HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

this week's episode is out early btw

features an all-time Tom & Greg scene

i’m finishing season one

“I like your girlfriend”
“thanks, I met her at a sex party where she was giving a blowjob to the groom”
“you should marry her”

are you asking my PERMISSION to blackmail me?!?

prob the best show on tv right now? new cast additions are a joy. Holly Hunter! Zach Cherry!

hate all these people so much

like every moment of kendall on screen is anticipating how he’ll fuck up, while hoping he gets hit by a bus

Yep!

you don't hyper-decant ?!

Connor’s the most obvious representative of the hyper-moneyed class who never needed a particular ethos or organizing principle for their life (because: money) and constantly scrambles to find one because he’s deeply unconfident. But you don’t have to commit to anything or feel a real investment in efforts because, money!

I feel like they’re leaning into that directionless concept in season 2 with Roman attempting to learn the company

connor roy was interested in politics from a very young age

https://i.imgur.com/6wyaXiD.jpg

I'm kind of worried about his paid consort

we need a running tally of every time someone in the family treats a normal person like garbage, only to have a scene where one of their handlers is seen giving an envelope of money in return for a NDA signature in the background

another great episode goddamn. the cousin greg bit at the end was the cherry on top.

speaking of cherries, cherry jones was awesome, hopefully she wasn't just a one-off.

the maid shooting a knowing look at Kendall as he wandered by in the morning might be first first no-payoff-envelope scene where the whole family was present, but given the circumstances that probably isn't foreshadowing?

I think you mean cousin Gregory

yes, my apologies to the honorable gregory

Overjoyed to discover that hyper-decanting is actually real.

Are you an actress or a poetess or something

endless quotable episode but i partic liked
SPINNIE SPINNIE CHICKEN DINNIE

also "i think maybe the morgue is closing for the night"

i love this show but also i wonder if there's an audience of MBA dudes who view it as aspirational (a la Wall Street)

i mean when logan said "you want to hear my favorite shakespeare quote? take the fucking money" i was like "whoa badass" for a second

the pearce family are awful

Oh wow Shiv fucked it. I think the one to watch now is probably Roman? In that he's actually doing the stuff that Shiv was too impatient to bother with, and if there's anyone to have as any ally/mentor it's probably Geri (leaving aside the deeply weird nature of that alliance).

Love how Kendall literally shat the bed and was the one who actually secured the crucial vote in the process.

but ultimately did shiv fuck it? was logan really going to name her as his successor? it feels like he has no intention to ever name anyone and is just toying with all of them like he has done through their whole lives. they're all going to get their turn as "front runner" (except connor probably) but he's never going to hand it over. that felt like the root of him being so obstinate in the pierce negotiations rather than him getting revenge on shiv.

love how logan always calls roman 'romulus,' maybe he is planning to make him king after all

appointing an heir is the one thing Logan has absolutely no certainty about

Shiv's the most competent but ideologically off. bringing her in is a test to see if she'd run things in a way he could reconcile with his ideas

Kendall's thirsty and can be ruthless but previously wanted it without his dad's blessing, and he's just too fucked up at this point. could see him being cultivated as a choice now that he's in-house, but he's too cowed to be really respected

Roman's the wild card. could be good, has no focus or seriousness and has all the mental baggage of growing up moneyed but, luckily, not purely hungry for power

I dunno I got the sense Logan was sincere about Shiv at first and then promptly regretted it, it was less a matter of ideology and more down to her impatience, reluctance to do the management training course and general bad judgement.

He's going to end up leaving everything to Greg.

otm

He's going to end up leaving everything to Greg.

*Gregory

Greg the Egg.

gregory the eggory*

Intrigued by what was going on with Marcia in that last episode though.

xpost YES.

Episode 5 is a masterpiece.

My money's on Greg(ory) as well. I'd like a Greg only bottle episode.

the entire cringe-worthy panel discussion with the siblings tripping over each other was exactly what the family and we, the viewers, deserved

we hear for you!

no no no
we HERE for you
loved the various people around greg(ory) cracking up at that

you doing the old cocaine?

the relationship between mole woman and rock star has become one of the many (highlights) of this show
"i have thoughts, but go on"

https://www.vulture.com/2019/09/succession-season-2-cherry-jones-interview.html

Because it’s Succession, when I read the script I thought, “There is no one in this episode who is noble.”

Logan practically chasing down the car was the most pathetic moment showing that he's a big old weak narcissist under all that projected self-confidence and braggadocio

Season 1 felt way too caricatured for me, with characters not really going beyond their tics — Roman will approach a buffet, take a bite of something and put the rest back, and so on; Greg will raise the last word of every sentence. Costumes were fantastic, though.

But now season 2 (just watched it all up to now this weekend), and it’s a much better show. The characters are getting shaken out of their easy mannerisms, and just in general it feels a little more credible. And putting the Roys against the old-school Ivy League elite is really satisfying.

