Succession seems a lot like Game of Thrones, in that you can have never watched it but know everything about it from online reactions.
It just always seemed too stressful to watch.
I heard lots of it, but never watched it.
In general he's not the type to step back, but at 92, who knows what medical issues are intervening. Heck, would we even know if there were a power of attorney?
4: Yes. It's a public company.
These old white rich people hoarding all the power in this country are going to be so surprised when they actually do die.
I heard they go to Switzerland to get new blood.
My memory is that they go to Jupiter because they're stupider. But maybe they go to Mars to get more candy bars, who can say.
I did, like all people of good taste, love the show to an unhealthy degree, but the riff is actually more historical, because I think the succession, when it eventually happens, might actually be a historical event.
I watched the first season of Succession. At first, I thought it was unpleasant but mostly well-executed, and kept hoping that it would get more fun. It never did, but ultimately it was Shiv's wedding that really put me off the show. Maybe this is just a matter of taste, because a lot of people aren't bothered by this, but I hate when a show that purports to be realistic reveals itself to be a closed universe. Shiv has this destination wedding in a Scottish castle, and invites exactly everyone you already know from the show, and nobody else. It makes no sense. Why would she invite, like, all the staff who work at HQ in her dad's company? (And no plus-ones, so that the characters only interact with each other.) Meanwhile, there's no sign that Shiv or Tom ever had friends from high school, college, graduate school, or any prior workplace, or any family other than the ones who are necessary to advance the plot.
I expect this kind of stupidity from a network sitcom. I assume (I've never watched Cheers) that if Sam and Diane got married they would invite everyone from the bar, with no plus-ones, and no family or friends that viewers don't already know. But that's because sitcoms are supposed to be absurd, and you understand that their worlds are very small, for budgetary reasons. On Succession, it's clear that money is not the resource that's in short supply, it's the show creators' interest in fully fleshing out the world. I quit watching after that. I had thought I was watching the writers' framing of a story within a Galilean universe, but with Shiv's wedding I realized I was actually watching a Copernican universe, and what you see on the show is the limits of the whole thing.
Shiv has this destination wedding in a Scottish castle, and invites exactly everyone you already know from the show, and nobody else.
I trailed off watching around this time too, but my impression there was there were a lot more people and the camera was just lingering on those we knew.
Why would she invite, like, all the staff who work at HQ in her dad's company?
The weird incestuous nature of the company where everything is personalized?
I heard Game of Thrones was big on incest, but I never watched it.
15. But why did people not bring their husbands and wives and partners? Why weren't Shiv and Tom surrounded by friends? Why would Bernie Sanders come to a party hosted by Rupert Murdoch and spend the whole time interacting with Rupert Murdoch's friends and family?
13 is super interesting. Shiv's wedding was the episode that actually got me into the show (I saw the pilot and liked it but not enough to persist, then stumbled on the wedding).
-Nitpickily, IIRC some of Tom's friends are in fact there but we don't get scenes with them (because Tom of course cares less about them than the Roys); and I think given their personalities it's actually completely plausible that none of the Roy children have any real friends.
-Broadly, I think the show does depict a Galilean universe, but most of the characters (the Roy children) *think* they're in a Copernican universe (where everything revolves around Dad, and therefore around them, because, they think, they are closest to Dad); and over the course of the show (especially season 4) that illusion collapses on top of them. Marcia even says to Shiv (IIRC in this very episode) something like "He made you a playground and you think it's the entire world."
I expect this kind of stupidity from a network sitcom
Also, the second half of War and Peace.
It reflects poorly on me, I'm sure, but I lost interest in the Murdoch succession story when I saw that the first reference to it I came across on social media was misleading and he was just saying he was stepping down.
Maybe the situation is less opaque than my ignorance suggests but I'd believe either that he'd already effectively stepped down and this makes it official, or that he's not really stepping down but is relinquishing official power such that if someone really wanted a legal battle they could go that route but it's more likely they'll continue to act as if he's still in control. Neither can be true at the same time but both are variations of "has anything really changed yet?"
I would like to blame TV for me not watching TV, but the real reason is that the internet killed my attention span.
Have you tried watching TV on the internet? It's a thing.
But my attention span was never at "Russian Novel" levels. I finished The Brother's Karamazov because it was a class assignment. Never got past the second chapter of Crime and Punishment.
he's not really stepping down but is relinquishing official power such that if someone really wanted a legal battle they could go that route but it's more likely they'll continue to act as if he's still in control.
