The trailer for a new thriller series from Apple TV+, Severance, was released earlier today. The show stars Adam Scott as Mark, a team leader at the nefarious Lumon Industries, who elects to undertake “severance”: an invasive surgical procedure in which the recipient’s memories are separated between work and play. “I have of my own free accord elected to undergo the procedure,” Mark says in the trailer. “I give consent to severe my memories between my work life and my personal life.” Yeah, anything that requires you to rattle off a creepy consent form on camera is probably something to avoid.

The series seems like it has everything one might expect from a series centering an enigmatic corporation, worker coercion, and weird brain chips. It’s the first project that multi-hyphenate comedy star Ben Stiller has directed since helming the Showtime limited series Escape at Dannemora, about the 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility escape, back in 2018. And while it doesn’t seem quite the unashamed anti-Capitalist slamdunk as Sorry To Bother You, the trailer serves some snippets of humor undergirding the unease. “It’s important your eyes be kind,” instructs Tillman’s unsettling boss. “Do you know how to make your eyes kind?” We don’t know, does anybody?

Scott is best known for his tenure on Parks and Recreation, in which he starred as Ben Wyatt. In May 2021, he revealed on The Ellen Show that he had been staying in old co-star’s Aziz Ansari’s apartment during the shooting of an undisclosed show; one might fairly presume that the project was Severance. He also spoke about how he first met Parks co-star Rob Lowe, guest host on Ellen for Scott’s episode: “Correct me if I’m wrong – am I correct that you and I met literally thirty seconds before they called action on her first scene in the show,” which Lowe corroborates. “They brought you and I in, and we had to meet that entire cast – which is like murderer’s row of comedians – and we hadn’t even said hello to each other,” Lowe confirms.

Watch the trailer below. Severance gets its global premiere on Apple TV+ on February 18. It stars Scott, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, Dichen Lachman, Jen Tullock, Tramell Tillman, Michael Chernus, and Christopher Walken.

Here’s the official synopsis for Severance:

“In Severance, Mark Scout (Scott) leads a team at Lumon Industries, whose employees have undergone a severance procedure, which surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives. This daring experiment in ‘work-life balance’ is called into question as Mark finds himself at the center of an unraveling mystery that will force him to confront the true nature of his work… and of himself.”

via Collider