A Very Personal
‍Fuck You to Apple TV+

I didn’t want to write this. I wanted to sit quietly, like a small, appreciative garden gnome, basking in the glow of Severance Season 1. I wanted to thank Apple TV+, maybe even leave it a good Yelp review if that’s how streaming services worked. “Polite shows. Crisp resolution. Decent use of Adam Scott.” Instead, I’m writing this. A letter of love. A letter of fuck you to Apple TV+. A letter of extreme disappointment.

When Severance first dropped, it hit me like a freight train driven by Charlie Kaufman himself. It was weird at just the right frequency of weird. It was mysterious in a way that trusted you to just sit there and feel confused, like life. No heavy-handed exposition, no idiot-proof flashbacks. Just that slow, glacial terror of realizing, Oh God, work really is eating my soul. It was personal. It was lonely. It was beautiful. It was mine.

And then Season 2’s marketing happened. I don't even know how to explain what they did to Severance. It’s like inviting your friends over for a cool little indie film night, and instead your house gets flooded with influencers live-streaming the vibes. Everywhere I looked: explainer videos, theory breakdowns, 9-minute recaps “in case you missed it!” Why Helly’s bangs mean something. Does everything have to mean something now? Can’t a haircut just be a goddamn haircut?

So here I am banging on about bangs. Peak internet behaviour.

Suddenly, the mystery that once felt so deliciously private turned into a commodity. Severance wasn’t my weird little mental health fable anymore. It was content. You could smell the marketing teams desperately trying to manufacture another mistery box moment. Maybe shinier and with better typography.

And it’s not just Severance either. It’s the same sad gravity that wrecked Twin Peaks once the TV suits demanded answers. It’s like we never learn. David Lynch didn’t want to explain anything. He hated the people who begged him to sew it all up neatly. He understood the whole point was not to know. Mystery isn’t to solve; it’s a place to live. And somehow, Apple and everybody else looked at Severance, this perfect slice of loneliness, and thought, "Let's make it into an escape room experience with microtransactions."

They even pivoted the focus from the show’s actual existential horror to Out Of Office. Suddenly, it's not about the horror of living a split life you can't control, it's about, I don’t know, Easter eggs? Obscure doors? Wacky coworkers? I came here to feel empty, Apple. Not to collect puzzle pieces.

And yet. There’s still something there. The bones of it. The perfection of Adam Scott’s dead eyes. The geometry of those hallways. The anti-corporate heartbeat thumping under it all. Like a faint signal under the noise. Maybe the show will outgrow this influencer-stage. Maybe it’ll get back to what made it great: brutal, slow, human dread. Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just have to build my own “severed” experience by unplugging my Wi-Fi for a week and pretending Youtube doesn’t exist. (Honestly not the worst idea.)

While we’re here, can I also say a hearty fuck you to Apple TV+ for consistently failing me when I need them most? Twice now! I’ve gone to rent Lost in Translation for an evening of melancholic, neon-lit self-loathing, and twice Apple TV+ has looked me in the eye and said, “Actually, no. Good luck torrenting it and making it work on your TV…”

And this week, at a carefully orchestrated movie and dinner night, I tried to rent Showgirls ironically/unironically, only to find it also unavailable. On the one night I decided to subject other humans to my troubled taste. Nothing says "this party is dead" to well fed people waiting for a campy movie like an Apple TV+ error message at 9:30 PM. If you can't be the platform that streams Showgirls in 2025, what are you even for?

And yet. And yet. There’s a flicker of hope. Maybe some genius still tucked inside Apple’s white corridors will see what made Severance beautiful, the raw weirdness, the human ache, and not just the opportunities. Maybe they'll realize that not everything needs to be memed into oblivion. That sometimes the best marketing is making something good, then shutting the hell up and letting people find it. Maybe Season 3 will surprise us all. Maybe it’ll be the equivalent of waking up in the Severance break room — confused, a little sad, but knowing somewhere deep down that you’re still yourself. Or maybe it’ll suck. Or maybe it'll be brilliant.

At this point, all I know is: I’ll still be watching. Still half-hoping. Still occasionally yelling fuck you to Apple TV+ at the rental screen when it inevitably lets me down again. Thanks, I guess. Or no thanks. I don’t know. Life is complicated.