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Ben Stiller’s New Series Is a Sci-Fi Take on Office Space
- bawana 5y agoMore dystopian stories to distract us from the real dystopia swallowing us - dwindling health care , 16 hr waits in the emergency room, rising copays while administrators whose work consists of emails and making short sighted decisions continue to take home fat paychecks
- readingnonsense 5y agobread and circuses
- jerry1979 5y agoNot surprising that capitalism commodifies capitalism anxiety.
- spacehome 5y agoOur healthcare system has very little to do with capitalism or free markets.
- javajosh 5y agoDon't forget about the false sense of security science fiction gives us about our civilizations ability to survive calamity, or spread beyond earth. And also the false sense of power super-spy fiction gives us over government security forces (and likewise a false sense of how gov sec forces function). I think both have a real distorting effect on our intuitions about the world.
- esturk 5y agoMaybe the distraction is voluntary because for higher cognitive individuals, like many here, they realize there's nothing they can do about it.
- Wiseacre 5y agoHow is that? Strikes and collective action actually do work.
- CRConrad 5y ago> More dystopian stories to distract us from the real dystopia swallowing us Distract from -- or remind of / allude to?
- ryan-allen 5y agoZombie movies never scared me, but this does!
- lai-yin 5y agoThe soundtrack, amnesia mysteries, with hint of sci-fi make me long for Mr Robot.
- rektide 5y agoNot quite as "down to earth" but I'm also pretty eager to see how Avenue 5's second season goes. Space cruise around the solar system goes sideways. Not as clearly Office Space inspired, but still a Great Snub style show.
- coryrc 5y agoIt's too "real" for me, like going to Target and watching the returns desk. More sad than funny.
- aidenn0 5y agoThat's how I felt about "The Office"
- jjulius 5y agoIRIS!!! One of the funniest shows I've seen in a while, and a welcome laugh at the onset of the pandemic. Been waiting anxiously for the second season!
- GekkePrutser 5y agoLooks good, thanks for sharing. I'm not subscribing to Apple TV right now so I wouldn't have known about it
- cinntaile 5y agoIs it possible to subscribe without having an Apple device?
- Rebelgecko 5y agoYeah. I watch AppleTV shows on my computer (their web UI is sometimes janky but it works) and via Chromecast.
- aplc0r 5y agoIt is. I had a subscription and used a Roku Ultra. However, I cancelled my subscription after every 4k stream buffered even on a gigabit connection. I watch 4k UHD content on every other service through the Roku without issue. So your mileage may vary.
- cookie_monsta 5y agoYou can watch in the browser on any device but they don't make it easy. I had to set up an account then separately connect that to my iTunes account. There may have been something else - I can't remember. It felt very cumbersome, but I'm sure would be buttery if you were inside the garden. I binged a few decent shows then cancelled before my 1 week trial was up. It's cheaper than most but has very little content (and the worst "search" function you've ever seen - maybe these are related).
- dleslie 5y agoAmazon Fire devices can install Apple TV.
- theshrike79 5y agoMost TVs have the Apple TV+ application nowadays. Appeared on my LG TV last fall-ish.
- techdragon 5y agoI’m really not seeing any connection to office space beyond… toxic workplace culture… and I mean that’s kind of a thing in a lot of movies, so I’m really not sure why they bothered to draw the connection to Office Space at all. Does look interesting though. The use of a camera focus shifting looks to be stylistically interesting and a good way to follow along with the characters mental mode switching. I’m kind of hoping this is just a 1 season “long movie” and we get a nicely wrapped up story, because I’m struggling to see this concept really managing more than a season and a half before it feels like they would just dragging it out.
- owyn 5y agoIt really doesn't sound like Office Space at all. Maybe more like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind crossed with Vanilla Sky and the classic sci-fi novel Dayworld (That future world of 7 people each living one day with the rest in suspended animation, but the main character lives all 7 days...)
- birdyrooster 5y agoI am guessing the author was lead to this thought because near the end of the trailer is this Office Space esque quote: "what is it we actually do here?" (similar to "What would you say ya do here?" by Bob Slydell) Also, in Office Space, Initech is bureaucratic and top heavy with management and push over employees that seem to accept the mistreatment until the last straw: management hires consultants to downsize the company. That decision starts a chain of events that eventually causes Milton to burn down the company and retire to the tropics with the stolen money. In Severance, I am guessing there will be a similar existential crisis for the business which arises from management smashing one moral barrier too many in the course of trying to achieve greater profitability.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> I am guessing the author was lead to this thought The author of the article (assuming, as is usually the case, they aren't also the author of the headline) doesn't mention Office Space at all.
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- redundantly 5y agoDon't see how this fits being posted to HN. Maybe I'm a fuddy duddy, though.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jjulius 5y agoHN is full of "nerds" and nerds (edit: stereotypically) love Sci-Fi. It's also full of conversations about work/office-related topics. So, Sci-Fi + Office Space being topical here makes sense in a very generalized way. At least IMO.
