Some people just can’t make a deal

Willa is a scene stealer. Actually pretending like Con had a chance made her the best liar on the show.

he couldnt sell it

All Kendall wanted from Shiv was an ounce of sincerity. He laid it all out for her. She had to try to play him like a fool and now this is on her.

Shiv fancies herself the smartest and most capable but she one, fails at wrangling her idiot brother and two, sucks so hard at lying that even he can read it on her face.

yeah the fake phone call and kendall instantly calling shiv's bluff was super cringe

She also fails miserably at strong-arming Greg.

The thing is it does matter what the network says.

This election is clearly going to be close.
This election is clearly going to be contested no matter which side wins.

Ever watch sports and they do instant replay and say "you must have conclusive proof to overturn a decision"? If the network can get enough support in an unclear result to say "Mencken is the winner", then the job of Jimenez to overturn isn't just "well it kinda looks like...", he has to outright prove he would have won, which he can't do because the votes are destroyed. That means the only option is a re-vote, which won't happen - even if it's the fairest, a central tenet that people expect from democracy in the USA is that "when the election day is done, there's a winner".

So, by giving one side the platform and seemingly impartial support to say "based on votes actually counted, I win", and the other side having nothing other than "based on what we think might have been on some votes that were destroyed, I win", the former gets entrenched as the perceived winner in the public's eye.

Ironically, for all the thought that this was a callback to 2016, it's more like the reverse of 2020; it was a close election, and there were some voting irregularities claimed (note: I am taking no position on the veracity of these claims, just that they were made). However, at the end of the day, news organizations declared Biden as the winner, and despite a lot of support from some sectors and a lot of legal attempts, nothing Trump did after that was substantial enough to overturn it. That's exactly what will happen to Jimenez.

I don't know this dude or his credentials, but I nonetheless found this Succession thread from an apparent election lawyer interesting:

https://twitter.com/adambonin/status...88194804514817

I think it's pretty clear that major news calls create a narrative that can ultimately affect the outcome, unless a person is optimistic enough to believe in the notion of an apolitical judiciary at this point. Beyond partisan biases, judges are also still frail human beings who will simply have an easier time sustaining an existing ongoing public narrative than overturning one. Bogus narratives pushed by a platform with a large megaphone can create a permission structure for all sorts of things.

Though I will say that the clear weak point here is that very likely ATN was the only one to actually call the election as having a winner already, which is a very different dynamic than a common call among all the major networks.

I didnt necessarily need the stakes of Succession to get this “high”. But I think they did it well. This kind of thing was inevitable when you make a show about a FOX surrogate.

thats not how any of this works, sorry


yeah the bigger point for them, which i think shiv pointed out, and they probably should have dwelled on more, is that they were destroying their credibility by doing this

It's kind of exactly how it worked in 2020, sorry.

You're making the mistake of acting like every single election challenge has the same level of legal merit and therefore the same chance of success in litigation. This is a fairly different situation than the 2020 brainworms stuff that got dishonestly tossed out there without any statistically meaningful substance behind it.

As noted, I do agree that what news networks say can have a real impact on how things play out, so I don't think that it's meaningless, but the Twitter thread I linked above does indicate that there apparently is a framework for re-voting as a potential legal remedy given the situation involved (whether it is one that is actually likely to be granted is another matter).

However, subsequent legal challenges in this show are probably just never going to be resolved, because they're seemingly just having each new episode be the next day in the Succession world and we only have two episodes left.

foxnews has for 3 years been saying that the dems stole the election ... remind me again of who is potus


yeah the atn call was like a reverse of fox calling arizona in 2020
the election choice was supposed to be like 2016
the 100k burnt ballots was basically florida in 2000
saw ppl saying there were references to other elections from 04-12 but i didn't notice

The show does a great job at showing how the kids think they can just do what they think Logan would have done and then letting us see how much it blows up in their face. Seems to have happened at least 2-3 times per episode since his death.

i thought it was a good ep but thats mostly because the "omg the merger is gonna go through, wait no it wont!" really doesnt do a ton for me so this was a nice deviation from that

Ya 2000 election is proly the most analogous.

other random thoughts & complaints fwiw:

- tom seemed more coked out before he did coke (unless the implication is that he's generally just a cokehead now? idk)
- the wasabi thing and greg pouring mellow yellow in the nate bronze guy's eyes is like season 50 homer simpson stupid (unless he was doing that on purpose ... but then, why?), they do this kind of thing a lot and i really hate it. greg especially just becomes 0 iq whenever they feel the need some comic relief
- the stuff with conner is ridiculous, the way they're treating him. just give him an ambassador spot somewhere, who cares. it would happen 1000 out of 1000 times irl. as a billionaire libertarian who ran for president he's absolutely qualified for that, they give that **** to literal nobodys
- hugo had one of the worst lines of the series, don't even remember what it was thank the gods
- willa ftmfw
- say what you will, but roman went full logan this ep (and generally, lately), good for him i guess
- kendall is a bitch
- excited for what shiv is gonna do to bone over her brothers, they all gonna "lose". except maybe conner

Yeah the episode was getting so ridiculous that for the first time this season I kept hoping for the finish line rather than just enjoying the episode. But in their defense, outside of this episode, the final season has been so entertaining and great for me that I'm willing to give them a day off. Hopefully it comes back stronger.

Just in general, I'm r ally getting annoyed by Mattson's character too. They've made him such a caricature that it's more annoying than anything. I don't know if they were going for another quirky Roman or something but they completely missed where Roman is an awesome character and Mattson seems like a cartoon.

Tremendous final season.

Each character is so well developed. Tom Wamsgans will always be one of my favorite television characters.

I actually loved this last episode but I agree about Mattson. I was hoping he’d be out after like ep6 and maybe come back one more time for either his victory lap or his head hung after losing. Either one is fine but if it was any other actor, I think I’d skip his scenes lol

Yes. Hanging chads plus the fact that most networks initially called FL for Gore based on exit polls, then reversed course later that night.

Kendall made the right moves in the end despite him looking like he was wavering on Menkin. He looked like he didn't want to commit until he fully knew what Shiv was up to but still hanged on to some hope that it was Jimenez to almost in a way to appease his ex-wife and daughter. But as a potential long-term boss of Waystar I think Roman put more runs on the board on election night but Kendall still didn't do anything wrong.

And tbh I wish this whole ex-wife and daughter storyline that the ex-wife is afraid for her daughter's wellbeing because of the political ramifications of a Menkin win is exhausting and really shouldn't be dwelling on Kendall's mind as much as it is or the writers are making it out but I guess they need to have some conflict in the character's world if Tom has the drugs angle now and Roman is the guy that just can't consistently get it together when trying to run things for Waystar and keeps ****ing things up.

Mattson needed to be kept around as he was always going to be Shiv's foil of getting her own back on her brothers as someone that was either going to run ATN for Mattson or have some high up position in the Waystar bought business moving forward.

Part of the issue is that the stakes seem pretty low in regards to the Matsson deal. If it goes through, the Roy siblings are billions richer and can go buy Pierce as originally planned or whatever. If it doesn't, they keep the company and... I guess keep fighting over who runs it? It just doesn't seem like it matters that much in the end.

With only 2 episodes left and assuming each ep continues to take place over a single day, I'm not seeing some big resolution of all the plot threads.

I still think this has been an excellent season through mainly for the acting and the great dialogue. Which is really the main point of this show anyway, plot has always been secondary. Looking forward to Roman's eulogy that's for sure.

Art imitates life with Mattson as Elon.