{"id":201,"date":"2019-08-27T06:01:30","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T06:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/?p=201"},"modified":"2026-08-14T03:27:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T03:27:29","slug":"succession-s2e3-hunting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/?p=201","title":{"rendered":"Succession S2E3: Hunting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Succession<\/em><\/a>\u00a0might feel absurd at times until you realize how absurd the world really is. I\u2019m starting to wonder if that\u2019s the point of the show: to get us to look at the kind of people who are running the world, to get us thinking that in every boardroom of every major company there is a Kendall Roy. Kendall was once bright-eyed and eager to make his mark on the world until eventually those higher on the food chain began to own him. Now he\u2019s nothing more than a skilled corporate assassin. And every business has a Roman Roy, too: clever but nowhere near qualified for the job and position in life that his last name got him. The list goes on and on until you reach Logan Roy himself. How many companies with a worldwide influence today are being run by people like Logan? And how many powerful people watched Succession<\/em> S2E3 and wanted to go to work and play \u201cBoar on the Floor\u201d with those they hold power over? As absurd as\u00a0Succession<\/em>\u00a0may feel, is the show holding up a mirror to our faces and showing us our reality?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Succession<\/em>\u00a0didn\u2019t start off beating us over the head with its commentary on the state of the world but Season 2 sure is. Showrunner Jesse Armstrong is telling us a story about how absolute power corrupts absolutely; he is telling us that no matter how degrading Logan is to those who work for him, they come crawling back\u2014like Frank did in Succession<\/em> S2E3\u2014because to be close to the power is the next best thing to having it, regardless of the price paid. This week picked up where last week left off in its commentary on news and how, to some networks, it\u2019s nothing more than a propaganda machine. In a line that will stick with me forever, Shiv warns Tom about the dangers of her father buying a rival news company and says, \u201cIf we buy them, I\u2019m worried about where I\u2019ll get my actual news from.\u201d In today\u2019s world, cable news is both weaponized and demonized, and\u00a0Succession<\/em>\u00a0isn\u2019t shying away from bringing these facts into its world of fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week we got to see Connor release a ridiculous campaign video showing exactly how unqualified he is to be running for President of the United States, and it became crystal clear what that story is based on. In our world of modern excess, money and name recognition can buy you anything, including the job of the leader of the free world. As ridiculous as it is to see Connor running for president, it is another mirror being held up to this moment in history. This on-screen absurdity is our actual reality and Succession <\/em>is shoving our faces in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Succession<\/em> S2E3 was a Logan-centric outing and really cast a light on how paranoid he feels. Logan might have his kids back under his thumb but the pressure from Kendall\u2019s former partners in the attempted coup is still very real. Logan showed what his version of a caged animal looks like this week and it\u2019s as unhinged and degrading as one might expect. The episode starts with him berating his \u201cinner circle\u201d for not being in love with his idea to buy a rival news company as a way to fix his current problems, and this is an ongoing theme of the episode. Logan\u2019s outdated way of thinking\u2014to spend a lot of money on something shiny to make himself appear more powerful\u2014is not met with enthusiasm from all (except Kendall, the Logan Roy loyalist).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Logan\u2019s paranoia was interesting to study this week and there were two causes for this paranoia to increase. One: he finds out that someone close to him spoke with a woman writing a book about him (a book he really doesn\u2019t want to be written). Two: he finds out that someone leaked details of his plans to purchase a rival company. These events, combined with his already fragile psyche, gave us \u201cBoar on the Floor\u201d: a game that evil corporate tycoons all over the globe are surely chomping at the bit to play. While I\u2019m tempted to say that we\u2019ll never again see something on Succession<\/em> as over the top as grown adults pretending to be boars fighting over a sausage, I\u2019m sure that statement will be proven wrong at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Greg
Screenshot \/ HBO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the big takeaways for me in Succession<\/em> S2E3 was Tom. Greg confides in Tom that he had awkwardly and hilariously sat down with the writer of the upcoming biography of Logan. Tom could\u2019ve easily thrown Greg under the bus during the game of degradation later in the episode but he doesn\u2019t. While Tom is far from an admirable guy, he does like Greg and seems to be looking out for him in his own weird way. Is it because he sees himself in Greg? That\u2019s my assumption at this point. The shoe fits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of Tom, when he returns home from the corporate retreat from hell, you can see that all he wants is to be with his wife. For all of his flaws, Tom loves Shiv, and while I won\u2019t say Shiv doesn\u2019t love him, she treats him as if he\u2019s a class down from her. He\u2019s there to do her bidding. While Tom was away, Shiv had slept with a man that was about as opposite from her as he could possibly be, and when Tom asks what she did while he was gone, she tells him without saying the words. The hurt on his face is real. This is not the marriage Tom wants. Last week I speculated that at some point Tom would be the one to bring Shiv down but now I\u2019m not so sure. In this story of greed and power, will Tom lose all sense of self\u2014the part of himself he sees Greg in\u2014or will he eventually break free?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to wrap up this week by looking at the game Logan is playing with his younger children. We\u2019ve seen him bringing Kendall closer despite not trusting him, we\u2019ve seen him push Roman to the side, and we\u2019ve seen him leave Shiv out in the cold by not inviting her to the corporate retreat only to end this week\u2019s episode by telling her it was time to bring her in. Whatever Logan\u2019s true intentions are, they will likely be self-serving. He wants his kids behind him, helping him fight his battles. Roman is more motivated than ever to earn his father\u2019s respect after being the odd man out. The question to me is how long can Logan manipulate his kids until they\u2019re ready to revolt like we saw with Kendall last season, and who will be the one? That remains to be seen but surely has to be where we\u2019re heading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Succession\u00a0might feel absurd at times until you realize how absurd the world really is. I\u2019m starting to wonder if that\u2019s the point of the show: to get us to look at the kind of people who are running the world, to get us thinking that in every boardroom of every major company there is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[283],"tags":[27,17,25,26,294],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-recaps","tag-brian-cox","tag-hbo","tag-jeremy-strong","tag-kieran-culkin","tag-succession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}