Entertainment
Review: 'Severance' Season 2 is a refined, thrilling masterwork
If you’re not familiar with the fantastically strange yet remarkably relatable premise of the sci-fi office series “Severance,” what I’m about to say may not make a whole lot of sense. Skip to paragraph three for a primer, then come back up here. Hopefully I won’t sound quite as unhinged after a bit of context, but then again, it’s been a rough few months so I can’t promise 100% sanity.
Surgically severing my work life from my personal life sounds like a delightful option right about now. The unprecedented challenges facing journalism have meant that my job keeps getting harder, from covering a chaotic election to processing internal strife here at the paper, to contending with how to write about the rise of a new American oligarchy without imploding. All this, and our hometown is still burning. In short, the once-disturbing premise of the dystopian drama/dark comedy now infuses me with calm. Finally, a way to do my job without the emotional strife!
Season 1 of the clever, absorbing show executive produced by Ben Stiller, who directed six of the nine episodes, introduced viewers to Lumon Industries and its “severed” workforce, made up of employees who’ve agreed to a surgical procedure that separates their work memories from their nonwork memories. The switch is activated when the altered individual step into an employee elevator that takes them down to the “severed work floor” in the morning and back up to the surface at the end of their shift.
The innies of the macrodata refinement department spend their shifts in front of computer screens, sorting random numbers into digital bins. They have no idea what the digits mean or what their employer produces. The sole focus is reaching their quarterly goal. Outties have no idea how their innies are being treated. In other words, it’s a corporate overlord’s wet dream. Even stranger, Lumon‘s office culture revolves around a cultlike devotion for its late founder, Kier Eagan, evident in the sculptures, paintings and numerous volumes of Kier scripture throughout the building.
Sarah Bock, left, Adam Scott, John Turturro, Zach Cherry and Britt Lower in Season 2 of “Severance.”
(Apple)
Returning Friday after nearly three years, Apple TV+’s psychological thriller continues to explore the extreme consequences of seeking a work/life balance, and not a minute too soon to quash my fantasies of a viable path toward leaving one’s work at the office — or escaping one’s personal woes by getting lost in work.
The consolation for dashing my dreams? Season 2 is an exquisite, masterful work of television. Its 10 episodes pack sci-fi creepiness, wry social commentary and black humor inside of a tightly constructed story that’s substantive and thrilling.
Created by Dan Erickson, Season 2 expands the backstories of its main characters, adding emotional depth to the cold, Kubrick-esque environs of their workplace. We rejoin the macrodata refinement team five months after last season’s epic cliffhanger, when they breached the system by tripping Lumon’s “overtime contingency” mechanism, or OTC, to awaken their innies in the outside world.
Mark S. (Adam Scott), Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), Helly R. (Britt Lower) and Irving B. (John Turturro) hoped to alert the public about their oppressive work conditions and glean insight into who they are on the outside. And maybe they’d even solve a few mysteries about their employer. Why is the data they handle deemed highly classified? Is Mark’s allegedly deceased wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman), alive and “working” at Lumon? And what’s the story with the goats?
While they unmask several mysteries, fresh riddles emerge. Newbie Ms. Huang (Sarah Bock) looks to be about 12, but she’s working at Lumon. When asked why she’s a child, she dryly replies, “Because of when I was born.”
Former enforcer Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who imploded last season, is plotting to win back her former position, or is she? Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), with his unnerving smile and rageful undercurrent, still roams the “severed floor,” but cracks are appearing in his managerial facade. And Lumon has turned the MDR team’s revolt into a PR opportunity, promising more transparency and respect for its severed workforce.
Employees are now promised better conditions, such as hall passes and exciting new snack choices like fruit leather! Lumon has even graciously pulled its surveillance cameras out of the break room, or so they say. The MDR team knows better, and they have a plan.
I don’t want to reveal too much here, and I’d probably get much of it wrong anyway because “Severance” encompasses more twists, turns and deceptive doorways than the endless hallways of Lumon. But trying to figure out what’s happening, and who’s behind it, is half of the fun.
