So I haven’t finished the final season of Succession yet, but I have about four more episodes to go, and it just gets more and more intense as I watch each episode. I thought I would just savor the show and watch an episode here, an episode there, maybe ration out this delicious chocolate cake of a show rather than decide “Fuck it” and pig out in one sitting. I did just that today. I can’t complain about staying home today because honestly this was a great day to finish off the show. I was too riddled with coughs and nausea to do much else, so I turned on my laptop and binge-watched a lot of Succession today. It’s definitely not a relaxing show by any means. But there is just something about the characters, the acting, the dialogue and the story that is just so captivating. Honestly, I kept forgetting that at the end of the day, it was Brian Cox and not Logan Roy or that it was Matthew MacFadyen and not Tom Wambsgans. Of course, there are actually people like the Roy family that exist in real life, media conglomerates who participate in illicit activities and all kinds of corruption. But man, the acting in this show had me hooked. Then again, there is something about binge-watching that provides a sort of escape from reality, which can also be unhealthy if I don’t do it in moderation and set limits.
In episode 1, “The Munsters,” Kendall, Roman and Shiv meet up to start a new media company called The Hundred because their dad told them in the last episode that they were on their own after he allowed Mattson to take over Waystar Royco, and that they had to “make their own fucking pile” of money instead of relying on their inheritance. However, they get bored and end up not going through with The Hundred, and they instead try to see if they can revive the deal with the Pierce media family because Logan is not backing down from acquiring Pierce’s media outlet, PGM. Naomi Pierce thinks Nan has lost interest in the deal, but the Roy kids convince her to persuade Nan to let them keep negotiating so they can acquire Pierce. It is also Logan’s birthday celebration, but he is not focused on all the birthday wishes and presents: he is thinking about the acquisition deal with Pierce.
Tom, meanwhile, isn’t sure what to do about him and Shiv. He is starting to see their marriage is falling apart, and Shiv just doesn’t seem to care because she is so busy dealing with business matters. Greg comes to Logan’s birthday party with a date, a young woman named Bridget, and he is so happy that he brought a date, but then Kerry, Logan’s assistant, admonishes Greg about letting Bridget into the party because she seems suspicious. Greg goes up to Tom during the party and is so pumped that they will continue to join forces as “The Disgusting Brothers,” two men who bang women and feel good about their sexual conquests and get up into all kinds of other shenanigans. Tom, however, is less enthused and tells Greg to curb his enthusiasm a little, especially because his date has been the talk of the party, and not in a good way. According to Tom, Bridget has done so many things unfitting for such a high-society event as Logan’s birthday party: her handbag is too large for people’s taste (well, Tom’s anyway), she uses the nice towels in the bathroom and they are sopping wet, she asks partygoers personal questions, and she wolfs down the canapes “like a famished warthog” (to be fair, that last insult stung, and I’m not even close with this Bridget woman.) Greg rolls his eyes and says that Bridget is just “another tick on the chart.” It turns out that Kerry and Tom were on to something, because Bridget did end up taking photos of the party and posting on social media, which she wasn’t supposed to do, and she tried to snap a photo with Logan. I didn’t suspect anything when she and Greg were talking with Willa and Connor about Connor’s presidential bid. I thought she was just being inquisitive and asking questions. But then Colin, the security guard for Logan, tells Greg that Bridget needs to leave the party because she posted these pictures on social media and now Colin will need to go through her phone. At that point, Greg realizes he can’t do much to change the situation and he doesn’t want to get himself or Bridget into any more hot water, so he backs off.
I have never heard that expression before, but it showed me how Tom has brought Greg over to the dark side, and Greg is starting to shove it in his mouth and eat every last morsel of this dark side. He is loving the idea that he is this free bachelor who can bang a woman and treat her as just another “tick on the chart.” Goodbye to his sweet sensitive personality, the awkward Greg who genuinely liked Comfrey and wanted to talk to her. No, Tom asked him in the season 3 finale if he wanted to make a “deal with the devil,” and Greg said yes. I had a feeling Greg was going to change when he started to move up in the company. He started to get a taste of that power, even when his grandpa Ewan warned him at the beginning that he needed to steer clear of the family because they were a “bunch of vipers” who were going to chew him up. Greg ends up fucking Bridget, and he goes up to Tom and whispers in his ear “The Disgusting Brothers…on motherfucking tour!” He then tells Tom about his sexual escapade with Bridget, and he thinks Tom will approve and cheer him on, like, “Yeah, man! You fucked that girl!” But instead, Tom tells Greg he is in huge trouble for having sex in Logan’s house with a woman who wasn’t technically invited to the party and was doing stuff at the party she wasn’t supposed to be doing. Tom is also not having the time of his life in his marriage to Shiv, so it’s hard for him to feel any sort of happiness for Greg’s pursuit of sexual shenanigans. When Shiv gets home, she finds that the house is dark and seems empty, but then she finds Tom in the bedroom. He wants to stay and talk about what went wrong with their marriage, but Shiv doesn’t have the emotional energy to talk about that and says they should divorce. It is really painful for Tom to hear this because his marriage to Shiv hasn’t been easy; it’s been filled with betrayal, heartbreak, poor communication and boundaries and other complex feelings.
There was a really deep scene in the episode that stuck with me. Logan gets sick of being at his birthday party and waiting for the deal with Nan Pierce to go through, that he and Colin go out to eat at a restaurant, and Logan starts to reflect on his own mortality and the philosophy of economics. I kind of resonated with his reflection on life and death because I had lately been pondering the meaning of my own life and about the issue of life and death in general. It made me think of the montage during the opening credits, which toward the end feature Logan Roy in his 30s or 40s sitting outside at a table quietly with his family, and then shows him in his 80s sitting with his public relations team in an office at happiness. Royco talking about business matters. Logan is shown from the back with a posture that indicates how jaded he feels about running this company, and wondering what his purpose in life is. Logan provided this comfortable wealthy life for his kids, and acquired all this wealth, and he has been in the business of negotiating for decades, but he is wondering at this point what the purpose of all of it is. It seems he just wants to have a human conversation where he talks about much deeper stuff, not just about investments and business but about what the purpose of life is, and what happens after people die. Confronting my own mortality is scary, to be honest, and I still hold on to a fear of death, but I have been reading writings by the late Buddhist philosopher, Daisaku Ikeda, and he gives insight into the Buddhist view of birth and death. I started reading these writings more seriously when I was going through a deep and dark depression and wondered whether my life had any value or meaning beyond waking up, eating breakfast, going to work, taking a shit, brushing my teeth, and going to bed on repeat. I even wondered if there was any point in living at all. But I think Buddhism has given me a much deeper way to look at life, and it’s helped me reflect on how I really want to live my life. That was just a little thought I had while watching this scene with Logan and Colin in the restaurant.
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