Split, the review of the series on Apple TV

When I explain the concept behind Split To someone, the answer is invariably: “Maybe it worked like this.” A world where an individual’s personality can be divided, in fact, in two. The one that moves in society, which is at home, in the family and the one that goes to work. The body is the same: but during the day, the external or internal part, depending on the moments, is as asleep, and He knows nothing about the other.

Leading quietly, the Appletv+ series created by Dan Erickson and directed partly by Ben Stiller, now the second season concludes (there has been talk of 20 million dollars per episode), and for now it has two Emmy, 96% of approval on Rotten Tomatoes e Infinite memes and theories on Tiktok. We like it because in the alienating setting of the windowless offices of a multinational, with a winter that never ends, it talks about us.

The protagonist, Mark S. (Adam Scott) finds himself at the head of his office, the metadata refinement department, after his colleague Petey has resigned. Which is already mysterious in itself, a bit because the interiors have no chance to communicate to their exterior the will to resign, a bit because Leaving the job means for an interior to stop existing. The company is the Lumon, a sort of pharmaceutical multinational (the one that really does the Lumon, apart from having an entire town and cultivating the cult of the founder, is not very clear).

The interiors have no idea that other offices are on their plan, reserved for the employees of the split and where only the managers are “whole”, and their existence runs out all there. Mark, we discover almost immediately, underwent the split because the wife died: during working hours, you save the elaboration of mourningwhich remains everything on the shoulders of his outside, determined to spend the weekend with the bottle in his hand.

The first season of the series came in 2022, when we were still in the Pandemic mentality And from smart working. For the New Yorker“The office was becoming not only a place of fear and resentment, but also of desire». Even the aseptic and labyrinthine underground corridors of the Lumon have an aura in some way comforting, clean: «What was projected on our screens rather than a criticism of the office seemed to fetishization». Now that we have returned to work in presence, We romanticize the muffled atmosphere much less of the slice of the Lumon.

In the series the work is “Mysterious and important” But it is not really clear what they do: they select numbers that “seem frightening” and then baskets them. The satire effect reaches the point: of how many repetitive works, without an immediate impact on reality, We do not understand the meaning? When they reach the four -monthly goal, the employees are rewarded with Waffle Party. The way employees are also called is also childishing: Mark S., as was done in elementary schools to distinguish pupils with the same name.

THE’Father-Padrone company It treats employees how they were not working adults, but ensures that they keep them in a continuous state of subjugation (they are also employed, literally, children). And here too: how many times, speaking at the table with friends, jump on the one whose company “is like a family”what you hear from their leaders who “disappointed them” for expressing a desire for professional growth, that “the frames are only a detail, We are enhanced here as a person»?

It is clear that the balance of private and working life is a fiction. The exploitation is only moved to another subject: it doesn’t matter that it is a part of our personality that we cannot have access. To start the story, in the series, it is the revelation that there are people who never go from the split plan. But beyond the dark plots of Lumon, we already know Who is who never leaves. The interiors will also come out from there with their body, but the their mind is always and only in front of the computer. And ours?

We consume series on the series (and films) that compact us with the eight working hours: The Office He made us fond of a character like that of Michael Scott, who It is the worst existing head. Babygirl It makes us fantasize about relationships that liven up the day. Tiktok always resists the format of Tell your day “9 to 5”so before going to bed we look at another person on our cell phone who films while writing on the computer all day (like us), drinks from his Stanley Cup (like us after having seen them in a thousand videos) and then returns home and watching some videos (already, just like us). Here is the most effective split we know in reality: isolating ourselves from our problems by force of Scrolling (otherwise said: Brain Rot).

And while we get lost in a video that ironizes on “Would you like your outside?” infinite goat photos (making meme is mysterious and important), and the routine of a perfect stranger who lives in Manhattan, for a moment, there is absolutely nothing in our head.