Other addictive aspects of this show are the powerful performances. Turturro’s portrayal of Irv’s haunted outtie is spellbinding and infused with heartbreak. Scott’s performance as the team leader who’s seeking answers, and perhaps even liberation from Lumon, is strikingly authentic against the fabricated, sterile environs of the office. Tillman’s slow reveal of Milchick’s hidden layers add new, captivating dimensions to a show that’s already full of them. Nuanced performances from Cherry and Lower animate the personality split between innies and outties.
Disturbing, dark riddles compound and unfurl in wonderfully unexpected ways by the thrilling season finale. And though the story comes together in a tight conclusion, enough intrigue remains to concoct another season (if we’re lucky).
“Severance’s” playground is the uneven field where office drones battle the Musks and Bezos of the world and where the insidious power of corporate behemoths stretches far beyond their stated business. If only those scenarios were science fiction.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review – SHAKA: A STORY OF ALOHA
Entertainment
Tommy Lee Jones’ daughter reportedly found dead at San Francisco hotel on New Year’s Day
Victoria Jones, the daughter of Academy Award-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones, was reportedly found dead at a hotel in San Francisco on New Year’s Day. She was 34.
According to TMZ, the San Francisco Fire Department responded to a medical emergency call at the Fairmont San Francisco early Thursday morning. The paramedics pronounced Victoria dead at the scene before turning it over to the San Francisco Police Department for further investigation, the outlet said.
An SFPD representative confirmed to The Times that officers responded to a call at approximately 3:14 a.m. Thursday regarding a report of a deceased person at the hotel and that they met with medics at the scene who declared an unnamed adult female dead.
Citing law enforcement sources, NBC Bay Area also reported that the deceased woman found in a hallway of the hotel was believed to be Jones and that police did not suspect foul play.
“We are deeply saddened by an incident that occurred at the hotel on January 1, 2026,” the Fairmont told NBC Bay Area in a statement. “Our heartfelt condolences are with the family and loved ones during this very difficult time. The hotel team is actively cooperating and supporting police authorities within the framework of the ongoing investigation.”
The medical examiner conducted an investigation at the scene, but Jones’ cause of death remains undetermined. Dispatch audio obtained by TMZ and People indicated that the 911 emergency call was for a suspected drug overdose.
Jones was the daughter of Tommy Lee and ex-wife Kimberlea Cloughley. Her brief acting career included roles on films such as “Men in Black II” (2002), which starred her father, and “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” (2005), which was directed by her father. She also appeared in a 2005 episode of “One Tree Hill.”
Page Six reported that Jones had been arrested at least twice in 2025 in Napa County, including an arrest on suspicion of being under the influence of a controlled substance and drug possession.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: “I Was a Stranger” and You Welcomed Me
Just when you think that you’ve seen and heard all sides of the human migration debate, and long after you fear that the cruel, the ignorant and the scapegoaters have won that shouting match, a film comes along and defies ignorance and prejudice by both embracing and upending the conventional “immigrant” narrative.
“I Was a Strranger” is the first great film of 2026. It’s cleverly written, carefully crafted and beautifully-acted with characters who humanize many facets of the “migration” and “illegal immigration” debate. The debut feature of writer-director Brandt Andersen, “Stranger” is emotional and logical, blunt and heroic. It challenges viewers to rethink their preconceptions and prejudices and the very definition of “heroic.”
The fact that this film — which takes its title from the Book of Matthew, chapter 25, verse 35 — is from the same faith-based film distributor that made millions by feeding the discredited human trafficking wish fulfillment fantasy “Sound of Freedom” to an eager conservative Christian audience makes this film something of a minor miracle in its own right.
But as Angel Studios has also urged churchgoers not just to animated Nativity stories (“The King of Kings”) and “David” musicals, but Christian resistence to fascism (“Truth & Treason” and “Bonheoffer”) , their atonement is almost complete.
Andersen deftly weaves five compact but saga-sized stories about immigrants escaping from civil-war-torn Syria into a sort of interwoven, overlapping “Babel” or “Crash” about migration.
“The Doctor” is about a Chicago hospital employee (Yasmine Al Massri of “Palestine 36” and TV’s “Quantico”) whose flashback takes us to the hospital in Aleppo, Syria, bombed and terrorized by the Assad regime’s forces, and what she and her tween daughter (Massa Daoud) went through to escape — from literally crawling out of a bombed building to dodging death at the border to the harrowing small boat voyage from Turkey to Greece.
