The line about “you’ll get castrated on pay, but you’ll be saved” was fecking hilariousI think Shiv also would have turned knowing Tom was going to be CEO therefore keeping her within power whereas with Kendall, she will get feck all.
Also Greg getting $200k as an assistant
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I’m so gutted it’s finished.
Correct. It’s in the top tier though, along with true detective series one and a couple others.
Ken would have been somewhere between a mediocre and a terrible CEO.
But they were not voting for CEO. They were voting on whether to sell the company. That's why the whole thing is more than a bit odd.
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Kendall didn't kill the guy. The guy sees the deer, grabs the steering wheel, and drives them off the road and into the water. Kendall can escape the car and tries to do see if he can help the guy, but he can't. He could call for help but the guy's going to die anyway.
It's a horrible accident that Kendall immorally/criminally covers up and then gets blackmailed for it.
Kendall is the Roy that most resembles a human being.
He is the sibling who comes closest to having normal romantic relationships (which isn't saying much, tbf). He is the only sibling who has multiple friends (with meaningful screentime). He's capable of empathy toward others. He's less cruel to people, privately and publicly. That's what makes Kendall compelling: he's ill-equipped for this because he's an actual human.
I love Kendall. Regardless of his qualities he's a fecking great character.
He was the most complex of the siblings, and was fascinating in my opinion. Definitely my favourite out of the 4.
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Fair enough. Suppose he's been very vulnerable and all in the series.
He was the most emotionally vulnerable and paid for it.
What’s #1?
Oh Elvis
An interesting thought
Pretty sure Roman would have rinsed him many times over for being sterile if that were the case
Probably has in the past. He absolutely flipped when he started talking about it so I think it makes sense.
Better Call Saul.
Should've pre-grieved.
Just saw somebody say that Shiv Roy means Stab the King. That's crazy
The Ken part maybe works, but I don't find this part too convincing:
We don't need explanations for why Logan soured on Ken. It's established quite clearly in the first episode: he thinks Kendall is weak, soft, and a drug addict. He tells him all that and then asks him if he wants to take a swing at him, then mocks him for looking like he's going to cry. The point is reinforced in S2 finale when Kendall asks him if he ever thought he could do the job, and Logan's response is "you're not a killer." All of that is true and we see it, that's why it resonates. Kendall's barely seen dark-skinned daughter doesn't really have the same gravitas.
Part of what makes Logan so ruthless is that he doesn't value family as much, not to the extent that 'who gives me grandchildren' is going to determine his decisions. And I think we see that a lot with Tom. Tom is the person who ends up with the job the actual bloodline wanted, and he gains Logan's (mild, tbf) respect throughout the series (and "earns" the job) because of what he can deliver for the company, not for the family.
I disagree, I think it's spot on personally. There are many times throughout the series where Logan makes comments that make a lot more sense after Roman revealed that he's infertile.
I can understand a lot how Kendall acted throughout this whole series.
It reminds me of my best friend who is part of his family business; he is the firstborn (even though Kendall isn't really the first but at the same time treated like he is) and has gone through a very similar path to Kendall in terms of succeeding his father and taking over the business when he steps down.
He got told as a young kid himself that he would one day run the business, and from even there he felt and put enormous pressure on himself to portray that image before he even got close to that position. His father made him jump through hoops for many years which put him under more stress of striving to succeed. They even were in a similar position regarding a takeover and where his future lay should it have gone through!
Luckily their relationship is nowhere near as volatile as Logan and Kendall's was, nor is he part of a multi-billion dollar empire where I imagine the stress would be 1000x worse. However I could see a lot of similarities in terms expectations and pressures that are put on someone who spent almost their whole life looking to emulate their father's success and continue the family business. That's why I felt the most sympathy for him in the end, because I have seen a similar story in real life.
It reminds me of my best friend who is part of his family business; he is the firstborn (even though Kendall isn't really the first but at the same time treated like he is) and has gone through a very similar path to Kendall in terms of succeeding his father and taking over the business when he steps down.
He got told as a young kid himself that he would one day run the business, and from even there he felt and put enormous pressure on himself to portray that image before he even got close to that position. His father made him jump through hoops for many years which put him under more stress of striving to succeed. They even were in a similar position regarding a takeover and where his future lay should it have gone through!
Luckily their relationship is nowhere near as volatile as Logan and Kendall's was, nor is he part of a multi-billion dollar empire where I imagine the stress would be 1000x worse. However I could see a lot of similarities in terms expectations and pressures that are put on someone who spent almost their whole life looking to emulate their father's success and continue the family business. That's why I felt the most sympathy for him in the end, because I have seen a similar story in real life.
