I’m just starting this new thread so we can freely discuss the ending to Succession but not spoil it for those who haven’t seen it yet.
Does that make sense? Mods, I’m happy for this to be deleted if it breaks any rule!
I myself will need to collate my thoughts a bit before I comment. I feel I haven’t taken it all in yet.
The Tom & Shiv hand “embrace” at the end was a thing of beauty, pathos and magnificence
Agreed!
Good idea. I held back from commenting on the other one because I didn’t see how I could do anything but agree with everyone else how great it was unless I added spoilers. And I did something similar with Happy Valley, announcing that there would be spoilers below the OP, so I don’t anyone will object given your warning.
So, in the end Tom ascends to the Iron Throne, albeit under Mattson’s patronage and only because, as his wife says, he’ll suck the biggest dick in the room. Kendall goes to stare at some water as he always does at key moments, poor damaged Roman will be a court up jester without a court and Shiv … well Shiv is the most interesting of the siblings. It was her wavering between Mattson, until he sold her out, and her brothers which sealed the deal. In the end of course, she voted against Kendal and secured the sale of the company from underneath him. Was that cruelty, or did she really save them from becoming their father? Their mother was right; it would not have been good for them to perpetuate the empire.
There is another son of course, and one of my favourite scenes in the last episode was the main trio watching a video of Logan holding court around a dinner table with Connor and some board members, and seeing Connor and Logan relax in each other’s company as they never could. The only one ever seen close to their father was the one who didn’t want to take over from him. Though I also loved the kitchen ‘dish for a king’ scene when Kendal Roman and Shiv revert to childhood and act like siblings for once.
But what a tremendous season this has been. So dense that episodes repay instant rewatches, superb performances and crackling dialogue. Absolutely brilliant stuff, and now I’ll need to find something to fill the gap.
Anyone else think Kendall’s fate was similar to that befalling The Shield’s Vic Mackey?
I am the eldest boy. Already a meme
Glorious stuff.
It’s been so praised to the hilt that I keep thinking that maybe it’s been overrated. But, honestly, I think the writing is genuinely extraordinary, and this is an astonishingly dark and tragic series for a popular mainstream show. And, of course, stellar performances and direction throughout.
Two key scenes in this one for me. Firstly that scene where they watch the video of Logan relaxed with Connor (my one criticism of the last few episodes is we haven’t seen nearly enough of Connor and Willa) with Frank and Geri and the rest of the gang. You can see on their faces the realisation that they were completely shut out of this side of their father. And, intriguingly, it seems Connor wasn’t – maybe because he was the only one who wasn’t a threat.
And secondly, when it’s all falling apart and Roman says that it’s all bullshit, and we’re all bullshit. It is, and they were.
That video was brilliant, wasn’t it? I hadn’t thought of it in the terms you described there, about it showing a side of Logan’s personality the kids weren’t aware of. That’s interesting. What I noticed was it was the only time (I think) we ever really saw evidence on screen of Kerry and Logan’s affection for each other. Over the course of the series the Kerry character really took me by surprise, and for a long time I really doubted there was an affair going on, even when everyone in the show had realised it!
Any thoughts on this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Wambsganss
Bill Wambsganss was the only player ever to pull off a triple play (I.e. three batters taken out at once) in the World Series. It seems a bit of a coincidence that he shares a surname with Tom.
I too loved the scenes you’ve mentioned above, and thought episodes 3 and 9 were the two best hours of television I’ve ever seen, though the ends of the first and second series pushed them very close. The combination of character development, social comment and humour were unparalleled in my opinion.
I’m not convinced that Tom can really be seen as “the winner” in the end. He now has to do all the dirty work for a man who casually told him that he wanted to sleep with his wife, and said that he does not want a partner but a “pain sponge”. And yes, the Tom and Shiv hand hold at the end was devastating. Brilliant, brilliant stuff.
Exactly this. Tom’s fate is sealed, his pyrrhic victory is to be bonded with a man who clearly despises him and will gleefully use him as a ‘pain sponge’ having taunted him about his wife. who in turn, has thrown her lot back in with a man who hates her. Kendall was always going to end up here, staring out at the water. I felt Roman had some sort of epiphany at the end though, tiring of the superficial, hopeless bullshit.
As somebody elsewhere said, this is one of those rare shows (it may be unique in this respect) where you could make an interesting spin-off series about almost any of the main characters.
In particular, I’d love to see what Conner got up to as an ambassador. He might have been delusional and ridiculously out of touch, but he was the closest any of them came to being a warm human being. I imagine that a night out with him might be fun and wacky. I fear that going out with the other siblings would leave me full of existential dread (Kendall), exhausted and soiled (Roman), and feeling pitiful and slightly afraid (Shiv).
