succession – The Arts Are Life

My Wild-Ass Dream

Dream had on July 4, 2024

I had a dream that I made an audition tape, and I got chosen as one of the youth guests to be on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show. I was in a ballroom and was typing out this book I was working on, and then Stephen Colbert appeared behind me with this huge smile on his face, and I exclaimed, “Holy shit!” and apologized for cursing. He laughed and said it was fine and we hugged because I was so in awe of meeting Stephen Colbert and getting to be on his show. I then found out who the other people who got nominated to be on the show were, and Nicholas Braun (who plays Cousin Greg on the show Succession) was one of the people nominated. I then found myself trying to get ready for the show and then I was in a bedroom with my mom, and I was watching a movie that was in Hindi and it had Hindi subtitles. I kept changing the channel and then found myself on a movie set where I was wanting to act in the musical Rent (it was downtown.) Mom was sleeping and so I watched the movie by myself.

Then, I was in a pub, and Shiv Roy from Succession wouldn’t let me and someone else use this black SUV that was parked out front. They needed to take someone to the airport because they played tuba in a symphony orchestra. Shiv was pregnant and was wearing a long black wool coat and was talking on her smartphone a lot. I think she was also carrying a cello to fit in the back seat of the van. Then I was back inside the pub, and I was in an interview at a round booster seat area with Stephen Colbert, who was asking me, Nicholas Braun, and another young person about how we overcame our addiction to drugs and alcohol (edit: in real life, I haven’t struggled with addiction, and I don’t think Nicholas Braun did either.) I was talking about how drinking alcohol didn’t make me feel like myself and so I stopped drinking. At the end of the interview, I shook hands with Stephen Colbert, and he thanked us for coming on the show. Then, at the after-interview party, I wanted to share Buddhism with one of the servers at our table, so I saw one of the servers, a short Latina woman and saw she was standing to the side. I wrote the address of our local Buddhist center on a card with the words “Nam myoho renge kyo” on it and asked the server if she had heard of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. She said, “Someone gave me a card already” and showed me a bent Nam-myoho-renge-kyo card that someone had left. I thanked her and then was looking around the bar to find Nicholas Braun. I saw him talking with some people and I really wanted to get his attention, so I kept looking at him from across the room. I don’t think he noticed me.

Then, I found myself going through these different rooms and down staircases where people were singing about love, sexuality and finding someone, and I was on a balcony where, down below, was a garden. A random person asked me, “Is the movie Trainspotting graphic?” and I said, before leaping down the balcony, “It is VERY graphic because it portrays drug use.” (edit, 7/28/2024: in real life, I had read the novel Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh several years ago, but honestly it was a depressing book so I don’t know if I can handle the movie, even though I love Ewan McGregor and think he is an incredible actor.) Then, I was going down a staircase through a basement, singing in a soulful voice like Celine Dion about how I really wanted someone (in this case, Nicholas Braun) to see how perfect I was for him. Then a white man, who was an actor, was re-enacting a scene from a play and a Black woman, who was also an actress, was breaking up with him. I climbed down the staircase while singing and a bunch of other women of color were singing and swaying around, and one woman was sitting on the staircase, so I had to tell her, “Excuse me,” as I walked down. Then I saw these receipts hanging down from the staircase, and realized those were the receipts from all the romantic stuff I had bought for my crush, Nicholas Braun. And then I woke up.

Succession, season 4, episodes 2-3

Contains spoilers.

Honestly this has been the most emotional season of the show so far. I think when I first started watching this show, I didn’t know if I was going to want to finish because everyone was really mean to each other, but somehow, I think just the acting and dialogue is what kept me hooked on this show. It’s been emotional because a major character passes away unexpectedly and the characters who supported this person are spending the rest of the season dealing with intense grief.

In episode 2, “Rehearsal,” Connor is rehearsing his wedding with his fiancée, Willa, and it’s not going easily. Kendall, Roman and Shiv are also still figuring out whether they should go through with the GoJo deal with Lukas Mattson. Logan Roy is also doing more supervising of the ATN news team, and Greg and Tom find him walking around the office in sunglasses while people scurry nervously around Logan doing their work. He gets up in front of the news crew and tells them they need to knuckle down and that he is determined to get ATN back to being a powerful media outlet. Kerry, Logan’s assistant and mistress, auditions to become a news anchor for ATN and she ends up becoming a huge laughingstock when people, including the Roy siblings, watch her audition because they think it is really bad. There is one scene where Gerri and Hugo are watching Kerry’s appearance on the ATN news network and they are laughing at how she says things and the smile that she forces, and they immediately shut down the laptop when Logan walks in. But then Logan tells Hugo to open his laptop, and Hugo is reluctant but does so, and Logan briefly finds they had been laughing about Kerry’s audition tape. Tom tells Logan that Kerry wouldn’t be a good fit as an anchor for ATN, and he has Greg deliver the bad news, which doesn’t go so well and prompts Kerry to storm out. Things are not going so well for Willa or Connor during their wedding rehearsal, and when Shiv, Roman and Kendall finally arrive late, they find Willa and ask her how the rehearsal went. She is still not happy in her engagement to Connor and isn’t sure she wants to marry him, but she doesn’t let them know this, she just tells them she is in a rush and needs to go home. Connor then tells them that Willa is uncertain about marrying Connor. The four siblings meet at a bar to discuss the future deal with GoJo, and Connor is trying to locate where Willa is.

