HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

I loved shiv's discussion with Gerri, in the beginning I literally couldn't tell if she was about to get her to keep quiet to protect the family and firm, or if she was giving her an ultimatum to get Gerri to torpedo roman...it was clear quickly, but the beginning my head was spinning.

Yep, it moves so quickly, and Gerri's first answer ("I don't recall") was perfect.

The way Shiv overlays "good at this" and "bad at this" in every scene is so, so painfully real

i found the ending of the ep pretty upsetting! and i'm not usually impacted by tv shows/movies that way. obv the kendall situation, but also the shiv/gerri discussion and roman's blooper. obv roman is disgusting but that feeling of realizing oh shit i just sent that text/email to the wrong person is very relatable and made my stomach drop.

Gerri holding the cards and refusing to bow to Shiv’s coercion was such a power move. She’s just so much better at this

yeah

I don't think Kendall's dead, but it allows anything from him being totally fine to some kind of emergency.

Though it would be kind of hilarious if Kendall died right when the magazine piece came out. Killed by the New Yorker!

I guess I just have a little trouble imagining even these sociopaths charging forward with a huge, glitzy wedding [show hidden text], but who knows.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, December 6, 2021 10:01 AM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I thought perhaps the rest of the family wouldn't know about it yet...but I'm not sure about the timeline. Is the wedding the day after the final scenes (Milan + pool)?

kendall and shiv are always demanding applause classic rich kid problem makes them untrustworthy

Kendall isn't dead. It does seem that Logan wants him to be, though. Otherwise it's risky to kick Ken this hard while he's down, knowing he has a card to play that would take them both down.

possible the wedding continues via logan/ken split between events?

would require very intense BotW session for Ken's kids to not discover dad

next ep is the season finale innit?

seems like the writers wanted to just have a reference the classic great gatsby pool imagery, but p sure you can see air bubbles streaming from his nose until the credits roll

I dunno, just find it hard to believe that a family member dying on the grounds where the entire wedding party is staying would just somehow go unnoticed.

xp Yes, and a call back to the dinner—Kendall not drowning, but torturing himself with how long the waiter might have survived before drowning.

he did look passed out in the scene guess he couldve been fucking around

i don't think the makers of this show would have someone die on camera in a way that is simply extremely confusing. he's fine.

the classic great gatsby pool imagery

I think you mean the classic Bojack Horseman intro sequence imagery

(And I do feel like in a weird way Succession and Bojack Horseman are turning into the same show)

Next episode will be a dream sequence of Kendall as a middle-class traveling HR exec in California.

xpost - I don't think he's actually dead either, fwiw, more just reacting to theories I've seen about him being dead and the wedding still proceeding as hinted at in previews.

Kendall will wake up flailing and accidentally pull a groundskeeper into the pool, drowning them.

i don't think the makers of this show would have someone die on camera in a way that is simply extremely confusing. he's fine.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, December 6, 2021 12:20 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

hes prob not dead but passed out face down in the pool fucked up on pills and booze isnt that confusing, its a classic drug user way to go

theyve been leaning heavily on the death imagery with him the last couple eps, if hes not dead then symbolic logic dictates... that he will be reborn

he will atone for his mistakes by ruining the GoJo deal and making it all about himself

where's the preview for the finale?

he will atone for his mistakes by ruining the GoJo deal and making it all about himself

― accordion folder full of Zoobooks (Sufjan Grafton), Monday, December 6, 2021 12:33 PM (fifty-nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

amen

i understand people die while on drugs, but when that happens in drama it's usually text rather than subtext!

Are they going to gloss over the fact that GoJo was just acquired by Hooli?

One thing I love about Logan (by love I mean despise obviously) is the way he instinctively refuses to give people what they want. He offers Kendall the buyout, then toys with yanking it back as soon as Kendall wants it. Because once he knows that someone wants something, he has leverage over them. It's a pretty convincing depiction of a guy who sees the world as an endless power game and he needs to know he's winning at every turn. "Win-win" is not a real thing for him, it's soft.

𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek)
Posted: December 6, 2021 at 12:36:15 PM
i understand people die while on drugs, but when that happens in drama it's usually text rather than subtext!

i mean its a cliffhanger but he was breathing water

yeah when Kendall leaned into the morality & evil stuff, you just knew he was (ahem) dead in the water

the way logan continually plays him for sport is so brutal — and the way kendall lets himseld be played for sport. ugh. this family

the beatings will continue until morale improves etc

Also thinking about just how easy it was for Shiv and Tom to casually bully Cousin Greg, because he dared to be enjoying himself and on a streak of relative good luck.

the new yorker profile reminded me of how good strong's little part is in the big short. great character.

caroline collingwood makes me homesick btw.

she has a line "how clever" (used as an insult) in season 1 which is the most authentically old money bit in the entire show.

"ken in a coma comes with everything you see here."

Before this episode and inspired by Kendall's A-Team swaddling robes in the aftermath of his asshole birthday party this occurred to me:

Kendall thinks he is Hannibal, Logan is Mr. T, Shiv is Face and Roman is Murdock.
Shiv thinks she is Mr. T and Logan is Hannibal (but she is not okay about this), Roman is Face and Kendall is Murdock.
Roman thinks he is Face, Logan is Hannibal, Shiv is Mr T and Kendall is Murdock.
Connor never watched the A-Team as it aired the same time as The McLaughlin Group.
Logan had this show cancelled in 1987 when it didn't perform up to predicted benchmarks.

i loved all the awful classist banter about Mums new fiancee. I learned from the Slate Money podcast that the line the mum says about Onions buying his own furniture was a reference to 80’s conservative MP & ubersnob Alan Clark’s diary where he said that deputy PM Michael Heseltine looked like someone who buys his own furniture lol
(informative for me but prob well known to britishers etc)

somewhat sadly, i heard my grandmother give more or less the exact speech that shiv's mom gives at that bridal shower, "some people aren't meant to be mothers, i probably should have just had dogs but he wouldn't allow it"

This episode was Shivtastic

Speaking of Connor, he doesn't get off the hook just because his absolute shitheel way of proposing wasn't quite as bad as what his siblings did.

Shiv’s outfit was hottt

oh god the proposal was so weird & sad

"some people aren't meant to be mothers, i probably should have just had dogs but he wouldn't allow it"

― When Young Sheldon began to rap (forksclovetofu), Monday, December 6, 2021 1:05 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

and then she says "he would kick anything that loves him just to see if they would come back" as justification for not getting dogs, willfully oblivious (or non-caring) about the fact that he constantly does this to his kids (who to be fair, in this particular case, are less lovable than dogs)

Connor's fakeout though, when everyone watching and Willa thought he was gonna drop. her, and she suddenly started saying they could go underground again. That was sad.

Everyone’s Sunglasses game is always on point

Shiv's morning-after line to Tom was even worse than what she said when she was allegedly role-playing. "I mean, I don't love you, but I love you."

what happens in sexvegas stays in sexvegas

ooh yeah that line killed me. the love you one, not the sexvegas one.

shivs logic = lets have a REVENGE child

Usually with these shows about awful people, they tend to try to sand off their rough edges over the years and give them some sympathetic characteristics for viewers to care about. This show goes the Seinfeld/Sunny route and just makes them worse and worse.

Shiv and Roman just say the most awful things to each other and everyone else. Shiv constant negging of Tom is particularly horrible, due to the desperately-sad looks Macfayden creates for Tom. And of course, everything that comes out of Roman's mouth is crafted to be as mean as possible.

What makes this show different is that, for the most part, the meanness is directed at the other awful characters. But that tends to dull the impact of their meanness, since they all deserve all of the shit thrown their way.

I think I'd like to see some character in the show who isn't a POS, but so far, I don't think there are any? This show is so overwhelmingly-cynical that I guess that type of person couldn't even exist in the Roys' orbit. The closest we get are their domestic employees, but they only serve as nameless servants for the Roys to carelessly abuse.

Am I only watching this for plot