Tag: tv shows

TV Review: Season 6, part 2 of The Crown

Well, it’s official. I finally finished watching the last part of the last season of The Crown, a biographical drama on Netflix depicting the life of the late Queen Elizabeth II. This later season covers some crucial turning points in the lives of the people in the royal family. In episode 8, “Ritz,” Margaret, Elizabeth’s younger sister, has to confront serious health issues. She suffers a serious stroke while partying with her friends. She is reciting a poem while smoking a Chesterfield cigarette, and then she loses consciousness, and she hears loud ringing in her ears. Before she knows it, she has collapsed. She gets serious medical attention, and the doctors tell her she has to make serious changes to her lifestyle, one of which is that she cannot smoke any more cigarettes or drink alcohol. In the earlier seasons, Margaret is seen in just about every scene smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of alcohol. Even after she gets a lung operation (the same one that her father, King George, underwent because he, too, smoked a lot), she continues to smoke. However, as she gets older, the doctors tell her that she cannot continue smoking and drinking anymore because they could be triggering her strokes. This is really painful for Margaret, and she starts to have a “screw-it” mentality, thinking, “Well, I’m going to die anyway.” After she gets her first stroke, she is shown having to learn how to speak and walk again, and the staff are shown dumping her many bottles of whiskey and her Chesterfield cigarettes down the toilet. While on vacation with her longtime friend, Ann, she still smokes cigarettes and drinks alcohol, and while in the shower, she experiences the ringing in her ears and then collapses. She turns on the hot water and collapses, leaving her with serious burns on her feet. Elizabeth is worried about Margaret’s health, but Margaret tells her that it doesn’t matter anymore and that she is going to die anyway, so she might as well do what she wants. Margaret’s birthday is coming up, and she wants to celebrate her birthday at The Ritz. However, Elizabeth doesn’t want anyone to know about her time at The Ritz because she is still a public figure and anything she reveals about her past could be used against her, so when Margaret tries to bring it up at her birthday celebration, Elizabeth cuts her off and gives a moving speech about her relationship with Margaret. There is a flashback to May 8, 1945, to when Margaret and Elizabeth are looking out the window and seeing everyone celebrating Victory Day in the streets because World War II has ended and the Allied Powers, which included Britain, won. Margaret and Elizabeth leave Buckingham Palace, which they are not supposed to do, and go to a hotel in London called The Ritz. Elizabeth thinks they shouldn’t be doing this because it’s against the rules, but Margaret just wants to party and have a good time. An African American soldier leads Elizabeth downstairs to a jazz club where people are partying and dancing. Elizabeth dances with the soldier and has a lot of fun, and Margaret and her friends go downstairs to find Elizabeth dancing and so they join in. They walk back together to Buckingham Palace the next day. This memory is significant because so much has changed between Margaret and Elizabeth since Elizabeth became Queen. Before becoming queen, Margaret and Elizabeth were sisters having fun and running around the palace. But there is one scene in one of the seasons that sets up the tension between Elizabeth and Margaret as adults. Since she is firstborn, Elizabeth faces a lot more pressure to keep herself together, and her father, the king, trains her in government and politics because she is destined to become queen when he passes away. Elizabeth feels a lot of pressure, especially since she is reserved while Margaret is outgoing. Margaret tells her that she could be queen because she likes to boss people around, but when Tommy Lascelles, the private secretary in the palace, hears of this, he immediately tells Margaret that she is not fit to be queen and that Elizabeth is. When Elizabeth becomes queen, she begins to distance herself from Margaret. Margaret wants to do what she wants, including marrying Peter Townsend, who she has an affair with. However, Elizabeth can’t let Margaret do what she wants anymore since there are laws and structures that end up prohibiting Margaret from marrying Peter. Peter ends up getting kicked out of the palace and has to spend time abroad away from Margaret, and Peter ends up marrying someone else, leaving Margaret feeling frustrated and resentful towards Elizabeth. Even as they become adults, Margaret asks for work to do, but Elizabeth can’t just give her a job because she is under a lot of restrictions as well about what she can and cannot do as queen. So, Margaret has to find work to do, and while seeking therapy for her mental health, she ends up finding out about two cousins who were cast out by the royal family for having mental illness and tracks them down. Honestly, I admire Margaret in the show for doing this because quite a few characters in the show struggle with their mental health, yet it’s seen as taboo to discuss it. In season 4, Princess Diana suffers from an eating disorder but no one in the royal family asks if she is doing okay. They just think she is acting out or sulking, but in reality, she is in a terrible unhappy marriage with a man who has been unfaithful to her, and not only that, but Camilla, the woman he is having an affair with, relishes in manipulating the young Diana into feeling worse about herself.

Season 6, part 2, shows how Diana’s sons, William and Harry, grapple with the death of their mother, Princess Diana, and their strained relationship with their dad, Charles. William faces a lot of pressure because he is the older of the two siblings, and as the season continues, Harry and William’s relationship grows increasingly tense. William argues that he faces a lot more pressure than Harry in the public eye, and Harry becomes envious that William is seen as the perfect child while he, Harry, is seen as the redundant child, the spare. (Honestly, after watching this season, I want to read Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare.) In a later episode, Harry and William go to a party that is themed “Colonials and Natives.” William dresses up as a lion, while Harry decides to wear a Nazi uniform with a swastika on the armband. At first, it seems like no one notices, but two students end up taking a picture of Harry’s Nazi uniform and share it with the press, and the newspapers eat this up. Obviously, the royal family isn’t happy to know that Harry did this when they read the morning papers the next day, and Harry feels a lot of humiliation and anger after finding out that someone took a photo of him wearing the uniform and sent it to the press. While meeting with the Queen, Prime Minister Tony Blair tries to make it seem like it was no big deal, and that Harry was just being a teenage boy who didn’t know any better, but Queen Elizabeth tells him that Harry did this two weeks before Buckingham Palace was going to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, so they can’t just pretend like it was no big deal. This made me think of when photos and videos of Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau wearing blackface resurfaced, and Trudeau addressed it and apologized because at the time he didn’t know it was offensive. Harry also said that he regretted wearing that Nazi uniform, and later on decided to meet with a rabbi and get educated on the Holocaust. There have been times when I have called people out on stuff that was racist, sexist or homophobic. However, there have definitely been times when I have said something that was uninformed or ignorant myself, and I had to apologize and then educate myself, but I’ve grown in the process of doing this. One time, a few years ago, I made an offensive joke, and someone told me “Hey, that’s offensive,” and at first, I took it personally, but then I realized that what I said was in fact ignorant and so now I don’t tell that joke anymore because I understand that it was hurtful.

