Eh… for instance, remember when Marcia (Logan’s first wife) somehow had one more vote than everyone else in the family trust? Super huge deal!!! Then forgotten about. Remember when there was this massive deal about whether Sandy and Stewie would get an extra board seat, and Shiv saved the day? Super huge deal!!! Then never mentioned again.
It’s just not good storytelling when things are massive issues, and then just vanish. And I don’t think it has anything to do with them being rich.
I think a lot of this show had resolutions that were basically the rich-person-financial-world version of “Reverse the Polarity of the Neutron Flow”. Consistency and accuracy and plausibility of the business side of the show always took the back seat when compared with emotional/character storytelling.
But yes I agree with your premise that there’s a lot of big stories that disappear. That seems to be typical of most dramas. Wasn’t that how ALL of Lost was?
I think a lot of the criticisms about “succession” become irrelevant when you look at it as I did from the start. It is mostly a black comedy about pretty terrible people. Complete accuracy is very much secondary.
Personally I felt it could easily have dropped 25 minutes from that episode and lost nothing. I fell asleep during the kids night in, went back and watched it at the finish.
I did think it was fun to have Ken and Roman have a brutal then childish fight in view of everyone, I imagine they’d had such fights before, just not in front of hundreds of people. The eye gouge looked like the type of cruel attack which would end their friendship forever. Then of course it decends into the usual siblings wrestling.
Apart from that, an overall summary of the series: great dialog, lots of dead ends, and rest pretty much as expected.
Nice touch to have Mum set up a pitch for something when they’re having dinner. Clearly that has been discussed by her and Peter before, and was ready to go for them to scam their slice for months when they had the chance…
Sure, you look at the previous work that Armstrong and Mylod have been involved with and the unlikeable characters, dark humour and inventive dialogue is absolutely in keeping.
“you can’t make a Tomlette without breaking Greggs” is not a phrase that is likely to spring, off the cuff and fully formed from anyone’s lips in real life but it is something that comfortably exists in “the Thick of it” or “Veep” or “In the loop” or “peep show”.
Yeah, I’m always amazed at how many people don’t realize that this show is a black comedy, including Jeremy Strong (which is why he was so great in it).
The show seems to be saying that these people who run our society are monsters and even when they lose, they still are billionaires, so about all we can do is take the piss out of them. I love the fact that one of the terms of Murdoch’s divorce is that Jerry Hall can’t share ideas with the writers of Succession.
After media mogul Rupert Murdoch abruptly divorced his fourth wife, Jerry Hall, last summer, his team got to work on the settlement — including a ban on giving story ideas to the writers of “Succession,” according to a new report from Vanity Fair.
Regarding the complaints of dead-end story lines: I think we were supposed to get just enough of those stories to tell the overall story Armstrong wanted to tell: The one of who would ultimately succeed Logan Roy at Waystar Royco. Who won the presidency? Doesn’t matter; we got what we were supposed to get to tell the Roy story. Logan’s stroke early on? It was relevant to the story, and he recovered; people recover from strokes. The purchase of the Pierce company? We got what we needed, I assume their lawyers and accountants are taking it from here and we don’t need to be bogged down with those details. The Tom-going-to-prison story? The DOJ settled and prison was basically off the table for Tom (and Greg). Unless the new president’s DOJ revisits the case, why would this plotline have continued?
I loved this show, probably one of my favs of all time. The horrific nature of the characters was what drew me to it; I don’t need “likeable” people to enjoy a show, just compelling. These were absolutely some of the most interesting, broken people I’ve ever seen on television.
Loved the ending. Shiv finally screwed her brother(s). She saw that she wasn’t going to win the throne, but she’d be damned if she’d let her backstabbing brother win it, especially once she saw she could sorta win it all by being married to the new CEO. At least it was more of a win than what Kendall (or Roman) got. Are Shiv and Tom ultimately doomed? Most likely. I don’t think people this broken can ever have healthy relationships.
And i think the virtual dinner party scene where Connor, Logan and the suits are all living it up, along with the siblings all watching it, was as brilliant a scene as i saw all season, except maybe Ewan’s eulogy. I couldn’t tell if Roman was ugly crying from seeing his dad again or seeing Jeri. It’s like it went from Connor’s hilarious, overly-complex multi-tiered system of cleaning out his dad’s shit, to this emotional gut-punch of seeing the old bear one last time, and in a truly jovial mood. Even these sociopathic monsters have depth.
Anyone notice the picture of Logan with Reagan, and another with Yeltsin, at the reception after the funeral? But who was the woman shown alone in the picture in-between? His first wife, perhaps?
Nice little bit of dialogue when Kendall refers to his new PA as “New Jess.” Can’t even be bothered to learn her name, the putz. Later we see “old” Jess walking behind Shiv, but nobody says anything about it.
Just after Kendall has made himself comfortable behind his late and not-so-lamented dad’s desk, he and Roman talk, and he embraces Roman hard, reopening his stitches. Was that intentional? What was meant by that? Kendall just physically dominating/bullying his younger brother?
It occurred to me that Stewie and his cabal twice bet on Kendall… and lost both times.
I understand the show was about the family and not about U.S. politics, but I’m still sorry we didn’t learn for sure how the presidential election turned out.
The opening credits all season showed a cellphone with a StarGo logo. Matsson heads GoJo, doesn’t he? What’s StarGo?
Do you think Kendall was about to say something at the very end, by the river? He opened his mouth and then the scene ended abruptly (when that scene opened, I really thought he was going to try to drown himself).
Just after Kendall has made himself comfortable behind his late and not-so-lamented dad’s desk, he and Roman talk, and he embraces Roman hard, reopening his stitches. Was that intentional? What was meant by that? Kendall just physically dominating/bullying his younger brother?
I think Roman was pushing his face into him to open the wound. He finds all degrees of comfort in pain it seems. Plus maybe he was trying to find an excuse to skip out on the Board meeting (open head wound), so he wouldn’t have to see Jeri. Just a guess.
I understand the show was about the family and not about U.S. politics, but I’m still sorry we didn’t learn for sure how the presidential election turned out.
To me, this would make a compelling follow-up movie, in the way El Camino was for Breaking Bad.
After they yelled cut, Jeremy Strong had the urge to jump over the railing, so he starting running for it. The actor who played his bodyguard ran after him and stopped him. It was totally unplanned and they got it all on film, but decided not to use it. Strong is into method acting, so the emotions and body language of Kendall was that of someone who was contemplating jumping over the railing. That came through in the portrayal. Rather than Kendall looking confidently out over the water eager for his next accomplishment, he was feeling like he lost everything and wanted to end it all.
It was a real estate pitch of some kind, what was relevant was ho no one actually gave a shit about anything but the money, Rome shows up at his mom’s house after a very public breakdown and she uses the time to pitch him some grubby deal her husband has cooked up.
I’m not saying it’s a fatal flaw… it’s still a compelling and extremely watchable show. But I think it’s a flaw nonetheless. It’s just not satisfying storytelling when we spend so much time being told we are supposed to care about X, then X comes to a (generally satisfying) climax, and then… it’s never mentioned again, doesn’t seem to have mattered at all, and we’re right back where we started. Particularly through the first three seasons, where Logan just always won, no matter what.