Rec the Thing

16 TONS by lemgob
Fandom: Severance
Characters: Mark S., Helly R., Irving B., Dylan G. (+ Irving B./Burt G.)
Medium: Vid
Length: 2:26
Rating: SFW (note: contains a brief clip of a suicide attempt by hanging)
My Bookmark Tags: character study, drama, dark, humour, ambiguous ending, identity, resistance
Song: “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie FOrd

Excerpt:

You load sixteen tons, what do you get? / Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go / I owe my soul to the company store

This song choice is inspired, and the editing is top notch. Both perfectly fit the show's combination of humour and darkness—the upbeat retro cheer and the corporate horror—and the verses are mapped impeccably to the four main characters in a way that had me grinning when I realized what order we'd be seeing our leads in. I particularly love how the meaning of "I owe my soul" shifts subtly character by character, knowing what we do about what brought them to Lumon and who they’ve become there.