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Tag: Shiv Roy

  • The Eyes Don’t Have It: Succession’s Series Finale, “With Open Eyes,” Emphasizes That Hubris Makes You Blind

    The Eyes Don’t Have It: Succession’s Series Finale, “With Open Eyes,” Emphasizes That Hubris Makes You Blind

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    If Kendall (Jeremy Strong) hugging Roman (Kieran Culkin) toward the end of the series finale of Succession reminded viewers of anything, it’s that, when it comes to the Roys, love fucking hurts—and seems to cause far more pain than it’s worth. The last episode, “With Open Eyes,” offers an ominous title in and of itself without any backstory, but taking into account that it continues the Succession season finale tradition of using lines from John Berryman’s “Dream Song 29,” it adds yet another sinister layer. Berryman himself was haunted his whole life by his father’s suicide when the poet was just eleven. With Succession being, at its core, a show about daddy issues and what they can wreak, it seems appropriate to interweave this writer into final episode titles. And oh, what a final episode “With Open Eyes” is. And yes, it’s all about eyes in this narrative. Particularly how those with sight can be so blind (see also: King Lear).

    The emphasis on eyes begins the moment Shiv (Sarah Snook) arrives in Barbados at the urging of her mother, Caroline (Harriet Walter), to come and comfort Roman after the beating he took at the end of episode nine, “Church and State.” Naturally, Shiv is only really interested in taking the trip so she can lock down another vote and really secure the GoJo deal for Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), who has promised to make her the CEO once the merger and acquisition goes through.

    Alas, in the business realm, where misogyny reigns more supremely than anywhere else besides politics, it’s clear that Matsson actually doesn’t feel that comfortable with Shiv taking the front seat while he rides shotgun at best, and in the trunk at worst. A profile in some New Yorker-esque rag featuring a cartoon of Shiv as the puppet master pulling Matsson’s strings (even though the article is called “Is Lukas Matsson Taking Over the World?”) does little to assuage his wounded ego. After all, he’s already being forced to stand in the shadows for the sake of the deal going through with an anti-foreign business president taking the reins (or not…the finale leaves that open-ended as well). And it seems to dawn on him that it would be so much better to have someone (a man, of course) in charge that he could boss around with far more ease than he can Shiv, who easily lives up to her nickname by shiving Kendall in the back at the end of the episode. And just when it seemed like the trio was getting along so well, too. That is, back in the kitchen of Caroline’s “hellhole in paradise.” After Caroline remarked to Shiv about being unable to “tend to” Roman, “There’s something about eyes. They just kind of, ugh, revolt me.” Shiv clarifies, “Eyes? Like human eyes we all have?” “Yeah, I don’t like to think of all these blobs of jelly rolling around in your head. Just…face eggs.” To be sure, that is what they amount to when you can’t really see past the blinding nature of your own hubris.

    Something all four of the Roy children suffer from…because let’s not forget about Connor (Alan Ruck). Even if his appearance is minimal as usual, but nonetheless effective. Especially when, via a fresh home movie, he stands next to Logan (Brian Cox) and delivers a performance of “I’m a Little Teapot” “in the manner of Logan Roy.” The lyrics then, naturally, go, “I am a little teapot—fuck off! Short and stout—what did you fucking call me? Here’s my handle, here’s my fuckin’ spout. When I get steamed up, you can hear me shout—Frank Vernon is a moron, Karl Muller is a kraut!” But Karl (David Rasche) can still sing a good Scottish folk song as he regales the dinner table with his rendition of “Green Grow the Rashes, O.” The lyrical content of which hits too close to home for the Roy children as they listen to the words, “Green grow the rashes, O/The sweetest hours that e’er I spend/Are spent among the lasses, O/The war’ly race may riches chase/And riches still may fly them, O/And even though they catch ‘em fast/Their hearts can ne’er enjoy them, O.”

    What modicum of something resembling “hearts” the Roy children might have certainly don’t allow them to enjoy much, that’s for sure. Indeed, they all seem like masochists who actually relish torturing themselves, and reminding the other siblings of who they really are. For a brief moment in the episode, Shiv and Roman are compelled to make Kendall forget who he is at his core by obliging him in his long-standing, ceaseless desire to become Waystar Royco’s CEO. Upon Kendall informing Shiv that Matsson ousting her (per craftily-secured intel from Greg [Nicholas Braun]), the trio at last aligns to form a bloc that will stop the vote from going through. The only problem, as usual, is that none of them can agree on who should be CEO.