Season 6 also shows William’s relationship with Catherine, or Kate, Middleton. Kate’s mother and Kate are walking through London, when they spot Princess Diana and her son, William, signing autographs and giving out magazines to adoring fans. Catherine and her mother approach Diana and William, and Catherine is starstruck and falls in love with William. Back home, she is shown sitting in bed with magazines splashed with William’s handsome face, and her mother tells her that she can find a way so that Kate will end up with William. Kate doesn’t believe it’s possible, but as the show progresses, her mother basically gets her to stalk William. Kate’s mom listens to the radio to figure out where William is staying and where he is going to college. She finds out that William is taking a gap year and so she sends Kate on the same gap year. She finds out that William is going to St. Andrews, so she sends Kate there, too. William falls in love with Kate, even though he is dating another girl named Lola. Lola, like William is wealthy, while Kate works at a restaurant to support herself, so it seems like she doesn’t have a chance at first. However, when William finds out that Kate borrowed the books for the art class they have together, he approaches her and they talk about their memories of the gap year program. They are having a great conversation, but then Lola comes along and feels disrespected that William is flirting with Kate. When a girl asks William for an autograph, he snaps at her to go away. Both Kate and Lola think he was being rude, but then he tells them that they don’t know what it’s like being ogled all the time and constantly having girls harass him for autographs. However, as young women in a sexist society, they deal with being ogled all the time, so they both ditch him. William dealing with the fame and being good-looking reminded me of this guy who worked at Target named Alex. In 2014, a young woman snapped a photo of a sixteen-year-old cashier working at Target named Alex because he was good-looking, and the photo went viral on social media. Alex didn’t know that someone had snapped a photo of him, but pretty soon he achieved this Internet fame and he found it overwhelming, with news agencies camping outside his home and his phone blowing up with notifications and messages. He had to leave his high school and had to be homeschooled due to all the unwanted attention he was getting. He said he preferred a private life away from the spotlight, and I feel that William in The Crown was like Alex from Target because he didn’t want all this publicity. He wanted to be private about his life, but everywhere he went, even in college, girls kept approaching him for autographs and he had very little to no privacy, to the point where a young woman’s mother (i.e. Kate’s mom) is tracking his whereabouts so that her daughter can achieve her dream of being William’s girlfriend. There is one scene where William and his bodyguard are getting groceries, and no one else is around. That is one of the few scenes (probably the only scene, actually) where William is in a public place and doesn’t have to deal with screaming girls and camera-happy paparazzi. In an earlier episode, he gets letters from his schoolmates letting him know to reach out to them if he needs anything, but then he gets another bag of letters from mostly girls around the world. Some are sympathetic, but most of the letters are about how cute and sexy William is. It’s a lot of pressure for William to deal with because he is still grieving the loss of his mom and juggling schoolwork and extracurricular activities, and he just wants to have that time to himself to deal with his grief, not attend all of these engagements and deal with fame.

The last episode is about Queen Elizabeth planning for her funeral in the future. She is overwhelmed at first that Prince Philip wants her to have this big celebration at her funeral because he himself wants to have a lively celebration after his death. She wants a quiet funeral at Balmoral with little noise. At the same time, she and her cabinet are arranging for her funeral in the future, Charles asks her permission to marry Camilla. The Queen wants to say yes, but the archbishops at the various churches approach her and say that it’s not as simple as giving her son her blessing because both Camilla and Charles are divorcees, and they had an affair while they were both married to other people. Their only option is to have a public ceremony where Camilla and Charles confess their “sins” (aka the fact that they had an affair together). Camilla and Charles end up marrying and many people celebrate the wedding.

The Queen also deals with an existential dilemma where she is questioning whether she should step down from her responsibilities as queen and find a successor. There are a few scenes in the last episode where she talks with her past versions of herself (played by Claire Foy, who was in seasons 1 and 2, and Olivia Colman, who was in seasons 3 and 4.) Olivia Colman’s version of Elizabeth tells the 80-year-old version (played by Imelda Staunton), that she should find someone to take her place because other countries have done it before, such as Luxembourg. The 80-year-old version of Elizabeth rejects this idea that she should find a successor, but word goes around that the Queen is finding a successor, and because Charles is firstborn, he is in line to be king when she passes away. Charles is super excited about this, and word gets around that Elizabeth is going to announce his succession to the throne. However, the younger version of Elizabeth (played by Claire Foy) appears and tells 80-year-old Elizabeth that she needs to continue to run things because she has been doing this job, being the Queen, for several decades and no one else has the kind of job experience she has gone through. So, when Charles and Camilla are at their wedding celebration, they think Elizabeth is going to announce Charles becoming king after she dies, but she doesn’t address it and only gives a short speech about how proud she is of Charles and Camilla getting married. Charles is very disappointed that she didn’t make the announcement, but by then she doesn’t have time to chit chat. Once she makes her speech, she leaves the party and goes to pray in a private place in the church away from all the noise. I thought it was so cool how they brought out all three Elizabeths to show how much time has passed from the time Elizabeth became Queen to when she was 80 years old. Also, all three actresses were excellent in their roles as Queen Elizabeth, and they’re great actresses in general. My family and I watched Women Talking, a very intense film about a community of female Mennonites who escape sexual abuse in the male-dominated colony they have spent years in. Claire Foy played one of the women in the movie and she was absolutely incredible. Honestly, that film still gives me chills. I really loved Olivia Colman in The Favourite, which is a movie in which she plays another British queen, this time Queen Anne. The raw energy she brought to that role was incredible, and I was so happy when she won that Academy Award at the 91st Academy Awards for Best Actress. I also saw her in some supporting roles in The Lobster and Fleabag. In Fleabag she plays the main character’s godmother, and in The Lobster, she plays a hotel manager who doesn’t elicit any emotion when telling Colin Farrell’s character that he must find a partner in 45 days, or else he will be transformed into an animal of his choice. It was a very dark and disturbing movie, and by the end I’m pretty sure I had nightmares. But as a single person I found this movie very relatable at times, even though it’s a dystopian movie. And Imelda Staunton made a really good Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I will always remember her pink checkered suits, her smug smile as she enforced all these draconian policies at Hogwarts, the annoying way she said “Hem-hem” whenever she wanted to make a point, the torture she put Harry through when she forced him to write “I must not tell lies,” and the scene where she gets swept away by large winged horses called thestrals while Harry tells her “I’m sorry Umbridge…I must not tell lies,” turning the tables after the disrespect and pain she put that young wizard through. Yep, I will remember all these things because Imelda played her so darn well.

