't really quite realize that until towards the end of the the first season, the importance of her actual real identity to to this little bit of world building. It is a it's a mystery box show. And if your patience with things like Lost Run thin, you may not like this as much, though. This this show does a much better job of getting to of answering. Questions than Lost ever did through its first three seasons, four seasons. This this sets up questions and then answers them. It's great. But I kind of I love the look of this show. Ben Stiller directed the first couple of episodes and there's this great tracking shot. So here's the setup. Setup of the show is workers in this in this at this company. Lumen can undergo a process called severance. Where they separate their memories between work and home life. Once you enter the basement of the severance building, your work memories start. It's like a whole different you. You're any is what it's called. And then when you leave, when you leave the elevator, it's back to the real world. And people the people who take these jobs tend to be a little bit broken. The guy who Adam Scott, again, is the lead here. He is taking this job because his wife has died and he wants to get get away from his sadness for eight hours a day. He doesn't want to be thinking about her and how sad he is. That is the basic set up. It is. Interesting to me in that it is dealing with a lot of theory of mind stuff and like what we actually what makes us who we are and what we, you know, how how important is memory to defining us? And I just I found the I love the whole thing, I love the look of it, like I said, so the first couple episodes are directed. By Ben Stiller, there's this great tracking shot in the basement of the Lumen building where we are following Adam Scott's character. But instead of being from behind, seeing him going down the hallway, the cameras focused entirely on him, where we aren't we aren't seeing where he's going. Because where he's going doesn't really matter, if that makes sense, we're seeing we're watching, we're watching his process, his progress through this little rat maze that he's in, and it's entirely focused. On him because he is, you know, he is he is the center of what is, what is what is going on. I, I don't know, the whole thing. I just I just really enjoyed it. I don't know. JVL, you did not like it.
JVL00:19:07It's not I didn't like it. So there are things I only watched the first episode. The look of it is fantastic. The attention to detail and set dressing. Adam Scott is wearing a Vostok. Watch when he is in his Audi, which is fascinating. It's a Russian watch. And then when he goes to become his any, he changes watches and and puts on what looks like a nose glass hoot, which is just a very sterile dial with nothing else on it. I so here is so here's the question, right? Is it a is it a is it a philosophical show or a puzzle show? Maybe it works as a philosophical show because there is a good place ask sort of vibe to it. Maybe it's just because Adam Scott was in both, you know, small part in the good place. And it's quite funny. And if it's about like the nature of being like, maybe I could get into that. But I my immediate read was as a puzzle show. And where the question is, what does this company do? Which is the only thing I cared about watching it. The truth is, I had absolutely no interest in any of the characters. All I want to know is, what does this company do? What is what? Why would you need workers who don't know who they are on the outside? Yeah. Does it answer that question?
Sonny00:20:45You're going to be disappointed if that's the main thing. Because that's the only thing I care about. There's there's a lot of interesting stuff about the company. And it gets it is essentially it's hard to describe without spoiling it badly. But there there is a whole alternate world vibe to the the lumen company. They have their own little like creation myth and backstory.
JVL00:21:11Well, you see, there's like this Lenin esque painting of the guy who I assume is their founder. And they ask what what they ask. What would he what is his favorite breakfast? Right? Yeah. And I assume that this is that the same guy we saw, right?
Sonny00:21:28There's a there there's there is, there is a very, I really like the bit of world building that they do there. If you're looking for like, are they burying bodies somewhere like that is not the the sort of answers you're going to get.
JVL00:21:44So this is, this is my I, it is totally valid, right? The road, the road never tells you how they got where they are. It's a story about the journey, right? I don't care about that journey. What I care about is how did the world get that way? That's a me thing. That's not a Cormac McCarthy thing. But for me, successful puzzle shows have to answer those questions. And, you know, the most successful puzzle show ever is probably Twin Peaks, which the question is, who killed Laura Palmer, right? X-Files, the question is, are people out there? Alias, right?
Sonny00:22:29Was the these shows to the all puzzle shows to the degree that they are successes or failures
JVL00:22:38ultimately comes down to do they answer the central questions in satisfying ways?
Sonny00:22:44And yeah, if you're if your main question is, what is Lumen and what does it do? There are kind of tangential answers to that that are setting up things that are clearly going to happen in the next season. But it is much more interesting as a philosophy show, as a kind of again, as a as a theory of mind. So like I was thinking about this the other day, the the the weirdly the most profound thing that I I can remember reading about the idea of personhood as a child happened in a web of Spider-Man comic. And when I was like eight or nine years old and it was a very it was almost a toss away, a throwaway thing where these these two hoods were in some sort of glass tube and a scientist comes up and he's going to turn them into superpowered villains. And one of the guys asked the scientist, he says, hey, is this is this going to hurt? And the scientist replies to him, you won't remember anything. That is not an answer. That is not a this will or will not hurt what it is. This is a recognition of the fact that if you don't remember anything happening, does that thing actually happen? And that is what this show is actually about. So like the the innies, right, they exist. Their entire existence is within the basement of Lumen. They don't there's no break for them. They don't they don't go home and sleep and hang out with their family. They they are just there all the time. Their entire existence is within that little world. And what happens to them there? And and how that plays out in the real world is a is a central question and idea of it's a question about what what do you owe to yourself? If you could enslave yourself for eight hours a day and earn all, you know, earn your money, not ever have to deal with work shit, not ever have to think about, you know, home stuff when you're at work, never have to deal with the plumber coming and, you know, trying to get all that stuff done. But you would never know what was happening to you for that eight hours a day. Would it would it would it how much would that matter? Again, it's much more interesting. Don't look at it like a puzzle show. Look at it like a philosophy show. Look at it as a show about what it means to be a person.
JVL00:25:09Well, I mean, this is I don't know. I mean, being a fully integrated person means like enjoying your work. Right. Finding meaning in all the parts of the day.
Sonny00:25:25Or or what if you don't want to?
JVL00:25:28Well, that's a problem. Then the answer the answer is to to change your life in such a way so that you do. I mean, there is a part of right in an office space where Peter says to the hypnotist, could you make it so that I just zone out and don't even really remember having gone to work? That's not what we do here, Peter. I think I can help.
Sonny00:25:50Yeah, yeah. And that's like that's part of it. But the question is in that like what actually happens when you zone out? What what what happens to that part of you when you're still there? You know, it's again, it's it you you kind of have to watch it to to get the sense. I wouldn't blame you for for bailing on it if if you're if you're going to get like really hung up on like what is what is Lumen and what do they do?
JVL00:26:12That's right. I just can't like why why would this exist? What is the purpose of of creating something like? Like this, you wouldn't just do it for somebody is monitoring it. Somebody again, this is, you know, how did the road get this way? Well, nobody and most people didn't care. I did. It's the only thing I cared about was how did this happen? I like my puzzles. I like my puzzles.
Sonny00:26:36All right. All right. I'm sure it's I can hear some noises in the back. You got it. Yeah, I got it. All right. Bye. I'll see you. I'll see you later. I'm sure it's fine.
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