    With Kendall swimming out to a dock to let his siblings confer in the darkness of a Barbados beach, Shiv and Roman discuss whether or not they ought to finally just let Kendall have what he’s been dreaming of ever since this whole saga began. Roman asks, “Should we give it to him?” An annoyed Shiv says, “Yeah, we probably should.” Shiv pauses and then adds deviously. “Unless we kill him.” Although meant “in jest,” it’s ultimately exactly what Shiv decides to do by ousting her big bro at the last minute. And when she cuts him with that knife, he definitely bleeds, saying, “I feel like…if I don’t get to do this—I, I feel like, that’s it. I might, I might, uh, like I might die.” And there is that exact feeling as we watch him sink via the elevator back into the bowels of the cruel real world. Whether or not he tries to kill himself now, Kendall is already dead.

    Perhaps it’s all part of his karma for Andrew Dodds (Tom Morley), the waiter who ended up drowning at the end of season one as a result of Kendall’s insatiable search for drugs. When Kendall spots the waiter, just fired from Shiv’s wedding by Logan, he asks him for a “powder” connect. When Andrew tries to offer him some ketamine, which he does himself, Kendall insists he needs a “different vibe tonight”: coke. Thus, Kendall drives them through the darkened English countryside in search of Andrew’s connection. When he sees a deer in the road and swerves, Kendall crashes the car in the water, leaving a ket’d-out Andrew to die. In the present, when Shiv and Roman bring the murder up (which Kendall confessed to them in the season three finale, “All the Bells Say”), Kendall has lost all sense of guilt for the “incident,” immediately responding, “It did not happen. I wasn’t even there.” He then reiterates, “It did not happen!” Because when rich people say something didn’t happen, then it definitely didn’t. But this denial makes Shiv all the more disgusted by her brother, and therefore convinced they’re better off selling the company than letting him be the CEO. Blinded by her own jealousy, of course, she would rather watch the company burn in someone else’s hands than let Ken take his shot. And, talking once more of eyes and sight, when Roman reminds that, in terms of “bloodline,” Ken’s children aren’t “‘real’ real,” he escalates the eye jelly comment Caroline foreshadowed to the next level by pressing Roman’s eyeballs in (already having mushed Roman’s face into his shoulder in that previous scene of “aggressive love”).

    This gives Shiv her opportunity to go back into the meeting and cast her vote in favor of the GoJo deal despite being betrayed by Matsson. And despite the fact that the CEO position will go to, of all people, Tom fucking Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen). The one person who should have been axed ages ago both personally and professionally, but managed to shapeshift his way to the top. Indeed, it’s his “mutability” that makes him so appealing to Matsson, whose opinion of this non-person is obviously cinched when Shiv describes him as “very plausible corporate matter” and “a highly interchangeable modular part.” In other words, exactly what Matsson is looking for in his own puppet. And, being that Tom sells himself by noting of his current position, “I’m cutting heads and harvesting eyeballs,” Matsson can tell he’s got the chops to give the chop to whoever he says, whenever he says. Of course, Tom’s mention of harvesting eyeballs is yet another nod to the notion of sight and vision—or rather, lack thereof—in this episode, and in Logan’s progeny.

    Kendall obviously had no foresight about Shiv’s sudden treachery, prompting him to continue to stand in disbelief in the office where the emotional and physical altercation transpired. Roman finally lays the truth out for him: “It’s fuck-all, man. It’s bits of glue and broken shows, fuckin’ phony news, fucking come on.” Unable to see that reality, Kendall keeps urging, “We have this, we can still do this.” Himself seeing clearly for the first time, Roman balks, “Oh my god, man, it’s nothing. Okay? It’s just nothing. It’s fucking nothing. Stop it!” Kendall, who has placed his entire identity into this role of “successor” cannot believe what Roman is saying, repeating “no” over and over again until Roman interjects, “Yeah. Hey, we are bullshit… You are bullshit. You’re fucking bullshit, man. I’m fucking bullshit. She’s bullshit. It’s all fucking nothing, man. I’m telling you this because I know it, okay? We’re nothing. Okay.”