7 Shows I Really Love

I remember when I was younger, my parents would limit my time watching TV to weekends. During the week, we were focused on school, so we weren’t allowed to watch TV. I think this helped immensely. I’m guessing the only exception to the no-TV rule was Oprah Winfrey’s show on ABC on weekdays. Oprah would often talk about important topics such as nutrition, getting out of debt and managing finances, and various disturbing life experiences, such as the woman who went to an ATM at night and had to beat up a man who assaulted her and claimed to be her husband. I loved a lot of Arthur and Between the Lions, and as I’ve grown older, I’m becoming more addicted to YouTube, which is technically TV to me. I am also starting to binge-watch a lot of shows. I always get this heavy feeling when a show is over, but then I understand that these people need to move on in their careers and do other stuff. These are a few of the TV shows I have binge-watched these past few years:

  1. Blackish: This was a really good show. I was sad when it ended but also understood that the actors needed to move on and do other things. It’s about a middle-class African American family living in Los Angeles who are trying to navigate living in a predominantly white neighborhood. Dre is the father of four (and later five) kids: twins Jack and Diane, his teenage son, Junior, his teenage daughter, Zoey, and his baby son, Devante. Dre’s parents, Pops and Ruby, live together with the family and they are hilarious. The show has some funny moments but also brings up serious issues, like one episode where Dre and his coworkers debated about the 2016 election and another where they are addressing police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Dre also works as the only Black person in his department (until Wanda Sykes pops in some of the episodes to call out Stevens and Lido on their shit. Those moments were priceless.) so he has to navigate a lot of microaggressions and ignorance from his white coworkers and boss. I think one of my favorite episodes was “The Nod,” in which Dre and Pops teach Junior the importance of nodding to another Black person as a form of acknowledgement.
  2. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. At first, I didn’t know if I would be interested in it, but then I watched the first episode, and the minute Midge got onstage and started drunkenly talking about her husband having an affair with his secretary, flashed her breasts and got arrested, I was hooked. What I love about this show is that it showed me that failure is necessary for success. Midge fails many times during her standup career, but she learns what works and doesn’t and becomes a successful comedian through lots of trial and error. She also stays true to herself and remains down-to-earth, even when society tells her that she needs to fit their expectations. I remember one episode that stuck with me was when Midge meets this famous comedian named Sophie Lennon. Sophie has this gimmick she does where she pretends to be working class and from Queens, but in real life Sophie lives in a mansion and is very wealthy, and also incredibly pretentious. She tells Midge that to survive the competitive male-dominated world of comedy, she needs a gimmick and can’t be true to herself, but Midge proves her wrong because even though people don’t warm up to her at first, they eventually do, and they realize that she is in fact very funny.
  3. Downton Abbey. I remember seeing my mother watch this show a lot in May 2022 because it was going off of Netflix. I didn’t understand what the big deal was at first, other than that I kept hearing people talking about it. When in my cello lesson, my music teacher referenced the mood that a piece was trying to convey as being like Downton Abbey. The minute I watched the show, though, I could see why people liked it so much. Each character has such an interesting and rich backstory, and it wasn’t just about the wealthy Crawley and Grantham family but also about the butlers, the footmen and the chambermaids who work for them every day. At the time, I developed a crush on the actor who plays Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier). I got really attracted to his dark hair and tall stature, and so I kept looking up interviews about him because I thought he was really cute. Also the music was incredible; I really love the music during the scene where Mary and Matthew fall in love in the rain (the song playing is called “Such Good Luck”). I also love the friendship between Isobel and the Dowager Countess, and the competition between Denker and Spratt.
  4. Ted Lasso. I am so glad I got the Apple TV as a gift because watching Ted Lasso was a Godsend. Also, the same actor who plays Spratt in Downton Abbey is the same actor who plays Leslie Higgins in Ted Lasso (Jeremy Swift). I really love Ro Kent’s character. If you haven’t seen Ted Lasso, it’s about an American football coach named Ted who goes to England to coach a football league called AFC Richmond, despite not having any prior experience coaching UK football. He encounters a lot of obstacles when he first starts coaching, to the point where everyone is flipping him the bird and shouting at him a certain six-letter word (hint: it rhymes with “banker”), but over time people learn to appreciate his dedication to AFC Richmond. I also love the show because it addresses the importance of getting help when you struggle with your mental health. Ted suffers from panic attacks, and at first, he is reluctant to get help, even when Dr. Fieldstone keeps hinting to him that he may need to make an appointment to see her, and he laughs it off like it’s no big deal. But he realizes over the course of the show that even as he is taking care of and encouraging others, he needs to take care of himself, too. As someone who has been in a dark place with my mental health, I learned the hard way that toughing out a depressive episode or a nervous breakdown isn’t a great (or safe) thing to do in the long run, and delaying getting the help you need only makes the situation worse. There have been many times when I thought, I don’t need therapy, I’m fine! I can figure this shit out on my own! Or when I was first referred to a psychiatrist to get on medication, I freaked out and ended my therapy appointments. I often waited until I had gone through a crisis, until I was on the very edge, to ask for professional help, and honestly looking back, I would have trusted my gut sooner when it told me that all those periods of isolation and withdrawal from others, thoughts of death, lack of energy and appetite fluctuations, and loss of interest in hobbies and activities were probably a sign of something more intense than just “I’m sad.” I think that is why watching Ted Lasso encouraged me because it shows that seeking professional help and being honest about what you’re going through with other people can be a scary experience, especially because there can still be stigma around getting help, but it’s necessary for healing from these painful experiences. Which brings me to my next pick…
  5. Shrinking: After watching Ted Lasso I was so excited to find out that Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent on the show, was on the writer’s team for Shrinking. Shrinking is another Apple TV show and it’s about a therapist named Jimmy who is grieving the death of his wife, Tia, and figuring out how to show up for his patients in the best way. He also has a strained relationship with his teenage daughter, Alice, who is also grieving the death of her mom. His colleagues, Paul and Gaby, help him navigate through his grief even when going through their own challenges as therapists. However, they also are not happy when he goes against the grain and decides to get more involved in his patients’ personal lives by spending time with them. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it backfires, but Jimmy develops genuine connections with his patients, namely a man named Sean, who keeps getting into fights and suffers from anger management issues. The writing of this show is absolutely brilliant, and each character has a unique personality. It also reminded me that therapists aren’t just therapists; at the end of the day, they are human beings with their own problems and worries. Honestly, after watching this show and other shows about therapy, I have more appreciation for the work that therapists have to do. Listening and helping people navigate complex issues such as trauma, grief, sexuality, and relationships isn’t easy and compassion fatigue is real, so that’s why I appreciate the work therapists do.
  6. Bridgerton. I kept hearing about this show a lot, and I finally decided I wanted to watch it to see what all the buzz was about. I admit, I have only read the first couple of books in the novel series, but I am anticipating season 3 of the show. I thought it was cool that Shonda Rimes was able to create this world of Bridgerton. It is the most racially diverse period drama I have seen in a while. Also, I really love it because the actress who plays Eloise Bridgerton is a Buddhist like me. She has this really awesome interview on Shondaland about how she used her practice of Nichiren Buddhism to overcome her challenges with mental health and become an actress. The interview really encouraged me.
  7. Succession. I am going to be honest, this was one of the more difficult series to get through. It seemed on the surface like a bunch of mean-spirited backstabbing and other shenanigans, but I love satire and dark comedy and this show is definitely a dark comedy. It’s about a multimillion-dollar media family named the Roys who argue with their dad, Logan, about who will succeed him as CEO if Logan becomes incapacitated or passes away. While none of the characters are necessarily great people, the show gives a glimpse into their humanity and each actor really brings the character to life. I started watching it after the show got numerous awards at the Emmys, Golden Globes and SAG-AFTRA awards. I wanted to see what the buzz was about, and at first I couldn’t get into the pilot episode, but as I watched the intrigues and the arguments and the suspense unfold, I couldn’t stop watching the show. I was also cooped up indoors during the time I watched it, and wasn’t going out much, so I had a perfect excuse to binge-watch the show. If I could have done it differently, though, I probably would have watched the show over a series of weeks. It’s emotionally intense, especially towards the end (no spoilers, I promise), so by the end I was pretty exhausted. I think the most interesting character relationship dynamic is between Tom and Greg, to be honest. Tom acts like this super confident person, but he treats Greg like a subordinate, and Greg also lacks self-confidence so he later on in the show becomes a pretty corrupt character. It kind of reminded me of when Nate Shelley in Ted Lasso became egotistical and tore up Ted’s Believe sign. He was a sweet character at the beginning, but he never got his dad’s approval, so he got upset and took it out on Ted. However, Nate redeems himself eventually after picking up an old hobby he loved. Greg is sweet and naïve at the beginning, but even he is trying to gain Logan’s approval and a taste of power at Waystar- Royco and he ends up following in Tom’s footsteps to chase after that power. I did fall in love with Greg’s affinity for California Pizza Kitchen in season 1, though. The music by Nicholas Britell in this show is absolutely incredible, too. The theme always gives me goosebumps because it’s so powerful. It’s this genius blend of hip-hop and classical and conveys the power and ambition that the Roy family and the other characters crave throughout the show. The writing is also really good.

