803. Seperance

Original airdate: January 4, 2026

The premise: After observing his impromptu salesmanship at a gift shop, Homer is recruited by Duffman to do “organic” in-person marketing for a mysterious and bizarre company with a secret, sinister agenda (or do they?)

The reaction: The first season of Severance was the last time I’ve been absolutely glued to a TV show, with the finale being one of the most intense, gripping episodes of television I’ve ever seen. The cliffhanger is left on felt almost impossible to come back from, how the world of the show would irreparably change and I couldn’t even envision what a season 2 could possibly look like. When the second season finally released, the wind was definitely taken out my sails after the explosive finale. It felt like it revealed too much while not explaining enough, in a weird way. I just wasn’t a fan of where they picked the ball up and ran with it. Also, the fact that we had to wait three years between seasons definitely deflated my interest, as it becoming common for a lot of big streaming shows, a fate I hope does not befall my beloved PLUR1BUS. Hell, it only took a year and a half between Fallout seasons and I still have no real interest in watching season 2. Oh wait, The Simpsons? New episode? A week delayed? Should probably get onto that. The Severance parody here is par for the course with this show, recreating the iconography and the music, with facsimile elements such as the mythic founder “Elroy” standing for “Eagan,” and Julianne Moore voicing her interpretation of Patricia Arquette’s character. The main aim is to take the piss out of one of these types of mystery shows and subvert it, as directly explained by Lisa (“This whole place is like one of those puzzle box TV shows… and there’s always a big secret at the end.”) But despite everything, the “twist” is that there is no sinister secret, it’s just a regular job. The “seperance” procedure, unlike its inspirational counterpart, was just some light cosmetic work. Homer, and later Marge, find satisfaction in their new jobs, but they’re exhausted after work not because of some nefarious goings-ons, it’s just because they’re working adults (“It’s called having a job. You’ll learn soon enough, [Lisa,] and Lord willing, Bart will too.”) But let’s back up. The basis of this company is to manufacture seemingly organic in-person marketing, as all other forms have come up short in our modern age (Duffman reveals he’s been fired for this very reason.) Homer puts on a big show in front of friends and strangers to promote a product, and the crowd goes bananas every time. Marge joins the outfit later on, and is a dynamite earner as well. But what is the scope of this company? Is it just advertising in Springfield, or are they worldwide? Given their elaborate, Lumon-like headquarters, this feels like their home base. We also see Homer’s shared office, a recreation of the Severance location (complete with Zach Cherry voicing one of his co-workers, alongside Agnes Skinner and Gil.) What do they do in that office? Their work is all happening outdoors. As silly as it seems, this grand, fulfilling work Homer and Marge is doing never seemed to make much sense, nor did I get any idea as to why both of them find it so personally satisfying. It felt like they had the idea of the Severance parody where the punchline is you act like a different person outside of work because you’re fucking exhausted, which admittedly is a cute idea, and then they worked backwards to build the episode to that point, but what they came up with didn’t fully hold for me. In the end, Bart and Lisa whine that they want their parents back, so Homer and Marge quit, even though at the very least Homer has to go back to work at the power plant. The guy’s a deadbeat dad anyway, can’t he stay there? There’s no resolution to that anyway, we see Homer and Marge fake enthusiasm for their kids stupid bullshit before they slump on the couch acting like zombies. Some pretty disgruntled parents in the writer’s room this week. Hopefully Jeff Westbrook’s kids take all this with good humor. If he has them, can’t seem to confirm that.

Three items of note:
– Some fans have praised this new 2020s era for having a noticeable bump in animation quality, particularly in the character animation. I’m not looking to shit on the work of the talented artists on this show, but there is a newer animation approach to certain scenes that is more detailed and involved, but always looks off to me. In this episode, there’s two separate scenes of this: in the first act when Homer is buttering up Lindsay Naegle as part of his sales pitch, and at the very end when Homer is acting mock-impressed by Lisa’s Popsicle stick garbage. The character animation becomes very fluid, but there’s no distinct key posing, so when the character is going through their animation, they’re not hitting any expression high marks, it just becomes a weird movement soup where I don’t know what I’m supposed to latch onto. There’s some times in the past they’ve done it for very specific, big animation moments that I can understand, but then sometimes they’ll do it like the two times they do here, and I’m not really sure why they picked these two shots to kick the animation acting into high gear. Maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t like the look of it.
– Midway through the episode, Homer gets the alert on his phone of what product he’ll be shilling for next, and he is very disturbed (“No… no! Anything but that!”) Instantly, I knew it would be non-alcoholic beer. It felt like the most obvious thing it could be, and sure enough, it was. Also, when Homer refuses to go through with it, he’s called back to EOD headquarters, where not-Harmony Cobel tries to sell him on “separance” (“We’ve developed a simple procedure that separates you from the tastes and desires that makes you you.”) Again, I still don’t get how this makes sense after the reveal that there’s no conspiracy. The minor cosmetic surgery improves morale so greatly by itself that it makes Homer a completely unscrupulous salesman? Just by being able to get hair plugs, would he then be totally cool pushing the non-alcoholic beer? The circle isn’t squaring for me on this.
– In what must be an intentional reference, after he gets fired, Duffman is inexplicably dressed as Leonardo DiCaprio’s character from One Battle After Another. Really not sure why, but whatever. Phenomenal film, by the way.