Kansas Crimson

KUTradition wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 11:29 am that doesn’t sound like pure fiction

twocoach wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 11:35 am

KUTradition wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 11:29 am that doesn’t sound like pure fiction

It just got to the point where I even rolled my eyes a few times. We get it already. The only major problem I had was that it was only 8 50-minute episodes. That's annoying. That's not enough content for what should be a full season.

RainbowsandUnicorns wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 9:13 pm Watched AIR tonight - on TV.
Better than I thought it would be. I'll give it a 7 out of 10.

DrPepper wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 1:04 pm

RainbowsandUnicorns wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 9:13 pm Watched AIR tonight - on TV.
Better than I thought it would be. I'll give it a 7 out of 10.

I also watched it. I enjoyed it too. How accurate do you think it was?

DrPepper wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 5:21 pm I flat out did not know that Nike shoes were not a thing (except for runners) until Jordan. I guess I was too young to know that.

twocoach wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 10:41 pm

DrPepper wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 5:21 pm I flat out did not know that Nike shoes were not a thing (except for runners) until Jordan. I guess I was too young to know that.

Huh? The Nike Blazer and the Air Force 1 were both pre-Jordan.

DrPepper wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 5:21 pm I flat out did not know that Nike shoes were not a thing (except for runners) until Jordan. I guess I was too young to know that.

pdub wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 5:51 am He coulda been having a bad day and was tired ( that day ) of interacting with strangers.

Not long after that he and Justin Long were in my buddys ( KU grad ) wine bar and they stayed til close and were chatting away with him, super nice. Then my buddy and a coworker and Justin Long went out to another bar after close and each iced each other.

MICHHAWK wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 9:29 am Hill Street Blues is probably the best cop drama ever made. that show was excellent from the first episode to the last.

the only cop drama that i can think of that might have it beat is maybe Homicide: Life on the Streets

without Homicide: Life on the Streets there never would have been The Wire.

pdub wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 10:51 am Succession is over which is a bummer.
Such a well done show.

Spoilers:






Despite how awful these people are, what makes this show good is that you still feel for them and root for them. They humanize these terrible humans and give glimpses that they are still kids who just wanted their father's approval.

Kendall gets so close and then blows it by not maintaining his cool in the ultimate negotiation right at the end moment - with Roman and Shiv. He basically feels dead now.

Tom somehow wins the power struggle between he and Shiv. Their sham marriage now may continue.
Greg hangs on.

Rome is just gonna go back to getting wasted and a wreck of a person.

That said, what about the Pierce deal? Isn't that still on the table?!

None of the sex on Succession was sexy. None of the weddings were romantic. None of the parties were fun. None of the relationships were supportive. None of the houses were comfortable. None of the style was cool. The dialogue was very, very funny, but on the whole, the Roys’ world was so desaturated, so anesthetic, and such a bland montage of interchangeable stock photo luxury backdrops that only repetition compulsion could explain why they were so hell-bent on ruling it. Their universe was nothing, as Roman said to Kendall in a crucial scene in the finale. It was bullshit. Why go to the trouble of betraying everyone you love when the only reward is another gray conference room and another chat with Karl?

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not criticizing Succession here. I think Succession was a brilliant show—maybe the best-written series, at the line level, that I’ve ever seen. But I’m wondering how we’re going to remember it in a few years’ time, once the hype cycle fades, once the discourse around Fox News and democracy is (please, God) very different, once we’re able to consider Jesse Armstrong’s creation alongside the other skyscrapers of prestige TV history. (A very Succession image: white clouds reflected in blank glass.) How will it hold up compared to Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and so forth? It’s an impossible question to answer, of course, but it’s interesting to me, partly because Succession seems to have been so clearly made in the prestige TV mold and partly because it seems so different from every other show in that mold. I also think, for reasons I’ll get into in a minute, that the question of how we’ll remember Succession is primarily a question about cynicism—not the Roys’ this time, but ours.

But let’s talk about the Roys for a second. Succession is a complicated show when it comes to form and genre, but above all else, it’s a psychoanalytic satire of the superrich. And in the same way that almost everything the Roys say revolves around textbook—even cartoonishly textbook—Freudian obsessions with sex, violence, and bodily functions, almost everything the Roys do is driven by textbook Freudian motives. Kendall wants to kill his father and replace him. Roman wants to submit to him and be punished. Shiv wants to marry him. (And so, in the finale, Kendall tries and fails to seize power, Roman has his wound literally reopened, and Shiv drives off holding hands with the CEO of Waystar.) In a world where running Waystar Royco looked like a fun and satisfying thing to do, all the Civilization and Its Discontents stuff might have gotten lost. We’d have assumed everyone was competing for the crown because the crown itself was so nice. Rational behavior! But against Succession’s overwhelming atmosphere of high-end hopelessness, in which the characters are essentially guaranteed to be unhappy no matter how much power they obtain, the psychological tropes become starkly visible. The crown is made of tinfoil; the only reason to chase it is because childhood trauma is compelling you to.

And this realization, in turn, is the source of the show’s odd satiric power. It’s odd because—well, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t necessarily have looked at our era of fake news, environmental degradation, rising income inequality, faltering trust in institutions, and vanishing democratic norms and thought, “It’s clear that this is all happening because some rich kid has an Oedipus complex.” On the other hand, contemporary reality is just about hallucinatory enough to justify turning to the master of dream interpretation to explain it. And as Succession never tired of reminding us, the stupidest explanation is very often the truest.