HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

We met Greg vomiting in a (Doderick?) suit.

I don't know if this is that kind of show, but now I'm worried about Roman harming himself.

Yeah I didn't know what Doderick was! nor that the Calispatron thing went back really far either.

Roman trying to convince Kendall that Living+ (I'm sure this is already the name of a Freeview channel, so took me ages to figure out what it was supposed to be) is possibly awful reminded me of Peep Show where Jez is trying to tell Hans that their track is shit. "What's shit? The track's shit? it's THE shit!"

omg this ep was so cringe & stressful & GOOD

the insane havoc these grieving idiots can wreak with so much power & so many minions at their disposal, it’s dizzying

guys i don’t think rome’s ok

grumblequote grumblequote

roman firing people immediately upon experiencing the slightest discomfort, top ceo strat

tell me i’m not like my dad & i will laser you from outer space

So did Gerri get fired or not? She was still there at the end.

I think she just laughed off Rome and kept doing her job.

I don’t think she’s fired. I think there will be a flurry of awfulness immediately next week (Joy’s litigation, some watchdog organization calling Kendall’s stock bluff which might in turn cause Karl to turn traitor, Matsson making moves) and Gerri’s “firing” will just be a nothing

I’m one of the rare few who adored Margaret and it has been such a pleasure to see both J Smith-Cameron and Jeannie Berlin in this fantastic show

She didn't get fired, she just got told she was fired

good to be reminded what absolute scumbags the whole family is. just poisonous people. this felt like a greatest hits episode. kendall on stage, shiv toying with tom, roman hapless and cruel, etc

i just learned today that karolina isn't played by patricia arquette lol

She's a Dagmara dagnabbit

always happy for an Annabel Gish cameo. bummed she was fired right away. she would have been a nice foil for Roman and Kendall's co-ceo shtick.

that back and forth was amazing though. obv Roman is off the rails but his jab about LA was pretty brutal.

Tom's patheticness is just bottomless, it's incredible. Shiv whips him like a dog and he comes back for more. He digs deep down, gets really real, and she mocks him, makes a joke of his love, or what he thinks is love, and she allows him to participate in the joke, and play his own vulnerability for laughs, a chance which he obediently grasps

I'm glad this show has reminded us how terrible all these people are. You spend this long with certain characters and I guess there is probably a natural desire to redeem them, to have them come good, but that would be a disservice to what the show is actually trying to portray imo

"How am I supposed to follow this?? He just offered them eternal life!"

"Security plus entertainment is a very compelling offer"

tom and shiv playing bitey really made the sub-dom subtext of their relationship into text

greg trying to do kendall's "no one says no" routine to the audio engineer and immediately making it pathetic with "i don't want to get fired"

that was a jam-packed episode. lots of ups and downs for everyone

tom/shiv relationship ruins is prob the first time i’ve found tom not pathetic tbh

i’m not interested in any of them being redeemed (it’s a v shakespearean show so i feel like that’s not even in the cards) but the special hypnotism this show practices makes it so i can watch a full hour of them being horrible bastards to each other and everyone else and still think “oh my precious beautiful evil terrible embarrassing children”

the only redemption any of them could possibly experience is in extracting themselves entirely from daddy’s failcompany and appropriately enough his death has ensured they won’t

I feel like this episode is directed towards everyone on Twitter who over the last two weeks was like "Roman is the real business genius in the family do u see"

greg trying to do kendall's "no one says no" routine to the audio engineer and immediately making it pathetic with "i don't want to get fired"

― na (NA), Tuesday, May 2, 2023 10:21 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

eww such a classic gross management pattern bluster followed by pleading

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

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

― flamboyant goon tie included, Monday, May 1, 2023 bookmarkflaglink

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

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, May 1, 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I did not get cold vibes in this episode. I think he’s on the high of being in charge.

I think we’ll get at least one more episode of Kendall being on top. I took the final scene as a throwback to last season, where he nearly drowned in a pool. Now he’s swimming in the ocean. Ken is feeling powerful.

Coke, not cold

cocaine and mania have some similarities

i can watch a full hour of them being horrible bastards to each other and everyone else and still think “oh my precious beautiful evil terrible embarrassing children”

haha otm.

