As you all know I’ve been rabid for Severance the past few weeks, and I’ve been mulling over various theories, ideas and character arcs. But I did notice that food is a running theme on the show: food, its absence, its uses, its meaning.
Severance is a show about connections, what happens when we lose or lack them, and how we can grow by developing these connections and relationships to other. Food is often used as shorthand for community and togetherness, and Severance uses food – or the lack of it – to help underscore these bonds, whether broken or whole.
Mark, a grieving, alcoholic widower, is rarely shown to eat. His normal post-work routine is beer or whiskey or wine on the couch. There’s no montage of him even making a lonely bachelor dinner. He typically eschews food entirely outside of his interactions with others.
When Devon tries to pull him out of his house and away from himself, knowing the anniversary of his wife’s death is approaching, they find themselves in a dinnerless dinner party, a pretentious, masturbatory bit of nonsense. The participants describe food as mere fuel for higher things, and not worthy of weight in and of itself. But these are hollow people, tactless and empty. Their relationships are plastic. There is nothing real about them, and thus, nothing real about their “dinner party.”
The only real relationship that is explored here is Mark and Devon’s.
Which is where we see the healthiest, freshest, and most filling meal of the show, lit with golden warmth, made by Devon and given to Mark. Their relationship is real, their connections are real. Their food is real. Devon asks Mark about therapy (he’s not going) and Mark drinks from a hip flask (he’s ill, but doesn’t feel a need to hide it from Devon). The food in this scene underlines the strength of their bond.
Mark’s other attempts at meals go less well. Mrs. Selvig/Cobel nearly force feeds him cookies; he eats them out of politeness, but the batch of burned ones in her kitchen shows that the effort to connect in this way is doomed. He goes to Pip’s VIP area and is accosted by Petey before his food ever arrives. Later he and Petey share a pizza, but we don’t see Mark eating, and the pizza looks sad and listless. Petey is trying to form a connection with him, but Mark is unable or unwilling to reciprocate.
A relationship that Mark does truly try to cultivate is that with Alexa. However, it doesn’t go well. His first date with Alexa is entirely foodless, though he orders a second whiskey while they sit with empty plates. He ruins the date later by aggressively arguing with people downtown, his defensiveness fueled by whiskey, and heads home alone for a beer.
The best he manages to do with Alexa is to decline alcohol at his second dinner with her and enjoy some fries – and this is their healthiest interaction, where they mutually extend the date and Alexa comes home with him. Food as connection.
Contrast ordering whiskey number 2 in an empty restaurant on their first date, with being good with only water and having at least fries in a restaurant that shows more warmth, more liveliness, other couples. It’s a healthier step, and one that almost gets Mark to a better place, until he runs out on Alexa in the middle of the night.
His worst meal, and the only time we see himself having his own food in his house, is when he scours the news for information on Graner’s murder, makes an ass of himself to Alexa, tears up Gemma’s photo, and grieves her more than ever. This is not sustaining. This is not healthy. It’s a fucking bag of potato chips and a bottle of whiskey for dinner.
In contrast, innie Mark doesn’t fare much better. The food at Lumon is doled out purely as soulless rewards for work the innies must perform. The food is precisely regulated, either with tokens or with Milchick’s falsely cheerful deliveries of bizarrely regimented melons and eggs. Lunches are provided and noted on the list of the senior refiner’s duties, but we never see the innies get to enjoy them, if they are indeed enjoyable. Food is fuel. Food is incentive. Food is out of their control.
Even the vaunted waffle party, lauded all season, requires taking a refiner away from their team so they can eat alone, where they then put on a mask and watch other people in masks. Food as separation. Food as distance. Food that encourages distance rather than fostering closeness.
But slowly, the innies begin to band together. They realize their prison is cold and cruel, that they have been deprived of basic, vital, precious relationships. Helly realizes that her own escape is not enough, and she wants the others to find freedom too. Dylan realizes corporate incentives mean nothing in the face of his son’s embrace — and he insists the others deserve the same chance to experience their own lives. Mark begins to realize through Ricken’s book and their new experiences that self-worth and community are vital goals. And Irving realizes his love for Burt is beautiful, Kier be damned.
The egg bar, coveted as fuck, is actually good. So is their teamwork. Their friendship. Their connections, finally recognized by all of them as more important than punishment or toeing the line or making it through another day.
So they plan their rebellion, their chance to break through to the outside world, to honor their mutual struggle and their bond. Dylan gazes upon his reward, a glass cube of all of them united; and Irving, excited, determined, triumphant, says:
had the realization that the innie/outie terminology in severance is likely because innie/outie -> belly buttons -> umbilical cords -> severance -> rebirth and now. Thinking Thoughts. Birth & death are absolutely extremely high presences in the show. in terms of birth you have devon, you have the senator’s wife, you have mark & gemma not being able to have kids, you have the doula, you have dylan & his kid, you have helly being the daughter. in terms of death, well. you have gemma/casey, you have burt, you have helly’s suicide attempts, you have the daily death/rebirth as they become their inside selves. i think there’s something here with the idea of severance as tether; you have characters who want to become unsevered despite being previously very firmly pro-sever like dylan (and to some extent irving) which continues the thread of: why sever? is severance antithetical to love? clearly no bc dylans discovery of his son enables him to realize the innies as a family to the point where he transcends his desire to leave to find his son for his innie family & therefore both literally & figuratively becomes a bridge between worlds (holding two buttons at once that he shouldn’t be able to, knowing the outisde & inside, loving ppl on both sides)death on the outside (gemma) drives them to rebirth on the inside (innies) but then death on the inside (helly’s suicide, burt) drives them to rebirth on the outside. then of course u have the anti-capitalist message that soulless work cannot be compartmentalized and neither can the human be seperated from the employee without some form of violence, at least not permanently. permanence and definitive exclusion is not natural & will always necessitate violence in maintaining its borders. anyways birth & death are both tethers between worlds & this is also probably related to the heavily religious tones of the workplace, especially given helly’s jesus vibes, how her name is covered in certain scenes so it looks like “hell”. the idea of outside being real life & inside being the afterlife is also somehow linked to the moralized concept of afterlife in christianity (which i do not know too much about to be fair so feel free to correct me). something something you will be punished for your sins on the outside when you return to the inside. you get heaven or hell on the inside based on your outside performance
As you all know I’ve been rabid for Severance the past few weeks, and I’ve been mulling over various theories, ideas and character arcs. But I did notice that food is a running theme on the show: food, its absence, its uses, its meaning.
Severance is a show about connections, what happens when we lose or lack them, and how we can grow by developing these connections and relationships to other. Food is often used as shorthand for community and togetherness, and Severance uses food – or the lack of it – to help underscore these bonds, whether broken or whole.
Mark, a grieving, alcoholic widower, is rarely shown to eat. His normal post-work routine is beer or whiskey or wine on the couch. There’s no montage of him even making a lonely bachelor dinner. He typically eschews food entirely outside of his interactions with others.
When Devon tries to pull him out of his house and away from himself, knowing the anniversary of his wife’s death is approaching, they find themselves in a dinnerless dinner party, a pretentious, masturbatory bit of nonsense. The participants describe food as mere fuel for higher things, and not worthy of weight in and of itself. But these are hollow people, tactless and empty. Their relationships are plastic. There is nothing real about them, and thus, nothing real about their “dinner party.”
The only real relationship that is explored here is Mark and Devon’s.
