A new high-concept science-fiction series is always something that I have to watch even if I feared it might be more of a thriller or a drama. The central conceit is original enough but really grabbed my attention is that this is kind of an office dystopia setting in the vein of The Stanley Parable. The series even cites the game as an influence! Despite some clever ideas, the plot develops in a very predictable direction and slows down in the middle of the first season. Fortunately the last two episodes drastically ramp up the tension, all but guaranteeing that we’ll be there for the next season.

Mark Scout is a severed employee of Lumon Industries, meaning that a chip has been implanted in his brain which separates his workplace self from his normal one. One day at work he is told that his department head and best friend Petey has abruptly left and he is being promoted. His first task is to supervise the onboarding of a new employee Helly who wakes up in the conference room with no memories of even her own name. Despite Mark’s best efforts. Helly responds badly and keeps wanting to resign but is turned down by her outie, her outer self. Their other colleagues in the same department are Irving, an elderly man who buys fully into the mythos that Lumon has built around its founder, and Dylan, a more cynical but productive worker who enjoys the perks of meeting quotas. In the outside world, Mark has no memories of his colleague or even what he actually does at work. His sister Devon worries about him and we learn that he has been suffering from depression since the death of his wife, choosing to be severed as a way to deal with the pain. One night a disheveled man appears to him, introducing himself as Petey. He explains that he is on the run from Lumon after reintegrating his memories and that the world needs to wake up to what is being done to the severed employees.

The premise is original and immediately compelling. It’s great how the series leans completely into the bureaucratic nightmare esthetic. The underground severed floor where they work is a seemingly endless maze of nondescript corridors, with each department kept isolated from each other. The company mandates rules and procedures for every conceivable situation, such that when Mark is ordered to handle Helly’s orientation, he has to flip back and forth through a huge manual. The very best part of the world they have created is that with no memories and no cultural artefacts of the wider world allowed, Lumon has deliberately engineered a synthetic religion and internal culture to motivate the severed employees. The founder of the company Kier Eagan is held up as a messiah-like figure with the employees being taught and encouraged to quote his sayings. Of course, we can see that the quotations and works of art are stolen from existing ones but in the cult of Kier, all great things are ascribed to the genius of the founder.

Mystery box shows like this always run the risk of being too stingy about doling out the secrets and never getting around to providing real answers. This show does slow down in the middle as it focuses on establishing the characters and their motivations. The worldbuilding never completely makes sense as Lumon is simultaneously too large and too small. It has genuinely revolutionary technology that could change the world but the severed floor is seemingly managed by only a handful of supervisors. It’s silly that Mark’s boss has to personally carry out nefarious deeds herself in the outside world. No matter how insidious the company is, in the end surely enforcement of their rules must be applied through violence. How happens if an employee simply sits there and refuses to cooperate? My best guess for what happens next is that what Lumon is selling is simply the severance technology itself and so Mark and his colleagues are really being put to work to improve the chip without knowing about it.

The season finale is awesome however as they really ramp up the stakes and the tension towards the end. Neither the writing nor the directing are particularly noteworthy. Too many times, it feels like they’re using a ticking the boxes approach, such as giving each character their own reason for rebelling against Lumon. You’d be hard pressed to think of any singularly memorable or affecting scene. Still it’s a serviceable show with an original premise and there are enough twists to keep things interesting. I’d be up for watching the next season when it pops up.