HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

I think this episode has pretty bluntly given the lie to all those shitty power rankings people insist on wasting their time on itt & elsewhere. Can’t even laugh cos it’s so bleak.

Was reminded watching this of the classic Harpers essay, Who Goes Nazi? and several of the characters and aspects seemed to pop up in this episode and obviously previously, it’s just that this episode clarified where people went when shit happened in a way that’s never been quite so concrete before. I mean regardless of whether this result actually stands and what happens with Wisconsin, none of them can go back from this now.

Tom:

Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities by virtue of health, good looks, and being a good mixer. He married for money and he has done lots of other things for money. His code is not his own; it is that of his class—no worse, no better, He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value—success. Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would.

I think young D over there is the only born Nazi in the room. Young D is the spoiled only son of a doting mother. He has never been crossed in his life. He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody... He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others.

Kind of gutsy for them to go straight at Election 2020

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwLEaZ0XwAMR5Mg?format=jpg&name=large

Loved how they forced Kendall’s perspective here, making an abhorrent choice with full knowledge of the consequences.

funny how after all that, tom is still the fall guy and prob gonna get sacked

Cos he’s not an insider, that was always obvious.

Would definitely be ironic if Tom goes to jail (unlikely I know) for following orders from the CEO bros rather than cruises.

This was so tense but it was funny watching Mencken just after finishing the show Kidding.

It was also funny to see Mencken just after finishing the new season of Perry Mason.

"we can do business with him," "we'll have him on a leash," hmmm...

how the world might've changed if only daniel jimenez bit the bullet and bro'd down with kendall for an extra few minutes

That isn’t what the turning point was, it was him realising that Shiv had deceived him and popping off about that. As ever, everyone else fades into the background of the Toy siblings, even their own children.

*Roy obv

If you take its political/business details seriously, including that Kendall is primarily motivated by scotching the deal, there was less discussion than maybe there should have been about "OK but the courts are probably going to not just give Wisconsin to Mencken, and there's still a good chance he loses" — in which case they're way out on a limb that will be very appealing for Jimenez to cut off.

Like even though they kept saying, "We're not actually making him president," they were acting like they were. Which probably sets them up for who-knows-what comeuppance. Or maybe not, who knows. Definitely building to a crescendo of some kind here.

Hamlet ending everyone dies

That isn’t what the turning point was, it was him realising that Shiv had deceived him and popping off about that. As ever, everyone else fades into the background of the Toy siblings, even their own children.

― Everybody's gonna get what they got coming (gyac), Monday, May 15, 2023 10:01 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

well, yeah

Like even though they kept saying, "We're not actually making him president," they were acting like they were. Which probably sets them up for who-knows-what comeuppance. Or maybe not, who knows. Definitely building to a crescendo of some kind here.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, May 15, 2023 10:03 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it would be shakespearean for them to sow the seeds of their tragic comeuppance, but i think that'll happen in a different way. in every situation in the show where the government and business have faced off, the government proves toothless. it would be surprising for that to shift this late in the game.

Oh yeah, we're definitely not in for a "truth and justice prevail" ending or anything close. Some form of bad guys will "win," however the show ends up defining that.

funny how after all that, tom is still the fall guy and prob gonna get sacked

― ludicrously capacious bag (voodoo chili), Monday, May 15, 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Unless Mencken comes out on top in the lawsuits. Tom himself became part of the news cycle (and the history books!). If Mencken actually succeeds then Tom becomes totally untouchable and in a position to burn down all three Roys if he wants to.

(emotionally crushed under the weight of their own power, of course)

xp

So, did Jess (after her encounter with Greg) tip off PGN to Tom's involvement in making the call?

Hunter Harris: "That shot of her typing on her phone lasted a few moments too long to make it seem insignificant to me: a moment later, Tom is damn near on a wanted poster for slitting the throat of democracy?"

That makes sense. I liked the shift from Tom insisting that he makes the calls to "it's your call", and it does seem like he potentially has the power to shift the blame on to K & R (of course they have plenty of leverage over him too).

Jess is a good guess, but I also assumed Ken or Rome told one of their minions to tip PGN off after the conversation about how they'd "take care" of Tom after Shiv told them how awful he was.

I hope it was Jess. That scene with her and Greg was chilling.

Agree with gyac about Ken’s motivations… consistently he’s had this “I think I should be the one… what do you think?” approach to negotiating his power with his siblings; him learning that Shiv has been a double-agent for Matsson must’ve crushed him

It was interesting, it’s been so many hours (and weeks) that the audience has been aware of the Shiv-Lukas collusion that it felt a little bit like “yo Ken you didn’t know?” when he put it together

I loved the conversation between Shiv and Tom (the baby revelation)— the acridity of previous eps fight seems to have cleansed Tom of any desire to participate in Shiv’s sparring, he seems broken and stronger for it

