Succession - HBO

I suppose the Gojo photo op scene that Roman has to endure also counts as Roman’s send-off. He’s the bloody, stitched-up public face of it.

I loved the Stickering Perambulating Circuits and the dinner video they watched together. Made me tear up, although I’m not quite sure why or who for!

In hindsight, it’s so obvious that the finale would have these three kids playing in Mommy’s kitchen as well as smacking each other around verbally and physically in a boardroom.

Yeah, feminist Shiv just stuck in that most womanly role of standing by her man and carrying his baby.

I felt that, too, but I think that’s mostly because the sibs are just terrible people. It’s also easy to root for the actor, rather than the character. This show has so many great actors, I think that plays a part in who wanted what ending.

But yeah, Tom. A boss who literally uses employees as footstools. A completely amoral man in a position to speed the collapse of American democracy, and who does so because “I give the people what they want.” A man who admittedly cares only about power and wealth. That’s who we’re kindasorta rooting for. Amazing that the show made us think that.

Rooting for? I was hoping somehow everyone would lose! I wanted Mattsson to lose, the deal to fall apart, but the kids to lose too, somehow all of it grinding into dust in some mundane bureaucratic/political collapse.

I’m not disappointed with the finale at all, just saying I wasn’t cheering for anyone in particular to achieve further success in the business/media world.

Except maybe Karolina.

Hugo pops up in the room.

“Where’s Karolina?”

When the kids were in the kitchen playing Meal For a King, my wife was like, “Aw, they’re getting to be siblings! This is so sweet!” Then she paused it to go do something, saw there were 48 minutes left in the episode, and said, “Oh no…”

I was rooting for Ken - he had seemed to overcome a lot.

The end was great, but really upset me. Not because Ken didn’t ‘win’ the job - but because his sister shanked him at the last second. Ken, for all his faults, cared for his siblings quite a bit. Even in the last episode he is hugging and comforting Roman right before the vote. Protecting Roman from physical harm multiple times (yes, I know he snapped at Roman when Roman insulted the race of Ken’s children). He chimed in just a few episodes earlier when Tom insulted Shiv in the ATN conference room.

Roman too shows love, but in his own broken way. He, like Ewan, always stayed loyal to family. That was Logan for awhile, but his brother to wrap up the show.

Shiv on the other hand turned out just like her mother. She never cared for her brothers. She wouldn’t let Ken have the role in Season 1 when Logan was ill. She was willing to send Ken to prison in Season 2. She released an extremely personal and vicious letter about Ken and his family in Season 3. It is obvious that she was always going to Shiv him in the end. None of this to mention her treatment of Tom throughout the show. And it made me sad that the true betrayal was of Ken’s love for his siblings.

As for her being the best position - I don’t really agree at all. The family is now cut out of the company. A husband she doesn’t love is serving as a puppet, and she has no role at all except to become Marcia.

If she had gone with Ken she would have her pick of jobs. Ken basically told her she could do anything - including cleaning up ATN - which would have been her opportunity to finally back her ‘moral’ position on the show and make a true impact. That would be a far stronger position, with her brothers both in leadership positions, then where she is at now.

But she couldn’t overcome her hatred and pettiness towards her brother, so she tossed it all in the bin.

I was a little disappointed. I was hoping for it and them to blow up more spectacularly.

This I cannot understand. Kendall was so obviously carrying down Logan’s abuse across the generations, and was a time bomb waiting to go off (and indeed has gone off several times, only for him to skate because he’s rich and powerful). His breakdown at the end was just pure ego - “I need this, I deserve this (for arbitrary non-meritocratic reasons)”. He was the one who most needed to lose, for the sake of everyone around him.

I read that as Kendall pressing Roman’s stitches against his shoulder to cause him physical pain after Roman started sounding like he wanted to put up a fight for CEO again. Reinforcing that he had truly inherited all of Logan’s cruelty.

Hard to miss all the blood.

That scene was weird, but Roman was also participating in that as well, burying his head into Ken’s shoulder. It seemed like he was treating it as some sort of self flagellation or something. Anything to not think about Gerri.

I was really hoping for a final conversation with Gerri, but alas, this is meant to be a tragedy with a tragic ending. That is what we got. It was meant to feel like we were robbed.

Shiv’s move was unforgivable. Her morals have always been a nice little thing she believes she has, but when it comes down to it, she does whatever she wants.

