CletiusMaximus
Footballguy
He's fantastic in The Big Short.
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Succession on HBO (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Maik Jeaunz
- Start date
He's fantastic in The Big Short.
=Smackdown=
Footballguy
The side conversation between Tom & Greg are my favorites - just classic.
Capella
Footballguy
Yup. Great movie.
Capella
Footballguy
Yea to kill his dad’s rep, he was old, out of it etc or to take a more kind path. Kendall told Hugo to essentially shank his dad.
Desert_Power
Footballguy
Alan Ruck hasn't been in anything either
Desert_Power
Footballguy
Yes and....maybe? The latter would certainly help our hero Tom get back in the mix. He is here to serve.
jamny
Footballguy
Yeah. Wasnt sure if that was the first hint of it and I missed it before.
Also wonder if her fall could have affected that.
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supermike80
Footballguy
She sure looks preggo this season. Or she had too many krispy kremes between seasons. I mean I know she's actually preggo in real life...and it is showing
Don Quixote
Footballguy
There were some hints and internet speculation, but that was first confirmation. I remember reading something speculating on it a couple of weeks back because her character had not been drinking alcohol.
SFBayDuck
Footballguy
Yeah she's preggo irl, so seems they're going to have to carry that out.
Unless they keep going with the each episode is one day thing, in which case this season is over in a week of Succession time (which I think corresponds with the election?).
And Kendall is the only one who knows about Hugo's possible insider trading, so he was basically telling Hugo, "If anyone finds out that I was the one who told you to make Logan look bad, then I might have to tell folks about the insider trading."
Lol these people are so reprehensible, the worst of the worst.
Desert_Power
Footballguy
Yeah. Was also reminded of Logan at the end of 4.2 when he told the kids "you are not serious people". As Kendall tries to discuss the fate of the company, Shiv is silent and Roman is off making jokes.
GordonGekko
Footballguy
“You make your own reality. And once you’ve done it, apparently, everyone’s of the opinion it was all so #####ing obvious.”
^
The above quote is from the pilot episode. If you want to understand the thematic conflict in any narrative, look at the very beginning.
Logan Roy is a malignant narcissist. He has no empathy for his children and he has no empathy for himself. But out of his children, Kendall was the only one to actually start gunning for him and was willing to risk everything to do it. To take the risk to face off with his father. Someone like Logan Roy can't admit he was wrong. Never. But what stares him in the face is that Vaulter could have been Waystar Royco's own version of GoJo. Without having to surrender it's name and without having to put itself in a position without true leverage. In that regard, Kendall was trying to make his own reality.
In the character dynamics, Shiv consistently refuses to commit. This is the big sin to Logan regarding Tom. Not that she picked a weakling, but that she cheated on him and wouldn't commit. You see that in her business viewpoint. She'll only come after her father if she has her brothers behind her. If she has Tom behind her. She was easily swayed out of her political consulting life to join her father, but not before the tease of backstabbing her own candidate. We also get a frontal view of it when she asks Tom to have an open marriage on her wedding night. At least Kendall took his shot but failed.
Roman understands how to see the flaws in other people's ambition, but never chooses to reach out beyond his own sense of risk tolerance. The rocket explodes under his watch, based on his carelessness, and that defines him completely to Logan. Roman makes others take risks, but never himself. That's not making his own reality.
Connor lacks defiance. Zero. As the mother of Kendall, Roman and Shiv points out - Logan is designed to keep kicking people and then gets excited to see who comes back. Connor doesn't even need to be kicked, he just comes back. Even though he virtue signals about how much he resents his father, but still takes the money.
None of the Roy children are the best choice, but if WR's board were forced to pick one, Kendall is the only one willing to take an actual risk. Kendall understands "Why" but he doesn't understand the mechanics of "How" Logan is too arrogant and impulsive to fully accept that his passion for GoJo is his quiet regret over Vaulter.
The other children are kicked and come back for their inheritance. To protect their place in the family order. Kendall got kicked and came back looking to kill the king. He was the only one willing to fight for the knife in the mud.
If Logan can conceive of Kendall as a "true killer", it validates to him that he wasn't a bad father. Because malignant narcissists can't truly regret anything. They can't admit their impulsivity. They can't forgive. They can't love. The line being both a potential underline of Kendall's name and also possibly a cross out of it, is to highlight Logan's conflict over the matter. He can't be wrong, he's never wrong. But the GoJo deal only brings him back to the point where the only feasible reality is that Kendall was right in form, but not in function, over Vaulter. And had Logan realized that, the entire family would not be in the position it's in with Matsson.
