Tag: tv show

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.

Episode Synopsis: Abbott Elementary, season 3, episode 3

I love Abbott Elementary. It is one of my favorite shows, and I was so excited that season 3 is finally here! I missed the first two episodes, so I need to catch up, but I definitely did not want to miss it. In this episode, Janine and Jacob are trying to find an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter for a student who needs an interpreter, but Janine has to go through several hoops in order to get the interpreter. She has to go through several chains of command, and she has high hopes that she will just get it approved immediately, but that isn’t how it works. Instead, her proposal gets rejected and after going through several people for the approval, she almost gives up. But Ava and Janine’s fellow teachers encourage her to keep going. Meanwhile, a group of Gregory’s students start to come into his classroom and hang out there frequently, even though Gregory wants to spend his free time alone. They come in with issues about their personal lives, and try to ask how they can get girls, and one student passes gas. This causes Gregory a lot of stress because he just wants to spend time alone. I was kind of squealing with joy because there is one moment where the students come in, and Gregory is reading the book Quiet by Susan Cain. If you haven’t read Quiet, I recommend it. As an introvert, I really loved it because it reminded me that there are also a lot of people like me who are introverted and that there is nothing wrong with wanting to recharge in solitude sometimes. Susan Cain talks about how introverts can make valuable leaders and shares her own experiences about moving through the world as an introvert. I remember reading it in high school and feeling, Wow, I am not alone. I feel seen and heard. I feel like Quiet was the perfect book for Gregory because I learned from this episode that he is someone who values his alone time. Gregory finally manages to set some boundaries with the students, and he tells them that they can’t come in his room talking with him about girls, and one of the students asks if he can still pass gas, and Gregory lets him. He has to set this boundary because one of the students asks him for advice about this girl he is dating because he wants to buy her a chain, and Gregory tells him to focus on school and then he and the other guys can focus on girls later. However, the student takes his advice too far and he ends up breaking up with his girlfriend, causing her to break down in tears and causing Melissa to ask Gregory what on Earth he did to make the young woman cry. Gregory realizes that the student took it too literally, and so he has to establish boundaries so that the kids aren’t coming in trying to get him to always give advice about their relationship problems. Mr. Johnson, the custodian, comes into Gregory’s classroom when he is trying to have some alone time, and Gregory tells him he is reluctant that his students think he is the “cool teacher.” Mr. Johnson busts up laughing because he thinks Gregory is anything but the “cool teacher,” and Melissa comes in trying to get a break, and Gregory admits that he is being called “the cool teacher,” and like Mr. Johnson, Melissa laughs because she can’t believe Gregory would be called “the cool teacher.”

Tariq, Janine’s ex-boyfriend, comes back into the picture because there is a student at Abbott named Nick, and Nick’s mom is dating Tariq. Earlier in seasons 1 and 2, Tariq was Janine’s boyfriend, and they had a very codependent relationship in which Janine took responsibility for his mistakes and his mess, and he depended on her to always take care of him. (This reminds me of myself, because I tend to be dependent a little too much on others and get comfortable with depending on them, when I can just do the thing myself. But that’s for another blog post.) Janine breaks up with him because he is just a really not-great boyfriend, and she is moving on with her life and moving up in her career. But when he comes back in this episode, it is not a pleasant experience for Janine, especially when he rubs it in her face that he has a new girlfriend. Tariq learns to respect his girlfriend’s son by calling him the name he prefers. Barbara, who is a no-nonsense teacher and has taught at Abbott for many years, advises him to not call Nick “Tariq, Jr.” or “T.J.” because Nick hates it, and because Nick is his real name. Tariq decides to do better (a little bit better, anyway) and call Nick by his preferred name.

Honestly, I cannot wait to watch the next episode of Abbott Elementary.

TV review: The Crown, Season 1 Episode 8, “Pride and Joy”

The episode opens with the Queen Mother (played by Victoria Hamilton) staring in her bedroom mirror as she prepares for the funeral of her husband, King George VI. Everyone at the funeral is wearing somber black clothes. Before they attend the funeral, Princess Margaret argues that she was her father’s favorite, not Elizabeth, but Elizabeth asserts she was his favorite even though the mom says he didn’t choose favorites when it came to both of them. They are at the funeral and Elizabeth reads about the unveiling of the statue of the king and the Queen Mother, overcome by emotion, walks over quietly to the car and drives away, quietly sobbing. Queen Elizabeth is preparing to travel to newly independent countries that are part of the British Commonwealth, but officials think Elizabeth should cancel them due to the independence demonstrations people have been holding. Meanwhile, the Queen Mother travels to Scotland to stay with the Vyners, some family friends of hers. Before she goes, she tells Elizabeth to back off of Margaret and to stop giving her such a hard time. It has been two years since Peter, Margaret’s husband, got sent to Brussels and was separated from Princess Margaret (their engagement created scandal since Peter divorced his wife after she found out he was having an affair with Margaret). Margaret is still angry with Elizabeth for arranging for Peter to be sent to Brussels. The Queen Mother is sad and nostalgic because her daughters are grown up and they seem to not need her. However, she finds she is much needed later on in the episode.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on the plane ride to Bermuda, tells Elizabeth to show herself as Queen Elizabeth, not Elizabeth Windsor. She cannot show people the ups and downs of being queen, she cannot complain about her job, she needs to pretty much be perfect at what she does and make it seem like the monarchy is the ideal everyone needs to strive for. There is also this idea of “preserving” the British Empire because Britain is worried that by becoming independent these countries will have their own autonomy and won’t need to depend on Britain. Britain believes if that were to happen, they would lose their control over these countries and how they are run. There is a beautiful scene where the Queen Mother and the Vyners are riding the horses on the beach in Scotland, and then at dinner the Queen Mother mourns the loss of her husband and in a way she is losing her daughters, too, because they are older and are no longer little kids anymore. Elizabeth lands in Bermuda and makes a speech there. Meanwhile, Martin gives Princess Margaret a speech to read at the ambassador’s reception in London. Margaret tells Martin she wants to change some words of the speech around and make it sound more fun, but because she is deputizing for the Queen, she is supposed to just read what they wrote for her to read. However, Margaret refuses to listen and goes so far as to put Elizabeth’s tiara on her head because she wants to be in Elizabeth’s shoes and have the spotlight on her just for once. She is supposed to be deputizing for her sister but instead she goes completely off script and pokes jokes at her sister’s trip and then calls out some of the ambassadors, making jokes about them. Martin is just standing in the back of the room, freaking out, like “Girl what the fuck.” She honestly should have done a standup bit with Mrs. Maisel because I felt like in that moment she channeled Mrs. Maisel energy (Miriam Maisel is a female comedian on the show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel).