Her character is fascinating, because I think she is meant to be more of an “outsider” who we think of more fondly, because she isn’t involved in the muck of cruises or ATN. She works on a Democrat senate campaign, thinks that they peddle garbage… But when given the option to fix things, she doesn’t choose to do the hard things. She is just as self serving as her brothers, even when she thinks she is not. She is probably the most cruel character on the show… Besides Logan. She really is her father’s daughter.

Sarah Snook deserves all the Emmys (Kieran Culkin too)

Not specifically to cause pain, but because in the moments before Roman was looking at his reflection and saying he looked a lot better than he realized. If he wasn’t as visibly, literally, damaged as he’d let himself think, then why shouldn’t it be him instead of Kendall? It wasn’t exactly rational, but Kendall shuts it down by dealing with the superficial aspect by reopening the wound.

None of them ‘deserve’ to win, but I connected with Ken the most and was rooting for him.

And I was disappointed that once again his family shanked him. It’s a lot of betrayal and abuse in Ken’s life.

Sometimes it felt like Logan was cruelest to Kendall; in that sense I was hoping he’d “win” by simply getting out of his father’s shadow and control. That seemed pretty unlikely from very early on though.

Some of the sibs are worse than the others. Connor and Kendall are the only ones who consistently show actual affection for family members. Shiv is nearly as awful as her parents.

But all of them were OK with blowing up democracy in the US, to make a deal with Mencken. In that context, it doesn’t matter who is nicer to their family or more polite to the waiter. Cartel bosses love their own kids. Hitler loved his dogs and Eva Braun.

Fuck them all! It was a good series - glad it was made & that it didn’t drag on for non-story-related reasons. I think it was a good ending to the show, even saw the ass-kissing Greg get his comeuppance when he tried for one last butt sniff on Tom.

I think Kendall went mask off at the end of this episode, as Roman did on election night. His ‘hugging and comforting’ of Roman was overt bullying, and the weird dynamic that Roman displayed right after suggests to me that Kendall has a history of bullying him. We know that Logan hit Roman on occasion, and nonetheless Roman’s primary drive in life seemed to be to obtain Logan’s approval. Now that Logan is gone, Kendall tries to step in his place by dominating Roman physically and getting supplication in return.

Then the ‘I am the eldest brother’ violent stuff, and pretending like the kid’s death never happened, which at the end of season 3 was the most real moment the three siblings ever had in the show. It is clear that Kendall is extremely chronically depressed, suffers from an abject lack of talent and capability (shown right to the end with his babbling speech to the board about why they should reject the GoJo deal), and was using the possibility of becoming CEO as the only thing to keep his life going.

I think Shiv was not trying to specifically knife Kendall at the last second, nor was she trying to ‘stick by her man’. She had the realisation as Roman did that they are all bullshit, they are nothing. Why should Kendall be CEO? Because his dad was? It is obvious to all that he wouldn’t be good at it, which is what she says as her reason at the end.

Inherited wealth is toxic to society is in my mind the main message of the show and it comes through most forcefully at the end of the last episode.

Agreed - some one got the titular “succession” but no one won, not even the audience.

I just binged this over the past month after only watching the pilot years ago. Perhaps that time compression distills things, but I can’t believe anyone watching was rooting for anyone - everyone was a horrible person.

Don’t get me wrong, it was fun as hell watching the show. But the Roy children were all immature, insulated idiots; any moment of feeling or caring were pure bullshit. The whole way through.

I am glad the show didn’t have anyone “win” for real, and glad it didn’t make everyone lose (they go broke, pianos fall on everyone or the feds arrest them all!). The message that this kind of wealth and power will succeed even in the spite of inherited idiots tells the real story.

The Tom and Greg fight scene broke my heart. Then the bit near the end where Tom keeps him on and puts on his sticker of ownership was so so touching.

I think one of the show’s great strengths is that it makes these horrible people feel very real and human and invites the viewer to sympathise with any part they can.

100% - that sticker moment was so perfect. I can’t wait for the spin off with just Tom and Greg. (Kidding on just that last part!)

Yup, I can see that- I guess I am just a cynical bastard. I did feel bad for some of the characters - what a sad set of lives! But I never felt a brief moment negated the other 99% of the time all these people were morally and spiritually bankrupt.

Another thing that was really well done, if not a bummer of a reality check - no one grew or changed. It always was about power and money for everyone involved, right to the end.