Ugh, and just after writing that, this episode goes back to Season 1 shallowness, taking away Holly Hunter character’s nuances and sophistication and the whole thing has a kind of BFA-LaBute-protege approach to sex and unoriginal swearing.

counterpoint: i really enjoy seeing Holly Hunter on television doing anything

Hard to see her have to deliver lines like “Kendall now has a bigger diaper to shit in” after a few episodes that work hard to credibly establish her tight-lipped New England manner...

I get the feeling that the character is purposefully chameleon-like and it was the Pierces who were tight-lipped New Englanders

and that she's playing for whoever is paying the bill? that was my takeaway as well. Unless the Pierce's are playing the tune and this is a long con...

upon reflection though I would agree this was not a strongly written episode.

ROY
CUNT

xxp its really some bizzaro woke mind virus to think that fox news etc is that important to counteract liberalism but murdoch is prob just saying that as a justification to perpetuate his power & wealth now & generationally

Wow, that article. Surely it's getting pitched as a Social Network-style movie as we speak.

Lachlan trying to reach me! 😳

Watched MOUNTAINHEAD last night — thought it was good but not good enough to start a new Jesse Armstrong thread for it. Longer than it needed to be to make its entirely obvious points. Good cast and dialogue as expected, though not much as sharp as the best Succession scenes. Written in filmed in a hurry, probably could have used a little more time in the writing room. Some great lines though.

This from the NYT review is something my wife and I were just saying about it, compared to Succession:

The bigger problem is that Armstrong’s entrepreneurs are sharp satirical cartoons but not really plausible people. Armstrong had four seasons to layer in character depth that gave resonance to the savage satire of “Succession,” but he hasn’t adapted his style to do the same in a two-hour movie.

I started watching this last night… the writer really likes the sound of his words too much. In a way it reminded me of Iannucci / Thick of It, because there was definitely the same fondness there, but the latter had more physical movement, and I realized upon watching Mountainhead, how much that physical movement actually made a difference. I really like watching Cory Michael Smith fwiw, but the other guys felt too much American Pie minus the raunch factor, which was basically the entertainment value of American Pie.

In general , It felt too static for film/tv. It would make more sense as a stage play tbh.

Also Silicon Valley the tv show already exists… on HBO … and this was not even as good as that show.

Yeah definitely not as good as Silicon Valley. And again I think a function of doing it on the fly, like he wasn't immersed enough in that world to make it feel lived in (the way Succession did).

Armstrong was a writer on The Thick of It and In The Loop

Oh really? Huh.

It makes sense now

Alexander Skarsgaard and Adrien Brody set such high bars for tech guys in the series that this doesn't quite live up to it. But I did love "the Montreux Razz Festival."

I enjoyed mountainhead, funny in parts but very cringey

It was perfect watching this hours after reading the Curtis Yarvin profile in the New Yorker.

the fact that that Yarvi. profile even exists is insane to me!, that anyone would devote any paragraphs AT ALL to that fkn racist rightwing psycho is infuriating & depressing but hey here we are

idk he’s basically on the hotline to the VP, I wouldn’t necessarily interview him if I didn’t have any gotcha questions but he still comes off as a weirdo

I couldn’t figure out why a generally
liberal writer had a kid with him several years ago before realizing he really was that guy, but then I noticed she had worked on rpgs or something in the past and was like, oh, she’s used to larpers.

What I took from that article was that he's an angry insecure nerd on the internet. My favorite line:

Sam Kriss, a left-wing writer who has debated Yarvin, said of his work, “It flatters people who believe they can change the world simply by having weird ideas on the Internet and decadent parties in Manhattan.”

Also Chris Murphy otm

“The guy does not have a coherent theory of the case,” the Democratic senator Chris Murphy, from Connecticut, told me. “He just happens to be saying something out loud that a lot of Republicans are eager to hear.”

xp I’d agree on insecure. when you get down to it, a lot of this faux-monarchism garbage is rooted in a fear of uncertainty. our system is bad at holding bad actors responsible, but Yarvin’s garbage isn’t about defining where the buck stops, it’s explicitly about putting people who have gamed the system into power and institutionalizing their actions

lol Kriss very much a 'weird ideas on the internet' guy himself, I'm sure there's a bit of self-awareness in that quote. Also, very much 'complicated left' and 'possibly cancelled', which both feel like necessary conditions for even debating Yarvin in the first place

I have no idea where this thread went
But in mountainhead they missed an opportunity to show bonding via music

TIL that future Tony winner Sarah Snook's surname is pronounced to rhyme with "nuke" rather than "nook."

Just finished first season of the thick of it, good stuff. Sorry the minister had to resign, he was the best part

spoken like a man who’s never cocked a snook in his life

xpost