Tag: media

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.

Succession, season 3, episode 6: What It Takes

In this episode of Succession, Kendall is working with his lawyer to testify against his dad, but Lisa isn’t making as much progress as he wants. He wants her to try harder in getting the case out about his dad’s corruption, but Lisa tells him that she is doing her best to represent him. Kendall tells Lisa that he likes working with her, but that she needs to try harder. He later goes before a group of people and they ask him questions about the allegations against Waystar, and he tells Lisa that the meeting with these people went horribly and raises his voice so they can hear him cussing them out. Lisa tells him to behave himself, and then pulls him aside and tells Kendall that she is doing her job but she feels he is disrespecting her expertise and her authority as a lawyer, and that he needs to check himself.

On the private jet, Greg nervously looks at his phone because he wants to check in with Kendall if Kendall is going to “burn” Greg, but he hasn’t gotten a response yet. Logan calls over the family and his team and talks about his strategy to bring down the tech industry, which is trying to outshine Waystar Royco so that it will lose its standing in society. Many people in the tech industry lean politically liberal, while ATN news (the media outlet of Waystar Royco) leans politically conservative, and many people are turning to the tech industry and this is hurting Waystar’s sales, so Logan wants to put together a plan so that Waystar can stay on top. Logan also thinks that the Attorney General has a photo of Logan on her dartboard, but Tom thinks that is just a rumor. The family goes to Virginia to a conference where they are trying to find the next president of the United States, since the old one isn’t running anymore. Many of the people at the conference are conservative and they argue about each other’s positions and gossip a lot. Greg confronts Tom and tells him he is worried about Kendall “burning” him, but Tom is too preoccupied with the possibility that he might end up in prison. During one evening in their hotel room, Shiv is watching the news on her tablet about the election, but Tom just wants to have a nice evening with her where they taste different wines. He went out of his way to get her these fancy wines, but she keeps looking at her tablet and doesn’t look at him. When he doesn’t stop talking about prison, she snaps and tells him to get over it. This hurts his feelings because he feels she isn’t really listening to him or providing any support for him when he needs it.

Tom feels lonely and he calls Greg in the middle of the night to grab breakfast at a local diner because that is what Tom thinks he is going to eat in prison. Greg tells Tom he is really worried about prison, and Tom unloads his own worries onto Greg about everything he has been reading about the horrors of prison. He tells him that the diner food they are eating won’t taste as good once they get into prison. I remember earlier in the first season, Tom invites Greg out to dinner to celebrate Greg getting his first paycheck. Greg suggests they go to California Pizza Kitchen, and Tom snorts and starts laughing, telling Greg that California Pizza Kitchen isn’t that great, and that he (Tom) is going to teach Greg how to eat rich people’s food. Tom thinks that CPK is inferior, middle-class fare, and that they should eat like rich people because Greg is now around rich people, so he needs to act and behave like a rich person. He has Greg eat songbirds and drink fancy wine, but now he is eating food at a diner, which early on he would have turned his nose up at. Honestly, I am sad I can no longer eat at diners like IHOP; they had really delicious pancakes, and I used to always get the Funny Face Pancake as a kid. However, I really love Spiral Diner. They have really good vegan breakfast items. Okay, that was totally a tangent, so back to the review of the episode. Honestly, I have never seen Tom so scared and intimidated before. It’s like he went from being this seemingly overconfident guy who acted like he was better than Greg, and now he is quiet during meetings with Logan and also is fearful of Logan’s authority. It’s like he has become a different person since testifying in Congress about the allegations at Cruises.

At the fancy gathering, Connor and Willa show up, and Willa is busy typing her play on her phone. She wanted to stay home to write her play (Willa is a playwright) but Connor wouldn’t let her, so she has to type it on a tiny screen while a bunch of conservative men talk around her. I feel bad for Willa; it looks like she really didn’t want to be there. Honestly, I thought that she and Greg were going to get together because Greg had a crush on Willa when they met at Logan’s house during Thanksgiving. Greg, though, is too busy trying to sue Greenpeace and not go to jail to worry about that. There is a scene in the episode where an older gentleman is making lewd comments about Willa in Connor’s presence, and when the guy leaves, Willa tells Connor she didn’t want that man coming up to her again. Willa felt disrespected, and I think Connor also doesn’t respect her work as a playwright. He is only focused on his presidential campaign. Honestly, I was so happy to find that the actress who plays Willa was the same actress who played Astrid in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (the actress is named Justine Lupe.) Her character is so different from Astrid’s. Astrid was very eager and excited to participate in Jewish traditions as someone who converted to Judaism, and she was very happy in her marriage to Noah. Willa, however, isn’t happy in her marriage to Connor and feels like she always has to tag along to his social events where she has to be around people who don’t care about the arts.

At the gathering, Roman finds out that his mom, Caroline Collingwood (Logan’s ex-wife) is getting married to a man named Peter Munion. He lets the other Roy children know, and then he later tells Logan, who can’t believe that his ex-wife would marry a man like Rupert Munion. In the break room that evening, they talk about who they think the next president of the United States should be. Some agree it should be Jeryd Mencken, but Shiv strongly disagrees because she doesn’t agree with Jeryd’s extremist policies. Earlier, Jeryd insulted ATN and said that it was only still around to maximize shareholder value, and that Logan Roy was no longer relevant anymore. Logan lets Greg join them, but he tells Greg to keep his mouth shut. When Greg speaks up and asks if he can contribute to the conversation, Roman tells him to shut up and that he can vote in the election like everyone else (he means the American middle and working class people.) Honestly, I think the real MVPs of this show are the people who work behind the scenes to set up all of these lavish gatherings. I really appreciate that the show shows them setting up the tables, catering the food and doing other important unseen things. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed it at first, but after doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work myself, I appreciate that they showed these people setting everything up. It was soul-crushing in one episode where they had a nice gathering at Logan’s house, and they had to throw all of the catered food out because Logan’s team found a bunch of dead raccoons in the chimney that was stinking up the house. Logan screamed at all of the caterers to throw out everything and that they would order pizza since the bad smell from the raccoon carcasses tainted the food.

Roman has a talk with Mencken, and he starts to dig Mencken’s policies, prompting him to take his side. Connor thinks that he should be the next president, especially because he has been campaigning for a while now, but Greg politely tells everyone that he doesn’t think Connor should be president and then he has to leave the room. Tom gets a call from Kendall and Kendall brings him up to the diner, and Kendall tells Tom he can find a way for Tom to not have to go to prison for the Cruises allegations, if Tom joins him in taking down Logan. Tom, however, says that he is just a “public servant” and can’t do that. Kendall feels that Tom betrayed him, and Tom leaves, telling him that in the room they are deciding who the next president will be. Tom goes back to the hotel, only to find a bunch of people in the ballroom hoisting Greg on their shoulders, celebrating him for something he did. He confronts Greg at breakfast because he is jealous and upset that Greg is happy and he is not, but Greg shrugs it off. Logan has Shiv join him, Mencken, Tom and Roman in a group photo, but she refuses to be in the photo because she doesn’t like Mencken. Logan tells her to come in the photo and she stands, arms crossed, refusing to get in the photo. Logan then goes up to her and asks her if she is really a part of the family, and so she finally acquiesces and gets in the photo, but only if she doesn’t have to stand next to Mencken.