Season 4, episode 3, “Connor’s Wedding,” is probably the most emotional episode so far. It is the day of Connor and Willa’s wedding, and everyone is focused on making sure Connor is ready for his big day. Guests are milling around and talking, and everything seems fine. It seemed Logan was doing perfectly fine early on, and he was on a plane with his crew (Frank, Tom, Karl, and Karolina) to go to Sweden to negotiate with Matsson. At the beginning of the episode, Logan calls Roman and tells him to fire Gerri, and Roman at first isn’t having it, but because he is scared of his dad and wants his approval, he ends up telling Gerri at Connor’s wedding that Logan wanted her fire. Of course, she is deeply hurt by this and refuses to speak to Roman again. However, everything changes when Kendall and Roman get a call from Tom that Logan has passed out on the plane, and they are doing chest compressions to try and revive him, and they don’t know if he will make it or not. Logan ends up dying, and within minutes the siblings have to make a statement to reporters and navigate the very complicated and painful process of grief, which is filled with shock, denial, pain, anger, anxiety, sadness and so many other feelings. Honestly, as terrible a person as Logan was, at the end of the day, it is painful losing a loved one. I think that is why watching this episode was so emotionally difficult because grief is a really painful process, and you can’t just cry and then call it a day. And on a day when Connor was going to celebrate his marriage to Willa, he faces this really shocking news. I’m sure it was hard for Logan’s PR team, too, because even though Tom remained calm on the phone with the siblings during this traumatic event, even he had to go into a private room and when talking with Greg, broke down and admitted he wasn’t okay. Even though Frank and Karolina and others on the team had to remain calm, I’m sure it was a scary moment for them, too, because no one knew that was going to happen to him. In episode 1 of season 1, Logan suffers a stroke and has to go to the hospital, and it is sudden and scary for everyone, but then he wakes up and everyone goes back to normal. However, throughout the course of the show, Logan deals with serious health challenges, and so throughout the show they have to figure out who will take over if he is incapacitated or passes away. However, even with all the preparation and talk about who will be the next successor, death is still a shocking and painful experience, so no amount of wealth or prestige could soften the blow of how painful it was for the Roy family to lose their dad.

Logan’s death hit everyone hard, and episode 4 shows how complicated their relationship with him actually was, especially when they find that Logan had drafted a will with specific instructions about who got what. I didn’t suspect Kerry of anything until this season. I just thought she just hid in the background, being Logan’s innocent assistant. But things got ugly between her and Marcia when Kerry shows up at the house to grab her belongings that she left upstairs in Logan’s room. Marcia hasn’t been to see Logan after she heard about him sleeping with other women, but she came back with a lot of pain and resentment, and so when Kerry comes and tries to go upstairs, and she is in a puddle of tears, Marcia tells her she is not allowed upstairs and that the guards give her the belongings she left. Roman tries to help her out, while Greg, who at this point has become a pretty twisted character, makes fun of Kerry and jokes, “Oh, here come the waterworks.” Kerry ends up dropping her stuff on the ground and telling Roman that she and Logan were going to get engaged, and Marcia tells her to get her shit and leave the premises. Roman thinks Marcia was being too hard on Kerry and asks if it was really necessary to kick Kerry out like that, but Marcia just says with cold indifference that she booked a cab for Kerry to go back to her own apartment. The other characters, with Logan no longer around, debate about who is going to take over, and they issue some pretty nasty insults towards each other (the insults they hurled at the beginning of the show were bad enough, but season 4 these insults seemed to cut even deeper, especially from people like Karl and Gerri.) Roman and Kendall find out that they would take over the company, but that Shiv would be excluded. Shiv has repeatedly fought the family over this, and in I think season 1, Shiv met with her dad to talk about how unfair it was that he would let Roman take over as chief operating officer and wouldn’t let her step up in her position at the company. Logan said it’s because she lacked experience, but Shiv told him he was excluding her because she is a woman. This really hurts Shiv because at some point she thought her dad had changed his mind and was going to let her take over, but it turned out he was just manipulating his children. He had the power all along and wanted everyone to go along with his long and drawn-out game. Roman and Kendall go into their dad’s office, and it hits them that their dad is no longer alive, and that they have this huge responsibility now to take over for him. It reminded me a little of season 1 of The Crown, because in season 1 Elizabeth’s father is failing in his health, and while she is in Africa on a tour with her husband, Prince Phillip, she gets a call that her father passed away. It was painful because they show her writing a letter to her father, and they show she is about to send it off, but she never gets to send the letter because by the time she does, she gets the news that he has died. She has to take the throne immediately, and it’s a difficult process because she is still grieving, but she has this incredibly huge responsibility to serve the public, and now that she is in the public eye, she cannot afford to show any weakness. It completely changes her relationship with her family, because she can no longer treat her sister, Margaret, like her sister. Her sister, her mother, and her grandmother all have to bow in deference to Elizabeth once she becomes the queen, and it also forever changes the relationship dynamic between Elizabeth and her sister. Margaret wants to get married to a man named Peter Townsend, but Elizabeth tells her she has to wait until a certain age before she can get married. She waits and waits, but still doesn’t get her sister’s approval. Even though Elizabeth tells Margaret she can try and help her, she can’t do any special favors for her sister because she is a public figure and anything she does that goes against the rules could put her reputation in jeopardy, so she ends up not letting Margaret do what she wants most of the time. This really sours their relationship.

