HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

shoutout to the poor sod who had to ride the elevator down with suicidal Ken

also my childhood version was

silence in the courtyard
the judge is eating beans
his wife is in the bathtub
shooting submarines

no idea what it meant or where it came from but it was fun to shout

I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm)
Posted: May 29, 2023 at 9:14:17 AM
Face eggs
yes thank you

also their mother struck me as not nearly as awful as she had in the past in this episode, like their total animosity toward her seems misplaced.

really? her withholding & denial of basic affection in this final ep i found really upsetting and heartbreaking

like her inability to care for Rome when he is at his most broken & vulnerable because of her own weird hangups just stung so hard but so flippantly tossed off like she was arachnophobic and he was making her hunt for spiders

her inviting them solely to be pitched
SERIOUSLY so fucked

even her meager offerings of food like she cannot, will not give them anything. not love, support, nourishment or even enjoyment

maybe it’s me coming from a childhood of emotional abuse but man i grew up with a version of that shit and it is as brutal and damaging as a punch to the face

Otm

and the way the siblings reach back to their own trauma & to their parents for the most effective tools to hurt each other, emotionally & physically is really stark in this episode

The Kendall/Roman hug and the way Kendall knows that Roman responds positively to pain because that was the only way he ever got attention 🫥

Shiv Truss with the ring pendant and what that symbolises or so I've read.

Felt a bit disappointed with it ending on Kendall on that way but some of that was just that it's ending and again I have no better ideas none.

the face-grab at the end was what got me

theviolence toward Rome is coming from the same brother who had once leaped to -defend- Rome from Logan’s beating
Ken now just fully metamorphosing -into- Logan without thought, like absolute muscle memory
awful

my read on the kendall/roman thing was partially ken helping make sure romans injuries looked legitimate enough, albeit in a weird way

reopening roman’s head wound was a fucked up scene with no one interpretation imo

even if the writers wanted one thing, it felt like love, Kendall enacting Logan’s cruelty, Roman visually leaning in — is he resisting? leaning into it? — and some shared acknowledgment that they’re not going to jettison the pain-inflicting inherent in this business

otm and that’s when the mood shifted from the very nice beach/kitchen scenes to the reality of taking over the trauma company

yeah mh otm

that tone-shift was so good
almost like Waystar Royco or even the building itself rejected their earlier familial closeness

it is the black lodge

haha fuck - have definitely been invoking twin peaks s3 in the last 24h - in a “best tv since Scary Monsters” context

excellent finale. tied up just enough, while also feeling like a fantastic normal episode of the show. i would happily keep watching these characters continue to be miserable but it’s appropriate that the show ended with the actual succession.

funny enough, the final result did feel like enacting logan’s will. tom’s betrayal of the kids (and stealing the chicken from logan’s plate lol) paying off

Clumsy interloper ftw

my name is jeremy strong and this is jackass pic.twitter.com/KlFBxlrYah

— lana cel-ray (@sweatyhabibti) May 29, 2023

Kieran Culkin and Sarah Snook shaving Jeremy Strong’s hair after Succession Finale. 🫶🏼🥲#SuccessionHBO #Succession pic.twitter.com/W7g86no6yV

— chiara (@sirromanroy) May 29, 2023

lol

Number ONE Boy, Jeremy Strong, has absolutely no idea what song they are singing. @succession ❤️ pic.twitter.com/2oanGNT0NL

— Matt Sharp (@_mattsharp) May 29, 2023

anyone else unnerved by how much skarsgard slips into sounding exactly like skarsgard the elder in odd spots?

also this

would party with this gang

🎥 | Sarah Snook and Jesse Armstrong doing karaoke pic.twitter.com/vtf6Zy836f

— best of sarah snook (@bestofsnook) May 29, 2023

both those songs' lyrics seem apt for succession

Also that all of their relationships are now so utterly broken. the brief moments of genuine togetherness in the kitchen and in front of the dinner video are over, it could be decades until they speak again

― JLB Credit (Jack BS), Monday, May 29, 2023 10:53 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

there were at least ten times between each relationship arc where i thought surely they'll never talk again in their lifetime, and then they'd just... be over it within like half an episode. i tend to think they'll be fine within a couple days, when they all realize this was actually the best possible outcome for all of them.

