HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

I also think a lot of speculation I've read assumes Armstrong etc want to see a bleak ending for everyone when I think they have sympathy for the characters, again I don't think it's a breaking bad scenario where the characters are frequently just cannon fodder for audience shock moments. There's probably a realistic ending coming which doesn't feel completely heartless.

. . . so, Marcia

they've done a great job of making a whole lot of scenarios possible and even plausible without any of them feeling obvious, and now the trick will be to make whatever actually transpires feel inevitable

It’ll just be the sibs and Tom and Greg back in the karaoke room, each doing a song in full.

The new CEO?

Shiv and Tom's baby.

quick what is each character's karaoke song

Tom--I Love You Just The Way You Are

Greg--Break Stuff

Connor's is already perfect--tho I would love to hear him do Desperado

I also think a lot of speculation I've read assumes Armstrong etc want to see a bleak ending for everyone when I think they have sympathy for the characters, again I don't think it's a breaking bad scenario where the characters are frequently just cannon fodder for audience shock moments. There's probably a realistic ending coming which doesn't feel completely heartless.

I'm trying to imagine anyone having sympathy for these characters at this point.

Shiv--My Old Man
Kendall--Wind Beneath My Wings

I'm trying to imagine anyone having sympathy for these characters at this point.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Wednesday, May 24, 2023 10:20 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this conversation is doomed to repeat itself itt forever or at least until the show ends but i do care about what happens to the roy siblings, and the only happy ending for me would be if they all just do something else instead of deepening their dadtrauma by vying for control over the stupid company. idk is this sympathy? roman is my favorite character btw and him being a fascist steamroller in the election episode did not dim my love of him one bit

Shiv - One Way or Another
Kendall - Hey Ma

ok yes absolutely kendall would do "hey ma" and he'd do a great job

this conversation is doomed to repeat itself itt forever or at least until the show ends but i do care about what happens to the roy siblings, and the only happy ending for me would be if they all just do something else instead of deepening their dadtrauma by vying for control over the stupid company. idk is this sympathy? roman is my favorite character btw and him being a fascist steamroller in the election episode did not dim my love of him one bit

I can see this a little bit, but they are a bunch of monsters who can't take their money and fuck off to Europe and eat a bunch of bread and drink wine, nooooo they gotta be Like Daddy.

Barry reminded me of this a little bit this week--he's got VR goggles on and is tied to a chair and is being psychologically tortured by Moss. . . so as a fellow human, you want him to break out of that situation, but he's still a murderer and a hit man.

so I mean I care about them as humans but I don't think good things are going to happen to them

they have to be like daddy bc daddy traumatized them into thinking the only real path is to be like daddy! i know they're monsters. the show is good bc i can have these thoughts at the same time

and yeah i think the finale is going to make me feel bad

thank god. best show ever. hurts my feelings

uuuuuggghh wish I quit reading before the Barry spoilers itt, dammit.

I have a whiff of sympathy for Roman. Lots for Rava. None for anyone else, really.

uuuuuggghh wish I quit reading before the Barry spoilers itt, dammit.

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, May 24, 2023 6:37 PM (six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sorry I should have hidden, my bad.

to be fair, it takes place within the first five minutes of the episode and there's so much more in that episode, but again my bad

thanks, I was just purposely avoiding the Barry thread since we are still behind on that one, but I guess a minor spoiler isn't too big of a deal

They are horrible people and if they were in real life or their last name were Murdoch most people here would want to see them die in a fire.

I enjoy the show and the stock market salivation at who is up or down each episode but thinking about them as people after four seasons is like being concerned that Seinfeld hurt Crazy Joe Davola's feelings.

the stock market salivation at who is up or down each episode

oh ok this is not the wavelength on which i enjoy the show at all. godspeed i guess. thank god this is a fictional show btw!

The whole reason the show is great and not an empty binge watch is the depth of feeling for complicated occasionally monstrous characters. It would be very easy to just have it be a vacuous race for the waystar chip but they're presented as real vv flawed human beings and not chess pieces

otm

I don’t even hate Greg the way a lot of other folks do,

I know it's very basic of me, but the stuff that has come out about Nicholas Braun has made me hate Greg rather than finding him amusing.

I have a whiff of sympathy for Roman.

I thought I had sympathy for Roman, until I saw him berating ordinary people for protesting and then getting his head kicked in, and I thought, good. He deserves that. Like, he has no business directly interacting with real people. We don't need his type actually wandering about on the streets.

Think you can feel sympathy for a character clearly broken before even reaching adulthood but still want them to feel consequences of their actions once they get there. Like channeling your family drama into electing a fascist is not it

The new CEO?

