HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

fun episode too, I guess they scaled back production and did some social distancing for covid reasons. I found the theatre like staging with lots of anon extras enhanced the sense of how all these Waystar schemers are lost in their own ambitions. The inner circle is a lonely place. Jostling for position in front of the ailing king. The Waystar A.G.M. had a Waystar Four Season Total Landscaping vibe, which again was partly to do with covid restrictions, I guess. Is a jigsaw piece missing regarding the telephone call Logan received behind the scenes, with tom... was Logan faking something!??

ha, i think it's the best one so far

― a (waterface), Tuesday, November 16, 2021 1:46 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I haven't totally decided how I feel about this season yet but ... no

show your work

that sounds more flip than I meant it to be. Am interested in why people thing this season isn't as good.

*the screws are tightening on the family
*Kendall is a hot mess
*As are the rest of the kids, but watching Kendall go through all of this and try to get traction has been great, am genuinely curious how next week will go, looks like he's maybe being deposed?
*I thought all that Holly Hunter/Rhea from Season 2 wasn't great and ultimately distracting
*Shiv is rising through the org and doing great work but also getting yelled at by Logan in ways he's only yelled at Ro-Ro and Ken Ken
*The stakes are super high for Tom, and you can almost feel it, his outburst last week w/Egg, his crazy shit with Shiv this week

i could see someone saying season 1 is maybe a lil less good as the show needed to get its footing but otherwise this season is just as good imo as last season and its operating at a v v high level

waterface otm, for all those reasons. I really like this season. I thought Sunday's episode felt like it could have been a season finale, rather than just the halfway point.

i love all seasons equally just like i love my children roman kendall shiv and the other one

Many great moments in this episode and the season overall. Shiv's hamhanded but quasi-successful attempt to form a daughters' bond with the other Sandy was well played on both sides.

i do love this season, but I read this today and kind of agree (possibly mildish spoilers for future episodes though)
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/10/succession-season-3-review/620397/

shiv got the deal done and sold it so well she actually believed she was getting that board seat

that article is interesting but see--I totally connect with them as humans and feel stuff for them. That's why I cringe whenever one of the kids or Greggy fucks up: They're human! They could be doing so much better! They make bad decisions!

But something is lost when the Roys go so far that we can’t connect with them as humans. The question of whether TV characters should be likable is, at this point, as tired as day-old guacamole. But without being able to occasionally feel something for the characters on a show, I don’t see much point in watching—especially when the glorious schadenfreude of watching horrible people suffer is undermined by the emphatic weight of knowing how their suffering will reverberate out to others.

The question of whether TV characters should be likable is, at this point, as tired as day-old guacamole.

shouldve stopped there

Agreed, waterface, they're human in so many ways. The eps have felt less varied this season. Maybe I just want to see more sunny beaches and the best coves.

oh i feel that. lotsa dull board rooms this year and conference centers. sounds like from that atlantic article & that NYER article awhile back that we're getting some Italy sometime this season.

Kendall's apartment is pretty boss

Not even his apartment though, isn't he still in his ex's?

I am definitely looking forward to a chance in scenery though.

yeah i can't be sure. the one he was in this week. all glassy and high up.

Oh that's right, I guess I lost track and the bunny convo fooled me. The Manhattan real estate porn is still def a big draw for me with the show.

theyre being draw into these less comfortable places by the chaos at the company

i think this season is great - you gain personal insight into the characters through their insane business dealings anyway, right?, there being less actual personal drama, or needing more of it, is not really a thing i noticed & that’s not really how the show is anyway

besides we have the slow disintegration of kendall’s sanity to keep us sated

In this season the spectacle been reduced, probably due to the restrictions of the shoot in the pandemic, it has leaned hard into the actors. I think it's no bad thing, the court of Roy is a terribly fascinating place, even without the episode polish that the earlier seasons seemed to have. Kendell has been 'on one' all season, it's kinda worrying for the character. I've really enjoyed how the corporate scandal is being played out, at board level i.e. barely a normal human response amongst the lot of them, as personal crises abound.

kendall roy

how is this real pic.twitter.com/1pyEaVQ7v9

— Mr. Notwithstanding (@hip_priest69) November 17, 2021

lmao

holy shit

L to the OG

wow, hashtag - resistance!!

“You can’t make a Tomelette without breaking some Gregs”
LMAO

Greg! How could you do that Greg! That was all we had!

YOUR LIFE IS NOT A BAGATELLE

grampa has the best vocabulary! all these 50-cent words, i’m constantly googling stuff he says. its such a cool attribute, he feels like a Dickens character

Something about Brian cox, he doesn’t quite pull off this role somehow. I know this is a minority opinion but to me he doesn’t have the gravitas

you simply must be joking

what in the actual fuck… i hope you are doing a bit

Loved those minutes where it seemed like no one and nothing could get in the way of him addressing the shareholders in a completely demented state.

new dad just dropped

stephen root as the surrogate libertarian convention head was good

this was a great episode. every character got a chance to shine, and justin kirk was disgustingly believable as a fascist who logan eventually won’t be able to control

“because of my physical length, I could be a target for all kinds of misadventure“

this ep redeemed itself in the last 5 minutes imo with Roy anointing Mencken, but until then it felt like full shark jump

I enjoyed Stephen Root as serious Jimmy James.

the return of the macho business donkey wrestler

a super karate monkey death car in every garage

Tom and Shiv’s subtle reactions to the first tastes of their wine were hilarious.

on the bright side it should adequately prepare tom for his prison toilet wine

It was such a treat to watch Connor's ego get pumped up before getting the wind sucked out of it in the end.

tom on the wine -“ its quite agricultural” lolololol

i really enjoyed this episode

the fascist being all “have you read plato?” to shiv was exactly how i imagined a room like that would be

kendall kendalling about firing lisa arthur for telling him the truth & then trying to act like he’s not going hat in hand to Tom out of sheer desperation … this birthday is going to be a shitshow and i cannot waaaaait

Menken was such a good shiny turd

“Franco, H, Travis Bickle…” …calling Hitler “H” was so hideous & absurd & awful, i gasped

incredibly bleak episode

it's interesting because fox news likely has less influence in the real world than atn has in theirs. i mean, fox was pretty desperate to find an alternative to trump until it became very clear that he'd win the primary

tho roman's "fascists are kinda cool, i guess" reaction to mencken before his hearty embrace of him does feel like the kind of wait-and-see approach fox took with that whole thing before going full brownshirt

It really felt like a deepening of the show to see Roman’s nihilistic attitude have real consequences (supporting a fascist) rather than just being comic relief.