HBO's Succession - Season 2 and Beyond

For a second there I thought it might be somehow advantageous for the kids to show human emotion at Logan's funeral (when they were all comforting Roman/strategizing), silly me

xp

yeah I thought Roman may have won some compassion outside the company core - then the President elect mockingly called him a cry baby :o

And we learned that the video of him crying at the funeral was leaked and going viral, welp

Carl's innocence protest ha ha 'what, it's circulating!'

Greg is so fucking craven, I hate all the characters to a degree but perhaps him most of all.

Roman’s breakdown reminded me of Frank TJ Mackey’s in Magnolia.

Caroline’s “oh” when she first looks at Shiv is perfect.

lol @ Caroline introducing her to Logan’s former mistress at the same time as trying to spite Marcia.

Ewan’s speech was great.

loved every moment of his speech

Also no shit the fascist withdrew his verbal promise, fucking idiots

+1 hating Greg more than anyone else, he is repulsive

(Reading upthread about cousin Greg being a fan favourite)

If cousin Greg has 10000 haters I’m one of them,
If cousin Greg has 10 haters I’m one of them,
If cousin Greg has no haters I’m dead.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwviYRGWAAAkHdC?format=jpg&name=large

Also, loved Jess telling Kendall she literally couldn’t anymore.

Ewan's speech was amazing but you just knew Kendall would pull one out of the bag too

Caroline is the best character in anything

The whole conversation between Shiv and her mom was amazing

Jeremy Strong’s face during the whole speech was incredible.

did Connor just say “pan-Habsburg, american-led, EU alternative?”

this might be close to peak Conhead hour

That NYT piece actually mentions Darwin's temporary blindness / the wasabi incident v nice

cousin Greg being a fan favourite

I think the reference was not so much to Greg being a fan favorite as the "Greg ends up on top" being a favorite fan theory, pretty much since Season 1. Not necessarily that people are rooting for him, but it's been speculated since the start. I never gave it much credence until basically last night.

It just seemed natural from the way he was shat on from the beginning as being lowest on the totem pole, and a viewer wanting the main characters to get some comeuppance.

Greg was so entertaining to watch for most of this series but I feel like his character in s4 has been underwritten. Part of why he feels so unlikeable, to me, is that he's become 2-dimensional.

I am trying not to predict the "winner" of Succession... but I kinda think Mattson is going to make Tom the US CEO. Mattson seemed sold on the idea when Shiv framed it as being a "puppet" position (which Kendall would not go for); and I think Mencken will want to reward Tom for making the call on election night. Those two desires together = Tom.

It just seemed natural from the way he was shat on from the beginning as being lowest on the totem pole, and a viewer wanting the main characters to get some comeuppance.

xp but Tom ruins everything he touches?

s1 greg coming out on top would’ve had some ironic juice but now he’s just as much a POS as everyone else. so I’m not sure what the “point” of him emerging victorious would be, narratively

It begins with the words.
Nothing happens without them. Sometimes, the writing achieves transcendence, but, in every case, it’s seminal. I got to a give a brilliant speech recently, which not only explicated my and my brother’s characters, it illuminated an entire narrative. 1/3

— James Cromwell 🐷 (@jamesocromwell) May 22, 2023

This is what great writers do. And they need to be compensated in accordance with their contribution. At the very least, they need to be able to provide for themselves and their families. 2/3

— James Cromwell 🐷 (@jamesocromwell) May 22, 2023

In this era of corporate greed and union busting, management seems to hold all the cards. Except for the most important ones: Unity; Solidarity; Fraternity. All of us win when the writers win. And we will win. Union! Strike! #wgastrike #UnionStrong #Succession @jessearmstrong1

— James Cromwell 🐷 (@jamesocromwell) May 22, 2023

👑

Caroline rallying the wives and mistresses and Marcia taking Kerry’s hand and her reaction was my favorite moment of the series

me too. also found the bit where marcia squeezed kett's hand weirdly moving, in a way this show rarely is.

and Cromwell's speech was astonishing, such brilliant writing.

Cromwell is on the official podcast and p much saying how he feels the same as Ewan politically. One of the better Cromwells!

Wouldn’t be hard.

