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This article contains key details from previous episodes of \u201cSeverance.\u201d It does not include any spoilers for the Season 2 finale.<\/em><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t your imagination: Something was off about the food from the start.<\/p>\n That first glimpse of cantaloupe and honeydew, arranged in the office to welcome Helly R., played by Britt Lower, was a little unnerving: Melons in jagged halves \u2014 severed! \u2014 filled with anemic, out-of-season fruit.<\/p>\n \u201cSeverance<\/a>,\u201d the Apple TV+ show written by Dan Erickson and executive produced by Ben Stiller, follows a group of Lumon Industries employees with chips in their brains that divide their work selves (\u201cinnies<\/a>\u201d) from their main selves (\u201couties\u201d). For innies, whose lives are confined to the office, who never sleep or see the sun, a snack is a treat. So why doesn\u2019t it feel like one?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The food on \u201cSeverance\u201d leaves a bad taste in your mouth because it\u2019s as fluent in doublespeak as the show\u2019s most ambitious corporate climbers. In the show\u2019s second season, which wraps up this week, food has acquired all the chilling, spine-tingling dissonance of upper management, refusing your request for a raise with a warm, unflinching smile.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI always try to design the props and food to have some connection, some metaphorical undertone,\u201d said Catherine Miller, the show\u2019s prop master, who devised season one\u2019s melon presentation to fit the \u201cvery graphic, very minimal\u201d aesthetic of Lumon\u2019s retro office. \u201cI think food has the ability to define time and place and mood and overall emotional connection \u2014 it can become its own character.\u201d<\/p>\n As a character, the food on \u201cSeverance\u201d never says what it means and never means what it says. Food at the office might be packaged as an employee perk, a reward for meeting project goals, but even a stack of golden waffles dripping with maple syrup is only there to enforce compliance.<\/p>\n At Lumon, food is manipulation, suppression, distraction. The company barely acknowledges hunger: Vending machines on the severed floor are filled with small portions of boring snacks like dried blueberries and sunflower seeds. Food takes the sharpest edge off an appetite, but never satisfies it.<\/p>\n On a corporate trip, known in Lumon\u2019s parlance as an Outdoor Retreat and Team-Building Occurrence (ORTBO), the team laughs at their manager Mr. Milchik, portrayed by Tramell Tillman, and his dramatic reading of Lumon\u2019s mythology. Punishment is instantaneous. \u201cThe marshmallows, please,\u201d Mr. Milchik commands. \u201cThrow them in the fire.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe knew we wanted the marshmallows to be special,\u201d said Ms. Miller, whose team made the thick, rectangular confections from scratch, printing them with images of the Lumon founder Kier Eagen\u2019s face using food-grade ink in a precise shade of Macro Data Refinement blue. \u201cWe tend to do angular instead of circular for the Brutalist aesthetic.\u201d<\/p>\n The excitement of food withheld, or deployed, at just the right moment is a tactic, an attempt to redirect characters from big, inconvenient feelings like defiance, curiosity, love or grief. The melon bar is first wheeled out to temper Helly R.\u2019s outrage after she tries unsuccessfully to quit her job at Lumon.<\/p>\n Later, a more elaborate melon bar appears when Burt, the head of Optics and Design on the severed floor, played by Christopher Walken, is forced into retirement, ending his budding workplace romance with Irving, played by John Turturro. After Irving is fired, the team shares a horrific watermelon carved in the shape of his head, part of Lumon\u2019s \u201cbereavement kit.\u201d<\/p>\n For innies, who exist only in the office, termination is death. But Lumon seems to think that melon can manage the full spectrum of their emotions, prescribing it as needed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMelon has been a theme over the two seasons, and each time we see it, we want to up the ante,\u201d Ms. Miller said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n To create the eerie watermelon head, Penko Platikanov, the show\u2019s sculptor, carved melons for a week. He used the dark skin of the fruit to form the hair, letting the white rind peep out at the nose. But each time he got down to the details of Mr. Turturro\u2019s face, the texture was too mushy for definition, the water content too high.<\/p>\n In the end, Mr. Platikanov turned to lacquered foam for a realistic and unsettling wet look. Though for a scene where Dylan, played by Zach Cherry, eats some of the funereal watermelon, the team carved about 16 ears out of real fruit.<\/p>\n One glimpse inside the Eagen family\u2019s home and it\u2019s clear how their neuroses \u2014 their fear and avoidance of messy emotions and appetites \u2014 have trickled down, shaping the entire corporation\u2019s ideology.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The penultimate episode opens with Helena Eagen, the daughter of Lumon\u2019s chief executive, in the middle of her tightly controlled morning routine: a swim followed by a cup of coffee and a single egg, cut into six identical wedges.<\/p>\n \u201cThe egg was endowed with a lot of subtext,\u201d said Ms. Miller, who trialed different tools and settled on a vintage wire cutter for the scene, which was shot with dozens and dozens of real hard-boiled eggs (before the current egg shortage). \u201cWe wanted a very violent ritual.\u201d<\/p>\n She opens the severed egg on a piece of luxurious china with a menacing image of a child restrained in a chair. (That plate was a rare vintage find, Ms. Miller said, and unlike the endless supply of eggs, she only had one.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As Helena eats the egg, in tiny bites, with great restraint, her father watches and criticizes her: \u201cI wish you\u2019d take them raw,\u201d he says, in reference to Kier Eagen\u2019s breakfast of three raw eggs. Helena is technically free, but her mornings are a warped mirror of Gemma\u2019s, Lumon\u2019s tortured test subject.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Gemma, played by Dichen Lachman, has her own exercise program and a daily menu of carefully curated foods. A drawer of Lumon branded pods holds all of her meals: rows of processed starches, meats and vegetables, manipulated beyond recognition.<\/p>\n The labels suggest flavors and textures the pods are unlikely to deliver, like \u201cflaky dinner roll,\u201d \u201crendered marrow\u201d and \u201ccandied carrots.\u201d Garnishes like \u201capple blossoms\u201d give the final plates the look of a generic fine dining dish from the early days of molecular gastronomy.<\/p>\n \u201cShe can mix and match the foods so she has a little bit of ownership, but no control,\u201d said Ms. Miller, who took visual inspiration from some of the food-pod startups on the market today, along with the food trays in \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n These meals aren\u2019t supposed to delight. Like that very first melon bar \u2014 would you like the green tasteless melon or the orange tasteless melon?<\/em> \u2014 food maintains an illusion of pleasure and choice for Lumon\u2019s most vulnerable captives, who aren\u2019t supposed to experience pleasure on their own terms, or to make real choices. Not at meal time, not ever.<\/p>\n But a little treat obscures the full extent of the company\u2019s control, and obscuring control is essential to maintaining it.<\/p>\n Follow <\/em>New York Times Cooking on Instagram<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>TikTok<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Pinterest<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n