Succession, season 4, episode 1 (“The Munsters”)

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.

Succession, season 3, episodes 8 (“Chiantishire”) and 9 (“All the Bells Say”)

Well, it’s the end of the third season of Succession and things are getting spicy and fierce! In an earlier episode, Roman and his siblings found out that their mom, who is Logan’s ex-wife, is getting remarried to a man named Peter Munion, who they don’t approve of because he seems boring. Episodes 8 and 9 take place in Italy, where Caroline (Logan’s ex-wife) and Peter are having the wedding. In episode 7, Greg hit it off with Comfrey, Kendall’s assistant, and got the courage to ask her out. It seems like they are enjoying the relationship in the next episode, but Greg is starting to wonder if Comfrey is actually interested in him, and he starts making eyes at an Italian contessa and tries to ask her out, but finds Roman has started flirting with her instead, so he loses his confidence. He asks Tom for advice, and Tom tells him to go after the contessa and not let Roman go after her. During Caroline’s wedding, Willa (Connor’s fiancée) starts crying because she is getting emotional about the wedding, and Greg looks back and comments to the contessa about Willa’s crying. The contessa says she loves weddings. However, he turns to Comfrey and she rolls her eyes and comments how Willa needs to get over herself, and Greg goes along with her and says Willa needs to get over it to. I am gradually seeing a transformation of Greg’s character towards this season finale and moving into season 4. I knew he had insecurities before, but I think because Tom and other people doled out enough bullying to last him a lifetime, Greg’s sense of self has taken a hit and I’m starting to see his insecurities more clearly. He started off as a sensitive guy, and he seemed nice, but I think because he has gotten enmeshed into the world of Waystar and wealth, he is starting to become hungrier for approval and validation from the people around him and is becoming less of a nice guy. It reminded me of The Wolf of Wall Street, when Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Jordan Belfort, is first starting off at Wall Street and he meets with Matthew McConaughey’s character, Mark Hanna, who is a brash, profane and macho Wall-Street guy who goads the young Jordan to have a drink with him. Jordan uses his manners and politely declines, but Mark convinces him he needs to toughen up and become this animalistic competitive person to survive in Wall Street and that he has to discard his kind sensitive nature. Jordan becomes a completely different person, and he becomes this person who cheats on his wives and sleeps with many women, swindles people out of their money and spends money lavishly. I haven’t seen season 4 to know how Gregory Hirsch turns out in the end, but so far, it looks like things are going to go south because Tom’s relationship with Greg has had so much negative influence on him.

In episode 7, Roman meets with Lukas Matsson, who runs a tech streaming media giant called GoJo, and wants Waystar to acquire GoJo. Lukas hates Roman’s father, Logan, but he agrees after Roman cajoles him enough times. However, in episode 8, things go south when Roman finds on his phone a meme that Lukas posted of him going on a trip to Macau and vomiting money emojis. It pops up on other people’s phones and when Logan finds out about it, he thinks Lukas isn’t going to be serious about the deal and is just goofing off. Meanwhile, Kendall wants to meet with his dad to make up for a really sour relationship between the two. They meet for dinner and Logan calls Iverson (Kendall’s son) over and gives him a piece of his mozzarella, even though Iverson says he doesn’t like mozzarella. In the fifth episode of season 1, “I Went to Market,” a much younger Iverson is playing the game I Went to Market, and he tries to grab the cranberry sauce can from Logan because he won the game, but Logan pulls it away from him and hits Iverson with the can, hitting him in the eye. Logan doesn’t do anything to help Iverson; he just dismisses it and gets angry when Kendall yells at him for hurting his son. Kendall and Logan get back to talking, and Logan tells Kendall that he had to clean up so many of Kendall’s messes because Kendall didn’t take responsibility for himself. He gets up and leaves, making Kendall feel even worse than before. Kendall is lying on a floaty with a beer bottle in his hand, while his kids, Iverson and Sophie, are sitting on the lounge chairs. With nothing to do, they get up and leave the pool. Kendall falls asleep and his face gets more and more submerged into the pool, to the point where he almost drowns. It was a really disturbing scene.

