HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

love this:

Kendall: well who’s NOT here
Roman: Your dad
Shiv: Your mom
Connor: Your wife & kids

also i am not a billionaire but i think i have been lowlevel ken vibes at every birthday party i’ve ever hosted

Exclusive footage of me being a super chill party host #Succession pic.twitter.com/ft1a54IYg6

— ho-ho-holly 🎄 (@hollylottie88) November 29, 2021

I like thinking Shiv was clubbing in London late-90s studying abroad while Kendall was into Wu-Tang.

So how do we take Naomi's attachment to Kendall? She seems too smart and self-aware for him, and she has her own family money, right? She's not just hanging around for the trappings of wealth. Does she actually like him or just feel bad for him or what?

she identifies with him, and he’s probably the only person in the world who can approximate her life circumstances (black sheep addict in super rich legacy media family)

Yeah, that was obviously their original connection. And I guess maybe she’s isolated herself from other friends etc because of her past issues and so forth. Just seems like more a pity thing than anything else at this point. Though also maybe it helps her to focus on someone even more dysfunctional than herself.

I liked how the super cringe performance stuff (the song, flying harness, cross, etc lol) was just a fake-out to torture the viewer, in light of his daddy rap of yore.

youre never going to top L to the OG, its better this way

Though also maybe it helps her to focus on someone even more dysfunctional than herself.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, November 29, 2021 10:26 AM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes, saving him means that she too can be saved, and so forth

I just started into this a couple of weeks ago from the beginning. For some reason I keep dozing off before the end. Which is not great.. I enjoy what I'm catching so it is a pain.
Interesting reading that it was started by somebody who came from Peep Show which means it is a really dark comedy presumably. Balance of comedy and drama seems to be a lot more to the drama though I guess it is a study of pathos and people's own self estimation and pretension and fun things like that.

Quite good but wish I could stop falling asleep and then having to try to get my player to rewind properly.

I’m replaying the entire birthday party scenario, the backdrop of Kendall trying to be the corporate whistleblower who is doing good, and how he completely made it about his internal dialogue and not about how he wants to be perceived in the public eye

We’re only a short period down the line from his speech about how he feels terrible for the victims of his family’s company, and he’s planning on being crucified on stage?! Jesus christ man, hold on to the plot for more than five minutes

just the most insane, self-centered petty shit. and his way of making the party about his life is a treehouse, newspaper covers dissing his siblings, and a mini wu-tang. he’s got nothing

one of the last shots revealing that he’s at hudson yards, and he’s staring down at that godawful sculpture that people keeping jumping off of… dark stuff

the fuckin chalice, the show maybe hates kendall too much this is getting obscene

the high concept society party, all the stupidity and insecurity motivating it, just brutally rendered

tom/greg interactions have strong aggressive homo-erotic vibes, a real “it’s rush week at ATN and I’m hazing you for the fraternity” feeling

tom just going ballistic because greg is having a good night (not even good, just not terrible) and he’s not

like I can’t tell if Greg being younger and taller is driving this weird alpha male peacocking or what the fuck the deal is. never understood this whole scene

saddest moment might be Ken's claim to the GoJo acquisition as "his idea". everyone else implies it's a very obvious idea widely discussed in pop finance media.

Yeah that Tom mode is tough to sit through, the jubilant office destruction was pretty iconic though

he was happy for a minute but quickly realized, again, that no one gives a shit about him

Does she actually like him

I think so! What you gotta remember about Kendall is that he's *simultaneously* the biggest jerk of them all in some ways, but also THE ONLY ONE who seems capable of having an actual human relationship. Rava, a normal person, married him and stayed with him long enough for them to have two kids of different ages, and is on good enough terms with him to let him use her apartment. Kendall authentically loves his kids! Isn't it actually hard to imagine Connor, Shiv, or Roman as a parent? (Again -- the simultaneity is what gives this its power. Go back to Shiv's wedding party. Kendall is dancing with his kids, truly being a father in a way you can't imagine his own father doing, but also, he just, y'know, KILLED SOMEBODY and is in the process of covering it up.)

I love how every episode of succession has all of these various interweaving plot lines and agendas and small shifts in power and status and then it’s like “also Connor shows up and he has a big pot of spaghetti and there’s nowhere to put it down” or something like that

— Jon Blair (@okjonblair) November 29, 2021

xp now you aren't giving Connor credit for being the stand in dad for the other kids. his polling is approaching 1 percent!

Wedding Present song title as dialogue this week makes “moon on a stick” look even more deliberate

the fuckin chalice, the show maybe hates kendall too much this is getting obscene

― lag∞n, Monday, November 29, 2021 11:24 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it does sometimes feel like an acting challenge to jeremy strong: "let's see you try to make this titanic asshole sympathetic!"

