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Joined: Sat January 12, 2013 7:19 pm Posts: 1489 Location: Buffalo, NY
Jorge wrote:
The final confrontation between the siblings looked and sounded like something they came up with in 10 minutes. Kendall actually saying "I'm the eldest boy" out loud, my god. Everything just had to be painfully unsubtle in the lamest fucking way.
But that’s them. Earlier in the episode, Kendall made light of Logan telling him at seven years old that he’d get the company one day. But I think he really believed in that moment. He’s still that 7-year old. The impetus for the scene (Shiv’s sudden turn) felt a little too convenient for me but that sequence laid bare exactly what those three are.
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 3:35 pm Posts: 32300 Location: Buenos Aires
Yeah I know, it just did so in the most insultingly obvious and explicit way possible. I half expected Kendall to stomp on the ground and demand his binky just to really drive the very obvious point home.
Joined: Sat January 12, 2013 7:19 pm Posts: 1489 Location: Buffalo, NY
But I think that’s something Kendall, as a character, would actually do. Your point is totally valid but this is always the way these characters have behaved, and rarely have the stakes been this high. “[These] are not serious people.”
The stakes of that board vote put them all in a pressure cooker and forced the core of their being and incompetence into the light in a crystallized moment. “Insultingly obvious and explicit” are perfect adjectives to associate with those three morons.
I definitely need a couple rewatches before I give it a final grade. The finale did have two very tough acts to follow with those preceding episodes.
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 3:35 pm Posts: 32300 Location: Buenos Aires
I don't agree, the way they acted and the things they were suddenly saying just felt very contrived in order to get to the plot resolution they wanted, including Shiv's callback to the server boy situation. The subtext was suddenly all just... text. Shiv's sudden turn felt very inorganic to me as well. Their little sibling bonding moment in the kitchen. Virtual dinner with dad at the auction. Everything, everything in this episode just had this gross sheen of rushed "FINALE" artifice, like that chemical aftertaste in diet sweetener. I enjoyed this season much more than the rest of the show because the writing seemed to go up a couple notches in quality. This episode felt like fanfiction to me
Joined: Sat January 12, 2013 7:19 pm Posts: 1489 Location: Buffalo, NY
I did mention earlier in the thread that this episode felt more like a dress rehearsal than it did finished product. So I’m down with some of what you’re saying there.
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 1:53 pm Posts: 10281 Location: in the air tonight
in defense of the Succession finale.
first, in response to the contention that the final scene between the siblings was "painfully unsubtle" and that the "subtext was suddenly all just text", I'd call attention to this argo post from the end of season 3, specifically this part:
Quote:
There is almost zero nuance or subtlety. They all just say and do exactly the thing that every episode and every scene is about. They just say it out loud. They just do the thing.
So, that's always what the show has done and been to me. That final scene felt true to the show for me. An increasingly desperate Kendall with no time to think in a situation he was not prepared for just says the thing out loud. That's just Succession, always has been.
next, in response to the contention that "Shiv's sudden turn felt very inorganic". I think the reality of voting in a corporate boardroom for your smug brother is different than hanging out with your brothers in the middle of the night at mommy's house, making gross smoothies and discussing if there are sharks in the ocean and giggling about licking mom's boyfriend's cheese. They are sufficiently different to explain that shift. As well as the reality that she was voting for or against her marriage. Have a kid with the CEO or keep doing what she just has been doing, get sidelined and embarrassed every day by her incompetent older brother who she has no respect for.
next, in response to Shiv's bringing up the waiter situation feeling contrived. Perhaps the way it came up was odd, Shiv Shiv could've just said no and not pulled that rabbit out of the hat to try to justify it, but it was necessary. That moment at the end of season three where Kendall tells them and they have a human moment is one of the few human moments this family ever had on this show. Of course they'll undercut it. Shiv using it against him is cruel, Kendall denying it ever happened is gross. It's just another example of what I said before this show is good at: making me feel bad.
