Inclusive Screen Weekly #25: Severance left me wondering how different my innie would be from my outie

Ted Lasso is coming back!! | We have a fish doorbell in the Netherlands | Severance review and more...

Mar 23, 2025

Did the finale of Severance also leave you in a state of deep reflection about work and life and work-life balance?

When I started watching Severance, I couldn’t help but think that it might be nice to have an innie to do all the grunt work for me. It would include going to work, cleaning the house, calling strangers, talking to strangers in general… You know. All the stuff I don’t really enjoy.

Now that I’ve watched the finale of season 2, I’m not so sure I want an innie anymore.

What if my innie ended up being way more fun than I am? Would she end up having a totally different personality?

5 interesting stories for the week

Ted Lasso is coming back. And he’ll be coaching a women’s football team!! [ITC]

If you couldn’t tell from the two exclamation marks… I’m so excited. There isn’t a lot of information available about the new season. For now, only Ted is confirmed as a returning character, with some rumors of Hannah Weddingham (club owner «Richmond» Rebecca), Jeremy Swift (Rebecca’s assistant Higgins), and Brett Goldstein (football player Roy Kent), also reprising their roles. All I can say is that I absolutely loved Ted Lasso seasons 1 through 3 (yes, even the 3rd season). And a women’s soccer team almost certainly will mean queer representation.

Did your dog freak out for no reason while you watched Severance? [The Washington Post]

There have been a lot of videos circulating on social media of dogs losing their shit while their owners watched Severance. Apparently, it has something to do with high-pitched sounds like the elevator bips. Funny enough, my hyper-sensitive, forever-crying dog did not seem bothered. AT ALL. He cried through an entire car ride today because he hates roundabouts or when traffic slows down, but I guess high-pitched sounds are ok.

France is preparing a “survival manual” for its citizens. I guess it’s time to get really worried about the future. [The Guardian]

In my quick-fire review of Zero Day below, you can read that I was already starting to wonder if I should withdraw cash. Then I saw this article. Should we all start prepping? I guess that’s our reality now.

Gen Z employees are putting off work to finish binging TV shows. Honestly respect! [The Wrap]

Listen, if the world is ending and our governments are preparing “survival manuals” for us, we might as well enjoy the moment. I’d put off work to binge TV shows, too if I didn’t feel so damn guilty about it because of my millennial internalized pressure to do well at work. My new resolution is to be a little more like Gen Z.

The Netherlands has a fish doorbell where you can watch a livestream and press a button to open a tiny door for fishes to go through the canal lock gate [Visdeurbel]

I love this country! Here’s why a doorbell exists if you’re curious: “Every spring, thousands of fish swim through Utrecht’s canals and waterways, searching for a place to spawn and reproduce. In the heart of the city lies the beautiful Weerdsluis, a manually operated lock. When the lock gates are closed, fish are forced to wait, wasting valuable time and energy – making them easy prey for birds and predatory fish. To help the fish, an underwater camera is installed at the lock. If a fish appears on the screen, you can press the doorbell! This alerts the lock keeper, who will open the lock when many fish are waiting.”

What I’ve been watching

Severance (Season 2)

My Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌖

Where to watch: Apple TV+

1 3 sentence synopsis: Imagine work-life balance if you could have two separate versions of you: work you and outside work you? Then it turns out the company “innie” you works for is evil and hiding your dead wife. But since your innie version is a totally different person with no memories of your life, he has no feelings for your wife, and he falls for another person.

A funny social media review:

Do I recommend the show? 100% yes. It’s the type of show that will make you want to make up your own theories as you watch and run to Reddit and other socials to read other people’s theories. It’s also visually stunning. I noticed a lot of people disappointed with season 2 in the IMDB reviews, but I personally thought it was a great follow-up to season 1 with a lot more questioning around innies and their individuality.

Characters & Diverse Representation:

There was a lot to unpack this season in terms of character development. Most notably, the question: “Are innies their own people?”. The scene where Mark talks to his innie in the finale was so telling of how outie Mark had never really considered his innie might be a different person with his own emotions. I love how the entire season kept poking at this moral dilemma while Mark kept trying to re-integrate. It was such a clever way to explain why re-integration kept failing. They’re just trying to merge two different minds.

