This episode hurt. It was sad and uncomfortable and depressing. We’ve had scenes with the Roy children in a room ripping each other to shreds before, like at Shiv’s wedding and at Rava’s apartment and at Connor’s ranch. But there was a buoyancy to all of those scenes, a shorthanded humour between siblings that has evaporated. Everything that happened between them was so f-cking dark. Let’s dig in.
Hotter than the fusion restaurant in Vancouver that lost Connor’s coat:
I debated sticking everyone under the cold list as this felt like a series of losses for all of them, but a few people did gain personally and professionally.
First Lady Willa:
Is Willa, who has unfettered access to these awful people, writing a scathing indictment of hoarded wealth and media conglomerates on her phone? Probably not, but one thing she will do is check you when you come for Connor. This episode was probably the most we’ve heard Willa speak (when she does, she’s mostly reasonable, compassionate, and polite) but seeing her stick up for her man was one of the not-bleak things in this episode.
And f-ck it, let’s add Connor to this as well. Like him, I do not trust coat checks and prefer to keep my jacket, thank you very much. Besides that, the mean headline in the art installation room about him sh-tting in a bag is because he took his little brothers camping! That’s the worst thing Kendall could think of to embarrass him, that Connor got sick while doing their dad’s job. Connor may not be built for “work” or a “job” or “the real world” but I’m increasingly convinced that he earned his inheritance as a payback for parentification.
Queen Rava:
Rava is the only warm-blooded human in the Roys orbit and quite simply a nice person. Ken being condescending to her about her ideal birthday (three glasses of wine and pasta) is so f-cking sad because it’s obvious that he wants love and stability, but he seeks out chaos and friction. Rava doesn’t let Ken pull her into his orbit of need (and kudos to her, this must have taken a sh-tload of therapy). Ken is fuelled by FOMO— when he had a family, he was obsessed with work and partying. Now that he’s free to work and party as much as he wants, he wants his family back. His soul is in turmoil and the way Rava holds her boundaries with him while still supporting him is the purest thing in Ken’s world. Watching the flicker of recognition of what he used to have against the hollowness of what he’s built is always between them.
Greg’s Southern (???) accent:
尽管肯德尔绝对他元气大损calling him a tapeworm (ouch), Greg ended up in the W column. I should be more into this Greg romance but I have to be honest that the casting Dasha Nekrasova completely breaks the fourth wall for me. (For those not familiar, Dasha is one-half of the Internet famous Red Scare podcast and a social media provocateur –单击此处查看我的意思。) But I am very into Greg yelling “prove it!” to Tom (re: fucking like a freight train and having a dick like Sequoia). I don’t think Greg or Tom knew what that meant in the moment but it released a lot of tension while simultaneously raising a lot of questions.
Roman: Bad slime puppy
Out of all of the characters, it’s Roman’s malice that seems the sharpest. Until now, he’s mostly moved through this crisis in a sensitive way, not betraying his dad but also avoiding burying Ken. But something about this night, perhaps triggered by walking through his mother’s cold vagina tunnel, took him from crass to cruel. He kind of lands the hot tech guy (an impeccably cast Alexander Skarsgård) and delivers a message. That’s standard work. But then he gets vicious. In a chaotic and hard-to-watch sequence, he shames Shiv’s sex life, cuts down her marriage, rolls his eyes at a clearly distraught Kendall talking about his daughter being spied on, and then physically pushes Ken while Connor gets upset. We’ve seen Roman be awful before, usually to please his father (like in the pilot episode, taunting the young boy to hit a home run for a million dollars, then ripping up the check) and he’s always taken pleasure in an insult, but there was something different about this. We saw his natural meanness merging with greed and blind ambition with a sprinkle of Logan dust.
忘了电话上的小便（要炫耀的百灵鸟），这是罗马揭幕的。他在近战期间陷入困境的一分：他问他的兄弟姐妹为什么要为他而不是其他人有一条线。肯德尔（Kendall）公开羞辱了他们的父亲，而希夫（Shiv）公开羞辱了肯德尔（Kendall），因此，在罗马眼中，他一直是更大的人。为什么他互相杀死时应该被淘汰？正如洛根（Logan）在本赛季早些时候对希夫（Shiv）所说的那样，“没有什么是一条线。到处都是永远移动的一切。习惯它。”这是没有线条的罗马人。
And maybe Logan has been waiting out Roman’s immaturity and sending him to kiki with fascists and tech bros and oil heirs is training is part of his end game. This was Roman at his most ruthless and Logan would have loved it.
In terms of writing, it’s a genius move as Kieran Culkin is an audience darling with his slime puppy trysts with Gerri. Just because he prefers phone sex to physical contact doesn’t mean he’s harmless.
Logan’s mid-life crisis at 80:
Logan defended himself against the cruises scandal by saying that he wasn’t chasing secretaries around his desk when it was happening, yet he is now chasing his PA around an open concept office. The era and players may be different, but it shows how little Waystar has changed on the inside since Uncle Mo(lester) was captain of cruises. How could anything change when all the players have remained the same? Logan choosing to woo his PA, even as he pays to get Marcia back, is an act of dick defiance. It’s his way of signaling to everyone around him that he won’t be told who he can and can’t sexually harass: not by the shareholders or the board or his children or the “climate” or his wife. So why is he on the hot list? Because like Tom said last week, I’ve watched everyone get f-cked multiple times, but I haven’t seen Logan get f-cked once.
