HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

Interesting to compare Kendall's and Roman's leadership styles in this episode. Kendall is in another one of his delusional manic phases, but as long as he doesn't go too far off the deep end, that's legible as confidence visionary thinking to the investors. Roman, on the other hand, blusters his way through things with a sort of ironic detachment, which seems savvy when he doesn't actually have to solve any complex problems or take any accountability, but cruel and capricious when he does. Worse, he's crippled by self-awareness and insecurity (which is why Logan was always able to bring him back to his side). I liked the scene where Roman confesses that he fired Gerri, and Kendall is immediately able to spin it as a big-picture strategy; Roman can't operate in that mode because he's too aware of his limitations and failures.

horrifying to see what these piss babies can do when they have actual power

a lot of moments of Kendall and Roman trying to channel Logan in here

I'm still not sure if the oldheads thought Roman's performance was passable or if they're hoping he keeps acting like a big weirdo to make anything other than a Matsson takeover untenable

"at least he didn't rap"

yeah impossible to tell what was actually going on in that room where they were celebrating post speech, pretty cool

rip l to the og

i took it as "the buzz is up and so is the stock maybe" so they were all happy

there's a Jeremy Strong interview today in the New York Vulture, and suprise surprise, as soon as he got the script for this episode he asked wardrobe to make him a flight jacket

haa

i took it as "the buzz is up and so is the stock maybe" so they were all happy

― a (waterface), Monday, May 1, 2023 10:52 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

stock going up could threaten the deal tho, which is what kendalls trying to do

yah but the greys dont know that

that flight jacket scene though was all time

Great episode. The Shiv/Tom stuff was fantastic. Them doing the biting game at the party was something that totally made sense to me, for where they're at and how they were acting. the fact it was in a public place was kinda part of the kink factor right? Plus they're turned on by each other's brutal honesty and disrespect.

"if I cringe any harder I might become a fossil"

I like to think the plot point with the edited audio was stolen from Used Cars.

what a perfect way to see Logan again

Life-Plus is a great name. The positive response to it was the most credulity-straining thing about the episode, but whatever, they wanted to give Kendall a win. In his flight jacket.

i thought the Life plus was baloney too and no one would have bought it but then in the recaps this AM someone reminded me of Theranos, which, lol

Lol @ "minimize surprise, maximize satisfaction" as the slogan.

at first i assumed living+ would be another damned streaming service lol

it's also funny because it does feel like a natural pivot for succession-universe's fox news to pivot into full service retirement communities

The house onstage immediately felt like Kanye’s
second Donda concert.

I thought of that as well, just love the moments when these type of people just don't understand why their visions can't become immediate reality. "Like, you just do the clouds, right? And just build the house, simple masonry and plywood is good".

re post speech celebration they were prob just relieved he didnt fuck it up

To me the Living+ and the studio storylines are meta comments on the nature of having to produce your show on a streaming platform that's also turning into a generic hub for content 'for everyone' and tech encroachment on everything with Mattson's company. It also highlighted more of parallels between Matsson/Musk – meme producer, stock evaluations playing a hand in acquisitions and deals.

I think this is happening across the board in other shows. Like Barry and the plot on Sally's show being thrown around because of opaque metrics – and the use of director of Coda working on a MCU movie. Idk, both shows are closing somewhat rushing things, in the same platform that has been shifting and turning.

Karl was happy Ken didn't give any "numbers" as planned to really jack up the stock price and fuck the deal

Kendall literally deepfaked Logan to say the “doubling” thing that he was so upset about earlier

Also liked the mirroring of Kendall’s sadface/recovery at seeing Logan insult him again on video (“That’s a Valentine’s card”) with Roman replaying the fake microdick insult over and over again at the end.

yes, but he threw it to Karl for "specifics" and that felt like him giving into the threat. No real forecast.

Just "double the earnings of the Parks dept" from the Logan puppet.

It was kinda nice that the Logan fakery was confined to good old-fashioned audio editing with no discussion of deepfake training sets or whatever.

xp

yes, but he threw it to Karl for "specifics" and that felt like him giving into the threat. No real forecast.

I agree, but only the dead guy said it. I may have read it wrong, but it felt like Ken held back some of the planned rocket fuel. But maybe all of the "numbers" talk was only to jusify Logan's "double" fake.

having a dead guy do the dirty work is pretty funny

It seemed like Ken kind of listened to Roman and Karl, maybe just enough to keep it from being a disaster.

yeah does seem like their lil talks prevented kendall from going further down the rabbit hole

teamwork!

YOU are an ATN citizen and YOU are an ATN citizen

lol greg telling tom his speech sucks right before hes set to go on

This was my favourite episode of the already-excellent season so far

I hypothesise that Ken is going to get in trouble next episode

I want to see the Matt Levine Money Stuff column covering Ken’s hype speech vs financial reality.

1. Are we to understand that Kendall is coked up again?

2. Who made the Logan microdick video? On watching, I for some reason took it as Roman having made it himself for his own masochistic reasons. But some people seem to think Kendall made it in order to insult/punish Roman for doubting him on Living+? On the third hand, the only person we actually know has the ability to get fake Logan voice video made is Greg, so was it Greg?

I thought I saw that it had come as a text from Kendall, but it was too quick to be sure?

ya

https://i.imgur.com/Kno30sr.png

i wasn't picking up coke vibe from Kendall

So messed up that Kendall knows that's actually a sweet gift to send to Roman

the bit where matsson explicitly tells a board member of a company that he does not own but is attempting to acquire to kill a product launch seemed like illegal gun-jumping to me.

probably won't come up, but wonder if the fact it happened on runway tarmac (where all the good crimes happen) was a hint that it ... might?

should've done it in international waters, rookie mistake

The multi-faceted implications of the "Doderick Macht Frei" tweet were staggering

Also I hope that everyone, like me, needed to google "Doderick" to understand the reference. Season 1 was a long time ago!

Yeah I also didn't get it -- they did put a big "Doderick and Friends" movie poster in the lobby to remind you but all that did is make me go "Who's Doderick?" twice.