HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

there’s no “authority” to declare in the us, it’s all projections, it just has a sheen of authority because there are graphics that go with it and the on-air talent sound confident when they say it, which goes right along with a lot in this show that we’ve already discussed about how powerful people are able to just will certain things into being with the strength of their grift

Expecting to next week see Roman after the funeral chuckling at Menckenist memes of Fivey Fox being guillotined.

xp yes of course, authority was the wrong word, "influence" or "persuasiveness" or similar would be better

Love being an international poster itt 🙃

Everybody's gonna get what they got coming (gyac)
Posted: 15 May 2023 at 14:48:54
Kind of gutsy for them to go straight at Election 2020


Isn’t this just as much 2000 election with Fox & Florida?

Also, the UK doesn’t have the cable news call element, but every single party (usually the tories )Rupert Murdoch supports forms the government. How is that in practice much different?

Murdoch denies this quote but you don’t get Brexit without the support and drive of his press.

Hilton wrote: “I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union.

“‘That’s easy,’ he replied. ‘When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.’

oh yeah the UK media has all sorts of malign influences over UK politics, just not in the particular way we saw in that episode of Succession, or indeed in the 2000 US election. I did note in the background of the last episode a front page from ATN's New York Post analogue with a "F*ck EU" front page, presumably meant to be from the day after the Brexit vote. So Brexit happened in the Succession universe, and Logan Roy was very happy about it!

That's what was giving me so much anxiety during this ep, the thought of a 2000-style vote issue in a post-Trump media world. xp

Btw - https://www.channel3000.com/entertainment/state-law-doesnt-provide-clear-answer-for-succession-wisconsin-sub-plot-election-official-says/article_a05e1e86-f333-11ed-88ee-ef36e22c49e7.html?ref=madisonminutes.com

Not sure I ever knew the extent of Fox's role in the 2000 election:

Fox’s role in the miscall was pernicious because it was prompted not by a careful analysis of vote data but by George Bush’s brother, Jeb Bush, who persuaded his cousin at Fox News, John Ellis, to make the call. Ellis was the head of the network’s election night decision team, the group responsible for analyzing election data provided to each network by the now-defunct Voter News Service (VNS), and for deciding whether the network should project a winner in each state. Earlier in the evening, all the networks had projected Gore the winner in Florida, but they retracted their projections within two hours. At the time, it was not clear that whoever won Florida would win the presidency, and little damage was done to either candidate by that miscall.

By 2:15 in the morning, however, the presidential race had boiled down to Florida, and the vote count at the time showed Bush leading Gore by about half a percentage point. By any reasonable standard, the networks should have held off making a projection. And at 2:15, none of the networks had made a call, though Fox was about to do so. Each network decision team was looking at the data provided by VNS, and while the vote appeared favorable to Bush, no one could be sure that by the end of the vote count, Bush would still prevail. In fact, a separate count by the Associated Press showed Bush’s margin declining precipitously, reaffirming that the election was simply too close to call.

In that context, John Ellis–who had just taken a call from his cousin Jeb Bush–excitedly announced to his decision team, “Jebbie says we got it! Jebbie says we got it!” A minute later, Fox projected George W. Bush the winner in Florida and the next President of the United States.

At the very moment that Fox made the call at Jeb Bush’s behest, Sheldon Gawiser, NBC’s decision team leader, was on the phone with Murray Edelman, VNS editorial director. Gawiser had not made up his mind to call the election, and wanted to discuss a possible call with Edelman as the person responsible for providing all of the election data. Edelman was stunned that NBC might call the race. A few days earlier, he had sent a memo to all of the networks, warning them that typically at the end of an election night there are large errors in the vote count, and recommending that the networks be cautious in making projections. When Gawiser suggested that NBC was considering a call for Bush, the first thing Edelman asked was, “Did you read my memo?” Unfortunately, Fox’s projection was announced just as this exchange took place, and Gawiser broke off the phone call with Edelman, saying, “Sorry, gotta go. Fox just called it.” A minute later, NBC projected Bush the winner in Florida and the next President of the United States.

Serious PTSD vibes reading that

his cousin at Fox News, John Ellis,

his cousin at Fox News, John Ellis,

his cousin at Fox News, John Ellis,

cp this was basically the year I got interested in politics seriously and it remains completely insane to me!

xp thanks phone 🫥

jebbie says we got it

you know, my cousin!

Same here, I entered high school that year so this was the first election I paid attention to, and when I started watching The Daily Show. (Also the year my father began his ongoing addiction to Fox News). Still astounds me how the whole incident, especially the Supreme Court decision, was accepted and moved past by both parties, with a minimal of fuss.

Like, I knew in the abstract about the electoral college, but I recall being so shocked that this entire election was coming down to a handful of chads in a small area of Florida despite Gore being ahead by hundreds of thousands in the popular vote--and that that fact was somehow irrelevant to the Supreme Court.

Yeah the Daily Show really came into its own during the 2000 debacle

Those election night calls really did make a difference that year, even after some of them got rolled back — they created the expectation that that was probably how it would play out, that Bush would ultimately be the winner. I do think that's part of why there wasn't more uproar about the eventual decision than there was, I think there was some widespread idea that the default was Bush as the winner and it would take extraordinary evidence to overturn it.

I dreamed last night that it leaked that tonight’s episode was to be a “clips episode”

hahaha

lol that would be amazing

"remember... when you went... full nut nut?"

"i remember!"

It's interesting that Succession and Barry are ending on the same night. If I were the HBO galaxybrain I might have tried to spread out the finales over two weeks. Do they have something big starting June 4th?

It's because the qualifying period for Emmy consideration ends on May 31.

IIRC, it used to be that as long as the majority of the episodes aired before the deadline, then the series could qualify. But they changed it this year so that all of them have to air before the deadline.

“he couldn’t fit an entire woman in his head”

many such lines tonight — and wow was I glad to see Cromwell bust his way up there — but that one hit

i’m guessing this last bit might have the Matsson/Mencken meeting of the minds?

did Connor just say “pan-Habsburg, american-led, EU alternative?”

this might be close to peak Conhead hour

"You would never have dared not to come to his funeral when he was alive." Lmao

Loved how it opened and closed with poor Roman — at the start imagining himself delivering an amazing speech and launching his solo career, and at the end beaten and kicked and run over by a mob.

Also I'd say the idea of Greg ending up in charge suddenly seems much more plausible.

"sometimes the people who love you also fuck you" -- some of the best lines in this show come off at first like paradoxes but when you think about them are in fact just literal statements of truth

me, thinking i was ready to see roman's inevitable breakdown in this episode: "oh, it's ok, i pre-grieved"

when Roman was up there, I squirmed like crazy. I kicked the air. I groaned. That was tough.

Caroline rallying the wives and mistresses and Marcia taking Kerry’s hand and her reaction was my favorite moment of the series

The first mistress apparently played by Brian Cox's wife.

(Yesterday I learned that Brian Cox’s son played young Watson in Young Sherlock Holmes, a movie I saw a dozen times in VHS when I was nine)

i don't understand what Matsson was referring to when he told shiv it's a yes? an off camera conversation with mencken?

(good episode btw. caroline is the best.)

Yeah, presumably a follow-up conversation with Mencken. But notice what he said the "yes" was to — approval of the deal with "an American CEO." Shiv's face shows she thinks that means her, but I bet you 1,000 shares of Waystar it's not. Because Logan's kids never get what they want, it's an iron rule of the show.

Yeah that's what I assumed, a follow-up with Mencken indicating that he's amenable to their proposal.

xp Greg's moment is coming

I've never totally bought into the "Greg as king" theory because it seemed like it would be hard to get from where Greg is to there — certainly as long as Logan was in the picture. But yeah, now the clockwork feels like it's going in his direction.

Greg doesn't seem capable of speaking on a stage

Greg can barely hold a real conversation together

not to be THAT GUY but the vibes have felt off last two episodes. I really thought Roman was going to die when he stepped into that crowd and kinda felt like something had been snatched away when he emerged ok. It just felt like it was building to something big and then nothing happened.

Still have high hopes for next week, but this week was a little too long also

Or maybe the deal goes through but with Kendall as CEO, reigning in hell under Mattson?

xp

I feel you but Roman dying would have been too melodramatic, it was shocking enough to see him dip into the real, uninsulated world

Greg would be the perfect Matsson puppet, not Shiv

Greg has no charisma and is not loyal

Kendall will make a play for sure, but I don't think anyone wants to deal with him. He at least accurately assessed the situation at the end of the episode, in re who had whose dick in their hands.

gonna say the same thing about greg's chances. I don't believe it, def too ridiculous, but they have spent enough time showing Greg trying to ingratiate himself to both Mencken and Mattson and that's one way for the fan favorite ending of Greg succeeding to make sense...Mencken and Mattson agreeing that Kendell and Shiv are both too big for their boots.

my big prediction is that none of the main characters are going to die in the finale. everyone seems obsessed with one of them killing themselves (usually ken) but i don't think it's going to happen. seems more like a cliched tv show thing than a succession thing. similar feelings about greg taking over. it's going to end with all of them being fucked but not in a big dramatic way.

james cromwell is such a great fucking actor.