“Is this a tactic?”
Damn Tom

somehow even more hateful than what he said to shiv last week

shiv's reaction is incredible, like, simultaneously aghast that anyone especially tom would ever say that about her yet knowing that her past behavior has caused someone to say that about her

she's trapped in hell

it kills me whenever any of the kids evinces a modicum of self-awareness. kendall asking shiv if he’s a bad dad (“i think the poison drips through”) was one and shiv’s facial expression after tom said that was another

as a tonic, just a nice moment of them actually kinda sorta caring about each other: ken telling tom to shut the fuck up when tom was calling shiv “hysterical”

The Ken/Shiv conversation is incredibly painful when juxtaposed with the ending. The “poison dripping through” line when she is specifically using Kendall’s shaky conscience about what electing a fascist means for his daughter, because in the moment it’s not the dripthrough of bad parenting that will most hurt his daughter and others far less privileged than her; it’s the white supremacist frightening the child on the street that he won’t protect her from, not his own monstrous inadequacies as a father. And Shiv gets that!

I also took “the poison drips through” as a self-indictment of the family after Roman’s going on about how they might as well fuck the world

it’s in the Roy bloodline

Shiv turned into Samuel L. Jackson in her scene with Greg ("Do you find me attractive?")

That “across the road” “…and into the bar” between Roman and Mencken felt like a Proud Boys-type nonsense oath.

Good misdirect with the bodega sushi, thought someone would get sick and then they hit you with the wasabi & La Croix in the eyes.

risking seeming on-the-nose in a way the show has mostly avoided. But also how could they not, in a way

I wish they had not, to be honest

I mean lots of good lines in this but I don't want this show crossed with US politics, I liked the last episode better when it was clear that US politics, a thing which really affects hundreds of millions of people, was for the characters on this show just another backdrop for their internal struggle. I guess in some sense that was still true of this episode, but not really. I think Roman authentically likes Mencken and Shiv authentically hates him and you also directly see other characters reacting and caring about what happens in the election. It's hard for me to articulate why this doesn't work for me in the context of this show, but.. it doesn't.

I was reassured to find a Twitter thread explaining that if thousands of ballots were arsoned in Wisconsin they actually would know whose ballots they were and courts would almost certainly not just decide those votes were zeroed out.

That's good, speaking as a Wisconsinite. I was still shuddering to think about the next '00-style ballot issue in the post-Trump era though.

I totally get what you're saying, but I did like the cognitive dissonance spectrum when it came to real world vs corporate politics. To Roman the real world is still an abstraction, and on the other side there's Shiv who understands that there's a world outside of the company, she can dip in and out of it. Kendall of course is struggling in the middle.

the kids are still driven by their own petty personal shit. shiv wasn't willing to sacrifice her deal with matsson to potentially derail a mencken presidency, kendall thought it was more important to screw over shiv than make a world where his daughter feels safe

I drank things that aren’t normally drinks.

couldn't i get a sniff of even a little guy? organize a little coup down in old peru? put me in a van to tajikistan? couldn’t I just be our fun guy in uruguay?

alas, kentucky, willa. alas, vanity.

Almost forgot about Con's concession speech, a different kind of brutal

I thought it was clear with both Shiv and Darwin saying they knew exactly which votes were destroyed because it was the city and they vote democratic. That’s how most elections are called so early.

They know that the votes are from Milwaukee and are therefore predominantly Democratic. But I think the question is whether those votes would be enough to overcome the lead that Mencken has without them.

In the show, they say they don't know who exactly voted and how many ballots there were, which would make it difficult to remedy the situation with, for instance, a do-over vote. But in reality, they would know this because the envelopes are scanned once they're received.

Yeah absentee ballots are the most trackable ballots of all.

(as we kept being reminded in 2020 in response to all the nutty absentee-ballot conspiracy talk. absentee ballots would be really hard to commit vote fraud with.)

the scene between greg and jess was so quietly good. jess seemingly trying to get greg to delay just a few mins, so that maybe someone else will call it but greg goes ahead anyway - partly because he thinks he's going to get in trouble if he doesn't, but also because he actually just loves having that power to sway things in that moment. greg was always a villain, but feels like his transformation into a Roy villain is complete here.

wonder if this is the moment where Jess finally quits on Kendall. That might actually be worse for Kendall than losing his kids - Jess is the only person who's stuck by him throughout everything so far.

Yes, Roz. Have to wonder what Jesse Armstrong has planned for a character named almost after himself that's been a part of this from the beginning.

idk if that really figures into it though. the actress who plays Jess mentioned in an interview a while back that she ended up getting called back and getting more screentime because Jeremy Strong is so method that he asks for Jess to be present in scenes that she wasn't written in lol

surprised no one has mentioned Connor's (I think) hitherto unrevealed campaign slogan: "Connor Roy: Enough Already!"

What I want to happen is for the election to recede into the background for the rest of the show because, like so many other things that seemed momentarily of import, the Roys don't actually care about it. Like, there will be a couple of lines of dialogue in one of the final two episodes where somebody mentions that a court ordered a revote and Jimenez won.

What I don't want is for the show to end on Roys Realize Too Late That They Ruined America And Are Bad

i was worried they were going to have a west wing style liberal deus ex machina bit until the last 10 minutes