Logan does not hate Kendall. Narcissists only have indifference. He simply saw the worst parts of himself reflected in Kendall. He attacked Kendall relentlessly because his son operated as a mirror to the true pathology at hand.
You don't kill the king for the throne. You kill him to show everyone else that you will not let anyone or anything else to define you.
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
You've never seen Frank or Karl in anything? Dude.
GordonGekko
Footballguy
Both GoJo and Vaulter are composites of Fubo
Matsson is designed to be derivative of David Gandler and Reed Hastings. Lawrence Yee was designed to be derivative of Sung Ho Choi and Pony Ma.
As soon as Gerri confides that she "gets lots of cake", then that means she's built off of Safra Katz.
Once you see the characters in certain scenes and you understand the point is open malice from the writers room, you start to figure out what Jesse Armstrong is sourcing from and why. The poolside conversation with Willa, Tom and Logan's wife, where Willa's response is tested about her "career", that was a clear indicator that Willa was built off of Kimberly Guilfoyle.
There is probably a pretty interesting discussion pathway regarding Succession's characters and their projectible real life counter parts and why, but, of course, the "Tim Tax" It would delve into public policy/public administration discussion by default, and Tim would just go berserk about it. Maybe it's my medication lifting off some of my filter, but good God did Tim rob so much from all of you or what.
Not fishing at all.
Although I finished episode 10 of season 2 and it was maybe the best episode yet. So maybe there is a still a chance. And, personally, I find Jeremy Strong bad as well.
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
I don't get this at all.
Capella
Footballguy
cool
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
I think the point was Kendall wanted so badly to believe it was underlined and everyone else knew it was crossed out. I think the three (Karl, Gerri, Frank) talked about flusing it down the toilette but (off camera) decided revealing it would cause infighting among the three siblings helping their cause of taking over.
GordonGekko
Footballguy
The Hugo / Kendall conversation highlights the hard demarcation point between high level staff and analysts and actual blood family.
You don't get to say "No" to a certain level of power. It just doesn't happen. No matter how insane and ridiculous the situation becomes. In media optics, if you distill it down to fundamental crisis management, in that situation you give the person two "choices".
The one where they survive. And the one that they should never take if they have any sense of pure self preservation. It is not a real choice, it's an illusion of choice. If you closely watch the larger meetings on the show, the support staff like Gerri, Karl, Frank and even Tom don't actually try to get into direct confrontation with the adult children. Even if they are wrong. Even if they are behaving stupidly. They will however begin to undermine and snipe at each other. Only in a very rare moment of actual honesty, does Gerri tells Roman, when the attempt against Logan fails - What's in this for me? How does doing this help me?
Otherwise she decides she has to indulge Roman's sexual advances and partially sate them. You begin to see that Gerri, Karl, Frank, Hugo, Karolina and Tom all had to navigate a very complex minefield to get where they are and stay where they are. And they see the children doing things and remaining anyway, that would have gotten anyone else either fired or just outright killed. Someone on the writing staff is a baseball fan, because Frank's character construction is shaded towards Joe Torre as a real life counterpart. Torre was known to have a deft ability to keep simple questions in play to manage Old Man Steinbrenner's gigantic ego and impulsivity.
The evolution of Kendall towards real character progression is that he finally understands that Hugo and Karolina are effectively telling him that there is no choice. There is only one real practical option. That's too run Logan's reputation into the ground even further, even after death.
Part of the reason that the writers pair off Tom and Cousin Greg so often is they swing between two worlds. Tom is both family and he's not. He married in but he's not real blood. Hence his sniveling and begging when he tells Logan that there might be a divorce. And he is basically asking for Logan's forgiveness and blessing. Tom has the same limitations of a Frank or Karl, but none of the benefits of an actual Roy child. Even Connor, the village idiot, is granted more leverage than Tom. Cousin Greg is family, but only serves a role as human punching bag. He also is inside and outside at the same time. Because he's incompetent, he has no role. Because he's technically blood, he has to be tolerated. Logan sees no value in Greg other than as a way to torture his inane gutless brother. You'll notice before "Boar On The Floor", that Cousin Greg rebels against Logan. He tells him that he told the truth and he wasn't supposed to be punished for the truth? What's the lesson there? With a malignant narcissist, and in a pit of vipers, trying to bunker up and huddle in only makes you a bigger target. What little safety you have is just to go on the full bore attack.