The final confrontation between the siblings looked and sounded like something they came up with in 10 minutes. Kendall actually saying "I'm the eldest boy" out loud, my god. Everything just had to be painfully unsubtle in the lamest fucking way. This season had me fooled with how good some of its episodes were
seems like what jorge enjoys (subtext) and what argo claims the show is (surface text) have been two competing aims of the show this whole time, and which fans have increasingly debated: is this a tragedy or is this a ruthless satire? i've enjoyed it most when it's been the latter, but it's almost impossible to make compelling, serialized drama without the former.
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Jorge wrote:
I remember I was in Miami when it happened. I was posting from the balcony of my apartment overlooking the beach. And I was having an argument with Adamdude.
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 7:41 am Posts: 19724 Location: Cumberland, RI
Simple Torture wrote:
We get a 30-year time jump and the last episode is Tom Jr. trying to get Iverson kicked off the board over the failure of Kalispitron Part XVI. Iverson goes to his father for advice, but Once Upon a Time in Shaolin finally leaked so Kendall can’t be bothered. Roman has Geri’s head in a jar like on Futurama. Greg?? and Jess got married and are well adjusted with a beautiful family and life together. Ewan is still alive at 115 and is still spitting fire. Karl actually defeated Menken in his bid for re-election thanks to all the stuff he did with cable in the ‘90s. Waystar-Royco finally falls after it’s revealed that the idea for Roderick was stolen from a cartoonist who befriended Bart and Lisa when he was living in the street, and he closes the company out of spite.
Considering the bit in the final confrontation about Tom Jr. being the “true” next generation, I count this one as a hit!
I'm team Jorge on the finale. In a lot of ways it undercut most of the previous (much better) episodes of the season. They spent an entire episode on the election, then didn't address any consequence of it (or even really resolve it). It's especially egregious that they didn't even use it to have any impact the characters beyond it. Kendall's apprehension, Romans full heel turn, etc all felt like it didn't happen or matter. Roman going full dictator for two episodes because of his grief was interesting.. then it was brushed away with a quick "don't want to see Geri/she's getting paid a lot"
And because of that lack of payoff, the total sidelining of Geri felt like it was entirely to remove her as a complication. Given her capability within the company and that world, it was almost like they didn't know what to do with her so they just came up with the quickest way to write her out to get to the conclusion they wanted to. Hugo's insider stock trading also was a story line they brought up and really did nothing with.
I liked the show, and some of what it did, but overall the finale really brought down the season I was enjoying most of. In what was over all, a pretty okay show.
sam adler-bell has a good essay in the nation about the tension jorge & asher get at separately
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Jorge wrote:
I remember I was in Miami when it happened. I was posting from the balcony of my apartment overlooking the beach. And I was having an argument with Adamdude.
Many critics remain preoccupied with the question of whether Succession succeeds as political satire. (Erin Schwartz addressed its ambivalent class politics in an excellent essay for this magazine.) It’s true, of course, that Succession is not a flattering depiction of the superrich. Waystar Royco’s internal code for an incident of violence or death involving a migrant or sex worker—NRPI, “no real person involved”—is a chillingly apt approximation of the attitude of the powerful toward those who suffer the costs of their comfort.
But, for the most part, those seeking a satisfying political resolution from the series will be disappointed. In Succession’s moral universe, no one can ever get what they want or what they deserve. Another sort of show might realistically depict the wealthy as boring and content, but verisimilitude is not the only responsibility of fiction. The Roys are interesting and miserable—and the more they suffer, as Bady has noted, the more we sympathize with them. We need not confuse Succession’s psychological interest in the Roys’ pain for an absolution of their sins. It is a particularly contemporary myopia that we tend to ascribe moral innocence to the traumatized, given that trauma is our only guaranteed inheritance and almost always the reason we do harm. After all, as the Roys know as well as anyone, pity and contempt are not incompatible emotions.
At some point midseason, looking down the barrel of prison time for his involvement in the cruises cover-up, Tom says, “I have, of late, decided not to tarry too much with hope.” A prudent strategy for those entering the world of the Roys, which becomes tolerable—even enjoyable—once you stop expecting anything to change.
I remember I was in Miami when it happened. I was posting from the balcony of my apartment overlooking the beach. And I was having an argument with Adamdude.
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