I also liked how it underlined how absolutely apolitical they are all at this point, now that they're really trying to run a global corporation.

xp I agree that Kendall is extremely high on life rn

tfw youre making your own cocaine with your mind

I guess I read Shiv saying to Roman "he's got that gleam in his eye" as "he's back on coke right?"

i think she meant just hes having business visions, hes going on a ceo walkabout

brad otm - i found Tom weirdly endearing in this episode? mcfadyen is so terrific at shifting gears from mocking or cunning into genuinely tender or playful, love it so much.

Feel like there have been so many scenes this season where he's deliberately harnessing/weaponizing his own sincere pain in attempts to get back into Shiv's good graces, it's brutal.

Yes

Tom is always endearing when he's with Shiv but it doesn't make him any less pathetic

He works it out by being terrible to everyone else, that's his therapy

i guess i find him actually expressing himself honestly to shiv incredibly unpathetic compared to what their relationship was when it actually existed where he was like this inert puppy dog who would perform any trick to please the shiv/daddy axis and who took all of his suppressed aggressions out on his subordinates like they were shoes in a closet

simultaneously i think he was a genuinely supportive and caring and open husband to shiv at times and shiv is far too closed off to receive this kind of love or begin to think she deserves it. and yet again i think tom ultimately could not, could never do the thing shiv needed most (kill her dad with his bare hands). anyway i have been on the verge of writing an essay about tom/shiv since this season started

Agree with all that but I feel like he is still an inert puppy dog and still shitty to other people, but like, I think he actually enjoys the humiliation, like this is actually The Zone where he thrives

there's a lot of the Tom/Shiv dynamic that's implied through their interactions with others

I'd read that essay

shiv/daddy axis a colossal turn of phrase

I think he actually enjoys the humiliation, like this is actually The Zone where he thrives

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, May 2, 2023 11:03 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

eating shit is an underrated skill in getting and keeping power, everyone thinks the big boys just throw their weight around all day but really they all have to eat a lot of shit too

tfw youre making your own cocaine with your mind

― lag∞n, Tuesday, May 2, 2023 3:41 PM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

"mind cocaine" is such a Kendall idea I love it.

"We're snorting ideas!"

hell yeah lol

the way kendall's CEO mania rhymes with his coke addiction sets him apart from roman and shiv, he does have a kind of bravery they lack in that he's willing to ride the edge of self-destruction and toy with l'appel du vide while his siblings are restrained by self-preservation. doubling the imaginary numbers, playing at pitching eternal life... his inner addict shifted to gambling and he's on the insane high of being at the precipice of an impossible win and certain eventual defeat. he wades into the sublime indifference of the ocean while roman soaks in his inadequacy

part of what makes jeremy strong's performance so good is he's got that glimmer of sad self-awareness even as he's being the most ridiculous dickhead

guys... that's not the clouds at all

do you think the clouds were just put together by a stage team or some sort of contracted artist installation that someone made a decent living off of?

I was imagining it was some conference gig where someone who did installation art made it and Ken is insisting his team just knock it out and rip it off in 24 hours

"everybody say thank you for the new rule, Ken"

part of what makes jeremy strong's performance so good is he's got that glimmer of sad self-awareness even as he's being the most ridiculous dickhead

feel like i could write a whole essay about his performance of Kendall walking into buildings with sunglasses on

we're gonna have to make a succession zine at this point

Title: Wambsgans Humiliation Zone

Kendall's thing is when anyone puts up a stop sign while he's in the middle of this high, he doesn't get pissed off or yells, he briefly and quietly retreats inward. like the clouds thing, or when Roman tells him maybe he shouldn't do the presentation. it's just a brilliant performance choice, this sad, beaten down kid emerging.

also idk but i think part of what makes the show compelling is the fact that these are people who are damaged in very human and touching ways, the awfulness is a symptom of the disease of their upbringing and their struggles with it, still trying to impress their awful and now-dead dad, chasing favor they'll never earn. i don't marvel at their pathetic-ness or evil, i want them to make it out of there somehow. a lesser show would just be a bit more gleeful at the prospect of their downfall, or reveling in sociopathic power grabs. it's a better show because while there's comedy to be mined from their amateurish endeavors and awkward interactions, it's ultimately not wholly mocking them or funneling them towards their deserved comeuppance. that's why for all its humor, it's a tragedy.

think Tom and Shiv have arrived at a weirdly better place than at any time during the show. He's not being pathetic with her, it could be argued they're being pathetic with each other but i think the dynamic is more complex than that. for one she is appreciating his current attitude.