HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

https://www.vulture.com/2019/09/succession-season-2-cherry-jones-interview.html

Because it’s Succession, when I read the script I thought, “There is no one in this episode who is noble.”

Logan practically chasing down the car was the most pathetic moment showing that he's a big old weak narcissist under all that projected self-confidence and braggadocio

Season 1 felt way too caricatured for me, with characters not really going beyond their tics — Roman will approach a buffet, take a bite of something and put the rest back, and so on; Greg will raise the last word of every sentence. Costumes were fantastic, though.

But now season 2 (just watched it all up to now this weekend), and it’s a much better show. The characters are getting shaken out of their easy mannerisms, and just in general it feels a little more credible. And putting the Roys against the old-school Ivy League elite is really satisfying.

Ugh, and just after writing that, this episode goes back to Season 1 shallowness, taking away Holly Hunter character’s nuances and sophistication and the whole thing has a kind of BFA-LaBute-protege approach to sex and unoriginal swearing.

counterpoint: i really enjoy seeing Holly Hunter on television doing anything

Hard to see her have to deliver lines like “Kendall now has a bigger diaper to shit in” after a few episodes that work hard to credibly establish her tight-lipped New England manner...

I get the feeling that the character is purposefully chameleon-like and it was the Pierces who were tight-lipped New Englanders

and that she's playing for whoever is paying the bill? that was my takeaway as well. Unless the Pierce's are playing the tune and this is a long con...

upon reflection though I would agree this was not a strongly written episode.

ROY
CUNT

good to see 'cunt as a term of endearment' is now part of scotland's international brand

last two have been a bit bumpy and not as finely wrought tbh; hoping the ship rights itself tonight.

lol we’re really into “uhh pedo guy was a fun insult in south africa when I was a kid” territory here with uncle mo

and this situation with roman is somehow going... worse!

“Rights the ship”??? This is clearly another classic season plz

yes - it bangs

You can’t make a Tomelette without breaking a few Gregs.

fantastic episode last night. though odd that none of the roy children fucked anything up for once.

i guess tom and greg made up for that.

the hardest i've ever laughed at this show is when tom tried to say he'd never met greg and that cut to shiv losing her mind.

tom is fuuuuuuuuuuuuucked

they said they need a blood sacrifice, but really it's gonna be more like a sacrifice-by-marriage

good thing he signed that pre-nup, right

otm about the tom denying knowing greg scene, I was cackling

you can't make a tomlette without breaking some gregs

do you think Tom started out like Greg and was crafted into an oblivious but malignant exec by some similar svengali figure?

Tom has been working towards this his entire adult life and he's fucked.

I like how Team Roman being held hostage at gunpoint was almost the light relief from the general sense of clammy dread.

Actually it might be Kendall who's fucked and Logan has enough leverage to make him take the fall.

Have we done this yet?

👀 King @PUSHA_T pic.twitter.com/MRubMz0IJ5

— Nicholas Britell (@NicholasBritell) October 7, 2019

*snore*

not trying to start a feud or anything but I’m a little annoyed @HBO & Nicholas Britell asked Pusha T to write lyrics to the Succession theme, since they asked me to first and turned my version down https://t.co/MUywcSIYzq pic.twitter.com/q8OLy52krZ

— demi adejuyigbe (@electrolemon) October 9, 2019

demi for president

omg. i'm an episode behind; glad to hear there seems to be a general consensus the last one was a winner.

I remade the theme song to #Succession in #MarioPaint.@Succession_HBO @HBO @NintendoAmerica pic.twitter.com/53yNTfzeX7

— ℝ𝕖𝕧. 𝔸𝕕𝕒𝕞 ℂ𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕠 (@adamcatino) October 3, 2019

Perfecto landing

yup

Succession but everyone wants some of Logan's M&Ms pic.twitter.com/pTxIyXWen4

— my ass is haunted (@Buncahn) October 13, 2019

two amazing smaller moments:

greg complaining about his rosé
roman trying to get shiv and kendall to be serious and them briefly considering it before mocking him with baby voices

i love the brief moments on this show when sibling affection peeks out from behind the verbal animosity. even a couple of episodes back, i realized the connor actually laughed out out at some of roman's cracks instead of the usual exasperated stone face he gets from everyone else.

ugh the threesome stuff

So what's the consensus: Did Logan orchestrate the betrayal?

nah

or I take that back. He might have hoped that was what Kendall would do

Yeah, I guess that's what I meant. I don't think he and Kendall were in cahoots.

I am also curious how Greg came to feed Kendall the documents.

he did tell Kendall back in S1 that he had them

i thought the smile was more of a bookend from kendall's tv performance at the beginning of the season--before he was a groveling simp, now he might actually be transforming to the killer that logan dreamed he'd be.

i don't really think l to the og was behind the plan, but i trust the writers to make any scenario sing.

I think Greg only decided to back Kendall right at the end - it had the feel of something cooked up on the plane. Greg looked too shook in previous episodes to have been planning it all along.

sails out, nails out

do y'all think that kendall + logan's failed meeting with stewy was part of kendall's plan? idk how much he thought everything through, beyond the scheming with greg (and greg must've had those documents on the yacht at some point)

I was just thinking there was no way Greg would have had his sole copies of those documents in a folder in a drawer at work.

I think the tipping point was when Logan referred to the death of the kid as "no real person involved". Like this is the defining moment of Kendall's life and the event that's been torturing him for maybe a year and Logan just handwaves it away, while also basically admitting his involvement and complicity in the abuse scandal. Genuinely I think Kendall would have taken the fall before that moment.

I was half expecting Kendall to whip out a phone recording of that moment at the press conference.