I’m glad it’s ended rather than going on too long, as so many US shows seem to do, but I’m unsure what show can fill the gap it has left. Jesse Armstrong himself has apparently said that he doubts he’ll ever write anything as good as this again. I don’t know if anybody could.
A night out with Connor “I’ll drink what the regulars drink…..Hmm, maybe a wheat beer but not Hoegaaden”
One of the laugh out loud moments from a series which was (I think) very underrated as a comedy. Much of the humour throughout the four seasons was fabulous.
Aside from the Wambsganns baseball player and the numerous King Lear riffs and references, other write-ups point out hints about the ending in the cast and character posters used to announce the show’s final series.
Eagle-eyed views will also spot several Peep Show references thrown in by Armstrong. The first I noticed was one of the investigators into the cruise ship thing was called Stefan Strauss.
One thing I don’t see mentioned as often as I would have expected is comparisons to The Thick of It and In The Loop, both of which Jesse Armstrong was also involved in. I see lots of similarities, particularly in the dark humour and the ability to make you care for cynical characters in an ugly world. Succession almost does for the world of corporate USA what The Thick of It did for UK politics (and equally makes you wonder if this is what it’s REALLY like behind the curtain).
The desperate, seat-of-your-pants decision making and last minute cajoling in the board meeting in the last episode reminded me of the In The Loop scene at the UN when they were trying to build a case for going to war on the flimsiest of evidence, hastily editing a Word document to create something out of nothing.
Plus, both The Thick of It and Succession prove that no one can swear like us Scots.
@Arthur-Cowslip
It’s often pointed out that CEOs or large companies/corporations share many of the same character traits as narcissistic sociopaths (an unwillingless/inability to view others any differently than they might inanimate objects is a classic example).
A former ad agency colleague who eventually went to work for “a major consultancy group” told me several stories that indicated this theory wasn’t just true of Big Swinging Dicks like Maxwell and Murdoch. but also the Kendalls and Romans jockeying to succeed them.
While determined to climb to the top of the greasy corporate pole, my mate found it all a bit too much and quickly left to find more palatable employment.
I don’t doubt it! It’s an ugly world out there, isn’t it?
Some of the making-of and behind-the-scenes information that’s come out has provided an interesting insight into what life is really like for the sort of ridiculously wealthy people portrayed here.
Apparently the writers worked with an expert on the super-rich to get the little details right. The seriously wealthy supposedly don’t wear coats – there is no need, as they are simply ferried from private plane to limousine to indoors without pausing outside. The actors were also told that their characters would not duck when exiting a helicopter – the message was “You’ve been getting on and off helicopters all your life. You know where the rotor blades are.” The fact that somebody was paid to think about this shows the sort of effort that went into the production.
I’m still amazed at the very basic fact about rich people that everyone learns at a young age: that they don’t carry wads of cash about with them all the time.
“If it is to be said, so it be”: Greg trying to adopt a formal, legal-sounding language when in the hearing.
Tom putting a sticker on Greg while the family choose what family heirlooms they want
Gregging – a verb is born.
I agree, so much wonderful comedy in Jesse A’s skewering of his characters’ deluded self-presentation.
I watched all forty-one hours. It was a gruelling, gruesome watch. I didn’t laugh. It was clever, the acting was excellent, the production values off the scale (renting helicopters can’t be cheap, though they made a couple look like four). I don’t feel I wasted my time but the characters went round in circles, saying the same things and regurgitating the same arguments. They could have reached the same conclusion in ten hours less. At least. It was a pleasing conclusion because all the totally horrible people ended up less happy, including Tom. I just wish Ken had made a lunge for the river.
Best telly ever? Let it settle for a while before coming to that conclusion.
@Tiggerlion
Re Ken’s making a lunge for the river
Just read an article where Jeremy Strong said he’d improvised an alternative ending in which Kendall climbed over the railings preparatory to jumping over them with possibly fatal consequences
The titles of the last episodes of all four seasons of Succession are taken from a poem called Song 29 by John Berryman who took his own life by jumping into the East/Hudson River and whose work Sam Armstrong knew from his days studying American Literature
An excellent piece on why ‘Succession is drama software running on comedy hardware’.
https://joelmorris.substack.com/p/succession-is-filmed-before-a-live
That’s a really good article. I think the series generally worked better as a comedy than a drama. Particularly the final episode, which got a little silly in places.
I will remember the one-liners (some of the best ever seen on television), but the plotting far less so; it occasionally felt like they were reaching for Shakespeare but landing on soap opera. The quality of the acting generally served to cover it over, but the issue was there throughout.