TV Show Review: Shrinking, episodes 1-2

I just started watching the Apple TV show Shrinking, and it is really good so far. I think one of my relatives recommended it to me, and I was excited that Brett Goldstein, who starred as Roy Kent in Ted Lasso, was a writer on Shrinking, so I partly wanted to watch the show because of that.

The show is about a therapist named Jimmy (played by Jason Segel) who is grieving the death of his wife and a strained relationship with his daughter, Alice. He is trying his best as a therapist, but he is experiencing serious burnout, and it seems like his advice doesn’t get through to them, so he decides to tell them honestly what he thinks they should do. He himself is struggling with his mental health, and in the first episode we see him drinking and his neighbor has to check on him to make sure he is alright. Alice doesn’t want to talk to him, and Jimmy doesn’t know how to have a better relationship with her. His colleagues, Paul and Gaby, are doing their best to support him but also, they are tired of him bringing his personal problems to his professional life, and Paul tells him he needs to stop bringing up his own problems because that is not what he is supposed to do as a therapist. Jimmy often gives out advice that seems promising at first but gets him in a lot of trouble. One of his patients, Grace, constantly talks about how her boyfriend talks down to her but thinks her breasts are great, and Jimmy finally gets fed up and tells Grace that her boyfriend is emotionally abusive, and she needs to leave him. Grace is taken aback but she accepts his advice, and she leaves her boyfriend and moves in with her sister. At first, I thought that was the end of it, but then when at Alice’s soccer game, Grace’s ex-boyfriend approaches Jimmy and attempts to beat him up for telling his girlfriend to leave him. Sean, who is one of Jimmy’s patients, ends up beating the shit out of Grace’s ex-boyfriend, but then the police arrest him, and he ends up in jail.