Tom didn’t ‘win’ though. The Roy family lost. The dynasty was exposed for what it was, a single terrible human exploiting the media and society for personal wealth and power. The family is now irrelevant. He couldn’t be overthrown but his legacy is non existent.
The kids were just empty vessels. We are shown how warm Logan could be. How he valued friendship and how he could be soft in the right spaces. He could never be that in a family environment. He was a broken human that couldn’t raise children and didn’t see that as a failure.
Logan hated Tom as he was another empty subservient suit.
Framing the finale as anyone having ‘won’ is reductive I think.
The Wire, The Bureau, Gomorrah and compete for #1 for me although admittedly Gomorrah fell off a but. Six Flying Dragons and Nirvana in Fire are in that tier too but might not appeal to some Western viewers.
Breaking Bad to me is a Top 20 show but not a Top 10 show. I rate Succession over BB myself.
I do expect BB to compete with The Wire and Sopranos when @Dirty Schwein finally does his rankings but I think it's overrated by a little.
Prison Break mate
You did not just compare The Wire, Breaking Bad and Sopranos with Prison Break.
If Severance has a strong second season it could easily jump into top 10 consideration for me. Felt Succession was on the same trajectory after the first 2 seasons but not to be.
Do the shows you just mentioned have a dude in prison who makes other dudes hold his pocket? I thought not...
Fair point. They also do not have a man who tattooed an escape plan on his body.
Maybe I should re-watch that first season, I don't think I ever have. It just cratered in quality so quickly afterwards.
I'm only messing. I know The Wire, Breaking Bad etc are better than Prison Break but I really had fun watching the latter and have fond memories waiting for each episode with my mates. I really enjoyed the first two seasons but then it takes a dive in S3 before falling off a cliff in S4 and never recovering.
Yeah, but did that not only happen because Kendall wasn’t paying attention because he was coked off his tits. It would be a stretch to call it an accident.
On the finale itself, I thought it was superb. As good an ending as this kind of show could’ve had. Enough tied up and still things left for people to mull and discuss. The numerous scenes we’ve seen with Kendall and water certainly foreshadow a grisly end for him. The point of this season and the ending for me seemed to be that they could’ve had it all if they could put their own self interest aside but the only reason they all lost was because they couldn’t let one of them win.
Ken would have been spectacularly unsuited to be CEO, or to any position of responsibility really. More so than either of his siblings. He's demolished as a person - just a walking, talking bundle of empty poses and erratic, half-controlled responses to stimuli. You get the sense he thinks the same way he talks. "Yeah. No. feck it. It's all good, I think. Right?"
.....and also because at least two of them would have been severely challenged to run a coffee shop with basic competence, while the third (Shiv) is constitutionally incapable of trust (unsurprisingly, given the world she grew up in), and hence of concerted action under such circumstances. So for me the point of the season and the ending is rather that their failure was an inevitable consequence of who and what they are. Even if the elements had somehow conspired to see them prevail at the board meeting, it could hardly have lasted long. As such, none of that really mattered much.
If there was poignancy in the ending, it's in the fact that who ultimately came out on top was the definitive opportunist - Tom Wambsgams. In that ravenous jungle, he was the one who ultimately proved best adapted to that murderous environment, not the kids who had spent their whole lives there. That didn't help them - on the contrary, that was their downfall because they had all been, to various degrees and in different ways, destroyed by that experience. Not one of them was a fully functioning adult.
To me, the huge thinking point of the drama was really that people like these could even be in the game, and how absurd and dysfunctional inherited wealth can be.
And they didn't really lose it all, did they. They'll end up with billions in their hands from the sale. Which is easily the optimal outcome for everyone concerned.
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But as Kendal said to Mattson early in season 4 ‘already a billionaire’.
Money is meaningless to them, it’s the power and the prestige that they crave.
I enjoyed the finale and the whole season. Logan was proven correct too, none of them are ‘serious people’, maybe because of Logan himself and how they were raised, maybe because they never had to work for their money, but still correct.
Money is meaningless to them, it’s the power and the prestige that they crave.
I enjoyed the finale and the whole season. Logan was proven correct too, none of them are ‘serious people’, maybe because of Logan himself and how they were raised, maybe because they never had to work for their money, but still correct.
Absolutely correct - Logan himself being, despite all his other flaws, exactly that. To a fault.