Outside of this main theme, my favorite three character arcs were:

Milchick navigating Lumon as a Black employee. I kept waiting for Milchick to rebel. I was a little sad when he didn’t get a big “F*** Lumon” moment in the finale, but it makes sense for his character. What the show did really well was showing how Lumon kept sending messages to Milchick that he’ll always be seen as an outsider. It started with the ridiculous Black Kier portraits meant to help him “see himself in Kier”. And it got solidified when he was reprimanded for using “too many big words” when almost everyone else at Lumon speaks this way. This Reddit thread has some good comments on the whole underlying racism.
The Helena vs Helly story arc. I hope the actress wins many awards for her performance. She played the two characters so differently that a lot of people online almost immediately clocked that Helena was pretending to be Helly in the first few episodes. Helly is so fun to watch, and she was the poster child for why innies should be considered different people this season. I think she also raises some good questions about whether Helena would have become a different person if she wasn’t raised by a psychopath.
Getting to know more about Gemma. The Gemma episode was one of my favorites. It was breathtakingly beautiful and made me realize we didn’t know much about Gemma. I hope she becomes the main character in season 3.

Rapid Fire Reviews

Started:

🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑 [Started] Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke S1 - Hulu: It’s a challenging story to watch since it involves abuse of young kids, but I think the docuseries is really well-paced and does a good job at telling it so far. I think they made the right choice, starting with footage of one of the kids asking for help. It gives an idea of how bad the abuse got so that we know it gets worse when seeing early signs in the first two episodes. I just find it a bit hard to understand how the dad was involved in all this. He seems to be mostly portrayed as a victim since he’s one of the people interviewed in the show, but he was present when all the early abuse took place on the eldest son.
🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 [Started] Celebrity Bear Hunt S1 - Netflix: It’s a chill celebrity “survival” show from the UK featuring Spice Girl Mel B. and other British celebrities. The premise is that whoever loses the day’s challenge will have to go into the bear pit to be hunted by a man called Bear. It’s fun in the background but nothing groundbreaking. I’ve only watched 1 episode so far, and Mel B. isn’t doing too well, so I’m not sure how long she’ll last.

Ongoing (for me):

🌕🌕🌕🌘🌑 [Ongoing] Zero Day S1 - Netflix: I’m currently at episode 4 and continuing a slow watch of the show. I’m still not blown away, but it gets a bit more interesting. It’s also making me slightly paranoid. Like should I just take out some cash from the bank in case?
🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑 [Ongoing] Below Deck Down Under S3 - Bravo: I’m still rooting for Harry’s romance with Brianna, but who orders strawberry ice cream at a place that has other flavors? Come on, Harry! Other than that, Wihan made out with two girls and then decided he was “in love” with another girl. Typical below deck douche. Thankfully, we have Johnny spilling some incredible 1-liner wisdom in between crew dramas like “You need to find someone who will marry you for being yourself. If not, just get 10 dogs”
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗 [Ongoing] The White Lotus S3 - Max: The faces Rick made while listening to his friend talking about his sexcapades and wanting to be with Asian girls but then maybe wanting to be an Asian girl… No notes. It was flawless. Other than that, I have a lot of feelings about the gay incest kiss and why Mike White feels like it’s necessary to make gay characters do weird shit. Or, as he called it in the past, “Make gay sex transgressive again”.
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑 [Ongoing] Yellowjackets S3 - Paramount+: Soooo the wilderness screams the girls kept hearing were just mating frogs? This show is just ridiculous sometimes, I swear. I like that they are trying to tie some loose ends, though. For example, we’re finally seeing more questionable behavior from adult Shauna that matches a bit more closely with the awful personality of teen Shauna.
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌖 [Ongoing] The Pitt S1 - Max: The last episode was intense. There’s a mass shooting, and the medical crew triages the victims combat zone style with snap bracelets. I found it both stressful and weirdly fascinating to watch. Like watching organized chaos.
🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑 [Ongoing] The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills S14 - Bravo: The voice note report from Boz to Kyle after she saw Mauricio out with one of his “girls” was hilarious. It’s totally something I could see myself doing for one of my friends. The main drama in this episode was the “Greek salad, hold the feta” order. Who the hell orders a Greek salad without feta? It’s like the main ingredient! I was so shook I even forgot who made that absurd order.

Quotable moment of the week

That’s it for me! Now it’s your turn to let me know about all the interesting news and new shows you’ve seen lately.