In episode 8, Roman and Lukas talk more about the deal, and Roman asks how he feels about Waystar acquiring GoJo, and Lukas says that he wants a merging of equals so that they can both share the power. Roman is uncertain about this because he wants Lukas to just go with the plan, but Lukas wants to know what is in it for him as well, so he makes this deal about the merger. Logan meets with Gerri, Roman and the rest of his team and asks them whether they should make the deal with Lukas because Logan thinks he isn’t serious about the deal after Lukas posted that meme of him vomiting money emojis. Roman says they should still go through with it, and Logan considers it. Throughout the show, Roman has continuously said sexually explicit things to Gerri, who is on the public relations team at Waystar, and even when she asserted boundaries and told him she was dating and that he needed to respect that, he didn’t respect her wishes and continues to act inappropriately around her. Roman finds himself in hot water, however, after he sneaks his phone under the table, takes a picture of his erect penis, and texts it to Gerri after she congratulates him on the deal with Mattson. Or so I thought he was texting it to Gerri… Roman expects Gerri’s phone to buzz with the notification, Gerri is not looking at her phone. Instead, Logan’s phone buzzes and he ends up receiving the dreaded dick pic. He is, of course, very offended, but he doesn’t call Roman out. Instead, he has Roman come into his office after meeting with Shiv, and he asks Logan why he sends dick pics and if he has a problem. In a matter of seconds, Roman goes from being this overconfident young man with sexual bravado into a scared child, and he tries to reason with his father, but his dad continues to belittle his son and dismisses him. Roman’s transformation at that moment reminded me of how Tom acts when he is around Greg versus when he is around Logan. Tom acts machismo and cocky towards Greg, but when he is around Logan, he is quiet and servile and gets easily scared when Logan intimidates him (then again, who wouldn’t? That scene where Logan makes him, Greg and Karl play “Boar on the Floor” was sadistic enough.)

In episode 9, “All the Bells Say,” we get a lot deeper into Kendall’s story and where so much of his pain and suffering is coming from. The episode begins with the Roy siblings, Greg, and Willa playing Monopoly outside on a nice sunny day, and they are enjoying the game, but then Kendall comes along, and everyone gets really awkward and quiet around him, and they start to ask if he is okay after his drowning. He dismisses it and says he is fine. Logan calls Roman over to talk with him and Lukas about the deal with Waystar acquiring GoJo. Lukas proposes that he and his company GoJo take over Waystar because GoJo is having more monetary success and engagement than Waystar is, and because Lukas doesn’t think Logan is fit to run the company anymore. However, he tells Logan it is ultimately his choice whether he wants to accept Lukas’s offer or not. Logan tells Roman to get back to the wedding while he and Lukas talk more about the negotiations, and Roman reluctantly leaves. Honestly, after watching these past couple of episodes, I really want to go to Italy. They show so many beautiful shots of the countryside, the architecture, and the food that they eat looks delicious.

Roman goes over to Shiv and Connor, where they are sitting at a table eating pastries. He tells them about the conversation that he, Logan and Matsson had, and then Kendall comes over and they awkwardly bring up the topic of Kendall’s mental health because he tried to kill himself. Kendall tells them they are being ridiculous and that he just fell off the floaty and that it was no big deal. His siblings still think he needs help, though. Connor then gets angry because Kendall is making the conversation about him when he betrayed Logan, and he tells Kendall to stop trying to kill his dad. He then gets upset that no one told him about the merger deal with Matsson, and that everyone leaves him in the dark about these issues. He is also upset because no one congratulated him on getting engaged to Willa, and he leaves angry and resentful towards his siblings. Willa is still uncertain about her marriage to Connor, and honestly, I don’t know if she is happy with this man or not.

I think the most emotional scene of episode 9 was when Kendall breaks down into tears because he is remembering the time that he killed the caterer during Shiv’s wedding in England. In the season finale of season 1, Shiv and Tom get married in England, and during a social gathering, Logan is talking with a group of people and a waiter comes by with champagne. Logan declines, but the waiter doesn’t hear him and overfills Logan’s glass. Logan screams at the waiter and fires him. Kendall finds the waiter outside, and he asks him if he knows where to find hard drugs, and the waiter offers ketamine to Kendall and they both partake in it. They end up driving under the influence, and they swerve to hit a deer and their car goes flying into the river. The waiter drowns and dies, and Kendall isn’t able to save him, and he feels guilty about it for several months. When he finally tells Roman and Shiv that is what has been on his mind for so long, Roman tries to downplay it, like “So what? It’s no big deal” and tells Kendall to get over it. Shiv, however, understands that telling Kendall to get over killing someone isn’t helpful, and instead tells him it’s going to be okay. Kendall breaks down and cries because he feels terrible for what happened to the waiter, and Roman and Shiv end up helping him back on his feet after giving him time to process what he is going through. The three of them take a van to the castle where their dad is having all these business negotiations, and they plan to confront their dad about how he shouldn’t let Matsson take over the company. Roman at first isn’t sure about going along with their plan because he is scared of his dad, but he goes along with it. Shiv calls Tom and tells him about their plan, and Tom asks how it is going to affect him. He gets off the phone, and Greg is getting so excited about the prospect of him marrying the contessa, but Tom tells him to buckle down and focus because things might go haywire for Waystar and they might be going down together. Shiv, Roman, and Kendall meet with Logan, and Logan tells them he will talk to Shiv and Roman only if Kendall leaves the room. Roman tells him it would be better if they all talked about it, and Logan tells them that he agreed to let GoJo take over Waystar. This really pains the kids, and they try to argue with him why this is bad (especially because they could lose their inheritances) and Logan tells them they can make their own pile of money and that they are on their own. It turns out that Caroline, Logan’s ex-wife, negotiated with Logan to not give the kids control over what happens at the company, even though they thought that the divorce agreement would let them change the rules around so that they could have a say in what happens to the company. The kids feel like their mom betrayed them, and after Logan leaves the room angrily, Shiv breaks down and cries and Tom comes over and hugs her. This was a really intense moment.

