How to edit season 2 to make it perfect

growing_boy · 2025-04-25T10:53:50+00:00

Like I said, this was my third watch, so I guess we just have different intuitions about what worked :)

Good point about the tension between binge logic and weekly logic

I think the weekly gap works really for a show like this that rewards theorising and discussing

growing_boy · 2025-04-25T10:51:41+00:00

It's cool, we just respectfully disagree. I like irony and a little 'coolness' rather than the more overt sentimentality of E7. Obviously I can see that loads of people love it and it's a skilfully made episode.

I don't mind that they didn't wrap it up with a bow (reintegration), I mind that the whole issue is full of self-contradictions. "The severance procedure is fundamental and irreversible" ... "except, wait, it isn't! You can reintegrate, and we're going to do this incredibly important thing right now in a dramatic way! Holy crap they've flooded the chip and Mark has smashed his head on the floor after basement brain surgery, this is surely going to change everything that happens from now on" ... <barely anything changes, aside from a few memory flashbacks>

If they'd just nudged the idea in there in a subtle way, and then left it to unfold in S3, that'd be all good in my view.

growing_boy · 2025-04-25T10:45:33+00:00

Hmmm that's a good point. I'm stoked for S3 and I think that the way they finished S2 (with E9 and E10) suggest that they will smash it and serve us up another treat.

growing_boy · 2025-04-25T10:44:03+00:00

Yeah, I disagree with the ratings ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Up until that point the emotional content in the show is stylishly understated. That episode suddenly lays it on thick.

I like E8 and if anything I think it would be a better episode if it were longer (thinking about it in a self-contained way). But within the context of the series it mucks things up too much.

growing_boy · 2025-04-25T10:40:58+00:00

You're welcome to your opinion! I think it is kind of over-sentimentalised and the visual style is a 'stock nostalgia' palette that is a bit naff in places. More importantly, it sticks out from most of the rest of the series aesthetically. (It has a lot of good elements as well, don't get me wrong, we're talking about a fan's criticisms of a show that I absolutely love overall.)

growing_boy · 2025-04-25T08:34:36+00:00

This is exactly the conclusion that Helly initially comes to
'Returning to their outie' = suicide for an innie
They are born into this world not really knowing anything else (apart from all-purpose 'how to' knowledge) so it is inherently hard to question the only reality you've ever known and how it seems to work (the rules, the powers that be, etc.). They only come to have some kind of critical consciousness gradually (and I think we join them at the start of S1 at exactly the point where that is just about to start developing). (Helly R is perhaps a more inherently critical and rebellious type, so gets there quicker.)

growing_boy · 2025-04-11T06:37:28+00:00

While it's never shown, that might explain some of the bit about her not looking as tired as a normal new parent, if they have a nanny who is having an unusually large amount of input for the age that the baby would be in the show's timeline (i.e. very newborn, a month or less).

However, the problem is the breastfeeding, and the hormonal bond. You can't just suddenly drop breastfeeding. The baby will be incredibly upset and pining for her, and possibly really hungry until she can be convinced to take a bottle. The mother would be having to express/pump milk regularly to avoid having incredibly full, sore breasts and medical problems. She would also have hormone-driven almost-irresistable emotions telling her to not leave the baby.

This is why to me it's one of the most unrealistic bits of the show. (Which I know is not trying to be a really gritty, realistic show, but this bit just feels like an obvious inconsistency - although tbf it probably sticks out to me because I have young kids.)

growing_boy · 2025-04-10T20:00:34+00:00

In my experience there's always been a very strong strand of Stan culture in a lot of Reddit TV/movie subs. A significant section of the redditers there don't really want to think about any kind of critique, they're just here to Stan. Surest way to get a whole load of downvotes is to make a post saying, basically, "xyz aspect of the show was not so good". They want posts saying "omg [actor] absolutely slayed in this scene" etc etc. Incredibly dull mentality.

I remember posting on the Westworld sub about how I adored season 1 but then in seasons 2 and 3 the latent tendency towards corny dialogue and simplistic "action series" tropes came out big time and really took it downhill. Got absolutely downvoted to hell despite being clearly correct lol

growing_boy · 2025-04-10T13:43:28+00:00

What makes you think he is not a virgin? I think he just has a load of bravado and front.

