TV Recap / Review: "The Simpsons" Parodies "Severance" in Season 37, Episode 13 - "Seperance"

This evening saw the debut of the 13th episode in The Simpsons season 37, entitled "Seperance" (the title, much like the episode itself, being a parody of the Apple TV+ science-fiction series Severance), and below are my recap and thoughts on this installment of the long-running animated sitcom.

"Seperance" begins with a flashback to Homer Simpson's (voiced, as always, by Dan Castellaneta) first day working at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, where its owner Charles Montgomery Burns (Harry Shearer) "smells" potential in his new hire, thusly putting him in charge of a big red button that immediately shuts down the plant in case of emergency. Naturally Homer immediately presses the button multiple times, forcing a lengthy restart process while the town's schools and hospitals go without electricity, and in the moment he claims he will never get tired of pressing it. Cut to the present, where Homer is so bored at his job that when an emergency actually does arise, instead of pressing the button he simply flings pizza slices at it, ineffectually, then beckons his coworker Lenny (also Shearer) to press the button for him.

But thankfully for Homer, at long last it's time for a vacation. Unfortunately, the Simpsons decide to spend their time off at a State Park, where Homer is also miserably bored-- though his son Bart (Nancy Cartwright) and daughter Lisa (Yeardley Smith) are thrilled to collect stamps by visiting locations around the park. Once they finish collecting all the stamps, they visit the park's gift shop, where they are rewarded with trophy stickers and then swiftly throw the stamp books into the trash. Here's where Homer decides to liven up the family vacation by tricking Lisa and Bart into wanting stress balls as their one souvenir they're allowed to take home, though along the way he also manages to convince everyone else in the store to buy stress balls as well. A trenchcoated man watches from afar as Homer successfully pretends to be enthusiastic about the useless products, and then he follows the Simpsons home, revealing himself to have been Duffman (Hank Azaria) the whole time.

It seems that Duffman has been laid off from his job at Duff because traditional advertising no longer works on young people-- Homer and his wife Marge (Julie Kavner) are distraught to learn that their kids no longer remember commercial jingles like the Meow Mix song. However, Duffman now has a new job at a company called EOD promoting other useless products, and he wants to enlist Homer, whose first task is to sell self-balancing unicycles, which he manages to do at the site of a coal-mining accident. Homer is initially quite good at his never job, even having convinced Mr. Burns that it was a good idea for him to quit without notice, until he's tasked with promoting non-alcoholic "Un-Duff" beer. He brings the beer to the bowling alley and starts handing it out to his friends, but then knocks the can out of Lenny's hand before he can drink it. A woman named Consonance (guest star Julianne Moore from Boogie Nights) watches through a surveillance camera and calls Homer into EOD corporate office to speak with her.

At this point anyone familiar with Severance will realize that Consonance is a parody of Harmony Cobel from that show, and soon Homer is given the offer to undergo the "Seperance" procedure. After accepting and reporting for his new job in a four-sided cubicle-- just like the one from the show-- where he works alongside Gil Gunderson (also Castellaneta), Agnes Skinner (Tress MacNeille), and a new character named Farley (Severance's own Zach Cherry, basically playing his own character Dylan), Homer is much happier and more productive at work, though at home he begins to behave like a zombie. This prompts Marge to angrily visit the EOD offices, where she too gets separated into an "uppie" and a "downie" (riffing on the "innies and outies" from Severance), joining Homer in enthusiastically promoting products like shoe insoles all over town.

Soon Bart and Lisa begin to worry about both of their parents, who are completely without energy at home, and they too pay a visit to Consonance. Here's where we get a big setpiece that continues to parody elements of Severance, while simultaneously pulling the rug out from under the parody and revealing that Homer and Marge didn't actually undergo a procedure or have chips implanted in their brains (poor Duffman), but instead just had their teeth whitened and-- in Homer's case-- hairplugs installed to make them more chipper-seeming. And unlike Lumon Industries from Severance, EOD isn't really behind any vast conspiracy except for the furthering of capitalism and the pursuit of the "all ighty ollar." It's a clever twist, and the episode as a whole is just funny enough for me to forgive it being pretty out-there as far as Simpsons plots go. One wonders if this parody was originally intended for a "Treehouse of Horror" but expanded into a full episode because it simply wouldn't fit into a single segment. Again, the story is kinda all over the place, but I laughed quite a bit so I can't really complain. Also it helps a lot that I have seen (most of) Severance, so I was able to pick up on a lot of the in-jokes and references scattered throughout. Your experience and mileage may vary.

New episodes of The Simpsons air Sunday evenings on FOX.