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.

Succession, Season 3, episode 5

I am currently watching the third season of the HBO show Succession, and honestly it is incredible. I am really stressed out though. In this episode, the shareholder meeting is going on, but Logan suffers from a really bad UTI and so everyone on the team has to make sure he is okay. He forgets things, and also does stuff like calling Shiv “Marcia” and he also feels pain when he goes to the bathroom, and Tom has to make sure that he makes it back to the conference room okay. They are also negotiating a deal with Sandy Furness and Stewy Hosseini, and Sandy’s daughter negotiates with the Roy family that they can have seats on the board if they give up their private jets. At first, I was like, What’s the big deal if they have to give up their private jets, but then I realized it’s because they pretty much go everywhere with the jets, especially to international places like Hungary and England.

I could feel the stress in that room when everyone was trying to rush and find a doctor for Logan, and it really stresses out Shiv because she was only focused on the deal with Sandy Furness’s daughter and not on her ailing dad. It stressed out Roman when Shiv told the doctor to hurry up with checking her dad’s pulse and his health, and finally Roman tells her angrily that she needs to calm down and right now just focus on taking care of their dad. There is a scene where Greg meets with his grandpa Ewan, and Ewan is angry that Greg didn’t go with the attorney that he got him and went with someone else, and he tells Greg that he is giving Greg’s part of the inheritance to Greenpeace. This crushes Greg’s hopes and dreams because in an earlier episode, he is telling Connor that he is really pumped to be getting his $250 million inheritance, and Connor warns him about not getting his hopes up too quickly. Greg thinks it will be easy as pie, but after Ewan tells him he is giving away Greg’s inheritance money, Greg gets upset and tells Tom he is going to sue Greenpeace.

There is another scene where Karl and Gerri are trying to hold down the fort during the shareholder meeting, but they fail miserably and they often have to stall because everyone is figuring out so many things at once: how to take care of Logan during his health crisis, whether or not they want to go through with the deal that Sandy Furness offered them, and also Kerry, Logan’s assistant, tells them that the president of the United States is on the line and wants to speak to Logan. They argue over who in the room is qualified to take the call, and they end up letting Roman take the call. They tell him to not use swear words in the conversation, though, because Roman is known for using salty language and being sarcastic in arguments with his family. But Roman does his best to maintain his composure and not swear at the president so that he doesn’t blow Waystar’s reputation, but it turns out that the president is not running again next year and that leaves the family in very hot water.

Kendall also comes back to shake more things up at the shareholders meeting. While Karl is in the middle of making his speech, Kendall interrupts him and pushes him aside, and he tells the audience that he is starting a foundation to raise money for all of the victims of sexual abuse at Waystar Royco. This does not go down well, and very few people end up clapping in the audience. The Roy family members are embarrassed and angry, and Logan ends up having Kerry summon Kendall to a meeting with him but then blowing him off at the last minute. When Kendall tries to call him, Logan tells Kerry to block Kendall’s number from his phone.

Logan is also not satisfied with the results of the shareholder meeting or the deal with Sandy Furness. When Shiv tells him to lighten up and celebrate a little, he gets angry with her and shouts at her to get away from him. Everyone in the room is really scared of Logan, and so during the celebratory toast, no one is laughing or making merry. Instead, there is silence. Also, Tom’s marriage to Shiv seems to be going farther and farther down the toilet. After the deal is sealed, Tom approaches Shiv and wants to make out with her and tells her he is tracking her ovulation cycle because he is horny and wants her to bear children with him, but after a really exhausting interaction she tells him she is not interested and that she actually finds him tracking her ovulation cycles creepy and doesn’t want him to do that. It was already stressful enough when Shiv had an affair with her ex-boyfriend, Nate, and Tom thought that after he got rid of Nate he would go back to having a normal loving marriage with Shiv. But she is so focused on work that she tells him to get over himself when he shares with her his anxieties about going to jail. He looks on prison blogs and thinks about how he is going to go to prison after testifying about the Cruises documents, but Shiv keeps telling him to get over it and that he might not go to jail.

I think seeing this episode from a Buddhist perspective kind of helped. In Buddhism we talk about the four sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death. No one can escape these sufferings, no matter how much money they have or how much success. Even though Logan is this wealthy man with this huge fortune, he is getting compassion. and his health is failing. I don’t know if I am reading too much into this, but there was a brief moment where I saw Tom bring out his Buddha nature when he is helping Logan in the bathroom. Logan has Tom escort him to the bathroom, but then Logan has a pain in his chest and is really struggling to breathe, and Tom makes sure that he gets back to the room okay. I understand he didn’t really have a choice in helping this man, especially because he controls their inheritance and they wouldn’t know what to do if he suddenly did, but I think for a brief moment, after seeing Tom early on bully Greg and act superior to other people, this brief moment showed me he brought out some of his compassion.

Succession Season 3, episode 4

I am just going to be talking about a few scenes in this episode. This is just a rough draft.