The reason Tom is so vicious to Greg is that Tom gets it on all sides. He takes the full brunt from Logan, then Shiv at home, then the adult Roy children who mock him, then the infighting that naturally occurs in the support staff. Tom cannot attack a real Roy with a role, so Greg is the closest thing possible. Thematically, to go after Logan after his death shows a stark reality within the show's world building - The only way out is to run over someone else. Living or dead doesn't matter. The carnage is going to happen eventually, all you can do is make sure it's not you. You can't wait for your moment, you must actively bear down on everyone else all the time. You are a hunter or you are prey.
A critical visual motif on the show is reflection with distance. You'll see Kendall staring into a window, barely seeing his reflection from afar, and struggling to look at himself. Part of that is built around the inevitability of narcissistic collapse from an emotional standpoint. The other is that the audience is told they are forgiven for the malice against the characters. Kendall, Shiv, Tom and the rest can't even look at themselves. Not what they truly are. And since they can't, it's OK for you the viewer to take joy in their fall. In their suffering. The manipulation in the writing, score, visual and tone inflection wants you to assess that the only answer is death. That the world is a better place when Logan Roy dies. And that his children are weak pathetic failed contenders for the throne of being worthy enough to be so despised.
Head writer Jesse Armstrong gave a speech at the Emmys that he shouldn't have done. HBO traditionally does not want that kind of press engagement. They want prestige television, ratings, critical acclaim, money and a certain level of cache with the general viewership.
Go watch Armstrong at the Emmys. While the baseline structure of the show is built around being derivative of Rupert Murdoch and his media empire, it's not a huge secret who the Roy family are constructed from and why. Armstrong is gaslighting the audience - Why isn't he dead now? Why don't you want him dead? Doesn't he deserve to die? Why aren't you strong enough and pure enough to kill him?
But the biggest mistake was the caricature that is Cousin Greg. Think about the real life counterpart for Greg. The young but far too tall "relative" or "son" of a current widely despised highly public malignant narcissist that is constantly in the national daily media cycle. This is an open violation of an informal agreement made in the mid 90s by all the networks. Making Greg a failed clown and implying he's the product of even more cuckolding is too far. It's one thing to imply all the women in the Roy family, and their real life counterparts, are whores. That's vicious enough on it's own. But you aren't supposed to go after civilians. Armstrong decided he should make the audience visualize what [EDIT - Name Redacted / "Tim Tax" ] will become in absolute terms. That this is all OK because it's only a "projection" of the future. But the kid is a civilian. You aren't supposed to go after civilians.
The talk between Karolina and Hugo with Kendall about post Logan spin control is a rationalization. It's trying to normalize what Armstrong is doing. And he's doing things that he shouldn't. It opens the doorway to use mass entertainment to settle grudges against everyone else's children as a means to proxy attack someone deemed too much of a public villain.
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Desert_Power
Footballguy
My take was that it was too many people to cover it up once Gerri walked in the room.
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
But she was on board with flushing it.
ignatiusjreilly
Footballguy
Everyone still catching up on last night's episode? Is that why there are no posts on it?
I thought it was really good. Loved all of Matson's dominance games over Ken and Roman. At first I was a little unsure why he told Roman he ####ed himself after that rant on the mountaintop, but I think the key point was that Roman revealed there might be a divide between the brothers and the board. That was why he subsequently called Frank with the higher offer, knowing it would ensure the brothers couldn't hold that information from the board, and they would be obligated to accept it if it was in the company's fiduciary interest to do so
I thought it was really good. Loved all of Matson's dominance games over Ken and Roman. At first I was a little unsure why he told Roman he ####ed himself after that rant on the mountaintop, but I think the key point was that Roman revealed there might be a divide between the brothers and the board. That was why he subsequently called Frank with the higher offer, knowing it would ensure the brothers couldn't hold that information from the board, and they would be obligated to accept it if it was in the company's fiduciary interest to do so
Dan Lambskin
Footballguy
“Your ears are thick and chewy…like barnacle meat”
ProstheticRGK
Footballguy
Yeah, agreed. Roman made mention of it- that he'd deny everything if there was an SEC violation investigation. As CEO he has a financial obligation to work for the best interests of the shareholders. That is gonna be the crux of the drama going forward. And it looks like Shiv is going to be supplying material proof to Mattson to bring the case. Kendall also looks particularly manic, again. He is going to implode spectacularly.