I thought Sean and Jimmy’s patient-therapist relationship was interesting. Sean has gotten in a lot of trouble over many years for getting into fights and beating people up badly. The first few visits don’t go well. Jimmy has to take a phone call during the session, and Sean ends up leaving. But then Jimmy takes Sean to a boxing club so that Sean can work out his anger there, and Sean ends up being pummeled badly by the other boxers. However, Sean had a moment where he did overcome his anger. While walking down the street, someone bumped into him and threatened him, and Sean didn’t actually beat him up. He just imagined beating him up and then he walked away from the guy. However, he ends up beating up Grace’s ex-boyfriend to defend Jimmy. This reminded me that therapy isn’t a one-and-done thing. It’s a process and it requires a lot of honest self-reflection. I remember going to therapy for the first time in my junior year of college, and it wasn’t a great experience, so I gave up on going to therapy. What that experience taught me, though, is that you can’t give up. Even if the therapist isn’t a good fit, keep searching. When I got back to my second semester of that year, I really thought I could tough it out and just keep the depression and anxiety to myself, but it was really, really hard and I ended up suffering in silence. I’m glad I had chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo during that time because man, I was about to lose it. After moving back home, I finally got therapy after dealing with a pretty awful depressive episode, and it really helped. It wasn’t an overnight thing where I changed my behavior and thinking patterns in one go; it has taken a long time, and it is still an ongoing process. Seeing therapy helped me learn how to deal with stressful situations at work. When I left my job in June 2022, seeing a therapist helped me deal with the stress of finding a new job. Seeing a therapist now is really helping. Again, it’s not an overnight magic cure, but I have found therapy a helpful tool to help me work through these personal issues that I had been dealing with. It’s easy for me to walk around and pretend like I’m okay, and to keep my problems to myself, but it’s helpful to have a professional to talk to so that I don’t just have to keep these problems to myself. There were periods where I felt, Oh, I’m better, I don’t need therapy, but then some stressful thing would happen, and I would find myself not being able to navigate it, so contacting a therapist has been helpful.

I really appreciate the scene where Alice goes over to Paul’s instead of going out drinking with the girls at school. During gym class, Alice’s classmate invites her over for drinks under the bridge, where a bunch of teenage girls get drunk under a bridge. Alice doesn’t want to go, but she doesn’t know what else to do, especially because she can’t really relate to the girls at school. At first, Jimmy wants to eat dinner with Alice, but she says she has plans that evening, and he feels hurt. But then his friend asks him out to pickleball that evening and so Jimmy accepts his invitation. Alice picks up chicken sandwiches and goes home to eat dinner with Jimmy, but Jimmy tells her he is going out to play pickleball. At first, I thought Alice was going to decide to go to drinks under the bridge because she wasn’t going to get to spend time with her dad, but then she ends up going to Paul’s and they eat the sandwiches and watch TV together. This scene reminded me this movie I saw called The Edge of Seventeen because in the movie, Nadine doesn’t relate to kids her age and like Alice, she is grieving the death of a parent (Nadine’s father died of a heart attack when she was 13) and also doesn’t have any true genuine friends, so she often eats lunch with her history teacher, Mr. Bruner. Nadine has depression and often feels alone, but Mr. Bruner ends up being someone she can trust. He doesn’t tell her to cheer up or get over her depression, but instead gives her a space where she can talk about what she is going through. He also refuses to bullshit her and often gives her honest advice, even if it’s not the advice she wants to hear. Like when she is telling him she is an “old soul” and doesn’t relate to her peers, who seem to be focused on social media and acting silly, Mr. Bruner tells her that maybe no one likes her. Growing up I found myself relating to Nadine a lot because I usually gravitated towards older people because I struggled to relate to my peers, but I also began to realize that I wasn’t the only 20-something dealing with insecurities. Once I opened up to people about what I was going through, I found a lot of other young people who were struggling with depression, anxiety, insecurities, loneliness and other issues. It is so easy for me to think I’m the only one going through problems and to be honest, it’s still hard for me to open up about what I am going through with people because I feel a lot of shame and guilt and worry people are going to judge me, but I’ve learned that problems are just a part of life and that sometimes talking them out with a trusted friend helps. It may not take lots and lots of friends to form a genuine connection with someone. Sometimes you just need that one person in your life who you can trust and lean on.

Abbott Elementary, season 3: episode 4 (“Smoking”)

Yesterday I couldn’t get enough of Abbott Elementary, so after catching up on episode 1 (“Career Day”) I watched the latest episode, “Smoking.” In this episode, a student at Abbott is caught smoking, which caused the fire alarms at the school to go off. Apparently, there is not a no-smoking rule at Abbott. The teachers end up having a discussion about drugs in the lounge. Jacob says that smoking is bad, but Janine says he can’t say that because he vapes. Jacob argues that vaping is not as bad as smoking, and then he tells everyone that Janine does weed. Janine admits that she smokes it every night and that she needs it to function. Ava admits that she does hookah, Gregory admits he has an occasional protein-bar edible, and when Barbara tells them they need to give up the sin of taking these drugs, Melissa laughs and says that Barbara drinks alcohol. Mr. Johnson tries to chime in, but Janine sees a student has been taping the whole discussion with his phone, and the teachers confront the student about how he needs to not let the discussion become public. However, it is too late. The student ended up posting the conversation on social media, and now students everywhere in the school now know that their teachers do substances even though they told the students that substances were bad. During a lesson Jacob is teaching on the Dust Bowl, one of his students asks, when looking at a photo of the Dust Bowl, if that is what the inside of Jacob’s car looks like when he is vaping, and they laugh at him. Janine greets a student in the halls with a simple “hi,” and the student whispers, “Bet you are.” (At first, I didn’t catch this, but then I watched it again and realized the student was making fun of Janine being “high” on weed.) Barbara is teaching her students and takes a sip from her traveler mug, and a student asks her if she is drinking Pinot Grigio. The teachers are fed up, and so they find a way to clear things up with the students.

They end up enlisting the help of Tariq’s program, F.A.D.E. I honestly thought Tariq was going to show up again, but instead it’s Slim, another guy who is part of the F.A.D.E. program. Slim was deeply influenced by Tariq, and it is clearly showing in his performance. He ends up giving a really hilarious spoken word about not doing drugs, and it is very cringey for the students to watch. He enlists another F.A.D.E. spokesperson, Caroline (played by a really brilliant comedian named Aparna Nancherla), who ends up engaging the students in a very chaotic discussion about which drugs are better or worse than others. The school ends up employing a strict checking policy where the teachers have to check the students’ bags for any drugs. Obviously, this isn’t fun, and it stresses the teachers and students out. The teachers talk more about it, and they realize the best way to address this is to actually have a conversation with Curtis, the student who was caught smoking. Melissa and Gregory sit down with the student, and the student apologizes and says he won’t do it again, and that he doesn’t even like the taste of smoking. Melissa and Gregory tell him he isn’t in trouble and tell him that they just want to make sure he is being careful. When the student asks if it was his fault for having the F.A.D.E. program brought into the school, Melissa assures him that wasn’t his fault (“it’s the government’s fault) and they send the student back to class. Gregory and Melissa don’t want Curtis to be suspended, and so Gregory finds a way so that Curtis’s suspension will be lifted. When Curtis finds out, he goes into Ava’s office and gives her a hug (this was really touching).