i think ken attacking roman and shiv crossed a line (repeating their dad’s abuses) it may be hard to come back from but also yes you’re right they sure have said horrible unforgivable things to each other and bounced right back into a seemingly forgone dynamic

Tomorrow they all wake up and are still billionaires, so

in a few months, they'll all show up at some benefit connor/willa are hosting, roman will make a snide quote abt tom ruining the company, and they'll all be back in the same old patterns

i loved caroline's "I've never had my plans ruined by a huge board meeting before" lol. because yes, at the end of the day this was just another business deal

Best possible outcome for Rome. Ken who knows, he might kill himself, he might find a new venture to juice up on. Shiv got the worst end. The scene with her and Tom in the limo reminded me of Kay and Michael in the Godfather

The last Greg/Tom scene reminded me of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jjr2SuLJCo

Thought this an excellent coupla tweets from sometimes-ILX0R Jay Babcock re: the final shot

I thought the whole point of the final shot in Succession was to call back to the opening...? pic.twitter.com/7h3Uw2zG6N

— Jay Babcock (@jaywbabcock) May 30, 2023

Weirdly I felt more moved by Tom and Greg’s off-then-on again business (that slap!) than by Kendall’s immolation.

Overall I thought that was a strong finale but I felt a mite of disappointment — although perhaps that was just me being disappointed at the show ending, and at Kendall for his inevitable last minute self-sabotage. I love that shmuck! And am sad for him.

I definitely didn’t buy the two major heel turns (Shiv’s last-minute change of heart, and Kendall’s move to Mencken in the election episode). Nothing to do with the actors, just felt like the writers putting plot before character. I’m also (for entirely personal reasons!) not particularly into using the threat of suicide as a means to juice dramatic tension.

Otoh I was really petrified that Kendall was going to be eaten by a shark.

i lol'd at Kendall's pitch to the board on why they should reject the sale - he's good at bullshitting onstage but once again he fumbles the bag when it came to actually doing any real business. "Um, it's a bad deal, ok."

roman wasn't happy about the photo op/signing at the end but he stepped up and did it anyway - even though he's an unrepentant asshole, he's always been the bigger person than kendall when it counted. also i think he secretly agreed with shiv, and felt relieved that it wasn't him who made the decision in the end. I would've liked one last scene between him and gerri, but am also glad they chose not to go there - roman truly fucked himself over with her (and gerri was right, she could've gotten him to the top). 

i don't think shiv's end is the worst tbh - or rather, idk if it would have been any better for her if she had chosen ken. even after all their promises to her, there was no guarantee that she would've gotten ATN, esp after seeing Ken in Logan's office and the conversation with Stewy - a reminder of Ken's incompetence as well as the fact that it was always going to be a boys' club.
 
It was an impulsive choice, bound up in all her trauma/jealousy/resentment, but it's also the only one that makes sense for her character. she got to make the decisive call, secure her child's legacy, while remaining in the same place she was before - two steps from power, but this time without having to compete with her siblings for it. 

the tragic aspect is the fact that you could be the same type of rich, white, awful, entitled person as your siblings but you still wouldn't get your foot in the door just by virtue of being a woman. gyac otm upthread re: the misogyny towards Shiv  

Yeah, this tweet succinctly got Shiv’s ending otm for me

shiv made the choice that wealthy white women always make when confronted with the fact that misogyny will prevent them from ever truly winning. she’s a victim and a perpetrator and a winner and a loser and her ending is tragic but she had a reason to choose it

— s (@Iauraroslin) May 29, 2023

Oh, there were other options ...

https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/diana-rigg-1200.jpg

I was just thinking Game of Thrones had a narrative advantage in setting War of Roses stuff in fantasy dragon land, and maybe Succession might have avoided the Murdoch entanglements by being set in Coruscant or something.

