Is Severance Slop?
To be clear, I’m (somewhat) a fan of the show. The premise is original/timely (and lends to some memorable scenes/situations), the acting is good, and the set/cinematography should maybe win something. But towards the end of S2 I noticed myself thinking several times, “this feels written by AI.”
Slop doesn’t mean “low quality.” Severance is extremely high-quality in some dimensions, so we need to get specific. Slop, literally, is the food farmers feed pigs; it’s a random assembly of leftovers. So slop is work that is arbitrarily assembled in a context where quality doesn’t really matter. If you’re invested in the premise, and are already paying $9.99 per month for Apple TV, then whether the writing is great, good, or bad, it doesn’t really matter, you still watch. I did. Vibes and star power only earn so much goodwill and patience though; if the form is hollow, the viewers will eventually buckle in frustration.
A few different qualities emerge from AI slop—amnesia, hallucinations, disorientation—all of which are hallmark features of the show. (Minor spoilers ahead).
Severance is a mystery that opens loops with no regards for ever closing them. Every episode opens 3-5 loops, but then they’re quickly forgotten, as if it’s written by a transformer with limited bandwidth. The show violates the principle of “Chekov’s Gun” (if you plant a gun on stage, someone has to get shot). Over two seasons they’ve placed dozens of “guns” and have barely used any. It’s as if an LLM was prompted, “add suspenseful cliffhangers aligned with the high concept,” and now it’s carelessly barreling into the unknown at 400 WPM.
A good mystery will resolve minor loops to help open major ones. In Severance, both major and minor loops are ignored. Mark’s “integration” (the fusion of his innie and outie) is critical to the premise; it was a key theme all season, but it played zero role in the finale. Instead, the plot is steered by cinematic porn and the bizarre. One episode we stumble into a room with baby goats. One episode we wake up in a forrest without ever learning why. In S2E10 recap, the show’s creator said, effectively, “We needed another Lumon-sanctioned celebration, and we didn’t want to do the waffle party again, and somebody suggested, ‘what if we bring in a marching band?’” It’s like they’re prompting an endless cascade of irrelevant hallucinations. “No, crazier!”
The result is 60 minute episodes of slow-paced hi-fi disorientation. I guess it’s properly meta: the viewers are as confused as the characters. But for 20 hours? Right idea, wrong execution.Once the vibe wears off, you realize a Severance episode is 50-90% bloat. There is sometimes only 5 minutes of meaningful development per episode, surrounded by spooky moments, stunning imagery, dream sequences, and staring contests. I’m not saying the show should be fast-paced or linear. It should be slow and surreal, but it should also be strategically fusing together the different elements within the premise. Instead, it maxes out on art vibes. Each episode’s plot feels like it’s constructed by an LLM that can’t quite distinguish content from style, and so it just randomly arranges material that fits the aesthetic.
Could be pushing it here, but Severance might be the peak example of high-production streaming slop, and a preview of the future of AI entertainment: a user prompts a clever premise, they’re augmented with stunning visuals/vibes, but nothing is coherently composed. Maybe I’m just angry from the finale, but I think the writing is unforgivable, especially given the potential, and especially since it costs $20 million to produce an episode that is mostly shot in all-white rooms.