The After Hours

Of course, a great episode of setup is only as good as the following payoff. But this episode is superb, managing to set up a huge season finale while also progressing the plot and giving us exciting new plot points to push us forward.

The penultimate episode of season 1 had this uneasy and tense feeling, and that is dialed up to 11 here, especially with a consistently stressful score.

Milkshake finally seems to snap (Tramell Tillman is incredible), Adam Scott also gets a lot to chew on, and i think every characters plotpoint went in an extremely interesting direction. Cobel gets, ironically, more interesting things to do in this than in her own episode last week. Helly and Dylan have huge cliffhangers that i also can't wait to see resolved.

So ready for the season 2 finale. Not ready for the wait for season 3.

One of the great things about this show is its deliberate pacing and visual storytelling, similar to shows like Better Call Saul or Breaking Bad.

While not everyone likes that, it's a shame that some reviewers fail to see that their own desire for instant gratification doesn't devalue the show's quality.

The loud minority of negative reviews, many of which focus on pacing and, therefore, personal preference, also contain obvious shortcomings in understanding that aren't the show's fault.

Severance doesn't hold the viewer's hand; there's a lot of subtext, and a basic understanding of visual storytelling helps make sense of the complex character dynamics and themes.

Instead of accusing other reviewers of being bots, it might make sense to watch some analyses (e.g., Banshee Breakdowns, JBuck Studios, Think Story) for a deeper understanding of why, in fact, everything actually makes sense.

In regards to a previous review mentioning a few characters and their choices, it's apparent that there's a fundamental lack of understanding provoking these opinions.

It's pretty frustrating to read these self-defeating comments. For example, Devon obviously knows about the cabin because it has been a major plot point in season one.

We might not have all the answers yet, but many questions, in fact, become clearer as the seasons progress. If Severance were available to binge all at once, the majority of the negative reviews wouldn't exist. It's a shame that the show's rating is negatively affected by the impatience of some viewers.

The creators specifically stated that they will address the mysteries they introduce. This obviously won't happen in just one season, but since they have already written the ending and just need to figure out how to get there, maybe it's time to enjoy the journey instead of obsessing over a lack of answers in the meantime.

After all, Severance is a show about identity, love, grief, autonomy, and alienation in a cruel world, and not just about what exactly it is that Lumon is doing.

Season 1 was by far much better. I was hoping this episode was going to be amazing given the last 2 slow ones but its just another slow paced episode with a bunch of filler.

We get good information but once again the story only really starts to progress in the last few minutes to lead up to the season finale. Starting to feel like the walking dead where nothing happens until the episodes cliffhanger. I still do enjoy the show but as time goes on it's leaving more and more to be desired.

No wonder the finale is going to be 70+ minutes long, it needs to be in order for us to get 15 minutes worth of actual story.

I welcome your thumbs down.

While I enjoyed last weeks episode I was a bit annoyed of a second standalone episode away from the characters we loved and waited 3 years for. This episode brings back everything that makes this show what it is in full force at its top level. The performance were great, the jokes were funny and -as always- left us with more questions than answers. Next weeks episode being over an hour long definitely gives a lot to look forward to. Also apparently people are saying the board is made up of a bunch of goats now? I'm here for it, this is definitely the best fanbase in the world. Yes I'm rambling but I needed to reach the minimum character requirement.

This episode was a good setup for the season finale. I wish it had been a little more revealing in some parts, but I feel like it showed us enough to build hype for the season finale. However, despite saving the excitement for the end, it still left us with a high level of anticipation and curiosity for next week.

Some people may have been frustrated by the lack of answers to some questions, but all nine episodes have been a build-up to the finale, which I honestly have high expectations for, because I trust Ben Stiller and we'll have 76 extremely revealing minutes ahead of us. I give the episode a score of 8 because on the "Severance" scale of scores, 8 would be the usual high quality that the episodes present, which for me is already excellent, 9 would be only for "Woe's Hollow" and "Chikhai Bardo", two episodes completely out of the curve in this series, which were impactful from beginning to end, and 10 so far only for "The We We Are", which was the best episode of the series so far, perhaps not for a long time.