Club Benefits
The award for the greatest movie summary in the history of movie summaries has to go to the one written by Rick Polito for TCM for "The Wizard of Oz":
"Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."
Summarizing long-form TV series can be a somewhat harder task. And that's especially the case for a multi-layered drama like "Severance" — Apple TV's genre-defying award-winning show with it's vast palette of moving parts, complex character arcs and bewildering sub-plots.
The task
Firstly, I asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to give me their best 'elevator pitch' — a pithy and succinct description that really sells the show to a new viewer — for "Severance".
Then I got them to write a pair of fuller summaries; one spoiler-free version, followed by another that could play fast and loose with the key details and plot points from the show.
As somebody who has watched every minute of both seasons, I then made a judgment call on which of the chatbots from Open AI, Google and Anthropic I'd rely on to explain "Severance" to my friends and family.
Warning: "Severance" spoilers ahead!
ChatGPT
Elevator pitch: "Severance is a sci-fi thriller about a company where employees surgically split their memories between work and personal life. Their “innie” exists only at the office, while their “outie” never knows what happens there. What starts as a clean solution to work–life balance becomes a disturbing exploration of control, identity, and what a job is allowed to take from you."
As is often the case with ChatGPT, this response is serviceable without being particularly engaging. Had I not already watched the show, I'm not confident I would be rushing to get an Apple TV subscription on this pitch alone.
I reckon ChatGPT may have been stung by spoiler-merchants in the past, because it gives practically nothing away in its spoiler-free summary. It's extremely vague, only mentioning one character by name and not going to any ins-and-outs of the plot. In fact, it's little more than an elongated elevator pitch.
I like the structure of the fuller summary, but it still strikes me as a strangely indistinct synopsis (e.g. "some characters") and barely goes in to any of the specific plot points of the show.
It seems that ChatGPT was determined to complete the summaries within a succinct word count, which isn't necessarily an issue. But, in doing so, it lacks the kind of detail that I ideally wanted.
Gemini
Elevator pitch: "Imagine you could surgically divide your brain so that your work self and your home self were two completely different people. When you’re at the office, you have no memory of your personal life; when you’re at home, you have no memory of what you do for a living. It’s the ultimate 'work-life balance'—until you realize your 'work self' is essentially a prisoner who never gets to sleep, and they're starting to leave messages for the outside world to get them out."
It's worth knowing that Gemini responded to the single prompt with three different responses, so we chose the first one.
Starting with the word 'imagine' gives it the feeling of one of those 1980s movie trailers, and it instantly makes it more personable than the ChatGPT effort.
I'm a big fan of Gemini's pair of summaries. The way it breaks down the premise, story and conflict in the spoiler-free version is inspired and manages to squeeze in mentions of all the key characters.
It's very season 1-focussed, and maybe it could have developed the summary so that it gave a greater sweep of what to expect from the span of all 19 episodes. But it's still undoubtedly a clear and engaging attempt.
We said we didn't mind spoilers for the second summary, and Gemini certainly didn't hold back!
It gives vivid detail about what Mark and Helly go through during the second run in particular, and even has a dedicated paragraph solely to the season 2 finale.
Claude
Elevator pitch: "Severance is a psychological thriller about employees who undergo a procedure that surgically separates their work memories from their personal memories—so their "work self" has no idea who they are outside the office, and vice versa. When one employee starts to uncover disturbing truths about what their company is actually doing, the show becomes a mind-bending exploration of identity, corporate control, and what happens when you literally can't take your work home with you. It's cerebral, stylish, and deeply unsettling."
I'm a big fan of what Claude has achieved here. It's taken the brief — to create an elevator pitch — and really runs with it.
What TV executive could possibly turn this down a cerebral, stylish psychological thriller that explores exploration of identity and corporate control?
The spoiler-free summary is a little shorter than I had expected. It builds on the elevator pitch, filling out some detail about the main character and, again, does a good job of selling the show. But Anthropic could take some tips from its Google counterpart here, and break it down into more easily digestible sections.
Splitting the main summary into two parts, there seems to be a marked difference between how it handles season 1 and 2.
The season 1 summary is rich with detail, successfully cramming nine episodes' worth of drama into less than 140 words. That's impressive.
But the season 2 synopsis is sorely lacking. There certainly aren't any errors in there, but it doesn't so much as mention Helly, Dylan, Irving or Ms. Cobel. Instead, it vaguely talks about how the series "entangles the characters in questions about which version of themselves is 'real' and whether either can truly be free while the other remains trapped".
What about 'Cold Harbor'? What about Gemma? What about those goats!?
Winner
Elevator pitch
The elevator pitch that would have had me most excited to invest my time in "Severance" is Claude's.
It really gets to the essence of the show, without potentially confusing things (like ChatGPT does) with chat of Innies and Outies. The closing paragraph is really strong, too, underscoring the style and tone to expect from the series.
Spoiler-free summary
Gemini does the best job here, as it's the only one to move away from a big block of running text.
It cleverly breaks down the response with sections for premise, story and conflict, making it extremely easy for the reader to get a grasp of what the show is about.
I would have liked to see it take things on with a little bit of a teaser for what happens in the second season as well, but all three chatbots focussed primarily on season 1.
Summary with spoilers
It's Gemini again, with its spoiler-tastic summary. Google's chatbot didn't hold back from letting us know all the key details from both seasons, including the cliff-hanger left at the very end of season 2.
If, for some ungodly reason, you decided to start watching "Severance" from season 3 onwards when it eventually returns, Gemini's summary would give you a decent jumping off point to begin from.
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