    And so it is that Roman is the one to finally admit that what Logan said at the beginning of season four was accurate, even if harsh: “You’re such fucking dopes. You’re not serious figures. I love you, but…you are not…serious people.” Only ornaments and pawns in the life of Logan, the quintessential King Lear figure of this narrative. And yet, a Cordelia never seems to manifest in any of his children. It’s nothing but Regans and Gonerils where the obsession with “winning at inheritance” is concerned.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lukas Matsson Has His Lexi Featherston Moment

    Lukas Matsson Has His Lexi Featherston Moment

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    There must be something about being inside a rich person’s apartment overlooking the New York skyline that makes a party guest have a rather overt epiphany: New York kinda sucks. More to the point, it’s not actually that special. Naturally, those loyalists who are obsessed with NYC and defending its “honor” no matter how much it devolves into a moated island for the uber-affluent or the uber-deranged (usually those two qualities go hand in hand) will say that the likes of Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) and Lexi Featherston (Kristen Johnston) are merely “haters” because they’re not being treated like the “relevant” beings they see themselves as. Of course, Matsson is endlessly relevant (“fudged” GoJo numbers or not). As far as anyone (apart from the Roys) is concerned, he’s a rich white man doin’ big thangs—and should be treated as such.

    Nonetheless, Lukas is feeling generally bored and resentful from the outset of showing up to Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Tom’s (Matthew Macfadyen) triplex in Lower Manhattan, where they’re hosting an election kickoff “tailgate party” (hence, the name of the episode being just that). It’s Shiv, playing the double agent throughout the ongoing and much talked about “deal” (one in which GoJo will absorb Waystar Royco), who urges Lukas to show up. Because not only will it throw a wrench into Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman’s (Kieran Culkin) plans to talk shit about him and GoJo, but it will also give Lukas a window of opportunity to shine bright like a diamond in front of the “most powerful people in America.” To Lukas’ surprise, it really is that easy to make an impact. More specifically, as he notes to Shiv in the coat room, “You know, I thought these people would be very complicated, but it’s…they’re not. It’s basically just, like, money and gossip” (ergo, Gossip Girl remaining the pinnacle of rich people life). And maybe that’s part of when the disenchantment with New York starts to sink in for Lukas. Sure, he’s been there many times and witnessed “the scene,” but never until this moment did it seem so clear to him how utterly lacking the innerworkings behind the veneer are. Like Dorothy and co. witnessing the Wizard of Oz being operated by nothing more than a little man behind a curtain, Lukas sees something far more disillusioning in these “movers and shakers.”

    Shiv confirms, “Oh yeah, no. That’s all it is.” Money and gossip. Synonyms for wheeling and dealing as a “key player” in New York. And being a key player, of course, automatically means you have to be rich. As the phrase that triggers so many people goes, “You have to pay to play.” No money, no skin in the game. And it is, as most are aware by now, a very rigged one. Matsson has been all too happy to be part of that ruse, particularly since he’s been putting one on himself in order to come across as “big enough” to buy out Waystar. Perhaps he was hoping that New York, for all its prestige and having a “solid reputation” as an epicenter of finance and “glamor,” would have more to it going on behind the scenes than merely more of the same.

    Kendall, committed as much to New York being the “end all, be all” as he is to his father’s company embodying that as well, insists that there is. And that Lukas is the inferior impostor who can’t hack it. In short, he’s no Anna Delvey when it comes to navigating New York as an impostor (as Kendall remarks to Shiv, “I fuckin’ knew he was a bullshitter. I’m tellin’ you…new money. You gotta hold those fresh bills to the light”). And yet, he actually does seem to know how to navigate. For he’s comfortable and confident enough in his own skin to “dare” to speak ill of the “greatest city in the world.” And amongst the “most powerful” people who run it, therefore all of America. Thus, we’re met with Lukas Matsson’s “Lexi Featherston moment” around forty-eight minutes into the episode. When he’s finally had enough of this blasé, bullshit party and wants to stir things up by asking, “So who’s, uh, who’s going out tonight in this shitty fucking town? Anyone? I gotta say, it’s pretty depressing from up here. You can really see how Second World it is.”

