Succession, season 3, episode 7: Too Much Birthday

In this episode, Kendall is putting together his 40th birthday bash, and he does everything he can to make it glamorous so he can rub it in his family’s face. At the beginning, he sings (I really loved Jeremy Strong’s singing voice in this scene. It was really good!) and Naomi loves it. Kendall is really pumped about this party, but then his siblings, Shiv, Roman and Connor, crash the party and insult him with lots of mean words.

I really love the part where Greg asks Comfrey, Kendall’s assistant, out on a date. When he tells Tom he wants to ask Comfrey out, Tom laughs and tells Greg that Comfrey is out of his league, so he shouldn’t even bother trying. However, Greg has a measure of self-confidence and is persistent in asking Comfrey out. The first time, it doesn’t work and he doesn’t have the confidence to ask her out, and she walks away when he tries to imply that he likes her and wants to go out with her (as someone who is awkward and introverted, I could really resonate with this situation.) Comfrey is busy on her phone dealing with Kendall’s stuff, so she doesn’t have time to talk to Greg. Greg approaches Kendall when Kendall is riding the elevator down, and he asks Kendall if he thinks Greg should ask Comfrey out. Kendall tells him to stay away from Comfrey because she is out of his league, but then Greg says that he doesn’t think that is the case and that he has a chance with Comfrey. Kendall is dealing with his own stuff, though, so it’s the last thing he wants to think about. Unfortunately, he insults Greg and calls him a loser (he calls him worse than a loser), leaving Greg feeling disrespected. However, I think Greg’s optimism paid off because he ends up approaching Comfrey again and finally asks her out. Comfrey at this point is fed up with Kendall bossing her around and making unreasonable demands, and she tells him she had to sort something of Kendall’s (I think it was a bunch of lunchboxes) and so she tells Greg he should just ask her out. I thought it was sweet when Greg asked her out, and I was honestly like, “Oh my goshhhh, Greg!!!” Just gushing with love.

There is a scene where Kendall meets at the bar with his ex-wife, Rava, and he asks her how she likes the party. Her reaction is lukewarm, which isn’t the response he wanted because he wanted her to be dazzled. He jokes that her idea of a birthday party is too laid-back compared to his, but Raya says she is fine having a laid-back birthday celebration. Kendall wants to see Raya again, but Raya wants to move on from their marriage because she wants Kendall to get his stuff together. Kendall’s battle with addiction is a huge theme throughout the show, and no one seems to support him in his battle with addiction. His father insults him, and Shiv decides to post a letter detailing his addiction struggles on the Internet, prompting Kendall to isolate himself from others. Raya asks Kendall if he received a present that his kids, Iverson and Sophie, sent him. Kendall received a lot of presents and was too busy worrying about his business with Roman and Shiv and keeping everyone entertained (unfortunately, few people were enjoying the party), so he didn’t notice. But he promises Rava that he will check to see if he got their present. He goes downstairs, and Naomi helps him go through the huge pile of presents that people left for him, and he ends up getting really stressed out about not finding the present. Naomi tells him to take a break and shows him a present that she got him. The gift turns out to be a watch, but Kendall isn’t impressed. He tells her he likes the gift, but that he already has a watch. This leaves Naomi feeling hurt and she berates herself for giving him that gift, saying it was a stupid gift to give him. He tries to hug her, but she tells him it’s fine. He goes through all the presents and throws them all around because he cannot find the gift his kids sent him, and Naomi begs him to calm down. He finally calms down and says he needs to go home.

