We’ve all seen a lot of corporate dystopian thrillers at this point. So, it’s surprising that Ben Stiller’s Severance still finds new ways to strike a nerve.

This new nine-episode Apple TV+ series, mostly directed by Stiller, centers on Lumon Industries, a company with a controversial program designed to “surgically divide” employees’ work memories from memories of their personal lives, meaning they’re always partly amnesiac. As newly promoted department head Mark Scout (Adam Scott) explains to job trainee Helly R. (Britt Lower), participation in the program is entirely voluntary, and “Every time you find yourself here, it’s because you chose to come back.”

That line is one of the nerve-strikes — that terrible suggestion that you chose this employment and keep on choosing it. It’s one of the pernicious bits of propaganda that burdens us: that in our mad scramble to make a living, we could’ve always made much better “choices.” If we don’t like a job, why don’t we just get another? If our career path turns out to be disastrous, why don’t we just change careers? As if we were living in a giant playground, and when you got tired of the slide or the jungle gym, you could always try the swings.