HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

Oh yeah, good comparison.

it was pretty heavy too--which was fine, but I appreciated the humor in Kendall's line, "We’ll get a funeral off the rack... We can do Reagan’s with tweaks.”

Yeah, for once the Sky ad breaks on Irish television were welcome. I found this very hard going and quite emotional for the first half hour. I also can't stop thinking about poor Connor left on his own eating Victoria sponge for a week. What a vivid and odd detail to add to an already extremely rich episode.

I also really liked how Karolina, Frank, and Gerry were able to turn into competent businesspeople immediately without having some cranky old git barking at them every ten seconds. If I was the kids, I would leave them to it from now on and just take the money. They have nothing to prove any more. There's nobody around to be disappointed in them now.

Yeah, the confused and initially inconclusive reports,

I did find this slightly annoying, I must confess. We had a sudden family death last year that involved a last-minute dash to the hospital and ICU and machines being turned off and all that scary stuff, and at no point was it hard to get a coherent rundown of events from anyone involved. I sometimes think they strive so hard for non-stagey dialogue in this programme that they go too far in the opposite direction.

To be fair in this case he wasn't in a hospital, he was on a plane with a bunch of nonmedical people.

Having this happen offscreen and arrive in the episode suddenly via phone calls and uncertainty and all that, it felt a lot more palpably real than just showing him keeling over.

The post-episode interview with cast & showrunners addressed this specifically, it was intentional and I think they pulled it off to great effect as well.

they never could reach that airplane medicine expert that kendall wanted

To be fair in this case he wasn't in a hospital, he was on a plane with a bunch of nonmedical people.

I didn't mean the medical people. I meant flatmates, family, those people. But I am obviously in the minority in feeling they overdid it.

part of it is tom's people-pleasing and word salad. he sometimes avoids finishing his sentences inc case they offend anyone. of course, he's always crystal clear when speaking to greg or another underling lol

It also emphasized their distrust/contempt for experts in the room who they hadn't vetted. The "I want to speak with the pilot" moment was so good.

gregging

kendall trying to force events/people to bend to his need for control was really fascinating & grimly funny

also roman’s consoling words to his dad, you’re still the king (i think?) and you’ll win, the competition verbiage feels at once lacking but also a sad reminder that this is what roman believes his dad needs to hear to rally, this IS roman’s version of tenderness with his dad because there isn’t any other kind

also with all three of them, ken, rom, and shiv all separately capturing the brief moment in initial grief where the world just falls away from under your feet like nonono/ this isn’t happening/wait stop
etc

he’s fucking heavily delayed

but can we all agree that the most upsetting moment of the episode was "loony cake"
followed by connor's first reaction to the news being "he never liked me"

connor went full f the family this season

The "I want to speak with the pilot" moment was so good.

Yes, that was very Kendally.

loony cake bleak af, go on and have your deserted wedding

everyone was good but sarah snook was mvp imo

The "I want to speak with the pilot" moment was so good.

Yes, that was very Kendally.

― trishyb, Monday, April 10, 2023 2:17 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it also recalled the part in the pilot (maybe second episode) where kendall huffily asks "is this the best part of the hospital??"

Do we think the caterers actually created a Victoria sponge wedding cake for Connor, or does he just think of any sandwich cake as "loony cake"?

sad we will never hear logan tell anyone to FUCK OWFF again
unless maybe he made a video will?

xpost my guess is the latter

Some other parts I liked:

- Connor getting distressed about the inadequacy of his cake and complaining about its exposed innards
- how Tom calls Shiv twice cos he knows she’d want to be there and she thinks it’s just fuckery and hangs up
- also the way they hug after the statement
- all the Greg/pig metaphors
- the whole Roman and Gerri scene and extreme discomfort, Roman fucks it up horribly ofc but despite that you see a split second of Gerri’s lip quiver before she puts her face back on again
- “That’s the question, are you a cunt? So give me a buzz”

Connor really dodged a psychological bullet not having to face Logan snubbing his wedding (since Logan would evidently have rather died than dropped by).

no, connor doesn't need love, remember?

it's his superpower

oh right, silly me

also, this is dumb but Kerry’s hilarious bizarre reaction made me think for a moment that he WAS alive

not dumb! some people I watched with thought the same thing. agreed sarah s. was the mvp.