There is another scene where Greg and Tom are going through a maze where random people give you compliments, like “You are amazing” and “Keep doing you.” I can’t remember if that is exactly what they said, but all I know is that they were positive affirmations. Honestly, this was one of the few times in the show where I heard genuine affirmations of respect and love, because the rest of the show involves tearing people down and talking poorly about them. Greg accepts these compliments in a genuine way, but Tom thinks that the guy who tells him he is awesome is just joking and not serious, so he tells the guy to fuck off and gets upset with him. Greg has to restrain Tom and tell the guy that Tom didn’t mean to hurt him. Greg is also just really happy that Comfrey accepted him asking her out, but Tom is angry and tells Greg that it’s not okay that Greg is happy while Tom is unhappy. Tom is not happy in his marriage to Shiv; she is still on contraception even though he really wants to have a baby with her. He is also still in hot water about prison even though he found out during his meeting with Logan that he probably won’t go to prison. Earlier in the episode, when Tom finds out he is not going to prison he is over the moon, and he goes into Greg’s office and upturns his desk, throwing Greg’s stuff everywhere and screaming in joy, which scares Greg and prompts him to back into a corner. Tom then tells him that he and Greg are not going to prison, and then he kisses a reasonably freaked-out Greg on the forehead. A couple of Waystar employees walk past him, giving him side-eyes like, “What is the deal with this white boy’s office? It’s a mess.” Greg assures them nervously that he was celebrating some good news, and they just walk away, leaving Greg to clean up his mess and lift the heavy table back to its regular position, knocking himself backwards.

I think seeing Tom’s anger and jealousy of Greg’s happiness from a Buddhist perspective helped because in the Buddhism I practice, we talk about joy for self and others, which means not only that we become happy through our Buddhist practice, but we also help others around us become happy as well. I have been struggling a lot with comparing my happiness with my friends’ happiness and I begin to think my life is less fun than theirs is, which is why I had to take a break from Facebook for a while because I was comparing my life to my friends (I understand that many people don’t struggle with self-esteem issues when using the site, but from my personal experience, I found it really hard to be happy for my friends when they posted photos of themselves getting married and starting families or getting into graduate programs, and I found it hard to feel happy for them because I wasn’t happy with my own life. I thought that if I just didn’t have any problems, I could finally feel good about my life, but practicing Buddhism has taught me that problems are a chance to grow and become a better person, and through practicing Buddhism I have learned my happiness can’t just exist by itself, but it must exist in cooperation with other people’s happiness. I’m not saying it is easy, but I think practicing Buddhism has helped me create my own happiness in the present so that I don’t feel like I need to seek it in some distant future. Tom showed me this concept in Buddhism called the life state of anger, or asuras, which is a life condition where people think they are superior to others. There is a really good book called The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra by Daisaku Ikeda, and he breaks down the concept of the Ten Worlds in Buddhism, which are ten states of life that anyone can experience at any moment. The lower six paths consist of hell, hunger, animality, anger (asuras), humanity and heaven. They are life conditions we experience in reaction to our environment. Ikeda talks about how arrogant people outwardly make look humble or fawning, but deep down they think they are better than others and they don’t want to admit that there are other people who are better than they are. Tom sucks up to Logan and acts like a humble servant, but in private he manipulates and disrespects Greg. However, a lot of his bullying towards Greg comes from deep insecurities he has about himself. As someone who has wrestled with my own arrogance and thinking that I am superior to others, it has taken a lot of Buddhist faith, practice and study for me to see that I have strengths, but I also have weaknesses and I’m not perfect. It was easy for me to be fawning towards people in higher positions than me, but I secretly thought I was better than others. During sex, Shiv tells Tom that she doesn’t really love him as deeply as she thinks he does, and that she is out of his league. Shiv thinks she is superior to Tom, and Tom just fawns towards her because he fears losing her, even though deep down he feels a lot of resentment and low self-esteem when she ridicules him or manipulates him in some way. So Tom has to take his frustration out on Greg to make himself feel that sense of superiority. Tom puts down Greg by telling him he has a small dick while he, Tom, is epic in bed, and Greg nervously tells him to prove it, but Tom ignores him. Again, it is still amazing to me how Tom can be so terrible to Greg but also in the presence of Logan and Shiv, he becomes fawning and servile.