- redundantly 5y agoThe comparison to Office Space is specious at best.
- GuestHNUser 5y agoI got the same impression. I find it strangely reminiscent of a sponsored reddit advertisement.
- CRConrad 5y agoSorry about that. It was, as jjulius said, the combination of SF and "office" theme that I thought would fit.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoDirect link to video instead of the blogspam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEQP4VVuyrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEQP4VVuyrY
- notfed 5y ago(OP make this the direct link please?)
- 7thaccount 5y agoWait..."office space" or "the office"? I thought the blog said "the office"?
- AnonHP 5y agoYeah, the title seems incorrect, with the article making no reference to Office Space but just to The Office.
- geocrasher 5y agoMore like "an office" these days :D
- rexreed 5y agoHow is this anything like Office Space, other than taking place in an Office and occupying space? This seems like an extended Black Mirror to me.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Apocryphon 5y agoGonna guess that this is like Sorry to Bother You crossed with the show Counterpart.
- Animats 5y agoThat's so like Apple. Finally, a way to enforce an NDA.
- akamaka 5y agoThat is unmistakably the former Bell Labs research building! What a fantastic choice of location to film in. I’ll have to watch this for that alone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex
- rrdharan 5y agoI had the privilege of working there for a summer (as an intern at Lucent in 1999). That was my first office job and between that and occasional childhood visits to my father’s workplace - a giant Bank of Montreal compound in suburban Toronto (https://goo.gl/maps/XFmPDMM5qFgQc4ie9 https://goo.gl/maps/XFmPDMM5qFgQc4ie9) I just assumed that all offices were grandiose concrete and glass structures with massive sweeping vistas. How disappointed I was by most of my subsequent corporate office experiences… Meanwhile the Holmdel complex reopened to the public as Bell Works and is worth a visit if you’re in the area!
- user3939382 5y agoThat was the first thing I noticed, too. Super cool. I’ve never been there in person, but the people and projects that arose from that building make it a semi-mystical place for me.
- agapon 5y agoI visited it once while working at Bellcore / Telcordia's Piscataway office.
- bdowling 5y agoThis was probably inspired more by Philip K. Dick's Paycheck than Office Space. In Paycheck, the protagonist agrees to work on a secret project for two years, after which his memory will be erased.
- pstuart 5y agoPKD is a gold mine of stories for the screen.
- godelski 5y agoFor anyone that missed it Amazon's Electric Dreams are just PKD short stories. I was rather surprised that they got some big name actors in it.
- paxys 5y agoPKD is a gold mine for heavily modified stories for the screen. His imagination, themes, sci-fi concepts and world building are all fantastic, but he falls way short on characters, dialogue and plot.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago> but he falls way short on characters, dialogue and plot. Like most sci-fi writers, to be honest.
- BerislavLopac 5y ago
- thelittlenag 5y agoI find that I'm digging the late 70's / early 80's aesthetic for the show. It lends a good bit of "other-worldliness" to the trailer.
- bni 5y agoIt reminds me of the aesthetic of the game Control, by Finnish studio Remedy. The producers of this show probably played it.
- mikewarot 5y agoSo Apple is funding a metacriticism of itself? It's like someone said... what's the worst thing about working at a FAANG?, and dialed it up to 11.
- kelseyfrog 5y agoA society seeped in commodified self-critique renders impotent any critique of real substance. That's what's so intriguing about the current political economy. It has effectively packaged up critiques of itself and folded them into the spectacle. Through this lens Severance may be a harbinger of future work critique films. Given the state of labor relations it's easy to imagine an appetite for films that give viewers the cathartic release of work tension they hunger for. In the context of the first statement, it's also easy to see the dangers in this pattern of behavior.
- paganel 5y agoVery well put, actively integrating the self-critique part is one of the most important things that allowed the current capitalist system to hold its top place (and even to thrive, at some points). The socialist system also tried to integrate the self-critique part ("auto-critică" it was called in Romanian) but failed to do that, hence why the external actors managed to take hold of the "critique of the socialism" discourse. Back to the self critique of capitalism, I see punk as a prime example of that, it's what I think allowed capitalism to navigate through the turbulent (from a socio-economic point of view) late '70s - early '80s as well as it did. Grunge, on a smaller scale, did the same thing for the Western capitalism of the early '90s, shows like "Black Mirror" did that for the creeping surveillance capitalism of the mid 2010s (we now say "it's just like in a Black Mirror episode", without taking any concrete steps to mitigate the surveillance capitalism creeping in on us).
- remarkEon 5y ago>what's the worst thing about working at a FAANG? Not me, but another friend of mine who's also a veteran told me the worst thing about working at a FAANG is that everyone there seems to assume that company's work as their entire personal identity. For reasons that should be obvious ... for a veteran that's kinda hard to do.
