To me, Willa seemed... humiliated. Yes, sure, when your dreams crash and burn and your billionaire boyfriend, who has backed you and is losing a lot of money due to your failure, suggests that you could at least make back some of the money by actively encouraging people to hate and mock you, you’re not going to say…

Re: reverse banjo — I think that Tom’s play for Shiv was to push everyone BUT Shiv so it’s not obvious that the person he wants to push is Shiv (Tom being Tom, he completely fucked that up). I think that’s what Logan’s line is acknowledging.

This is the kind of hill I too would be willing to die on, but to be fair, HBO themselves have formalised the wrong spelling, so from a style guide persepective, “Shiv” is correct (plus it provides us with that pun, etc): https://www.hbo.com/succession/cast-and-crew/shiv-roy

I agree completely. I’m not ordinarily a fan of horrible protagonists but when done right and with a healthy dose of humanity... I think the show does a great job of balancing the clueless awfulness of the wealthy and the kind of psychological trauma that wealth both generates through privilege and necessitates. It’s…

That was the Woolworth Building, which is at 225 Broadway. That wasn’t Central Park across the street; it was City Hall Park.

There is no way this ends well for Kendall. He’s transitioned from dead-eyed puppet to dead-eyed maniac. Everything about him this episode — the way he talks, laughs, pleads with everyone—is completely unhinged. Also, this show really does love putting him next to reflective surfaces. Kind of like a constant reminder…

• Is Connor still running for president? While he’s holding down the Balkans?

Myles called it his favorite show of last year and I think there’s been one review below a B-? I guess some things in the commentariat never change.

If Ted Lasso is shooting for the objective correlative (and given the tight plotting of season 1 I don’t think that it is), then the question becomes whether it has succeeded. Eliot’s essay argues that Hamlet fails in this regard, while Macbeth succeeds because it establishes that vital connective tissue wherein the…

What a sloppy ending to a sloppy season. The first season felt like a novel, with a single storyline broken up into 10 chapters. This season felt like an anthology, with each short story being told with no knowledge about what’s happening in the other short stories. The first season is the Marvel Cinematic Universe,…

I liked the finale a lot more than Myles, but it’s fair to say this season represents a sophomore slump. Too much pointless relationship drama, too many weird narrative tangents that didn’t pay off, and, yeah, not enough football. Still laugh-out-loud funny and immensely likable, but season 2 doesn’t feel anywhere…

One thing I very much agree with the review is that the Sam-Rebecca relationship was a mess. The spectre of the tabloids exposing it should have loomed over it like Godzilla. She was shown to be a target of the papparazzi from the first scene of the first episode, and press gossips are a force throughout both seasons.…

I keep waiting for the Lasso-Beard relationship to finally revealed beyond the taciturn, aphorism-based stage, and I think this would have been a good episode for it to happen.

Gotta agree with you wholeheartedly here. Many of the choices to pick up potential juicy storylines just to drop them later (or immediately) have irked me this season. Granted, this does feel like “real life” in a way but definitely not like an ensemble show where actions have consequences.
I think the writers need to…

One thing that disappointed me about this episode is that Ted didn’t reach out to anybody for help processing whatever feelings he may have had about Nate’s betrayal. Sharon and Rebecca both offered their help, but Ted didn’t take it. I guess I feel like Ted is supposed to have learned “it’s okay if you need help”…

Great review. I don’t agree with every point but do agree with most. This season has been far less focused and paid far less attention to detail.

This season was kind of a mess, but Trent’s comment on the surprise he can’t ride a bike “because of my hair and whole vibe?” made me laugh.

I was mostly onboard with this episode as a reasonably satisfying conclusion to what was IMO a patchy season, but I thought those three jumps were just awkward? Almost like they couldn’t think of a smooth way to wrap things up, so they just bludgeoned in three separate epilogues. Roy and Keeley’s relationship has been…

There’s one aspect of the Roy/Keeley conversation that I wanted to add my voice to and that I believe it’s totally plausible that Roy would misread Keeley’s needs as she gears up for her new job.

I enjoyed Beard’s reaction when Ted uses the name “John Obi-Wan Gandalf” while making up an inspirational quote during his speech to the team.