However, that shit lands Margaret in the papers. Elizabeth sees it and thinks of course, Oh no she didn’t, she is stealing my spotlight. Elizabeth, after traveling to the Caribbean, must go to 57 Australian towns in just 58 days. Philip opposes it because he knows it will be a lot of travel and they will get exhausted. But Elizabeth refuses to call off the trip.

Meanwhile, back in Scotland, the Vyners convince the Queen Mother to acquire property there and so they take her to the Castle of Mey, where Captain Imbert-Terry lives. Meanwhile, Elizabeth has a doctor’s appointment because she has a spasm in her face muscles. The doctor thinks she might be smiling too much so she lets him inject some liquid in her cheek to cure the spasm (honestly, the needle freaked me out a bit because needles today are smaller compared to back then.) Peter sees a movie and then sees Margaret talking to people working in a coal mine and sharing her honest opinions on the working conditions there. Martin is standing right next to her, looking at her like, Girl, watch yourself, but then one of the reporters asks Margaret if she misses Peter and she says of course, but then when asked if she misses her sister Elizabeth, she says not really. Peter later tells her she needs to check herself and not say shit like that on air because it could jeopardize their relationship. Back in their hotel room, Philip is smoking and Elizabeth takes away his cigarettes because her father smoked and she doesn’t want her family to start smoking. Elizabeth and Philip have a row because Elizabeth is spending all this time traveling and Philip thinks it’s all a joke and they can’t just spend one moment together as husband and wife. When Philip insults her further, Elizabeth attacks him and chases him around the room, breaking her shot glass.

Unfortunately paparazzi catch them fighting and at first Philip goes out to investigate but Elizabeth says she will go out and do it. She talks briefly with the men filming her and the guy filming takes out the film out of the camera and gives it to her to keep rather than deciding to broadcast it for everyone to see. He did the right thing. Elizabeth soon gives Margaret a talking-to and basically tells her that people came to hear the Crown, not Princess Margaret cracking jokes. Finally, the guy who sells the Queen Mother the house finds out she is the Queen Mother, but she didn’t tell him earlier because everyone who meets her starts treating her like a god and not as a human being. Unfortunately her vacation is interrupted and she has to go back to London to sort stuff out with Margaret after Margaret’s fiasco at the ambassador’s meeting. Meanwhile, there are still security concerns with Elizabeth going to Gibraltar, including death threats. Philip opposes her going but Elizabeth refuses to give in. She says she knows there are better leaders there but she is the Queen so therefore she has to go on the trip to see the people of Gibraltar. Elizabeth finally has Margaret meet her in her study room and when they met up I thought, Oh it’s on, because obviously Princess Margaret is pissed her sister is stealing back her brief moment of spotlight. Elizabeth tells Margaret that the monarchy, not the monarch, should shine. Margaret confesses she feels overshadowed by her sister and wonders why Elizabeth has to be the perfect sister while she, Margaret, stands in her shadow. Finally the Queen Mother gets to return to Scotland after things are settled with Margaret.

It’s only the first season and already I am starting to see similarities between Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret’s relationship and Mary and Edith’s sister relationship in Downton Abbey. Like Elizabeth, Mary is the older sister and thus she becomes responsible for keeping the family together, and like Princess Margaret, Edith just wants to feel valued and not overshadowed by her older sister. Mary has all this pressure on her to find a husband because she is the oldest of the three Grantham sisters, and when Edith can’t find anyone Mary constantly pokes fun at that. Edith also pokes fun at Mary when the Duke of Crowborough, who is supposed to be engaged to Mary, ends up leaving Downton. Mary digs at her by telling her that at least she’s not a fish with no bait like Edith. Edith and Mary continue to have this intense sibling rivalry with one another, but it becomes clearer that Edith really just wants to be happy herself and seeing Mary get all this attention to find someone makes her feel like she has no direction or purpose in life. Even when Edith does find love, it is challenging because the first guy calls off their marriage at the altar and the second guy goes missing and is killed, leaving her pregnant and then having to raise his child on her own. In The Crown, now that Elizabeth is Queen, she and Margaret don’t have the same relationship they did before, and everything they do they have to make careful decisions about so that they don’t cause scandal for the monarchy. When Margaret wants to do what she wants, Elizabeth tells her she either cannot or must ask for permission to do so. This makes Margaret feel constrained and she is left feeling like her sister doesn’t trust her to live her own life and make her own decisions.