JUst looked up the series creator Jesse Armstrong and he was also responsible for some of the writing for The Thick of It and Fresh meat. Funny i was thinking there were some similarities to Thick Of it but thought that was Armando Iannucci

as a person who fast forwarded through L to the OG, i enjoyed this episode once it became clear the song/crucifix skit wasn't going ahead.

what how could you

very sensitive to cringe

<i>Wedding Present song title as dialogue this week makes “moon on a stick” look even more deliberate

― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Monday, November 29, 2021 9:27 AM (fifty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink</i>

Don't know how I feel about Kendall being a fan of the Wedding Present.

Oops. Bad formatting.

JUst looked up the series creator Jesse Armstrong and he was also responsible for some of the writing for The Thick of It and Fresh meat. Funny i was thinking there were some similarities to Thick Of it but thought that was Armando Iannucci

The Thick Of It pilot was written by Armstrong and Ianucci, and group-written thereafter, with Armstrong remaining through S3 and future Succession writer Tony Roche joining on the second pilot. Armstrong and Roche both also wrote on Ianucci’s Veep, Armstrong only on the first season.

kendall saying "this is the full fucking thing" recalls logan's "we'll go full fucking beast" in ep. 1 - not sure if it's the writers not doing a good enough job to hide their voices or if it's meant to show that kendall really is logan's son thru similar speech patterns

I think that's deliberate, Kendall more than any of the other kids has obviously tried to model himself on Logan. Also the way they both say "Uh-huh" in a totally nonresponsive way to bad news or ideas they don't like.

Ooh good call on that

If you’re into this kind of thing, @successionfashion shows what the characters are wearing, including Kendall’s birthday Gucci baseball jacket.

i love that jacket so much

ah perfect $600 plain blue baseball cap https://www.instagram.com/p/CVzQHpzvQaG/

My favourite of the season but fuck Kendall for not recognising 'Radio Babylon' as a banger

Failed Sibling Dies in Tragic Jerk-Off Accident

I know this is all I post itt but the Tom/Gregg happiness thing was v Peep-show-esque.

How much fun must they all have had deciding on wacky shit for the party? The compliments tunnel was A++++
Also the stuff with the He-Man lunchboxes on Ebay

Roman being a huge dick and Shiv saying 'what does that even MEAN?' was embodying either Mark Corrigan or me

Kendall's social media/PR duo expressing relief at him calling off his grand entrance, song, etc was fantastic, along the lines of his assistant's reaction to the rabbit getting ill in the previous episode

What's the app called - StarGo or something?
The Madison guy was the worst guy imo
Even worse than trolly little Nazi Roman

Almost wondered if someone was going to recover/hack Roman's piss-soaked phone.

Oh yeah, Skarsgard is excelling at playing terrible men.

Sometimes the Winklevoss and Zuckerberg arrive in one package

was proud of roman for getting him out of his shell

phone pissing was a very believable tech bro story

Tom’s crazy leap from the floor to sit on top the filing cabinets in Greg’s office was awesome

Shivs carefree high af dancing made me feel v protective of her. Also I think she is all but ready to jump ship and or pull a Kendall

Kendall’s “I didnt want this to be an asshole’s birthday party”
sorrry buddy, thats kinda baked-in lol

Skarsgaard so good as deadeyed shark
Roman played it as well as he knew how but seems like Roman is playing Trouble & Skarsgaard is playing 3D chess

THE COMPLIMENT TUNNEL
god this party was a blessing

Kendall’s spiral reaction to not finding his kid’s birthday gift, just gutwrenching. I mean, the breakdow. is obv not just ~about~ that but def symtomatic
he’s so fucked & has so many problems but the fact that he clearly values the ~idea~ of being a good dad but at the same time can’t devote himself to it - he knows what the absence of that is like & doesn’t want that for his kids but still is doing a version of it… so tragic to watch

oh!

and the conversation between Kendall and Naomi at the beginning during rehearsal where he’s asking if it’s good or funny or whatever is so crazy, like everything she says is a non answer?

however, i do think she cares about him but maybe by the end has a full sense of exactly what she’s hitched her wagon to… like, that expression on her face to me is like, “my heart is breaking for you but omg fuck this mommy shit”
plus the way he was with her about the watch, sure she gave him something kinda meaningless, but she also maybe doesnt fully understand him & they havent been together that long & she thought they were still in the fun period? like thats when the scales start really falling from her eyes

dedicated to shiv & her dancing
may she dance freely without ridicule

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNOagGTbO-A

shivs dancing was perfectly rendered

xpost: Kendell and Naomi: Agree her take is a mixture of empathic co dependent and dispassionate 'aintgottimeforthis'. The watch was a lame present meant to highlight their lack of intimacy?!?. gawd, Kendell is pretty awful this season, hollowed out. There seems to be a re-treading of old ground going on with the siblings, I wonder where the show is going, if there's a season 4, feel they need to develop peripheral characters to bounce off more, the sibling drama becoming very predictable