“The Soldier” follows loyal Assad trooper Mustafa (Yahya Mahayni was John the Baptist in Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints”) through his murderous work in Aleppo, and the crisis of conscience that finally hits him as he sees the cruel and repressive regime he works for at its most desperate.
“The Smuggler” is Marwan, a refugee-camp savvy African — played by the terrific French actor Omar Sy of “The Intouchables” and “The Book of Clarence” — who cynically makes his money buying disposable inflatable boats, disposable outboards and not-enough-life-jackets in Turkey to smuggle refugees to Greece.
“The Poet” (Ziad Bakri of “Screwdriver”) just wants to get his Syrian family of five out of Turkey and into Europe on Marwan’s boat.
And “The Captain” (Constantine Markoulakis of “The Telemachy”) commands a Hellenic Coast Guard vessel, a man haunted by the harrowing rescues he must carry out daily and visions of the bodies of those he doesn’t.
Andersen, a Tampa native who made his mark producing Tom Cruise spectacles (“American Made”), Mel Gibson B-movies (“Panama”) and the occasional “Everest” blockbuster, expands his short film “Refugee” to feature length for “I Was a Stranger.” He doesn’t so much alter the formula or reinvent this genre of film as find points of view that we seldom see that force us to reconsider what we believe through their eyes.
Sy’s Smuggler has a sickly little boy that he longs to take to Chicago. He runs his ill-gotten-gains operation, profiting off human misery, to realize that dream. We see glimpses of what might be compassion, but also bullying “customers” and his new North African assistant (Ayman Samman). Keeping up the hard front he shows one and all, we see him callously buy life jackets in the bazaar — never enough for every customer to have one in any given voyage.
The Captain sits for dinner with family and friends and has to listen to Greek prejudices and complaints about this human life and human rights crisis, which is how the worlds sees Greece reacting to this “invasion.” But as he and his first mate recount lives saved and the horrors of lives lost, that quibbling is silenced.
Here and there we see and hear (in Arabic and Greek with subtitles, and English) little moments of “rising above” human pettiness and cruelty and the simple blessings of kindness.
“I Was a Stranger” was finished in 2024 and arrives in cinemas at one of the bleakest moments in recent history. Cruelty is running amok, unchecked and unpunished. Countries are being destabilized, with the fans of alleged “strong man” rule cheering it on.
Andersen carefully avoids politics — Middle Eastern, Israeli, European and American — save for the opening scene’s zoom in on that Chicago hospital, passing a gaudily named “Trump” hotel in the process, and a general condemnation of Syria’s Assad mob family regime.
But Andersen’s bold movie, with its message so against the grain of current events, compromised media coverage and the mostly conservative audience that has become this film distributor’s base, plays like a wet slap back to reality.
And as any revival preacher will tell you, putting a positive message out there in front of millions is the only way to convert hundreds among the millions who have lost their way.

Rating: PG-13, violence, smoking, racial slurs
Cast: Yasmine Al Massri, Yahya Mahayni, Ziad Bakri, Omar Sy, Ayman Samman, Massa Daoud, Jason Beghe and Constantine Markoulakis
Credits: Scripted and directed by Brandt Andersen. An Angel Studios release.
Running time: 1:43
Related
-
World1 week agoHamas builds new terror regime in Gaza, recruiting teens amid problematic election
-
Indianapolis, IN1 week agoIndianapolis Colts playoffs: Updated elimination scenario, AFC standings, playoff picture for Week 17
-
Business1 week agoGoogle is at last letting users swap out embarrassing Gmail addresses without losing their data
-
Southeast1 week agoTwo attorneys vanish during Florida fishing trip as ‘heartbroken’ wife pleads for help finding them
-
Politics1 week agoMost shocking examples of Chinese espionage uncovered by the US this year: ‘Just the tip of the iceberg’
-
News1 week agoRoads could remain slick, icy Saturday morning in Philadelphia area, tracking another storm on the way
-
World1 week agoPodcast: The 2025 EU-US relationship explained simply
-
News1 week agoMarijuana rescheduling would bring some immediate changes, but others will take time