Desert_Power
Footballguy
I get, emotionally, why the boys didn't want to sell ATN. However, it is weird to me that Matson went from wavering on the deal to giving a price that all of the other characters seem to think is awesome. They stumbled into an even bigger windfall.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Incredible episode. Skarsgard is such a great addition.
And yes, I think he sniffed out that they were trying to kill the deal on the DL. He saw how upset Roman was and how defensive he became for his dad. He knew that A) he could drop a number so big, the the boys had no choice and B) negotiating is about keeping your cool, Roman lost his which gave up the whole game.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Do you we really think he was wavering? I thought his convo with Shiv was pretty clear that he wanted it and was willing to pay more. Also, let's be real, they are all rich and none of this actually matters. What really matters is winning. Matson saw the way to win was to force them to sell.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
He said he has trouble with boundaries so a couple drinks and he's spilling his ****. Also, he probably sees how the 2 boys have excluded her and this was a chance to drive a wedge further between the Roy kids. She's not using it because she doesn't respect Kendall and Roman. They got the big number she wanted, she knows she was actually the one that got the deal done, etc. She may use it in the future but for now, her best bet to rise in status is through a secret alliance with Matson.
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Yes, which is why Matsson called Frank to give him the new number -- if Matsson gave it to Kendall/Roman, they might just keep it to themselves and not tell anyone, but Matsson knew Frank would be ecstatic and tell everyone and he would get his deal.
Roman and Kendall have no idea how to play the game. Everyone crapped on Shiv because "women are too emotional!" But Shiv and Gerri are cold as hell. It's Roman who let emotions take over, crying to Matsson about not giving them time to grieve Daddy and telling him they'd never sell ATN to him. That made Matsson want it even more, so he could shove it in their faces (asking Shiv to take a photo of Roman and Kendall after they heard the new number). Matsson didn't care about how much he spent -- which, if Roman and Kendall weren't so dumb, they could've figured out and squeezed him for even more. But they never even made a counteroffer! And everyone still thinks they somehow pulled off a miracle!
dkp993
Footballguy
It could also all be complete BS. He’s a game player, he even says so. it could just be a tactic to get her on his side by being “vulnerable”.
I thought it was probably a BS story, and he shared it to bring Shiv closer and see if he could trust her moving forward
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
Looks like she was just moving the spoon around.
CletiusMaximus
Footballguy
I thought maybe he was testing her - that its something tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber would spill to him on the mountaintop and he'd know she told them. He then asked her for the picture form the plane, which seemed like another step in that direction (albeit at this point pure Hollywood stuff, but they've crossed that line long ago.) The other somewhat far-fetched theory is that he wants ATN in the deal because he knows he has a serious employee sexual harassment scandal coming up so he wants Shiv and the comms woman on board as they've dealt with similar issues successfully in the past.
The other thing I think may be important is his offer went from an all-cash offer at 187 to 50/50 cash/stock at 192. So the Rayco/Waystar shareholders get less up front money and are then depending on him to secure their fortunes.
chet
Footballguy
To me, that's unrealistic. $187 all cash is so far superior to 50/50 $192 that they're not even in the same ball park. We always told people that cash is king.
Also, I find Ken, Shiv and Roman to be despicable people who all think they hit triples when they were born on third. Loved Logan and love Mattson.
CletiusMaximus
Footballguy
Agreed, but would add the M&A side of the show tries really hard to be somewhat based in reality but is about 95% crazy ridiculous bull####. Still probably better than the great majority of business/law television shows out there, but pure soap opera fiction nonetheless. There will surely be several more layers of crazy twists between now and the end and I'm all-in on it.
chet
Footballguy
Was it all-cash at $187? Because I thought that, in the scene where Matsson was taking a leak atop the mountain and Roman was telling him he'd never get ATN, Roman made a point that bad press could easily make the stock tank and affect the true value of the deal, which wouldn't make sense if it was all-cash.
Desert_Power
Footballguy
I thought both were 50/50. Also, the company seemed to be trading near 160 from other statements.
CletiusMaximus
Footballguy
Could be yeah. I saw it on twitter so naturally assumed it to be true.
chet
Footballguy
Well this sucks. Nicholas Braun (who plays Greg Hirsch) is accused of multiple counts of sex with minors. Probably my favorite character.
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
Pretty sure the initial offer was 50/50.
It's called an opinion. Just finished season 3 and still confused how a few of you feel this is great TV. The episode where Ken throw s his own birthday party was one of the worst hours of TV I've ever watched. Cringeworthy.
Maybe this show isn't for me.
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