Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.
what you need to understand about recommending a show to me is that no matter how much we both know I’ll like it, I can’t watch it until the Neurodivergence Department in my brain approves it. I don’t know when that will be, and I don’t have any more control over it than you do.
and they didn’t escape anything! no cycle was broken! shiv didn’t sacrifice herself to save her brothers! they are unmoored, they are adrift, they aren’t free. they’re all going to find new ways to self-destruct. if you think any of these people are capable of losing their father, their birthright, their purpose and moving on, you haven’t been watching the show.
licherally the way they’re all back at the beginning… kendall is never going to be CEO just like in episode 1. he spent 4 seasons trying to be CEO and trying to find meaning with his father and trying to find meaning in opposition to his father and then trying to become his father and now he will never be his father in the one way that matters to him. roman is once again the unserious asshole in the bar. he thought he could maybe be someone else but he failed and now this chapter is just a ‘weird little detour’. shiv stays married to tom because he’s ceo so through him she can access power and try to influence waystar, just like how in season 1 she wanted him to eventually be ceo because she thought (knew) logan would never let her be ceo and this is the one way she could get access. tom once again has power over greg because he’s ceo and because greg tried to betray him and failed which means he now owes tom everything for not firing him, which means their relationship can reset back to the s1-s2 dynamics tom was so comfortable in rather than the more equal s4 dynamic which he chafed at. tom’s going to let himself be the 'pain sponge’ in a never-ending game of boar on the floor because that’s the only way to get ahead. they suffered so much just to end up right back where they started and thats what we call 'tragic waste’ babey
you know who lost succession? jeremy strong. man gave his soul for kendall roy and gave it so beautifully and now he has to take his “i believe in making work where the sense of self and the character is amorphous” ass and go job hunting in a media landscape where the options are MCU hero#154 or olaf from live action frozen.
shiv was not being altruistic nor intellectually self-interested when she voted against kendall. that was pure raw visceral desperation to maintain some semblance of dignity that she felt kendall being ceo would shred her of. sometimes people do not act in other people’s best interests or their own best interests. sometimes people do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons just because it feels like the right, the only, thing to do. shiv could not let kendall be ceo. she just couldn’t. not because she wanted to sacrifice herself to “stop the cycle,” not because she made a calculation and decided tom was her best interest — because the thought of kendall being ceo and acting like That the rest of their lives when shiv earned that job, she fucking earned it, that was too much to fucking bear. watching him sit in dad’s chair, conduct that vote, grin with entitlement and cockiness and certainty — seeing that elicited a visceral painful all-consuming sensation not dissimilar to overwhelming nausea that, summed up in two words, would simply be: fuck. no. she couldn’t live with that. she just couldn’t. it’s not kind. it’s not smart. it’s just human. painfully, destructively human. because sometimes, that’s all there is to it. not just for shiv, but for everyone. god knows roman and kendall have had those same feelings, made those same self-destructing yet necessary-feeling decisions throughout the show. why does it have to be different for shiv? why can’t she be painfully destructively human, prone to impulsive ill-conceived viscerally felt actions, like everyone else? why are we incapable of allotting her the same nuance and humanity (the good and the bad), the same trauma-informed self-destructive life-ruining hamartias, as we do her brothers? why can’t we fit a whole woman in our heads?
the thing about ted lasso is it drove up in a bus, slammed right into me, and didn’t even stop to ask if i was okay because tonight’s episode took me by the face and said “our parents aren’t perfect and they never have been and it’s okay to love them the way we did when we were little and still be angry with them for the people they made us into and all we can try to do is be better and lead with the love before the anger” haha