Meanwhile, Janine also has to deal with Jessca (yes, this is actually how she spells her name) who is the substitute for Janine’s classroom. Jessca insists on the students calling her by her first name and doesn’t teach them grammar properly. She lets the students misplace commas and just has a very lax attitude towards teaching, and Janine has a problem with this. One of the students calls her Janine when she comes into the classroom, and Janine corrects him and says, “it’s Ms. Teagues,” but Jessca insists it’s fine and that nothing is wrong with her teaching. Janine confronts Barbara about Jessca, but Barbara tells her that every teacher has their own teaching method and that is fine. Barbara also admits that she wasn’t too thrilled about Janine’s teaching methods when Janine first came to Abbott because Barbara had a certain way of doing things, but after she got to know Janine over time, she came to respect Janine’s ways of teaching.

Poor Jacob had to give up his vaping pen at the end, though. The teachers cheer him on when he drops it in the trash can, but then he fishes back in the trash for his vaping pen because he doesn’t want to let it go. He ends up finding another alternative to vaping, a Bref pen, which is just straight up air (I had to look up if Bref pens were real, but I couldn’t find any.)

Abbott Elementary, season 3, episode 1: Career Day Part 1

A few weeks ago, I tuned into ABC to watch season 3 of Abbott Elementary. However, I didn’t know that I had missed a couple of episodes and wanted to catch up. Honestly, I laughed, I (almost) cried, and just was so glad that they decided to have a third season of the show.

There were some pretty hilarious moments in this episode. At the beginning, everyone notices that Ava, the principal of Abbott Elementary, is not acting like herself. She is following school policies to the point where she doesn’t participate in any shenanigans or act silly, and to the point where she takes away the teachers’ lunch period so that they are working all the time. Jacob, Mr. Johnson, Melissa, Gregory and Barbara all devise ways to get Ava back to her goofy self, so they try to give her stuff she likes. Jacob clumsily throws a pile of money on her desk because Ava likes money, but Ava doesn’t fall for it. Mr. Johnson tries to entice her with tickets to see Usher in concert while wearing an Usher T-shirt and trying to dance like Usher. That doesn’t work either. So, they use Gregory to try and seduce Ava, because in the earlier seasons Ava was always trying to flirt with Gregory even when she knew it was inappropriate and he didn’t like it. They have Gregory stand in the doorway to her office with his muscles flexed and have him talk to her in a sexy seductive voice about how her rules are “so rigid and hard,” and she looks up from her work and tells him to put his arms down (I busted up so hard when she called him “Jeremy Allen Black,” which is a reference to the actor Jeremy Allen White.) I laughed at the scene where they finally get Ava to go to the gym and then Mr. Johnson blasts the song “Back That Azz Up” by Juvenile. I love how Barbara called City Girls “The Town Women.” (Ava loves listening to City Girls and when she became a more serious principal and stopped cutting up, she stopped listening to City Girls for a while.)

Melissa also faces a huge decision in her relationship with Garrett, the vending machine guy at Abbott. They hit it off really well and he wants to get married to her, but Melissa doesn’t want to get married again because her last marriage wasn’t great. Garrett keeps hinting at them getting married, such as putting a Ring Pop in the vending machine, but Melissa tells him that she just does not want to get married. During Career Day, they bring in a marketing person from The Philadelphia Eagles team to talk about marketing, and the kids find it boring, so the person has Jalen Hurts call in on a virtual call to visit the class. Everyone is super excited, but then Garrett asks the marketing person if he could sneak in a way for him to propose to Melissa, so he has Jalen Hurts make an announcement about Garrett’s proposal to Melissa, with everyone watching the proposal in all the classrooms, and Garrett gets on his knee and proposes. Melissa is shocked, but she ends up saying “No,” and they have to go outside the school to talk about it. They really love each other, but in the end, Melissa didn’t want to get married, so they broke up. It was really sweet when they hugged even though it was a sad moment for both of them. When Melissa returns to her classroom, she is wiping away tears, and Jalen Hurts (Jason Kelce and Brandon Graham also make cameos. I’m not very knowledgeable about football, so I had to look up the names of the other players making cameos on the show) tells her that he respects her right to not marry and that she did what she thought was right.

Janine also faces a major decision herself. Manny, who works for the school district, offers her a fellowship to work for the school district. It is a great opportunity, but the only thing is that Janine would be away from her classroom for most of the time, and as a dedicated teacher who loves her students, it would be hard for her to be away from them for that long. Janine tells Manny that she appreciates the offer, but she turns it down. Jacob feels sad that he didn’t get the fellowship, and at first when Janine acts like it’s no big deal, Jacob tells her that the fellowship is a huge deal. The teachers also are kind of lukewarm about how Manny and the other people working for the school district are trying to change how things are done at Abbott. In one part of the episode, the district gives Janine’s classroom iPads, and Janine is so pumped that Manny and his team gave them iPads for the students to use as learning tools. However, the students complain about how the iPads aren’t fully charged and how there aren’t enough chargers for each iPad, so Janine brings it up to Manny and he and the team say that they will take care of it. Manny also introduces himself to Mrs. Howard (Barbara) but at first she is lukewarm because it seems like he doesn’t actually care about making Abbott a better place even though he comes off that way, but Manny tells her that his mom was an educator and Barbara starts to have more respect for him. Janine then comes to Barbara, and she wants to seem pessimistic about what Manny and the other school district representatives are trying to do to change Abbott, but Barbara says that she has had a change of heart and that she is actually quite hopeful about the changes the district will implement at Abbott. Janine then asks her advice about whether she should go for the fellowship or not, especially because she would be away from her classroom a lot. Barbara tells her that if that is what will make her happy, then she should do it, and that she can always come back to Abbott after the fellowship is done.