Gregory goes to see Logan and he greets Logan with a hearty good morning. Logan offers him something to drink and Gregory has this confused look on his face and asks Logan if he means an alcoholic drink. Gregory asks for a rum and coke, but he is at first joking around, but Logan takes him seriously and asks Kerry, his assistant, to bring him a rum and coke. Gregory says that Kerry doesn’t have to do that, but Logan says “What Greg wants, Greg must have.” Greg is very nervous throughout his discussion with Logan because Logan is an intimidating man, and Gregory is in hot water because Kendall went against the Roy family and talked about a lot of corrupt practices that the company did for many years. Gregory still works for Logan, so Logan has Gregory sign a non-disclosure agreement, but Gregory wants to know what is in it for him. Logan tells him that is not how things work with him, and so he makes Gregory sign the agreement. The scene where Greg wonders if Logan means to offer him alcohol reminded me of the scene in Mean Girls, where Cady Heron goes to Regina George’s house for the first time, and Regina’s mom, who is a permissive parent who lets her daughter do whatever she wants, brings them drinks. Cady asks Regina’s mom if there is alcohol in the drinks, and Regina’s mom tells her “Oh, honey, no! What kind of mother do you think I am?” But she tells Cady that if she wants alcohol, she has it in the house and Cady is welcome to it, but Cady politely declines. Greg reminds me of Cady before she became a Mean Girl because he is polite and awkward. They both remind me of me when I was growing up because I am awkward and introverted, and I remember people would always joke that I was too polite.

There is another scene where Tom approaches Greg in Greg’s office about how he, Tom, might go to jail. Greg is excited because he might be transferring to another department, the Parks division. Tom is not happy for Greg because all he can think about is his lawyer telling him, Tom, that he might go to jail after he testified for Congress about the Cruise documents. Tom tries to beat up on Greg and starts hitting him and telling Greg to fight him, but Greg tells him to stop hitting him and that he doesn’t want to fight. Tom and Greg have a very toxic relationship. I wouldn’t even call it a friendship because Greg just tries to do whatever Tom says because Tom intimidates him. I really do love the acting between these two characters. Somehow Greg’s office got cleaned up pretty quickly. At the beginning, Tom offers Greg the office and it is very unkempt and messy and there is stuff everywhere, and there is no room for Greg to have a space to work. But by the time Tom comes back, he sees that Greg has a desk and space to work, and there is a basket of large croissants and other pastries on the desk. Honestly, those pastries looked delicious. I am vegan but I would have loved to enjoy a pastry or two with Greg and Tom at the moment.

There is another scene where Logan gets heat exhaustion. He, Josh and Kendall are talking about the shareholder deal with Josh, who is a major investor (I was really pumped to see Adrien Brody playing Josh’s character because I loved his work in Cadillac Records, The Pianist and The Grand Budapest Hotel), but Logan has health problems and can’t walk that far, and Josh is taking them on the hike way too far. Logan refuses help when Kendall offers to call a doctor, but then he starts vomiting on the side of the road and then has a heart attack, prompting Josh and Kendall to get him to a doctor immediately. Kendall asks Josh about the deal, but Josh thinks Kendall should focus on taking care of his dad. Roman tells Kendall that Josh pulled out of the deal because Logan’s heart attack scared him.

TV Show Review: Succession (continued)

I haven’t finished watching the show Succession yet, but it is really good so far. I am currently on the second season. I was watching the Golden Globes and saw it had received a lot of awards and nominations, and so I became curious about the show. I was seeing it advertised on commercials for HBO, and so I finally decided to watch it a couple of weeks ago. And to be honest, I am hooked. The acting is so good. I also enjoy satire, so I really love this show. I was kind of nervous to begin watching it because I have a lot of anxiety around vomit scenes in movies and TV, and so I read some trigger warnings for the show and saw there was a vomit scene at the beginning of the first episode. However, because I had read about it beforehand, I knew when it was coming so I was able to close my eyes. And I am glad that my impending fear of this scene didn’t prevent me from watching the full show, because I would have missed out. I also really love the music in the show. I have heard Nicholas Britell’s music in movies, namely Moonlight and Vice, and especially the score for Moonlight was absolutely brilliant. I love the opening theme music for the show. It has these strings and the piano and I also love the percussive beats. It gives the show its theme, which is power, and a very Wall-Street New York City sort of mood (the show does take place in New York City).