- j5r5myk 5y agoLike a lot of these shows this scooped up a large crop of the New York film production workers for many months. I know a bunch of people that worked on it, including my roommate. Funny seeing it on the front page of HN.
- dpratt 5y agoI’m likely in the minority here, but I am grumpy enough to completely ignore what look like otherwise entertaining shows when they’re released with the artificial scarcity model. Waiting a week for each episode was required by technological necessity in the days of broadcast TV, but on a streaming platform it just feels like the provider is giving me the finger. “I could give you all the episodes now, because they’re all completed and waiting for me to press this button, here, but I won’t. Why? Well, a part of it is because I’m afraid that you’ll cancel if you exhaust all our content, and I want to use psychological tricks to make you stick around due to an fear of missing out, but really, if I’m honest, it’s just because I like messing with people and I enjoy their displeasure, doubly so when I cause it.”
- CharlesW 5y ago> Waiting a week for each episode was required by technological necessity in the days of broadcast TV, but on a streaming platform it just feels like the provider is giving me the finger. Some viewers (and I suspect most creators) prefer a serialized release over season dumps, and there are definite pros to it from a social/conversational perspective. Even Netflix is doing this to help create more interest for titles. For example, the 9 episodes of Arcane were released in three, 3-episode "acts". On the bright side, you can still binge at season's end if you prefer that experience. You can even wait until the show has ended, since the time between season releases must seem especially cruel to you.
- avl999 5y agoAiring 1 or 2 episodes a week gives maximum opportunity for a show to be successful, esp if it's a smaller show that doesn't have a built in audience (ie. if it's not a Marvel/Disney show or returning seasons of successful shows). Airing weekly means that there is an ongoing conversation around your show (if it's any good) and each media outlet is potentially writing about your show n times as opposed to writing about your show 1 time reviewing the entire thing, that results in more chances for the audience finding your show. The cancelling the service thing is at best a secondary concern. Moreover creators of many show prefer that their show be consumed on a week to week basis as opposed to binged in 1 sitting with little opportunity for the audience to reflect on it. HBO has mastered that art of "1 episode a week to maximize the audience and buzz of what appears to be a niche show" even on their streaming service and as a result have found unconventional hits like Euphoria, The White Lotus, Succession, The Leftovers which would otherwise have been lost in the glut of peak tv abyss if they were just dropped in one night.
- kochie 5y agoSo... it's a glimpse into working for Facebook/Meta in 2030?
- happybuy 5y agoFollowing Severance (which will be out in February) Apple TV+ will also release an eight episode series called "WeCrashed" based upon the WeWork saga in March [1]. And if you haven't seen it, there is also Mythic Quest (seasons 1 and 2) that is an Apple TV+ comedy series based in the offices of a game studio. Also don't forget The Morning Show which is an Apple TV+ drama based in the offices of a fictional breakfast TV show. So no matter what type of dysfunctional workplace you may enjoy, Apple will have you covered. [1] https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/news/2022/01/academy-award-winners-jared-leto-and-anne-hathaway-star-in-new-apple-original-limited-series-wecrashed-premiering-globally-march-18-2022/ https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/news/2022/01/academy-award-winne...
- yellow_lead 5y agoHow about one where the office is located on a Superfund / toxic waste site [1]? [1] https://truthout.org/articles/apple-employee-blows-whistle-on-illegal-spying-and-toxic-working-conditions/ https://truthout.org/articles/apple-employee-blows-whistle-o...
- pasquinelli 5y agothere are also people who don't work in an office.
- happybuy 5y agoDon't worry there's plenty of streaming originals on Apple TV+ catering for people who don't work in an office too. Such as Mr. Corman about a school teacher who used to work in a classroom but due to COVID is working from home. Or Acapulco a comedy series about a twenty-something cabana boy who works at the hottest resort in Acapulco during the heady days of the 80s. And for people who prefer a side-hustle, there's Physical which tells the story of a housewife that starts running aerobics classes in her spare time while successfully launching an accompanying home video lifestyle startup.
- krrrh 5y agoDon’t forget For All Mankind, an engineering workplace drama based in Houston, and Ted Lasso, which centres around hijinks in the back office of an English football club.
- prepend 5y agoAdam Scott is looking very much like Tig Notaro.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cm2187 5y agoOffice Space is interesting, it’s one of these movies to which I see references all the times while I have never run into someone in real life who actually saw it or even heard of it. The other one being This is Spinal Tap.
- prepend 5y agoI think that your experience is just a personal limitation or perhaps just bad luck. It’s a good movie, you should watch it. I suppose cultural touchstones have varying levels of awareness. Everyone I know has seen it but there are obviously some who have not.
- cowvin 5y agoWell, they're both old. Many people around my age have seen them both. Maybe they're just before your time.
- lucraft 5y agoI hope they explore the upsides of separating your memories like this. Because the downsides seem pretty obvious to me...