I think you're absolutely right about money being meaningless, and the power and prestige being what matters. This is the world they grew up in, and which, to their detriment, they embraced. They've accepted the rules of the game, and the notion that how well they play it is what defines them. Even Connor, who has sort of officially withdrawn from the competition (as well as from the real world in general). Despite this very obviously (when seen from the outside) dooming them to failure and unhappiness. Because they're really not equipped for it - and even if they succeeded, they'd never catch up with or surpass their own ideal image of their father.
Obviously, they could have chosen otherwise - but they're up against the whole, awesome defining and shaping power of upbringing, reinforced in this case by privilege and insulation. If Logan had been an auto mechanic, he'd just have been an unlikeable asshole, and they'd probably all have just turned away and looked for something better in their lives.
The outcome is still good for them. They're just incapable of seeing it that way, or the opportunities it presents. The worst is Shiv, who immediately chooses to step onto the worst possible path - becoming a presumably pliant Mrs Tom Wambsgams, taking up a position of dependency to another super-male, but this time someone she loves and respects much, much less than she did her dad. Ouch.
In the end, you kind of pity them all - wallowing around in a world that is not of their choosing and which they accept they are powerless to change, and recognise as deeply fecked-up, doomed to perpetual unhappiness and progressive destruction. But still it's too alluring for any of them to want to escape it. You sense the only ones who will come out of it well are the hard-headed ones who have never thought of it as anything other than transactional - like Geri.
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I enjoyed this show, and the finale stuck the landing. It was a great conclusion.
Kendall's character gave me PTSD because he acts and sounds like so many people I have worked with. Empty bros with catchphrases and trying desperately to seem hip while being a total corpo gonk.
I had to really parse the series finale, to figure out what happened in the "real world".
Kendall's character gave me PTSD because he acts and sounds like so many people I have worked with. Empty bros with catchphrases and trying desperately to seem hip while being a total corpo gonk.
I had to really parse the series finale, to figure out what happened in the "real world".
Mattson was also shown to be a scumbag and dilettante, the kind of guy who would fly a private jet to Burning Man and micro-dose LSD all day long. Zero substance to him, BUT, and this is a big but, Mattson is Swedish, and if we are to have new masters, the Swedes would be pretty fair. It would be like Fox News being bought by IKEA. Yes, there is some iffy quality issues, and it's mostly MDF with a painted veneer, but at least they have some concept of social justice. Mattson is keeping Tom as CEO so that he can "cut to the bone" the ATN division, meaning tens of thousands of firings. Fox News is the Barad DÛr of the Murdoch empire, so imagine all of those grinning chuckleheads being axed, all those wannabe pageant contestants out on their asses. I might be reading too much into it, but Fox / ATN will be gutted and its poisonous content will be muted, at the very least.
I liked how the show kept propping up one of the siblings, making you think they were going to become the real heir, and in a way making you empathize with them.
There were some things that I think will stand out as mightily unnecessary when the show is reassessed by future generations. Namely, some of the dialogue meant to underline how loathsome a character is. 1.) RoRo's obsession with dick picks and some of the really awful things he said. Roman is disgusting and pathetic, we get that, not sure his wanking while being abused was needed (?). 2.) Tom saying how he swallowed his own load from the part-time whore. I think it was supposed to be symbolic, viz., Tom will swallow anything to get ahead, but again it was unnecessary.
I liked how the show kept propping up one of the siblings, making you think they were going to become the real heir, and in a way making you empathize with them.
There were some things that I think will stand out as mightily unnecessary when the show is reassessed by future generations. Namely, some of the dialogue meant to underline how loathsome a character is. 1.) RoRo's obsession with dick picks and some of the really awful things he said. Roman is disgusting and pathetic, we get that, not sure his wanking while being abused was needed (?). 2.) Tom saying how he swallowed his own load from the part-time whore. I think it was supposed to be symbolic, viz., Tom will swallow anything to get ahead, but again it was unnecessary.
Tom swallowing his own load and the comments that follow is one of the top moments I’ll have you know.
I ain't judging, man.
I really need to rewatch that episode, but I think I really have different view of someone being a murderer than some of you. And I hate people who drink and drive, I think they should any time someone drives a car drunk or on drugs should be jailed. But then that alone doesn't make you a murderer.
Kendall was driving the car, and that guy took the wheel and steered it into a fecking river, it wasn't Kendall who did that. Kendall didn't decide himself "I am going to save this deer in front of us and kill one of us instead", did he?
Maybe I don't remember it well, but I am pretty sure that happened.
Kendall was driving the car, and that guy took the wheel and steered it into a fecking river, it wasn't Kendall who did that. Kendall didn't decide himself "I am going to save this deer in front of us and kill one of us instead", did he?
Maybe I don't remember it well, but I am pretty sure that happened.
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