Things get awkward, though, between Janine and Gregory. Ava catches them on camera (clearly, she is back to regular goofy Ava because that is something she would have totally done) and we see Janine and Gregory talking about what happened when they were on the museum field trip. In that episode, Janine felt that it would be best that she focused on herself and not try to start a relationship with Gregory, and she thought Gregory still had feelings for her. But this time, Janine thinks that she and Gregory should make it official and get back together since she isn’t seeing anyone, and he isn’t either. However, he tells her that he wanted to respect her decision to not be with him, and that after that he had moved on. This puts Janine in an awkward position because she assumed Gregory had feelings for her. Since season 1, Gregory has had a huge crush on Janine, but at the time she was dating Tariq, who she had been with since eighth grade. Gregory decided to start dating Amber, a mother of one of the students at the school, and by the time Janine had broken up with Tariq, Gregory was taken, leaving Janine feeling secretly heartbroken. Janine finds another person, Maurice, who is Gregory’s best friend, and they seem to be working out. However, even though they are seeing other people, Gregory and Janine still have feelings for each other, and they end up making out on evening. Gregory and Janine tell this to Maurice over dinner one evening, and Maurice breaks up with Janine. Janine feels bad about cheating on Maurice, so during the field trip that the class takes to a museum, Janine tells Gregory that she feels bad about what she did to Maurice and says that she needs to step back from being in a relationship for a while to spend time with herself. Now that Manny is in the picture, I wonder what is going to happen. I’m not sure if Manny respects Janine as just a coworker, or if he is secretly interested in being with her, and I wonder if Gregory is going to feel a way about it if Manny and Janine ever do get together.

Succession, Season 4, episodes 4-10

So, I just finished the finale of season 4 of Succession, and it was, well, quite intense. There was so much that went on, and to be honest, at some point I had to stop taking so many notes and just watch the show. Taking notes helped because it helped me keep up with different points in the plot that I might have forgotten, but there were parts of the show that I had to watch closely, otherwise I would miss it.

There were some pretty memorable moments in this season. In episode 8, it is election day and everyone in the ATN newsroom is stressed, especially Tom, who is the head of ATN, and his assistant, Greg, who at this point is tired of taking Tom’s shit but still goes along with it. At one point, Tom yells at Greg for not bringing him coffee, and Greg asks if he wants coffee, and Tom calms down. Tom then goes to the board to see how the election results are going, and he is really stressed, so he does cocaine, and he tells Greg to do some as well. When Greg refuses, Tom grills him for doing cocaine with Lukas Matsson but asks him why he won’t do cocaine with Tom. Greg tells him that he is trying to not get addicted to cocaine, but Tom still pressures him to do it, so Greg does the cocaine. Tom then sees a bunch of sushi that Greg got from the bodega, and he gets angry with Greg for not meeting his requests for food. The cocaine scene reminded me of season 1, episode 8, when Roman, Greg, Tom, Connor and Kendall go to Tom’s bachelor party. There is a scene where Kendall is going to do four lines of cocaine, and Greg is checking in on everyone to make sure they don’t get too high or too drunk, and he checks in on Kendall. Greg sees that Kendall is going to do these four lines of cocaine, he gets worried and warns him not to do the cocaine, but Kendall tells him to leave him alone. Greg panics and then decides to do the lines of cocaine, even though he doesn’t want to, because he doesn’t want to see Kendall die, and Tom comes over and starts making fun of Greg and goading him on to do the cocaine. Greg experiences a severe reaction and panics, and instead of helping him, Tom laughs at him and tells him “Buckle up, fucklehead.” In the season finale, Tom meets up with Matsson and Matsson proposes that Tom, not Shiv, should be the CEO, and Greg texts Shiv and lets her know this. She confronts Tom and is really upset, and Tom, angry that Greg spilled the details about him becoming CEO, gets into a physical fight with Greg in the bathroom. Earlier on, whenever Tom tried to beat up on Greg, Greg wouldn’t fight back, but at this point because Greg has dealt with so much bullying from Tom, he is sick of it, so he hits Tom back. He still lets Greg stay on his team when he becomes CEO. I know the show is over, but I would be really interested to see what Waystar under Tom Wambsgans and Lukas Matsson would be like.

There is another scene in the election episode that was pretty wild. Darwin is about to announce the vote for whether Mencken or Jimenez won (Mencken is the Republican nominee, and Jimenez is the Democratic nominee) and Greg is eating from a container of sushi. Darwin has Greg move his sushi container over, and he slides next to him with his laptop. Darwin accidentally touches the side of the sushi container, which has wasabi on the side, and touches his eye and immediately his eyes start to burn, and he starts screaming. Everyone in the room yell at Greg to douse his eyes with water, but Greg ends up pouring lemon sparkling water in his eyes, which of course only makes Donny’s eyes burn even more. Everyone gets mad at Greg and this scene showed me again how Greg is always being called out for making so many mistakes in this show, even well until the very end. The election episode overall was very stressful because this year is the year of the election, and it might be kind of stressful. But it reminded me that if I want to truly feel like I can make a difference in democracy, then I need to vote. Even if there have been times when I felt like my vote didn’t matter, this episode (and real-life elections that I have lived through) reminded me that every vote counts. It was a pretty brutal moment when Mencken won the vote, and it was a stressful day for everyone at ATN.

The funeral episode, episode 9, was pretty dark, but the dialogue was brilliant. It is the day of Logan’s funeral, and also after the election results get called, people protest the election results in the streets of New York City. Kendall’s ex-wife, Rava, calls Kendall to let him know she is not coming to Logan’s funeral and that she and the kids are going to stay in upstate New York because it’s a really tumultuous day and she wants to make sure the kids are safe. Kendall drives over to her place to see if he can stop her from leaving, and when she says she and the kids have to go, he tries to block their car from leaving to no avail. Kendall not only has to deal with the stress of his dad’s funeral and Rava and the kids leaving, but also, his longtime assistant, Jess, wants to resign from her position as Kendall’s assistant. At first, Kendall tries to be happy for her, but instead he starts asking her why she is leaving. Jess says that it’s time, and Kendall gets angry and upset with her for leaving him at a really bad time. But Jess tells him that she had been thinking about resigning for a while. Honestly, I don’t blame her. Jess went through a LOT of stuff throughout the course of this show, and she tried her best to do everything that Kendall expected of her.