比康纳的精致肩膀冷：
Shiv Roy，跳舞女王：
我对Shiv的一件事是，她可以在一周中的任何一天都超越兄弟们（就饮酒，毒品和性爱而言！）。她参加了肯德尔（Kendall）的聚会，但有一刻，她给了他一个真正的拥抱，有一种感情。通常那将是罗马的角色，但他决定有点刺。
基本上，Shiv被喂入F-CK。She’s fed up listening to her husband talk about toilet wine (and then not even go to prison), she’s fed up with being undermined by Roman, she’s fed up with being used by her dad, she’s fed up with Kendall’s tantrums and Connor’s pipe dreams. But she has yet to act on any of these things. Shiv needs to make a move for herself. A big one. Leave Tom, leak the story of her father’s affair, start her own affair with Stewy, just do something to get off this hamster wheel of over-confidence and self-doubt. Shiv didn’t see Roman coming, she didn’t know they were spying on her niece and nephew, and she is continually blindsided by her father. She’s a sitting duck. (And why shouldn’t Shiv get to f-ck whoever she wants? Everyone else does!)
Tom “f-cks like a freight train” Wambsgans:
What do you think happened to Tom’s prison consultant? Did he work by the hour or on a contract basis? Anyway, it looks like he won’t be needing that service (although it’s tentative and anything can change). His instinct to wait it out and not flip for Kendall was right but like Kendall, he feels crushing disappointment at this birthday party. He thought it would be fun, but he took the wrong drugs in the wrong order (my guess is too much cocaine, not enough molly) and ended up surly and wired in the back of a town car with his uninterested wife. All of the issues he and Shiv that were there when he and Shiv said goodbye on the tarmac haven’t changed.
Side note: there’s been a lack of on-screen drug use this year, even though we know Ken and Naomi are not sober. Why have the characters stopped partaking on screen?
Naomi: what is this woman’s deal?
Naomi is the “I can fix him” meme come to life. There’s chill and then there’s enabling someone to the point of complete embarrassment and self-destruction. We know she has her issues (which she seems to keep a lid on in public) but she is gentle with Ken and seems to really like and support him. All of the heartbreak the audience sees in Ken, she sees in him, too. She has perspective on his party and his spiral, but to what end? How long will Naomi be able to talk him off the ledge?
Ken: Not so fabulous and 40
将自己的生日作为对他的童年的讽刺评论（没有真正锻炼他的童年创伤）是一个严肃的悲伤小男孩Sh-t。从本集的前几秒钟开始，我们知道这个生日将是一场灾难，因为他的唱歌和可怕的服装选择。亿万富翁男子获得分手刘海的版本，穿着绣花缎面夹克或带有高领毛衣的声明项链。
在兔子包裹的礼物上：孩子们在情人节和生日以及母亲和父亲节做父母的东西。我会怀疑世界上最富有的孩子这是正确的。肯之所以如此强调这现在的原因是因为他不是一个好父亲，所以这份礼物很重要。他现在应该有数十张纸牌和小饰品藏在孩子身上，但他没有。（Rava肯定确实如此。）
On the watch: Just as he’s metabolizing the crushing disappointment of his relationship with his children, Naomi gives him her present, a watch. There is of course the symbolism of a personal gift he can’t find but desperately wants (from his children) and a generic present he doesn’t want or need (from his girlfriend).
(One key thing I’ve learned from Succession is that a watch is a thoughtless gift, like whiskey stones for the 1%. No one wants whiskey stones! This is a narrative pushed on us by dumb gift guides! If you are struggling for a gift idea and contemplating whiskey stones, please email me so I can save you from this nonsense.)
Birthday cards and blankies: Ken spectacularly self-destructs but, in this episode, he had some help. The cheap birthday card with the offer to leave the company (via selling his shares in the holding company to Roman) isn’t just a monetary offer, but it quite literally puts a dollar amount on his father’s love (two billion, give or take a few hundred million). Kendall knows that cashing out will put him outside the family forever, farther than Connor, Ewan, or even his mother Caroline (who has a board seat). It would be the end of his life as a Roy and his father’s son. And what is he without his family? He’s not a good father or a husband or loved sibling or an inventor or a tech guy or even a particularly astute businessman. To his children, Logan is more powerful than freedom, good sense, money, or mental health.
在我们见过肯进来的所有悲伤情况中，他的生日聚会特别黑了，因为我们知道它即将到来。铅是折磨。这是一个俗气而痛苦的事件，一个拥挤但空荡荡的房间，响亮的音乐，没有气氛。血管，a building with a macabre real-life reputation，在这一集中似乎笼罩着肯（Ken），尤其是在阳台上的最后时刻。过去，我们曾经看到洛根（Logan）在肯（Ken）的安全方面进行防守：他为他聘请了一名摩托车司机，并且在肯（Ken）几次不舒服地靠近边缘之后，他在Waystar的阳台上安装了Plexiglass。洛根（Logan）是试图管理肯（Ken）绝望时刻的看不见的手。既然他已经脱离了，娜奥米·皮尔斯（Naomi Pierce）介入了。但是，这个高潮和低谷周期可以继续进行多长时间？