I like the turns Kerry's taken this season — before she was kind of this cipher. Good to get a sense of what she has been envisioning for herself, makes her seem more pathetic and vulnerable than she did previously.

On the plane I think besides just shock she was also dazedly processing that without Logan she didn't actually have a role, she had nothing to do, suddenly nobody needed her at all.

also connor’s line about Mr Scrooge being a huge wealth creator was chef’s kiss - truly peak Connor

here's hoping marcia comes back from her eternal shopping vacation

GREGLETS

Damn this was good. Disappointed L went out that way really but I have nothing better in mind.

Shiv having Tom's full name on her phone, man..

its gonna be such a shitstorm the rest of the way everyones spot in the hierarchy was totally relative to logan

wow, this episode! did anyone else think that Tom was fucking with them when they first got the call?

I liked how none of them had Final Words To Dad speeches when they were on the phone, it was all "you're going to be ok.. are you ok?" like I'm sure most people in a heightened stated of shock/disbelief would actually be

yeah exactly, it felt v true to life

I liked the cognitive gap between Shiv and Roman when she suddenly thinks maybe they should have the plane circle a little longer to give them time to prepare — because she's accepted he's dead — and Roman starts sputtering that they have to get him down and get him to a doctor.

this episode was masterful, i felt absolutely blindsided by the events, like i was there in the room, in a way that i simply haven't in god knows how long when watching stuff. my partner and i just sputtering "wait, no, what? so they're... they've got to... what? is this real? what? i -- what?" for 35 minutes. you couldn't do it better.

just like absolutely kubler-rossing our way through a tv show, that's a fuckin magic trick

lol otm

did anyone else think that Tom was fucking with them when they first got the call?

Completely, and actually one non-realistic thing was that the kids didn't seem to immediately think this too! At least Roman would surely have gone right to "Tom's fucking with us" and then "the whole plane is fucking with us" rather than "25 more minutes of CPR is gonna do the trick" as his mode of denial

on the official hbo podcast jesse armstrong said all the scenes of tom/frank on the calls were genuine audio of them on the call in the moment, like mcfadyen was at home doing the call in the middle of the night or whatever -and i guess they had a thing through the whold series where that was the case, actors would make themselves available to each other etc

i thought that was cool & kinda above & beyond touch to lend immediacy

i would like to offer a hearty fuck off to the home page of ny times dot com which had just enough leading headlines this morning for me to know what this episode was going to be about

^ exactly

did anyone else think that Tom was fucking with them when they first got the call?

Completely, and actually one non-realistic thing was that the kids didn't seem to immediately think this too!

The moment where I thought this was when Tom said to Greg "Logan just died" and Greg pauses and takes it at face value, when Tom has been hazing him with joke exaggerations for four seasons now.

Also, from the first episode, I guessed that meek Greg will rise to the top by the end. We'll see.

So in the fight for succession is going to be a big deal that Gerry was technically fired? I imagine that will come up.

I mean, Gerry has her pick of the courts, the police, and the media at this point...

does anyone know other than Roman, who she can emotionally control with a glance?

still smashed by this ep 24hrs later - hungrily reading recaps and remembering small details - best tv experience since twin peaks s3e8 and before that i can’t even think

greglets

it feels like tom, and by extension greg, is fucked. tom screwed the siblings to get in favor with logan and greg has totally tied himself to tom. unless logan stipulated something re: tom in his will.

i think gerri is fine, roman didn't want to fire her and didn't get around to actually firing her and no one else knows about it, at least no one who cares.

i was thinking that the first two episodes of the season did a great job of faking us out about logan dying this early in the season by setting up a season arc for him, he was going to focus on ATN and rebuilding it in his image and maybe or maybe not reconciling with the kids.

Tom should know better that just deleting the folder "logistics" and then emptying the trash isn't enough.