Shiv and Tom's baby.

The final scene will be a flash forward, and it will set the stage for a now grown Iverson and Shiv’s child to fight each other for CEO of Waystar—which has now been reduced to just an legacy IP brand name.

If I had to make a prediction (which I know, it’s not that kind of show), I think perhaps Menken will insist that Ken be the CEO. Ken will accept because he hopes he can kill the deal but keep the position, but he will fail and it goes through. Thus, after all this plotting, he will have “won” by becoming CEO, but still have someone above him wielding the real power—i.e., reducing him to the same position he was in during the first season, when Logan decided to stay at the helm. Would fit the "nothing changes" thread going through the show.

(The PGN deal hasn’t been mentioned in a bit, I wonder if that is kaputt—would they still be willing to sell to the siblings now that they openly cast their lot with a fascist?)

I know it's very basic of me, but the stuff that has come out about Nicholas Braun has made me hate Greg rather than finding him amusing.

Agreed.

I still can't watch this show without singing that parody version of the theme by the EWF September video guy where he sings "which one's going to get a kiss from daddy?" over the credits.

Kendall - def Hey Ma
Shiv - Fast As You Can
Roman - he’d be the guy that does Tequila so that he doesn’t have to sing
Connor - Honesty
Tom - Mr Jones
Greg - Shots

Pointless as it is to speculate seeing as we’ll all know in a few days, but the PGN deal going totally silent has been sus to me, I did wonder if Matsson could back them to purchase Waystar as a proxy and control both companies, but that’s probably bollocks. As long as everyone is miserable I’ll be happy.

xxxp the other funny ending would be that a PGN exec takes over ATN and Mencken welcomes it because a media property treating the president as an adversary is more useful for his needs than a news org repping for his administration

that was where Trump's whole crooked media thing was kind of useless, any small slight from Fox and they were the worst thing ever even when that was the media voice of much of his base, leading to other, more right-wing and pro-admin channels coming into play. if you are nominally against the president, it's a win-win

We already know Ken's song, it's Honesty

Looking forward to the spinoff series where Kendall starts Rawkus Records

group song..cat's in the cradle.

quick what is each character's karaoke song

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, May 24, 2023 12:14 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

didn't kendall rehearse a billy joel song before his bday that he wound up scrapping?

"honesty"

orrr what dan m said

Looking forward to the spinoff series where Kendall starts Rawkus Records

lol otm

I get the reference, but there is no way Kendall's label would ever get even an eighth of the critical respect that Rawkus got.

Feel like it's gonna be a Line Of Duty type ending. I want good things for Gerri, though.

my mother is coming to stay next Monday!! I can't work out when mr kinder and I are going to watch it in peace!!

https://deadline.com/2023/05/succession-star-brian-cox-says-logan-roy-was-written-out-too-early-hbo-1235378067/

Um

In what would represent an uber-dramatic twist, Cox will also float the notion to Rajan that Logan could still be alive. “If you think about it, from Logan’s point of view, he has to find out, how are his children going to behave when he dies, what will then happen? And the only way to do that is to fake his death and actually, at some distant point he’s observing the chaos that is following.”

He’s already been reincarnated in these Direct TV commercials.

who will win succession? quite simply, the viewer

Honestly I would love it, you might say this idea? I’m lovin it

i'm so happy they gave cromwell one more chance to just let it rip, man that was awesome

It was surprising seeing him go from the election episode, where he is taking charge, to “Church and State,” where he goes up to give his father’s eulogy and his facade crumbles. How did you find out about Roman’s breakdown?

This was the only season where I indulged Jesse in letting him tell me what was going to happen with Roman. In the past, I liked not knowing [until getting the script]. I’m not sure why, but I wanted to know more this year. He mentioned that [scene] early, and I wasn’t sure if it was a full breakdown, but he basically said, “You get positioned to be the guy, and you shoot yourself in the foot by just being a human being.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/05/succession-season-four-episode-nine-roman-funeral/amp

James started Rawkus out of his dorm room (just like Rick Rubin !!!!¡one), Ken probably got $750k funding for a group blog that ran nine posts by Bol and one by BIG GHOST before they figured out the frontend was so flash-intensive that only three advertising agencies on any given continent could read it

just saw an interview with Brian Cox and he mentioned something I feel dumb for not realizing, he said the season takes place over 10 days making each episode one day.

Wow, I hadn't noticed that. I did notice that every episode is like a set piece, with the characters locked in with each other somewhere - a retreat, a wedding, a funeral, a board meeting, a party, an investor event etc. - all the inbetween buildup is either dispensed with or summarised and we're left with the moments of highest possible tension