I really love the acting in this show. I haven’t seen many of Brian Cox’s previous works, but he really acted the heck out of his role as Logan Roy. Even though the show is a drama, it incorporates elements of humor. And the dialogue is really witty. Greg Hirsch and Tom Wambsgans have an interesting dynamic. Tom is from the Midwest, but he marries into the Roy family and becomes wealthy. Greg, however, is always asking his mom for money and doesn’t have his own place to live. He also has a job being a mascot at a Waystar theme park (Waystar is the media conglomerate that the Roy family owns) but he does marijuana before his gig and then vomits, getting him fired from the park (if anyone is squeamish about vomit scenes, it is around the part where Greg is walking through the theme park in his mascot costume. I closed my eyes around that part.) His mom has him reach out to Logan, who is his great-uncle, and so he visits the Roy family. He is an outsider at first because even though his mom belongs to the Roy family, he sticks out like a sore thumb because he comes to the father’s birthday celebration wearing a baggy jacket and worn shoes and he has a very friendly personality. Tom gangs up on him and makes fun of him for being the new kid to join the party, and he continues to bully Greg. There was one scene in particular where he approaches Greg in the break room in the office building, and finds Greg stuffing cookies in a dog poop bag, and he insults him for wearing the wrong shoes and using a dog poop bag to put his snacks in. Greg is intimidated by Tom but in season 2 I really saw how Tom bottled up so many of his insecurities and that he was also dealing with a lot of his own personal stuff and needed someone to take it out on. There is a scene where Tom is having dinner with Shiv, Roman and Tabitha, and Tom talks about his work in the ATN news department and how he is digitizing its algorithm, and they all are happy for him, but Roman then pokes fun at Tom’s humble roots as a Midwesterner who grew up in the corn fields and how funny his suits look. Shiv also joins in on the fun, but Tom tells her to fuck off because he is really hurt that everyone is making fun of him. Tom wanted to show that he had moved up from being an average person and wanted to show people that he was an upper class person with status.

There is another scene that always sticks out for me, and it’s when Greg and Tom are talking in the office, and Greg says that he got his first paycheck and Tom congratulates him and says they should go out to eat. Greg is super happy, and he suggests that they go to California Pizza Kitchen. Tom snorts and giggles and tells him that California Pizza Kitchen isn’t great food, and Greg tries to reason that they make his favorite dish, cajun chicken linguine, and Tom makes fun of Greg for having what he calls an “undereducated palate,” and he tells Greg that he will take him out and teach him how to be rich. To be honest, my first reaction to Tom dissing California Pizza Kitchen was “WTF?!?” And as I was drafting this blog post and scribbling my thoughts on the first season, I wrote a long paragraph about how I would have loved to go with Greg to eat at California Pizza Kitchen. To be honest, I am lactose intolerant and vegan, so the last time I went to California Pizza Kitchen in 2019 I got a pizza that didn’t have cheese (it was pretty good, not going to lie, and the crust was slammin’. Also, I actually was in California eating at California Pizza Kitchen so it was pretty special and made me feel like a little kid again, which I loved. It was a dream come true.) As an ovo-lacto pescetarian kid, California Pizza Kitchen was my jam, and we went a lot when I was younger. The split pea soup was my favorite, as was the cheese pizza and the ice cream sundae for dessert (oh, and don’t forget the Shirley Temple!) So when Greg suggested California Pizza Kitchen, I was pretty pumped, and I kind of deflated when Tom dissed California Pizza Kitchen. Tom ends up taking Greg out to this fancy restaurant where they eat roast songbirds. Greg is really hesitant to eat the songbirds, but Tom has him put his napkin over his face as they eat. Early on, Greg’s grandpa, Ewan, takes Greg to get noodle soup at a restaurant downtown, and Ewan loads his son up on soup, so by the time Greg gets to the fancy restaurant with Tom, he is full and he tells Tom that his grandpa took him out to dinner already. There is another scene where Tom calls Greg and tells him he has an assignment for him to do over the Thanksgiving break, but Greg is driving in the car with Ewan. Greg tells Tom he is driving with his grandpa so he can’t come into the office to complete the assignment for Tom (Ewan lives in Canada, so Greg has to drive from Canada to New York for the Roy family Thanksgiving) and Tom insults Ewan over speakerphone. Ewan gives Greg a side-eye like “What did he just say to me?!?” and Greg is fumbling over his words, and Tom is telling him to hurry up. Ewan is not as enthused as Greg is to see the Roy family, and there is one scene that evening where Logan is showing off these veteran medals he collects, and Ewan points out that unlike him, Roy never served in the war. Ewan calls out the Roy family for being dishonest and corrupt people. Honestly, I gave the same side-eye that Ewan gave to Greg when Tom said, “Fuck your grandpa, Greg!” Like “Sir, you do not cuss out James Cromwell!” (James Cromwell is the actor who plays Ewan. I knew of him from the movie Babe: Pig in the City. Also, I just found out it’s James Cromwell’s birthday today.)

