QuincyAbeyie When I wrote that, I was under the mistaken impression the season was only eight episodes! Greatly relieved that it's ten.
For me the Mencken / Jimenez antics of the last episode were necessary to round out one of the show's themes, but actually a bit of a sideshow, so I'm glad the electoral spectacle is out of the way and that we've been cued into next week as the funeral episode, which will presumably return the action to the interplay between the raw violence of capital and, well, the raw violence of a dysfunctional family.
I thought the strength of the episode just gone was how it hammered home that sympathising with the Roys is an error—as we see Roman enthusiastically, and Kendall with a self-exonerating regret, sign up quite smoothly to become the propagators of Mencken's fascism-lite, egged on by Tom's desperation to get the ratings numbers and call (but not '"call" call') the result. Whatever else they are, the Roys are content to be the functionaries of a brutal system.
The moment in which Shiv's treachery was laid bare and even she was forced to confront it, and to admit she's a rotten person who's been lying, and lying due to her rage at being sidelined, was also shocking. As was the scene where she revealed her pregnancy to Tom and he was just like "is this another tactic?!" … ouch.
Kendall says at the end "Some people just don't know how to cut a deal" and it's unclear if he's referring to his sister's unwillingness to go along with his leadership, or to Jimenez (and Nate's) refusal to engage with ATN brokering its influence. He's so obsessed with optimisation he's unable to escape arbitrage and function on principle, as his deprioritisation of his children has been revealing.
Haven't watched this yet but this channel's often good, they get pretty direct and unfiltered access to writers, and they've just brought out an ep on SUCCESSION's writing processes.