I’m not sure what the “point” of him emerging victorious would be, narratively

I don't think this show has ever been about good guys winning tbf

Quote from director Mark Mylod:

Mylod previously mentioned "What I do is completely copy Robert Altman. If you watch Gosford Park, which is a huge influence for me, Altman was a master at those, and his way of shooting with Gosford Park was not telling the actors where the camera was"

— Anand Chamarthy (@AChamarthy) May 22, 2023

so many incredible performances in this ep, exquisite writing but shiv’s line & sarah snook’s delivery of “goodbye my dear, dear world of a father” was so perfect
i love that line

greg sucks bcuz this show is at its best when its played straight and this mofo is always being goofy af with his sub-ucb bad comedy acting.

i kind of agree but i think although his schtick wears thin now, the show would be too much without his extra-ness. like he provides a weird ballast somehow

When Shiv was talking to Frank and Karl at the mausoleum, there was a fraction of second when she says "yeah?" after Karl says "What you saw was what you got", where Sarah Snook had an expression on her face that was so much like Brian Cox as Logan that I thought a bit of subtle CGI had been used. I've rewatched and I'm fairly certain there's no CGI but she was so like him for a moment.

Greg knows he's goofy tho, right? Like he's not completely un-self-aware. He just doesn't know any other way to be, so he just flails away. His persistence comes from not having a safety net, he has no guaranteed soft landing.

xxp

Yeah, I think Greg was a good type of comedic relief counterbalance but his growing shittiness and forcefulness has kinda soured a lot of that. Clearly an arc.

I don’t think he feels wildly out of place, but he’s been there since Ep 1 doing his thing and just feels like part of the tapestry to me.

Connor is probably more ridiculous.

👑

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 22 May 2023 22:49

Ha yes, Cousin Greg was unsuccessful in preventing Uncle Ewan from unfurling banners and singing union songs

Loved seeing the contrast between Roman practicing putting his big boy pants on in the mirror at the beginning of the episode and absolutely shitting those big boy pants at the funeral. Glad he found his level.

gyac otm about Greg. Dude is a charmless weasel and unfunny at every turn to boot.

lots of flashy bits in this one but “you fucked it” takes the biscuit. Jeremy Strong is an assassin.

This show doesn't often let the rest of the world open up, the last scene did it with enough subtlety that it was really brilliant. A worse show would have Roman be recognized and targeted. Here we just seee these two opposing worlds having absolutely zero idea about each other despite being constantly at war.

Class episode, great monologues, can't wait for the finale

"the grim weeper". so good to see roman get shat upon by his fascist godhead. kieran culkin's performance is astonishing, and i feel some sympathy for the breakdown roman is currently experiencing, but he's a mostly repellent character and i sort of want to see him collapse further.

the moment he asks if his dad is in the casket, and somebody should get him out, just ended me

he can never escape his past, the 6 year old is always inside, "you fucked it, roman," never gets steak, and so he takes it out on the world, but it's just flailing, constitutionally he's not logan, he has never had to fight for anything, has no idea how to do it

kendall once again smashes a public speech under high pressure, he's very good at it. but once again has no idea how to do deals. his pitch to mencken was abysmal. 'i thought you were the sound system. now you want to play the tunes?' there's a very good answer to that - 'i want to play YOUR tunes, but i can't do that if i don't own the company' but he just, well, fucks it

feels like mattson's pitch also just bounces off mencken, difficult to divine how it's all going but i guess one thing you can say is that all these people are totally craven and deserve whatever is coming to them

the shiv reaction-o-meter off the charts this week

agree with everybody about cromwell's speech. he's an actor on another level, felt like witnessing a particularly great moment of theatre. all the business falls away and we're just in the palm of his hand

Cromwell's speech was so good I had literally no idea if Kendall's was any good, if it was landing, or if it was cobbled-together pablum.

I can't get a handle on how the show intends to portray Matson or Mencken - are they "serious people", as Logan would have it? Or are they bullshitters too?

They're playing them as more serious than the kids thats for sure. I would say they operate in logan's sphere. They have "success", the one thing that the kids can never have.

This show really could have done with another season. There feels like there's so much quality they can still draw from this world. Props for hanging it up before any potential of beating a dead horse I guess

cp depends how unserious you think American cities on fire and protestors out in huge numbers are

ffs xp!

From a realist perspective, Greg is definitely the weak point of the show. Why in fuck would the siblings still have an idiot like that hanging around, I mean he has no leverage, no shares in the company does he?

I think maybe they think he still has some influence over Ewan (as shown by the fact that they genuinely seemed to think he could get Ewan not to speak), who is still on the board. Also, everyone has annoying cousins. You just have to put up with them.

I think Mattson and Mencken are doing a deal - Mattson's call to Shiv about a US CEO implied M + M had a subsequent discussion - that cuts out all of the Roy children.

Now I am thinking Tom is going to be the Amercian CEO and Greg will be his hatchet man. This fits in with the theme of this season, that the Roy children are "not serious people" and would be the choice that inflicts maximum damage on the children. They've always treated Tom as a bit of a joke. The M + M marriage also continues this seasons theme of the undue influence of tech/social media on politics where the show's 2020 stands in for our 2016.

There is only a single episode left, correct?

imagine the effect on the Shiv/Tom power dynamic 😬