ODD JOBS

"Severance," on Apple TV+.

- BY INKOO KANG

The sci-fi series “Severance” styles itself as a tidy allegory for the misery of the modern office drone. Most of the employees on the “severed” floor of the secretive biotech firm Lumon have undergone a procedure that separates their work selves (the “innies”) from their at-home selves (the “outies”), so that the outies haven’t the slightest clue what the innies do all day, and vice versa. But the innies have no idea what they do all day, either; they spend their shifts grouping numbers into categories on a computer screen, to uncertain effect. (Could they be killing people? Maybe!) When the innies clock out, around five, their consciousness shuts down; their next memory is of the following morning, at the dawn of a new workday.