In the midst of the 2021 NFL season, we have to admit that many of us need an escape FROM our escape. We play fantasy football as a form of entertainment and as a game to win, whether it be for bragging rights, money or some traveling trophy that’s particularly sentimental to your leaguemates.
But when you’re in multiple leagues like many of us are, you have to deal with managing weird NFL upsets, a litany of injuries/waiver wires, and the general mental torture of the game. My point is sometimes we just need to watch some TV other than football. Lately, my show of choice to keep up on has been HBO’s hit drama Succession.
If you’ve never watched the show, it’s basically about a family of loathsome, mega-rich pricks all brokering for power as the family patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) becomes too old to remain CEO of his media empire, Waystar Royco.
Enough about the show. Let’s talk about the current Season 3, what we’ve seen from the first five episodes, and what we should expect the rest of the way. After all, that’s why you’re here, right?
The remainder of this blog will contain spoilers.
Season 3 So Far
Succession tends to be a slow burn at times, but a good amount has already transpired across the first five episodes. Rather than recap everything that’s happened, I’m going to share an assortment of thoughts/questions I have thus far. This is as much for my own mental processing of the show as it is for you to (maybe) enjoy reading.
The Waystar Royco leadership shows its incompetence when Logan is ‘not himself’
I suppose anyone with a modicum of medical knowledge (not me) might have seen Logan’s UTI coming when he had the continual urge to piss throughout the latest episode. At least I think that’s a side-effect. Logan not taking his meds leads to his incapacitation, to the point where he can’t coherently speak.
Waystar’s executive leadership–all the characters we’ve come to know and love/hate–don’t know how to move forward on a settlement deal with Sandy and Stewy because they don’t have the stomach to go against his wishes. His health puts them in decision-making purgatory, which further proves no one is ready to take over the position of CEO if no one can step up to the plate more quickly and decisively.
Eventually, Shiv (Sarah Snook) takes over and gets the group to agree unanimously they have to move forward with the settlement, but how they got there was certainly tense based on the clock they were working against during this episode.
Speaking of the settlement and the timeline, were there really any stakes with what they were negotiating?
Most of the back an forth negotiations on this “settlement” have been going on in the background, seemingly since the end of Season 1 when Kendall (Jeremy Strong) initiated the “bear hug” in a joint effort involving Sandy and Stewy. In this latest episode, it’s implied letting the acquisition go to a shareholder vote is much less preferable than the settlement itself. Is this because they simply lose out on significant control (including optics) if the two companies can’t come to a settlement on their own? I need some help with this one being explained to me, since it sounds like the Sandy Furness media conglomerate was going to swallow up Waystar Royco in one way or another.
Greg is a Shithead
I mean, yes, we already knew this, and yes, Greg somehow displays the perfect amount of entertaining cringe throughout the show, (i.e. reluctantly downing a full Rum and Coke at 10 AM) but now that he’s officially been cut off from his spiteful grandfather Ewan’s inheritance, it’s safe to say he’s a full-blown shithead. A lot of characters in the show annoy me when it comes to their uncanny ability to play the middle and stand on both sides until the opportunity that best suits them at any given moment comes along, but we’ve finally seen the consequences of flip-flopping play out for one of the lowest characters in the family power structure.
Forward Looking Statements
Pardon the corporate jargon. The following is just a quick bulleted list of predictions as the season progresses and ultimately concludes in December.
- Logan stabs Shiv in the back and fires her or sidelines her to some two-bit role in the company for continuing to be compromising, and in his eyes, never ready for the Big Job.
- Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) has another existential crisis re: potentially going to prison; (we haven’t see the desk flip yet) even odds on whether Greg is present.
- Greg will attempt to further negotiate his position with Logan so he can be made whole financially; Logan will give him some half-baked, empty promise to get him to stay on the “joint defense.”
- The show has this unique dynamic going on between Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Gerri, (J. Smith-Cameron) but nothing is gonna happen there. They just don’t have enough time in the show to dedicate to it. I’d be shocked if they hooked up somehow.
- We haven’t seen the last of Logan’s deteriorating health, and bringing back Sandy Furness in a wheelchair is not for nothing either. Sandy dies and Logan falls (maybe breaks his hip or gets knocked out by a blow to the head?) before the season ends.
That’s all for now, feel free to hit me up on Twitter @AndrewMackens if you want to discuss further!