When Shiv, Roman and Connor enter the party, the host asks them to take off their jackets, but the Roys decline and push through security to go inside the party. Kendall really livened up the party by having a big sign outside the building reading “The Notorious Ken– Ready to Die” as an imitation of rapper The Notorious B.I.G.’s album Ready to Die. Kendall wants to rub his success in his family’s face after they kick him out of the family for going against Waystar and working to leak the allegations against Waystar of corruption and sexual abuse. He has them go through an entrance that is pink, and is modeled after his mother’s vagina, and his siblings find it over the top and disgusting. They confront Kendall and the four of them exchange insults and tell him his party is absurd and no one is going to like it. Logan sends Kendall a birthday card, and I didn’t expect him to write a nice message because Logan hates Kendall for trying to bring down Waystar-Royco, so when Kendall reads the card, it reads “Cash Out and Fuck Off.” Shiv and Roman try to enter the treehouse because they want to meet a shareholder named Lukas Mattson, who they want Logan to negotiate a deal with (at the beginning, Logan arranges to meet with Mattson but Mattson flakes out at the last minute), but Kendall refuses to let them enter the treehouse because they refused to join him in taking down their father and insulted him so many times. Roman and Shiv try to push past, but with no success. Shiv finally gives up, and goes to the bar to get hammered and then dances like there is no tomorrow on the dance floor because she has to get out all of her frustration towards Kendall. I don’t blame her. I dance a lot to get out my stress as well. Roman ends up going in the tree house and meeting with Mattson, and Roman tries to convince him that he should negotiate a deal with Logan because Waystar’s stock is tanking and they want to acquire a streaming service called GoJo. Mattson, however, flaked out on his meeting with Logan because he doesn’t like him and he is doubtful about Logan’s potential because Logan is old and close to death. Roman tries to sidestep the question about when he thinks Logan is going to die, and tries to convince Mattson that they really need to acquire this company. He and Mattson go into the urinal and Roman convinces Mattson to urinate on his phone because the game he is playing is still loading and going slow. Mattson agrees to the deal, but in the next episode, I found out that deal wasn’t going to be as easy to negotiate as Roman thought.

When Naomi is leading Kendall on his way home, Roman insults him and Kendall insults him right back. Naomi tells them to leave him alone, but Roman thinks he is ready to pick a fight with Kendall, so he makes a lot of insulting comments towards him, and Kendall leaves, trying to ignore him. Roman trips him and starts laughing at him, and Shiv calls out Roman for being immature and doing that to Kendall. Roman really struggles to respect people’s boundaries, and he reveals that Waystar has been harassing Rava and her and Kendall’s children. Even Shiv thinks that is a boundary Roman should not have crossed. Don’t get me wrong, Shiv still hates Kendall for turning against the family, but even she thinks that what Roman did was carried away. Kendall ends up going home, and Naomi cuddles him while he rests in a warm blanket, feeling hopeless. He had this big birthday party and just wanted to feel good about what he was going, but he feels that his siblings ruined it.

I was in a discussion meeting today and we talked about the Buddhist concept of the Ten Worlds, and we specifically talked about the world of insatiable desires, of hunger. The life condition of hunger is one of constant craving, and desire, according to Buddhism, is neither good nor bad, but if we are controlled by those desires, they can become a source of suffering because there is no limit to our desires but there is only so much one can have. Kendall thought the night was going to be fantastic and he made it super expensive, but at the end of the day, what saddened him was that he didn’t get his siblings’ approval and they weren’t fazed when he tried to rub his success in their faces. Even when Naomi gave him a watch, he wasn’t happy with the gift because he already got an expensive fancy watch. He is supposed to give this elaborate performance at the end, but he ends up backing out because he is emotionally overwhelmed by everything going on at the party. His assistants are actually relieved that he backed out of this one because they were already feeling overwhelmed by his wild requests and demands. I was reading on the Wikipedia page about the episode, and I didn’t know this, but the title “Too Much Birthday” comes from a Berenstain Bears book titled Too Much Birthday. It has been a long time since I read The Berenstain Bears, so I didn’t catch the reference until reading about it, but I remember devouring those books as a child, so it was pretty cool how they incorporated that reference in there.