Matt Ingebretson and Jake Weisman in a promo for Corporate
The Big Picture Dan Erickson’s Apple TV+ sci-fi series Severance follows a group of workers at a mysterious company called Lumon Industries, all of whom have undergone the titular process the show is named for.
While at work, they can’t remember their lives outside the walls of Lumon, and vice versa. The series' sci-fi premise captures the feeling of seemingly endless workdays at an unfulfilling job and has been praised for its quirky characters, unique production design, and the emotional resonance of its themes about work life. Fans eagerly awaiting the return of Severance and its portrayal of life as a cog in a corporate machine should consider watching Comedy Central’s Corporate, created by Pat Bishop, Matt Ingebretson, and Jake Weisman, on Paramount+. Like Severance, Corporate captures the depressing feeling of an office job and takes it to the extreme. The dark satire follows best friends Jake and Matt who work as junior managers at the evil corporation Hampton Deville. The personalities of the two leads represent different responses to having a soul-crushing job. Jake is a nihilist who’s a little sadistic, while Matt is more eager to please and tries to make the best of the situation, similar to Irving on Severance. Anne Dudek and Adam Lustick are great as upper management, but Corporate's standout performance is the late Lance Reddick as the company’s CEO, Christian Deville. In fact, one of Corporate's biggest highlights is watching Reddick absolutely crush a role that feels unique from the rest of his work. Severance TV-MADramaMysteryScience Fiction Mark leads a team of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives. When a mysterious colleague appears outside of work, it begins a journey to discover the truth about their jobs. Release Date February 18, 2022 Creator Dan Erickson Cast Adam Scott , Zach Cherry , Britt Lower , Tramell Tillman , Jen Tullock , Dichen Lachman , Christopher Walken Main Genre Drama Seasons 2 Directors Ben Stiller Expand 'Corporate' Gets the Specifics of Office Life Just Right Each episode of Corporate explores something specific about work life, from how quickly the weekend goes by to the tendency to develop crushes out of sheer boredom. Each of these episodes is well-observed and relentlessly pessimistic. While Severance is a psychological thriller with sci-fi elements, Corporate uses surreal and absurdist humor is used to create a heightened reality. In the Season 1 episode “The Long Meeting,” Matt closes his eyes for a second and when he opens them, all the pastries have been eaten off a table. He asks Jake how long they’ve been in the meeting, and Jake tells him there’s no way of knowing. Episodes like “Remember Day,” where 9/11 is a holiday with very specific traditions for gift giving and gathering, suggest that although Corporate isn't a sci-fi show, it does take place in a slightly alternate universe. The creators of Corporate have a sketch comedy background, as does Ben Stiller, the executive producer of Severance and director of several of the episodes in the first season. This could partially account for the similar feeling of both shows. Corporate and Severance both portray the emptiness of work life in brutal but hilarious ways. In the first episode of Corporate, Matt and Jake meet an employee named Richard who keeps a spreadsheet tracking all the parties in the building that will have cake so he can subtly crash each of them. Similar to the obsession Severance's Dylan has with collecting all the perks Lumon offers, this plot shows how much workers cling to small joys. Related Before 'Bottoms,' Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott Starred in This Short-Lived Comedy Central Series “I have no flaws and neither do you, and that’s what feminism is.” 'Corporate' Is Even Bleaker Than 'Severance' Close Unlike the characters on Severance, the characters on Corporate do technically get to leave each night, but the show captures how fleeting life outside a 9-to-5 job feels. The episode “Weekend” is an aching portrayal of how it feels when someone takes up the limited time that exists over a weekend, while in “The Concert,” Matt struggles to force himself to go out and do something after work instead of just going home. Corporate sets itself apart from other workplace comedies with its commitment to being dire. One of the obvious ways it does this is with a lack of textual will-they-won’t-theys. While the audience is free to ship Matt and Jake with each other, or with their closest coworker, Grace , it’s always clear these won’t come to fruition in any meaningful way. This is a stark contrast from shows like The Office, which treats Jim and Pam meeting and becoming close as something that made their soul-crushing jobs all worth it. Even a show as dark as Severance isn’t as bleak in this regard; the feelings between Irving and Burt or Mark and Helly are given weight and treated as real. By contrast, in the Corporate episode “The One Who’s There,” Jake firmly tells Matt he only developed a crush on his officemate because she was right in front of him. Matt wants to prove Jake wrong but ends up developing the exact same feelings for his new officemate. The show seems to be boldly suggesting that a meaningless job takes over a person’s life so much that it renders everything meaningless. An obvious difference between the two shows is that Severance is full of twists and worldbuilding, while Corporate is more straightforward — but that’s why it could be the perfect show to watch during the Apple TV+ series' long hiatus. While audiences are agonizing over Severance’s big cliffhanger, they can relax with a complete three-season show that leaves nothing unresolved. Corporate has all the character work and beautifully observed commentary on modern life as Severance without the stress. Because it takes place in the real world, Corporate’s take on work-life can get much more specific than Severance. Severance is great at capturing the broad strokes feeling of a soul-crushing job, but Corporate captures perfect little details. For example, there’s an episode where Matt decides to stop overusing exclamation points, only for it to result in his co-workers thinking he’s constantly being angry and rude. Corporate is a sitcom that ultimately feels akin to a sketch show in many ways because it emphasizes one-off funny events over an ongoing plot. This may make it seem like the polar opposite of an edge-of-your-seat thrilling mystery like Severance. But, what makes Severance hold up on rewatch, once the viewer knows all the twists and turns, is the satirical way it captures the mundane tortures of corporate life. Corporate satirizes this same thing, with a set of characters who are just as fun to watch as the MDR team at Lumon.
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