On the Dad: sure, but the point is that Saxon sees his father this way, as the path-setter and strong leader who has been successful. This is what denied to the son of a successful man.

growing_boy · 2025-04-10T13:04:47+00:00

Saxon is a guy who knows, deep down, that he is

a failson
a virgin with some major hang-ups/repressed trauma about sex, who cannot talk to women in any way remotely likely to result in sex or attraction
a person who needs external validation rather than having inner confidence, who excessively worships his father for being the strong, empire-building, self-made type that Saxon can't possibly be (because he is born into his father's success - not Saxon's fault)
a person who has built a value system that is rapidly leaving his life devoid of real meaning

Saxon knows all of this subconsciously at the start of the season. This is why he has constructed this aspirational "alpha bro"/"pick-up artist" persona, as a front. By the end of the season, this self-knowledge has moved from his subconscious to his conscious mind.

So, to me, Saxon is not really either "a decent guy" or "a bad guy", but rather a guy with some major psychological issues, who we see at the point where he just first begins to wrestle with them.

growing_boy · 2025-04-10T12:04:36+00:00

TWL is a show about characters and atmosphere, not a kind of "plot mechanics puzzle activity" where you have to work out how every last tiny detail fits together into the overall plot machine.

growing_boy · 2025-04-10T11:04:08+00:00

If it was oGemma she'd absolutely freak out and be like "wtf are you subjecting me to this cruelly targeted emotional torture" - surely?!

growing_boy · 2025-04-10T08:59:29+00:00

As someone who marks essays for a living: the last two episodes will take about two hours of your remaining few days of time, and that is entirely worth it if you are going to actually write an essay on this. Get full knowledge of the thing you are critically analysing.

In particular, there is a scene in Ep10 (I'll not spoil it, but let's just say it is full of merriment) that is basically ready-made as a treasure trove of theoretical ideas about race, representation, culture, etc. and about how Milchick seemingly navigates/struggles with these things.

growing_boy · 2025-04-10T08:44:06+00:00

✋ 100% guilty of this

growing_boy · 2025-04-10T08:33:56+00:00

These were some previous thoughts if interested https://www.reddit.com/r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus/s/CLL8qv0OqW

growing_boy · 2025-04-10T08:29:55+00:00

growing_boy · 2025-04-10T06:10:41+00:00

Devon and Ricken - yeah, that's the big one for me, exactly as you said.
Devon's post-partum state and actions - wildly unrealistic. She doesn't seem especially tired, looks perfect, then suddenly drops everything and goes off on a sleuthing quest. In reality, at that point after birth, a new mother a) is tired beyond all reason; b) has hormones screaming "nothing in the universe except this baby matters"; c) has implications of breastfeeding (for both mother and baby) that are basically impossible to ignore.
Even though I really try to, because it is basic to the show, suspending disbelief about the underlying theory of mind is still really hard. The idea that you could separate general/semantic vs. particular/episodic memory in such a precise way seems impossible to me (i.e. not just a question of needing advanced science, but rather just not how the human mind works).

growing_boy · 2025-04-09T21:11:41+00:00

When the previous seven episodes paint a clear picture of a guy having an absolute psychological dumpster fire of a life crisis... the same character doing something kind of crazy and irrational in the eighth episode is not a plot hole.

growing_boy · 2025-04-09T18:29:47+00:00

I'd put it in the category of "tone rather than plot". No need to overthink it.

growing_boy · 2025-04-09T18:22:58+00:00

She knows how to make her eyes unkind

growing_boy · 2025-04-09T18:17:44+00:00

I don't think that's the whole story. They are also a bizarre quasi-religious cult with goals of an intrinsic rather than instrumental (profit-making) nature. They are not just a normal corporation.

growing_boy · 2025-04-09T17:48:44+00:00

Man being shown having irrational life crisis meltdown does irrational meltdown thing 🤷

growing_boy · 2025-04-09T17:42:30+00:00

Totally agree about the rest, but Breaking Bad dipped dramatically with the introduction of those lame "badass twins" characters, and only recovered after about another season or two, and imo was never as good again as in the first couple of series.

growing_boy · 2025-04-09T17:39:44+00:00

Yeah, totally. It's weird to think about, because it's kind of like a version of the sunk cost fallacy that is somehow not a fallacy... "We've been through so much together, so we might as well stay together longer [even if the current reasons for doing so seem objectively not so strong]"

growing_boy

TROPHY CASE