Greg is really inexperienced, and he wants to be part of the higher ups, but he hasn’t gotten there yet, and he still has to earn Logan Roy’s respect to get to the top. The Roy kids also pick on Greg and ignore him. When they are eating at the restaurant, Ewan warns Greg that he needs to steer clear of this family because they are a bunch of vipers who will eat him alive. However, Greg continues to get involved with the Roy family and curry favor with Logan so he can get out of working in the amusement parks division at Waystar Royco. But when he goes to Hungary with the family for one of Logan’s business deals, he almost gets in trouble because early in the episode he spoke with this biographer named Michelle Pantsil, who was planning to write a biography about the Roy family. Greg is nervous and tells her that he doesn’t want to disclose any information, but Michelle tells him he should have told her when he signed an agreement to meet with her that he wanted to remain an anonymous source. On the plane to Hungary, Logan is scouting out the person who spoke to Pantsil, and Tom is even scared of Logan at this point. During dinner, where everyone is eating the roast boars they hunted and killed, Logan forces everyone to play a cruel game called Boar on the Floor, where he has Greg, Tom and Karl fight each other for sausages and calls them “piggies.” He does this so that someone in the room will confess that they spoke to the biographer. I feel really bad, to be honest, that I initially thought the scene was funny, because when I read an article about the actors’ experiences with this scene, it was humiliating and stressful for all the actors to go through this Boar on the Floor scene. There have been times when I have laughed at someone for going through some problem, and then I go through my own experiences of humiliation and shame and realize, Wow, feeling these things isn’t fun for anyone. I really love reading Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown because she unpacks a lot of these emotional experiences that humans can feel at any time, and it really has expanded my view on emotions beyond just sad, happy, mad, and glad. There is a part in the book where she talks about experiences we have when we fall short, and one of these experiences is the feeling of humiliation, which is defined as “the intensely painful feeling that we’ve been unjustly degraded, ridiculed, or put down and that our identity has been demeaned or devalued.” (Atlas of the Heart, page 147) Reading this entry on humiliation helped me understand why the Boar on the Floor game was so terrible for everyone, and why many viewers found the scene unsettling. The day after Logan forces them to play that game, Tom goes to breakfast and says good morning to some of the people at breakfast, as if he is hoping to leave that experience in the past, but people chuckle when he comes in and the room is really silent because everyone is thinking about how horrible that game was. One of the people there that night, Syd, says good morning to Tom and offers him some breakfast sausage but he quietly declines. Greg is sitting by himself, processing the humiliation he felt after having an old man throw sausages at him and call him a “piggie,” but Tom joins him for breakfast because he, too, is feeling humiliated after what he had to go through. Greg thanks him for not telling Logan about him meeting with Pantsil, and Tom quietly rubs his arm in a quiet gesture of sweetness. Of course, he doesn’t suddenly become nice to Greg after that and he continues to be mean to him, but it was that one scene that showed me that both of them went through that painful experience of humiliation, so now that Tom knew how it felt to be made fun of, he could understand how Greg felt.

TV Show Review: Succession season 1 (some thoughts, part 1)

Written a couple of weeks ago when I first started watching the show. I don’t remember when that was but it was probably the week of January 15th.

So I decided to watch the show Succession after hearing a lot of buzz about it. I wasn’t super hip to the show when it first came out, but I saw it advertised all the time. When I watched the Golden Globe Awards this past Sunday I saw it kept getting all these nominations and awards, and I was like, Wow, this show must be really, really good. And as stressful as these first few episodes have been, it is quite good.

To be honest, I was really nervous to watch the show at first because I was reading the parent’s guide on IMDB and they mentioned that there is a scene where a character vomits. I have emetophobia, so I am pretty sensitive to vomiting scenes in movies. But I read on some other sites that have trigger warnings, such as Does the Dog Die and a tumblr dedicated to emetophobia warnings in movies and TV shows, about the scene, and after a while, even though my heart was racing and I was getting pretty nervous about watching the scene, I thought, It is literally just one scene. I don’t want that to make me not watch the show. And thankfully, I knew that the minute Greg goes to the theme park I could close my eyes and not have to watch the scene, which didn’t last super long.

The first episode, titled “Celebration” opens up with an elderly man waking up and walking through the house. He urinates and has to get the assistance of the lady who is helping him. The show opens with an incredible theme song by Nicholas Britell. It conveyed a lot of the power and prestige that runs throughout the show, and I love how he uses the strings and piano. I really love Nicholas Britell’s music. I remember he composed the music for the movies Moonlight and Vice, both movies I really enjoyed watching. Seeing the footage of the Roy family was also really intriguing, just seeing them grow up in this wealthy lifestyle. I was also excited to see that actor Will Ferrell was one of the producers on the show.

There were a few scenes from the Celebration episode that stuck with me. One is when Greg meets the Roy family for the first time when he goes to Logan’s birthday celebration, and everyone pretty much ignores him. He is the only one not wearing a fancy suit; he is wearing baggy clothes and he stands out. Greg has a really unlucky gig at an amusement park when a bunch of kids jump all over him and he vomits. When he gets fired he has to contact his great-uncle Roy (Greg’s mom is connected to the Roy family) for a job, and when he arrives it’s like the family treats him with a cold distance. There is also another scene where Conner, who is the firstborn of Logan Roy, gets Logan a sourdough starter but Logan calls it “gunk” and dismisses it, which frustrates Conner because he just wanted to get his dad something to make him happy. There is another scene where someone gives Logan a really nice watch as a gift but then when they are playing ball in the park as a family, Logan gives the watch to a family that is nearby. I also saw how Roman’s character was, because Roman promises this kid in the park that he will give him one million dollars if he hits a home run, and when the kid doesn’t win the game, Roman acts cruel and tears up the one million dollar check he was going to make out to him, prompting his sister, Shiv, to knock it off. Throughout the show, Roman comes off as overconfident and thinks that when he becomes the Chief Operating Officer of Waystar Royco he is going to get this prestige but he is unaware that it is going to be much more than a job to him. He also does something wild. He goes into one of the offices, unzips his pants and starts jerking off against the window. He cleans up his mess, but it kind of showed me how this power and influence can go to people’s heads.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: