HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

the moment he asks if his dad is in the casket, and somebody should get him out, just ended me

he can never escape his past, the 6 year old is always inside, "you fucked it, roman," never gets steak, and so he takes it out on the world, but it's just flailing, constitutionally he's not logan, he has never had to fight for anything, has no idea how to do it

kendall once again smashes a public speech under high pressure, he's very good at it. but once again has no idea how to do deals. his pitch to mencken was abysmal. 'i thought you were the sound system. now you want to play the tunes?' there's a very good answer to that - 'i want to play YOUR tunes, but i can't do that if i don't own the company' but he just, well, fucks it

feels like mattson's pitch also just bounces off mencken, difficult to divine how it's all going but i guess one thing you can say is that all these people are totally craven and deserve whatever is coming to them

the shiv reaction-o-meter off the charts this week

agree with everybody about cromwell's speech. he's an actor on another level, felt like witnessing a particularly great moment of theatre. all the business falls away and we're just in the palm of his hand

Cromwell's speech was so good I had literally no idea if Kendall's was any good, if it was landing, or if it was cobbled-together pablum.

I can't get a handle on how the show intends to portray Matson or Mencken - are they "serious people", as Logan would have it? Or are they bullshitters too?

They're playing them as more serious than the kids thats for sure. I would say they operate in logan's sphere. They have "success", the one thing that the kids can never have.

This show really could have done with another season. There feels like there's so much quality they can still draw from this world. Props for hanging it up before any potential of beating a dead horse I guess

cp depends how unserious you think American cities on fire and protestors out in huge numbers are

ffs xp!

From a realist perspective, Greg is definitely the weak point of the show. Why in fuck would the siblings still have an idiot like that hanging around, I mean he has no leverage, no shares in the company does he?

I think maybe they think he still has some influence over Ewan (as shown by the fact that they genuinely seemed to think he could get Ewan not to speak), who is still on the board. Also, everyone has annoying cousins. You just have to put up with them.

I think Mattson and Mencken are doing a deal - Mattson's call to Shiv about a US CEO implied M + M had a subsequent discussion - that cuts out all of the Roy children.

Now I am thinking Tom is going to be the Amercian CEO and Greg will be his hatchet man. This fits in with the theme of this season, that the Roy children are "not serious people" and would be the choice that inflicts maximum damage on the children. They've always treated Tom as a bit of a joke. The M + M marriage also continues this seasons theme of the undue influence of tech/social media on politics where the show's 2020 stands in for our 2016.

There is only a single episode left, correct?

imagine the effect on the Shiv/Tom power dynamic 😬

xpost yep. one episode to go, and it's 90 minutes

It would certainly be in the logic of the thing that none of the Roy kids succeed, which would put Tom/Greg in pole position. But there has to be some final twist doesn't there?

let's hope--and the twist last season was Tom, so let's hope they don't do that again

Maybe it'll be Gerry, and the greys will take back power.

i'm hoping for Stewey

This show really could have done with another season.

I'm so glad it's ending. It's so well-written and acted and is fantastic television but I find it so stressful, and felt incredibly bleak after last week's episode.

For real, I don't know how much more immersion in that curdled world I need. But definitely the show goes on the short list of HBO greats. Wondering now if it's kind of a last hurrah of that era, which I guess more or less started with The Sopranos. Not optimistic that the Zaslav MAX is going to bankroll this kind of stuff.

Feel like all the guessing about the finale assumes that Menchken actually gets the presidency, which isn't necessarily a given.

yeah they laid the groundwork for that with the absentee ballot stuff on the TV in the first scene or two. Almost seems nailed on that Jiminez will win because that would cause the maximum upset of everyone's chessboards

Thought last night's episode did a fantastic job of evoking the nightmarish turmoil that followed Trump's election, almost a little too well. The last couple of episodes have been particularly unsettling.

yeah it really was pretty cold-eyed about libs who do politics based on vibes rather than convictions, gg

otm

I get that filthy cracking wise is a Rome coping mechanism and it absolutely makes sense that it would ramp up with his breakdown around the funeral, but this was the first episode where his gross one liners felt really forced to a degree that it was almost cartoonish.

But minor complaint for an otherwise excellent episode with so many good performances.

James Cromwell imo

let's hope--and the twist last season was Tom, so let's hope they don't do that again

― a (waterface), Tuesday, May 23, 2023 6:46 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Maybe it'll be Gerry, and the greys will take back power.

― trishyb, Tuesday, May 23, 2023 6:59 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

would be fitting if tom and gerri come out on top of the cat and mouse game

roman's humor becoming even more off-putting and nihilistic just before he was supposed to step up and have his big coming-into-his-power moment at his dad's funeral was intentional and in character

agreed that it was in character and intentional, i just think the writers leaned a little too hard into "lol look how gross we can make this"

i prefer to think of it as Roman leaning too hard into 'lol look how gross i can make this'

Probably a lot of it coming from Roman feeling a bit more cocky after the previous night's victory.

I lolled at "is it mine?"

as nice as Kendall's speech was, i think it's kinda bullshit that he would have come up with something like that on the spot. i know it's just a tv show but. . . at least the brother had the written pages in front of him

Yeah it was definitely too eloquent and writerly to come off the dome, but I suspended my disbelief. Maybe that's Kendall's one actual talent (I did know someone who could perform similar feats, who incidentally turned out to be a pretty fucked up individual).

i've never had the impression Kendall ever prepares much of anything, one of his traits is bullshitting his way through speeches and pitches, and true to realities of both situations he's more successful at the speeches to crowds who want to hear bullshit vs pitches to skeptical parties. his verbosity works in the former really well, even though it's always kinda empty (and his funeral speech was empty vs Cromwell's, he just had a friendly crowd.)

i lolled at his main thing in the pro logan column being "vim" (sic)

saying the 10 most common words found in Succession out loud makes you sound like you're doing a Kendall Roy impression pic.twitter.com/Py5zPmvTA2

— Owen Phillips (@owenlhjphillips) May 22, 2023

That’s Shiv in every scene

pic.twitter.com/Z0fpRQVx6B

— Annie? Rauwerda? (@anniierau) May 22, 2023

Geri owns w/ Roman, they kiss, Logan's side chicks form alliance, 3-way with Greggers, steal his ETH, Kendall loses custody and tries to sign 100 Gecs to win them back, Skarsgard "cold plunge accident," Shiv & Tom physically explode, Connor & Willa settle for @audible_com deal https://t.co/vVXi6oXXKQ

— themjeans (@themjeans) May 24, 2023

Agree re Kendall's speech. It kind of took me out of the scene as I was trying to remember other off-the-cuff ish speeches he'd done. Ewan's was fantastic though.

https://time.com/6281792/greg-succession-finale-theory/

Greg coming out on top would be a Game of Thrones level bungle

trying to resist tapping the sign but FUCK GREG LET HIM DIE

I don’t even hate Greg the way a lot of other folks do, but I just think I’m terms of writing—given how crisp and smart and nuanced this show can be—Greg anointed at the end seems really hollow and cheap. As commentary on our current culture, it’s not terribly sharp satire to end by saying “the dumb cousin is in charge”.

People are fucking obsessed with debating who will win in this show like it’s GoT idk man

greg is not going to come out on top, this is not that kind of show

Yeah I don't actually care who succeeds, it's just something to idly speculate about this week. The Tom (with Greg gregging for him) theory is more plausible.

no matter who wins mankind is the loser amirite

Tom having talked to Matsson makes sense, he dropped the entire baby thing into the conversation to cement his status as Roy-adjacent to alleviate fears that he's losing the connection via Shiv, he's got no blurb in the paper regarding the calling of the election and Darwin takes the heat, and he's a long-term relatively-stable fixture in the company with no real political beliefs at all

i agree they’ve been teasing some kind of greg/matsson subterfuge in the margins but i can’t see it amounting to much. from the moment greg appeared in season one i think everyone thought to themselves “what if the hapless, guileless guy gets it!!!” but he has.. revealed himself to be not very hapless or guileless at all, if he ever was. everything you need to know about greg is in the way he answered the question “how is your mother doing”: “debt-free! solvent!” he is sifting through these ensnared power relationships looking for whoever or whatever will secure him and serve his needs in the moment, and i think his approach is as bound for failure as any of the siblings’

greg on top is the ending of a dumber show, otm. i think the closest we could potentially get there is greg firing tom, idk how that would happen logistically but it is what i want from their relationship