It does juice the narrative when the characters can actually poison, flay, torture and emasculate each other rather than just metaphorically.

perfect ending, can't think of a wrong note. was a lil bummed about Greg's future until I realized he's a rat and plays both sides and hell he gets 200k a year so fuck him

also kendall will never ever recover from this

man the mom scenes, too. . . wow she is a terrible mother. whoever said she didn't seem as bad hasn't been around toxic moms like that

even after all their promises to her, there was no guarantee that she would've gotten ATN, esp after seeing Ken in Logan's office and the conversation with Stewy - a reminder of Ken's incompetence as well as the fact that it was always going to be a boys' club.

Doesn't Greg still have secret copies of Tom's cruise boat coverup?

I did think for a minute Kendall took the elevator up and jumped off but was misremembering Adrien Brody in first episode of Pokerface.

The way Kendall blithely took back his Chappaquiddick confession seems like if he can get over that, he can get over this, and rather the final shot is more like the ending of Peep Show where he's realizing he's trapped in this purgatory except instead of being stuck with a forever roommate, he's realized he's going to keep trying and failing for the throne.

re: peep show, el dude bros --> disgusting bros?

Doesn't Greg still have secret copies of Tom's cruise boat coverup?

this is what I was thinking after the slapfight and Tom telling Greg he'd fuck it but leaking the news of Shiv's ouster. he didn't have to use it, but I'm guessing he'll keep it in his back pocket for the years to come.

surprised at how confused people were by the ken/rome hug. i had the same read as CAD mentioned upthread. when roman was looking at himself saying he didn't look that bad, why couldn't it have been him, he was saying what other people would think, ken understood and reopens his wound to make the explanation for why he couldn't be the face more apparent. appropriately, he does end up being the wounded face of waystar-royco anyway when he accepts being in the deal signing photo

I really thought it was Ken just straight up bullying Roman into submission somewhat but happy to admit I found it a confusing scene (including Roman's comments about how he looked wrt suitability for the role).

As others have said I thought the hug was powerful because it wasn't just one thing, it was all of them — it was an assertion of dominance and affection at the same time, with pain as the price. A very Logan-esque move by Ken, repeating learned behavior that he's been on the receiving end of.

Man, there are some tremendously bad takes out there. I follow this guy on Twitter, he's written some pretty insightful and funny recaps and power rankings throughout the show's run. But I just don't know how he landed on such a bad, and wrong, take on the finale (there's a whole thread, but these are some of the choice one):

Just had to get that off my chest. I literally had trouble sleeping last night I was so annoyed at the ending of this otherwise great show, but the finale was so bad the show is dead to me.

— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) May 29, 2023

If you wanted an ending where Ken once more whiffs, there were other ways to do it, but the problem I had with it was the actions of the characters made no sense in relation to how they'd acted for 38 full episodes and 9/10ths of the finale.

— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) May 29, 2023

Some people don't know how to watch TV and film, like just excruciatingly unable to assess character and plot.

and they’re all on twitter

I was annoyed by the theory that Tom was named after 1920s baseball player Bill Wambsganss (who made an unassisted triple play, do you see?!), so I was glad to see that Frank Rich debunked it:

“I hate to spoil the internet’s fun, but it’s false,” Frank Rich, an executive producer of Succession, told me in an email. “Tom’s family name was picked before we had shot a first season”—the Succession pilot was made in 2016—“let alone mapped out precise story twists that would culminate 39 episodes later! Not to mention that many of the key writers on the show, starting with its creator, Jesse [Armstrong], are British, live in London, and are devoted to British football.”

Rich, a New York magazine writer-at-large and former New York Times columnist, added that the source for Tom’s last name is a typical one in screenwriting: A Succession staff member had a relative named Wambsgans. “If memory serves,” Rich said, “we were looking for something off-key that would be awkward to say/pronounce, befitting a character who arrives as an outsider in the Roys’ world.”

I know that some people on the internet like to scrutinize any popular work of art for clues and hidden meanings. And some artists/creators do encourage those kinds of readings. But Succession really doesn't seem like that kind of show.

I think he has a fair point about the inconsistency but “show is dead to me” is instant ejector seat

What a season this was. The first couple episodes felt a little slow but in retrospect did a great job setting up the rest of the season. The momentum carried all the way through to the end. It's so rare to see a show nail its ending on all fronts so well