Well... now you guys are gonna make me try and watch this show. Adam, kudos to you on that answer.
I think I have all the episodes of that series stored on my Betamax, but have failed to ever make the time to start watching it. On Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 8:42 PM PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks so much Adam for taking the time to provide me with such a > thoughtful and articulate response. I have asked the same question in > several other places on the internet, and have only gotten some form of “if > you don’t like this show your an idiot!” I guess that’s why, in a nutshell, > I have enjoyed this group for so long. > > It’s interesting that many of the things you identified about your context > I would second. I loved The Thick of It, and Veep of course, and can’t get > enough of Carey Grant or Katharine Hepburn rapid firing delicious wise > crack filled dialogue. While the Roys and the real life people they > represent are horrible, they are somewhat less horrible than the killers, > psychopaths and human traffickers in the Sopranos. I guess I just don’t > hear the high quality dialog in Succession - instead I hear dialogue that > wants to be classic and smart, but, for me, isn’t terribly. > > It’s not that I have to like the characters in a show, but I do have to > care what happens to them, and I find I just don’t give a damn whether > Ivanka or Eric or Don Jr wins this weeks power struggle, and I don’t care > about their spouses or their cousins or the horse they rode in on. I am > interested in media as well, but I don’t count what Murdoch does as actual > media. > > I don’t hate the show; I’ve seen every episode, and enjoyed some > significantly, and most at least a little. But not only would I not > nominate it as one of the best shows of the year, I would not put it on my > list of the top 25 of the 21st century. > > It is odd for me though, because it feels like a show that is being aimed > at me. A lot of my friends and family members, who have similar tastes in > popular entertainment as I do, LOVE the show, and want to do long water > cooler deep dives into it with me in chats and tweets the next day, and > mostly I can’t be bothered to do much more than grouse about how much I > dislike having to be around those people for another hour. > > On Tue, 14 Dec 2021 at 4:00 PM Adam Bowie <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> On Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 10:11 PM PGage <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> >>> Can you at all out into words what it is you like about spending time >>> with them? I keep wondering if I am just looking at it the wrong way. I >>> just detest the people, and am not charmed by the snappy dialogue- and >>> particularly do not find Roman funny or endearing. >>> >>> >> Objectively, they are all awful people. But that's not what I'm always >> looking for from a show. You're not supposed to like these characters. But >> you are supposed to believe in them. And they're drawn richly enough that I >> do. Indeed what this show is brilliant at is making me interested in these >> otherwise terrible people. That's hard to do. Sure, we've had anti-heroes >> forever. It's even become a bit of a TV cliché - from Tony Soprano to Vic >> Mackey in The Shield to Walter White in Breaking Bad. But those shows are >> about us kinda liking the bad boys. This is something different. >> >> Strangely, these feel as real a bunch of TV characters that I can think >> of in any show ever. That comes through in the writing and the top-notch >> performances. There are awkward silences; there are bits of dialogue that >> are incoherent and don't feel as though a writer has written them (although >> for the most part, they very much have). Literally every character feels >> properly fleshed out, and not just a means to an end. And the show >> repeatedly leaves massive gaps in telling us exactly what's going on. We >> have to work to keep up - it doesn't hold our hands. and you just don't get >> exposition dialogue lazily dumped on us. We're treated like adults. It's a >> show that you absolutely cannot be scrolling through your phone while you >> watch it - not if you want to fully appreciate it anyway. >> >> Part of my love of Succession is certainly the sphere they operate in. >> Media has become so dominant in recent years, and I have always been >> obsessed with it. Here's a fictional company that has at its heart a Fox >> News-alike channel that from their perspective is just a means to an end to >> make money. And the characters know it intrinsically, but just don't care. >> On this week's episode, one of the throwaway lines spoke of turning on the >> "bigot spigot" when referencing their news channel, and their happiness in >> getting into bed with extreme right wingers. Sadly, it's vastly more >> authentic than, say, ACN in Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom - a show that >> itself could have been designed perfectly for me. Literally just this week, >> Fox News has lost Chris Wallace, coming just a couple of weeks after their >> streaming sibling turned up the "bigot spigot" to the max with Tucker >> Carlson's "documentary." >> >> Another reason for me loving the show is that you can follow a pretty >> clear through narrative from the British show, The Thick of It (from which >> the movie In the Loop, was a spin-off), through Veep and then finally to >> Succession. Jesse Armstrong, who created Succession, worked as a writer on >> the previous two shows, both created by the peerless Armando Ianucci. While >> the former two are easily classifiable as comedies, I'm not sure exactly >> where I'd place Succession, and it's probably reductive to attempt to >> define it clearly as a "drama" or a "comedy." It's definitely not a >> "comedy-drama" either. But it does have much more humour - and frankly, >> more laugh out loud moments, for me anyway, than most "comedies" I watch on >> TV. But Malcolm Tucker on The Thick of It and Selena Myers in Veep were >> pretty obnoxious too. I lapped them up. >> >> I suppose I can sit at arm's length from these characters and be >> enormously superior about their incestuous behaviours, and yet there's the >> dawning realisation that this really isn't that far removed from reality. >> It's going to be interesting to see Adam McKay's new movie, Don't Look Up, >> which from reviews, seems to be covering related ground, in perhaps a more >> slapstick manner. >> >> On another level entirely, one of my favourite film genres is the >> screwball comedy - especially those of the 30s and 40s. Howard Hawks' >> Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday are comfortably inside my top ten >> films of all time. Now what Succession doesn't have, which are essential >> ingredients in a screwball is a love story at the heart of them. Characters >> have relationships in Succession, but there's little in the way of love. >> However, both have lines delivered at 100 miles an hour, with lines that >> pass by so fast that you almost have to re-watch them to catch them. >> >> One final note on the Jeremy Strong thing - I thought this piece by The >> Guardian's Hadley Freeman, who herself interviewed Strong ahead of the >> start of this season, was very fair, and on the money - >> https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/dec/10/madness-in-their-method-have-we-fallen-out-of-love-with-actorly-excess >> >> >> Adam >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "TVorNotTV" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAD_sJGD4YBDFRQNjMT%3DYHnea5RF580q0NHB2OpFT_bevJ0YBQA%40mail.gmail.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAD_sJGD4YBDFRQNjMT%3DYHnea5RF580q0NHB2OpFT_bevJ0YBQA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- > Sent from Gmail Mobile > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYKNASo08zE6ovfyn07vrom9QLr9FMuX%3DpGL6uAu0eF1Dg%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYKNASo08zE6ovfyn07vrom9QLr9FMuX%3DpGL6uAu0eF1Dg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAK5Q1Bpi818bxhmAoec6ixCGw0hKrQd%3DM_E7AUj1oLwhqCOz_A%40mail.gmail.com.
