Dear Gossips,
I laughed harder than I really needed to last night during the “wasabi lemon” scene on Succession. It was welcome comic relief, like power guzzling water during a workout – you take it down fast and greedy, because it’s just been so grueling up to that point, and you know it’s about to get worse.
That’s just one of the reasons why the show is so acclaimed: the pacing, like it’s acutely aware of when viewers might need a 30-second reprieve … but the reprieve, as absurd and hilarious as it is, has a narrative function too. Greg’s gregging of Darwin meant that Darwin was taken out of all subsequent decision meetings, and critically the meeting when they made that depressing call.
It's depressing because of what we freshly remember from the last several years and depressing again considering what happened last week with the Trump town hall on CNN. Indeed, a handful of fools can have an impact on everyone and everything. And on this show, they’re not just fools, they’re assholes, all of them. That was also the point of this episode, with Succession doing what it does best: prioritising the “need” over the “want” of storytelling.
We talk about this a lot here – and it was Duana who introduced it first many years ago: the great shows give the viewers what they need and not what they want. And the need of this episode of Succession, the eighth episode of the fourth and final season called “America Decides”, is to remind us that none of these people should be our “faves”. Because that’s what we do, right?
Have you heard about the “Kendolls”? Per Buzzfeed:
“Kendolls” are often young women who admire the vulnerability and pathetic behavior of a 40-year-old business executive. They call him their “babygirl,” a term used to describe a pitiful man whose melancholy is somehow endearing, as well as “failwife,” “little meow meow,” and “the people’s princess.”
They want to fix him. They believe they can fix him. Roman, Shiv, Tom, Greg, and Connor also have their own fan corners. It is, after all, Succession. And the whole show is about who will succeed Logan Roy. So people have been picking their candidates. (That’s another layer to “America Decides”.) But Succession is not a hero’s tale. Turning it into one would be giving the viewers what they “want” – and this has never been Succession’s way. What we “need” is to be reminded, which is what they did in this episode, that they all suck. Yes, even Shiv!
She tried to use her pregnancy to manipulate Tom. She claims the moral high ground that conveniently would advance her own financial and professional interests in her secret alliance with Lukas Matsson. She also strategically miscalculated on multiple occasions last night – with Greg, with that fake phone call to Nate, with Ken…
And let’s not whitewash Shiv’s f-ckery in previous seasons. When Matsson confided in her a few episodes ago that he’s basically been sexually harassing Ebba, the advice she gave him was consistent with her how her character undermined victims of sexual assault at Waystar in season two.
Shiv is terrible. They are all terrible. None of them are redeemable. And it would be a betrayal of the soul of Succession when it concludes in two weeks to try and make it so that there is a lesser evil among the Roys. Like everyone else, I have no idea how it’s going to end. But I do not that the story won’t end on “want”. And last night’s episode was almost like a warning to those out there who are all like “I just want a win for my babygirl Shiv or my babygirl Kendall”; Succession is not here to make anyone feel good about their side. Whatever it happens to be, Succession will end on what we need.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