    For those who don’t remember Lexi’s own anti-New York monologue from season six of Sex and the City, it bubbled to the surface after being at her wit’s end with the banality of everyone and everything at the so-called party. Thus, Lexi snaps after being told she can’t smoke inside near the window, “Fuckin’ geriatrics… When did everybody stop smoking? When did everybody pair off? This used to be the most exciting city in the world and now it’s nothing but smoking near a fuckin’ open window. New York is over. O-V-E-R. Over. No one’s fun anymore! What ever happened to fun? God, I’m so bored I could die.” And then she does, tripping over her own stiletto heel and falling out the window. Previously, when Carrie encounters her in the bathroom doing coke and tells Lexi she only came in to get away from the party, Lexi replies knowingly, “Oh Euro-intellectuals. I don’t know why I pulled strings to get an invite to this piece of shit party.” Funnily enough, Lexi would probably view Lukas as one of the “Euro-intellectuals” she finds so dull merely because he happens to be from Europe. But at least his “right-hand man,” Oskar Gudjohnsen (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), is “moon-beamed on edibles” according to Lukas. Which makes things slightly more amusing for him (like having a court jester or something) as he “mingles” among the “glitterati” of the political and business worlds.

    Even so, just as Lexi did, Lukas finds himself utterly unimpressed by the goings-on at this “event.” Which, to him, feels like a sad attempt on these people’s part at pretending they’re living it up in some “fabulous” town with a lifestyle that couldn’t possibly be had anywhere else. Yet if it’s so fabulous, why does it bum him out so much as he stares out the window? Just as Lexi sort of did as she lit her cigarette and then turned her back to the city to give the “revelers” a harrowing recap on the state of affairs in NYC. A merciless “summing up” tailored to those who are still delusional about its “untouchable clout.”

    Kendall being one such person as he replies to Lukas calling it a shitty town with, “I don’t know, [it’s a] pretty happening town, famously.” “Really? Is it though?” “Yeah.” Lukas reminds Kendall of his quaint American perspective by saying, “Compared to Singapore, Seoul…it’s like Legoland.” Kendall insists, “You know we still run shit though?” Lukas ripostes, “Hmm, like as in…only in New York?” Kendall confirms, “Yeah.” Lukas titters, “Right. Okay. Well, uh, nothing happens in New York that doesn’t happen everywhere.” A fairly obvious statement, but one that actually needs to be said to those living in the self-deceiving bubble of “nothing else being like New York.”

    Starting to get offended as every NYC diehard does when a nerve is touched about “their” city, Kendall demeans in return to that comment, “You should get that written on a cup. Right? Shouldn’t he get that written on a cup? Like that would look so cool. You could sell that in a head shop in Rotterdam. Could be a good business for you.” Unfortunately, there’s still not much business in trying to “pull back the curtain” on New York blowing chunks, as it were. And even those who are “aware” of it still claim there’s nowhere else they’d rather be (especially if their choice is limited to staying in the U.S.).

    Including Carrie Bradshaw, as she claims to her “partner,” Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov), “I have a life here.” This being in response to his desire for them to move to Paris together. He answers, “Yes, but what do you want to come home to? What do you want your life to be?” These questions inferring that her continuing in the same way as she always has for the sake of “being loyal” to New York will only lead her down a path of despair and loneliness (something And Just Like That… ultimately confirms). And it’s for this reason that Lexi’s timing to appear as a cautionary tale plummeting to her death prompts Carrie to take her own plunge—by leaving New York. Even if New York is her “boyfriend,” as she called it in the first episode of season five, “Anchors Away,” wherein she tells us in a voiceover that she “can’t have nobody talking shit about [her] boyfriend” (this after a sailor named Louis [Daniel Sunjata] does exactly that). Unfortunately for Carrie and those committed to New York like a mental institution, this is what both Lexi and Lukas “deign” to do in their honest assessment of a city that “never sleeps.” Which is perhaps part of why it has the propensity to always disappoint.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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