Apple TV+’s Dystopian Sci-Fi returns

A moment in the second season premiere on Apple TV+ ResignationMark S. (Adam Scott) is led to believe that some of his wildest dreams have come true. Innies’ brave efforts to blow the whistle on their employer have worked. Their plan is being hailed as “the face of retirement reform.” The company regrets what has happened and is committed to doing better.

This, of course, is a lie to placate Mark S. just enough to get him back to his desk. But while the details of the situation are pure fantasy—as previously established, Mark S. and his colleagues have been implanted with chips that separate their work memories from the rest of their lives—the stench of corporate bullying is strong and painfully familiar.

Resignation is better than perhaps any other TV show at capturing the indignities of modern work, using sci-fi exaggerations to throw our own dystopian reality into sharp relief. As the Dan Erickson-created series enters its second season, that sharpness, as well as an insistence on the humanity of characters condemned to an environment hostile to it, continue to be its twin north stars , guiding it over minor stumbles in momentum and mystery-box wonders along the way.

Where season one saw Mark’s Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team find unlikely connection in the sterile hell of Lumon Industries, season two explains the company’s efforts to keep them in their place – to grim effect. The twisted humor isn’t entirely gone, but the jokes and quirky details mostly take a backseat to the drama as the company struggles to get back to business as usual by any means necessary.

The Innies have other ideas, though, and it’s impossible to blame them. The entire first episode directed by Ben Stiller takes place on the cut floor, making visceral the claustrophobia of a life that exists only in the office. But the outies aren’t able to move on so easily either – whether it’s lonely Irving (John Turturro) wondering about his connection to a man (Christopher Walken’s Burt) he can’t remember meeting, or the insecure Dylan (Zach Cherry), who struggles with his innie’s indirect influence on his home life. Helena Eagan (Britt Lower), the coldly calculating scion of the company, does extreme damage control after the rebellious outburst of her innie, Helly R. And Mark’s obsession with finding Gemma (Dichen Lachman), the presumed dead wife his innie has just uncovered is still alive, drives much of the season’s plot.

In addition to essentially introducing three entirely new characters, season two also allows for several detours throughout its 10 hours. One is an episode-long side mission to a corporate retreat outside the usual MDR office; another fills in for series antagonist Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) through a trip to her hometown. Most rewarding is a chapter that fills in the void that has been Gemma, contrasting warmly grainy montages of her marriage to Mark with the antiseptic horror of her current life on Lumon.

The scattered focus can be a bit of a drag to sit through—not enough to inspire an invested viewer to quit, but enough to inspire groans of frustration when a cliffhanger takes an extra week or two to resolve, or grumbles skepticism about whether the series can ever fully resolve its biggest mysteries. (I still can’t tell which way it will go.) It also comes at the expense of some of the character dynamics that made the first season so winning, especially among the members of MDR. When Dylan relays an anecdote about Irving slipping printer toner into his water glass to teach him a lesson, I realized how much I missed to see moments like those, instead of hearing about them afterwards.

But it provides an opportunity Resignation to expand his world beyond Lumon as experienced by his most lowly workers to Lumon as experienced by everyone else – up to and including middle managers like Mr. Milchick (an incredible Tramell Tillman), who is forced to swallow his share of insults from his own bosses. What it finds at every level is an intractable tension between the kind of corporate capitalism that Lumon represents and the humanity that its workers represent. For the company, universal yearnings for meaning or connection or dignity are just flaws to be dealt with or weaknesses to be exploited. When Mr. At one point Milchick agrees to celebrate a major event with a ceremony, he is criticized by a colleague: “It makes them feel like people.”

While the most central bonds of Season 1 (particularly the romance between Mark S. and Helly R.) remain the show’s beating heart, the most complex relationships this season are technically internal. Having wised up to the idea that there could be more to life than daily quotas and waffle parties, they can’t settle for a return to the status quo. While people in the outside world ponder over glasses of wine whether innies have souls, innies fight for their right to personal agency, to bodily autonomy, to existence. This sense of self-worth pits them against not only their superiors, but also, often, themselves.

This conflict is most clearly expressed in Helly R., whose outie treats her as a tool to be used or abused rather than as an extension of herself, much less as an individual in her own right. Lower’s finely tuned performance pinpoints the places where the two personalities diverge or converge, and Helly’s empathy adds poignant nuance to Helena without softening her atrocities. But it also shows up in the two Dylans’ strange feeling of envy towards each other, elevated by Cherry’s serious performance into something more than a jokey thought exercise. Or in the two Marks’ different ideas about what to do about Gemma, played by Scott with such vivid passion on both ends that it’s impossible to pick sides.

That a company like Lumon goes out of its way to discourage solidarity or individuality or emotion will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever had a job. Resignation goes further to point out how the most destructive effect of corporate capitalism is the way it alienates us from what may be the very best parts of ourselves. It makes for a season that’s often darker, less entertaining and not necessarily more satisfying — but one that hits, if anything, even more chillingly close to home.