During the funeral scene, Gregory’s grandpa, Ewan, gets up to deliver his own eulogy, and they try to hold him back because he wasn’t scheduled to deliver a eulogy, but he does so because Logan was his brother, even with their very complicated relationship. Ewan shows another side of Logan and him that I hadn’t seen before. He doesn’t sugarcoat his feelings about Logan, in fact, quite the opposite. He says that Logan was mean-spirited, power-hungry and all around not a great guy. But he tells everyone about how Logan got sent to a well-off school when him and Ewan were kids, and when Logan came back he got polio and their sister ended up dying of polio. Logan blamed himself for a long time for their sister’s death, and their aunt and uncle made him feel like he was responsible for her death. This was kind of a touching moment because Logan never told them about it, and I think it was revealing for me because the whole time I was watching the show I wondered, Do we get any backstory about Logan? Ewan and Logan don’t have a great relationship, and Ewan is reluctant to come over to Logan’s for Thanksgiving because he hates what the Roy family has become: a bunch of money-hungry individuals who tear at each other and make the people around them feel less than. Logan is showing off some medals he has been collecting, and Ewan says that while Logan never served as a veteran, he, Ewan is a veteran, and he grills the family about being full of themselves and forgetting the importance of morals. He tells his grandson, Greg, to not associate with the Roy family because they are a bunch of terrible people, and when he confronts Logan at a conference, he tells him that their mother wouldn’t be happy with the kind of person Logan has become.

Roman tries to get up and deliver his eulogy, and he takes a few minutes to arrange and rearrange his index cards, but he ends up breaking down in tears and not being able to deliver his eulogy. His siblings embrace him in a hug, and Roman looks through tears in disbelief at the coffin holding his father, and it hits Roman so hard because his dad really is dead and is not coming back, and it is painful. Kendall delivers his eulogy, and he says that while Ewan was right about Logan not being a nice person, he tries to share some positive qualities about his dad, that his dad inspired people to become ambitious and want to achieve success, and that at the end of the day, he created a life for Kendall, Shiv, Roman and Connor. Shiv shares her eulogy, too, and she talks about the not-so-great memories of her dad, like when he yelled at her and the kids, but she also acknowledges the huge impact that he had on her life (“my world of a dad”) and gets emotional as well. There was a really interesting moment when Marcia and Kerry briefly reconcile. Earlier, Marcia kicks Kerry out of the house because Kerry and Logan had an affair together, but then Caroline introduces Sally Ann, who was Logan’s mistress while Caroline was married to Logan, to Marcia and lets Kerry sit with them in the front row. It kind of showed me how Logan’s infidelity hurt all of these women involved, and overall, it showed the very messy complicated relationships he had with the people in his life. While Gerri, Karl, Hugo and Frank are talking about Logan, Gerri asks if they actually miss him though after the way that he treated everyone so poorly. Karl and Frank try to not say anything nasty or negative about Logan, but Gerri jokes that they have “Stockholm Syndrome,” which shows how, while he was alive, Logan manipulated everyone and made them feel inferior. Ewan talks about how Logan brought out a really ugly side in people, and throughout the course of the show Logan tells people to “fuck off,” insults them and has put his kids through years of abuse and manipulation. I think that is why the grief they go through is so complex because on the one hand, he was their father and it’s hard losing a parent, but at the same time they are emotionally scarred from all the abuse he put them through.

Roman at this point has adopted a very nihilistic view on life, and there is one scene in episode 9 where he leaves the funeral reception and goes out in the streets, which is blocked off to make way for anti-Mencken protesters. The police warn him to not go where the protests are because they have gotten violent, but he ignores them and leans over the railing and shouts insults at the protesters. He goes out to where they are marching, and he pushes a few of them and they push him to the ground, leaving him with serious bruises. Kendall and Shiv ask him why he has a big cut on his forehead, and he tries to brush it off so that he doesn’t have to talk about it, and he wants to be left alone. In episode 10, Kendall and Roman share a moment in their dad’s office where Roman is overwhelmed with grief at losing his dad and not becoming the CEO of Waystar even when his dad promised him that he had potential, and Kendall gives him a huge hug. But then when Shiv doesn’t want to go with the plan to let Matsson acquire Go Jo, the three siblings erupt in a huge fight and then Kendall shouts that he is the oldest sibling. Roman ends up making a comment about how Kendall’s kids aren’t biologically his, and Kendall beats him up, prompting Shiv to leave the room. There is a brief tender moment during the course of this very intense final episode, and it’s when they are at Logan’s house (which Marcia sold to Connor and Willa) and they watch a video of their dad having a casual conversation and singing and laughing with the people on his PR team, including Kerry, Gerri, Hugo, Karl and Frank. It is a really innocent moment where they are just having fun and Logan isn’t hurling nasty insults at them, and the siblings start to tear up because it is a really touching moment for them and it reminds them that even though they had a really difficult relationship with their dad, they really miss him. Another sweet moment is when the three siblings are at their mom, Caroline’s house, and they pretend to crown Kendall “king” and make him this disgusting blended mixture of food found in Caroline’s fridge. Caroline tells Roman not to eat her husband Peter’s cheese, but after she goes back to bed, Roman, when she is out of earshot, starts licking and sniffing the cheese and him and his siblings start busting up laughing. Shiv gives Kendall the gross mixture to drink, and he ends up drinking only a little, and Roman pours the rest over his head, prompting all of them to burst into giggles. This for me was an enjoyable moment in the show because the rest of the time, they are dealing with these serious adult problems, but this scene showed them being able to enjoy this brief moment of child-like innocence where they are at their mom’s house and just goofing off.

Honestly, as intense as this show was, I’m glad I watched it. The acting and directing was really good. And the music by Nicholas Britell is amazing.

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 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.