This appears to be the case. But, definitely the beginning of the end! Fun to speculate!
Is it even legal to own a Karamazov in Pennsylvania?
23: My son does that, watching TV and doing homework on the same screen. It can't be good.
26: I don't know if I still have it.
25 is also to say, yes, this post is totally half-baked, disinterest is reasonable.
I can't dig it up again, but there was a line from an article I saw earlier this month about how Senators by and large find stepping down unimaginable, because it's what they've been doing for decades and if they stop they'll shrivel up and die. Not a great state of affairs!
That's why they should get lifetime moisturizer supplies after they leave office.
1: It's also like GoT because the overall plot is the same. From the outset, it's all about who is going to win the throne. Succession's lame, weird answer was much superior to the one in GoT.
2: I found it extraordinarily stressful. And because of its verisimilitude, The Missus overall found it a really unpleasant thing to watch. I liked it, for certain values of "liked."
I share MC's take in 18.3 regarding jms's 13. The characters deliberately place themselves in a closed universe, and the stuff that 13 says is absent either takes place off camera or (as at the wedding) is in the background. We don't need to see any more of Tom's parents, for instance, than what we got.
24: My group in English class had to do an oral report on Crime and Punishment. On the bus ride to school, I could only get through the first part of the Cliff Notes, so I did the first part of the presentation. We got an A, and even though I've tried several times, I've never been able to read that book.
Karamazov, on the other hand, I read on my own, and liked it a lot. The Grand Inquisitor chapter is one of my favorite things, and I recommend that everyone go read that chapter, by itself, right now.
Me too, but does that stop me from engaging in important cultural activities like blog commenting?
My freshman year of high school, we read The Grand Inquisitor, and I couldn't even pay attention when we were literally reading it outloud in class, let alone tackle it at home, but then afterwards, when the teacher told us what it meant, I was absolutely rapt by the explanation and it was a major developmental moment in my understanding of the world. I never did go back and read the actual chapter, in that decade at least.
These old white rich people hoarding all the power in this country are going to be so surprised when they actually do die.
And yet, they never do. I've been waiting and waiting.
In my junior year of high school my AP European History was starting to tell us the story of the Grand Inquisitor, but I had to interrupt her, because she was telling it wrong. Could I have been a more obnoxious teenager?
On the other hand, she was saying, "....and then Jesus said..."
Jesus was silent the whole time! He wasn't allowed to talk!
The old white rich people, dying, will share their wealth... with their rich, white heirs in their 50s and 60s.
Do airports work during a government shut down?
Does it help or hurt to fly into an airport named after an asshole?
Aeronautically, it sounds preferable to land in an asscrack.
I'm old enough to remember reading an article about how Murdoch was handing over power and stepping down because old age was catching up on him, and that article was published in a magazine which closed in 1992.
Also don't foxes have cubs, not kits? Otters have kits.
They are called "kits" as well as several other things.
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Interestingly, the proportion of grammar and public school boys taking engineering was the same.|>
Shiv has this destination wedding in a Scottish castle, and invites exactly everyone you already know from the show, and nobody else. It makes no sense.
Apparently the Lannisters' band had another engagement. For which the characters were presumably grateful. (Still, we can dream of a show-wrecking crossover episode.)
Never any fucking recognition.
42: going to DC? That's the one that came to my mind. If I think about it even harder, probably both DC airports qualify.
51: BWI is technically named after Thurgood Marshall, but I've never heard anyone call it that.
Have you ever seen Dulles from a DC9 at night?
I just learned that Dulles has a Metro connection.
Anyway, I was going to go by Amtrak, in honor of Joe Biden. But I would have had to get up stupid early.
So now I'm going to take the Metro from National even though I could expense a taxi.
18: IIRC some of Tom's friends are in fact there but we don't get scenes with them (because Tom of course cares less about them than the Roys)
In fact is there not a fairly extensive bit in the one episode where he blows them off at the bachelor party because he ends up going with the Kendall boys (and maybe the financier guy) to a very exclusive party at an underground industrial space. Not sure if we see the guys at the actual wedding.
58.1 yes. 58.2 IIRC we see the same guys getting off the bus.
Further to 18, Shiv is given the line in season four ,"My world of a father". Orginal emphasis.