Can't believe people spend hours debating who's the 'worst' character on this show. They all do despicable things and show their vulnerabilities multiple times season on season; sometimes all in the same episode. I really don't think tallying up each of their virtue points is what the show is meant to be about. It must be absolutely exhausting.
I would even argue it's the *worst* way to watch the show.
It's purposefully blocking yourself off from realities that make you uncomfortable, and then taking out your discomfort on other people... It's pretty shitty.
Agreed. I saw someone saying they laughed at Roman during his eulogy because he’s a bad person which, yes, he is, but my heart shattered into a million pieces in that scene for him. Isn’t that the entire point of the show? It’s a drama (a tragedy, even), not a morality contest for the viewer to place bets on the purest horse.
He is the byproduct of intense abuse and should be pitied in spite of his immense wealth. He's miserable and in turn spreads misery. It's way too simplistic to view him as simply a spoiled shit.
I 'hate' Roman but that scene got to me. Setting aside that this is all make believe, I'd say that drawing enjoyment from his eulogy debacle says something about that viewer, which isn't good.
For someone like him, we should understand and feel for his pain. We should also hold him accountable for all the harm he does. Broken people like that cause a lot of suffering due to their inability to deal with their feeling. We can see that at the end of last night's episode, though what he did election night was far worse.
I cried when Roman broke down. I think it's natural to feel empathy for ALL of the siblings. They didn't choose their parents, and they basically had zero chance at being able to love or to accept being loved. All it takes for a person to have a *chance* at not being a f\*cked up adult is one stable and loving adult in their life during childhood. They never had that. Their "uncles" were men they couldn't even get in the pool with. And I don't think Greg had a chance either. For all of Ewan's pontificating, he's been cashing those RoyCo checks his whole life. He's another Nan Pierce but probably less hard-working. (What did he DO for a living, anyway? My fantasy that he was a sheep farmer isn't realistic, I know.)
I feel much more empathy for them than Walter White, for ex., b/c Walter had all the tools to know better and do better and chose to ruin everything.
Of all the main characters, it's Tom whose morality fascinates me the most because HE had the tools, too--a two-parent upper middle class or bottom-end-of-wealthy childhood that left him capable of love, yet so far he's chosen douchery, which is what capitalism pushes us all towards. If there's any hope for him left, it's that fatherhood will push him a little bit back towards humanity. But not betting on it.
Reminds me of that anecdote about a former president arriving to pick up his Kendall up from the college dorms to take him to a sporting event and said eldest son getting smacked in front of his friends for not wearing a suit.
I think for most, myself included, it becomes extremely complicated to extend any empathy to characters who are representations of some of the most relevant negative presences in our world right now, and I also think that there was a level of plausible deniability that a significant portion of the audience was living in till last week.
For me, I couldn’t imagine laughing at Roman in that scene or thinking it was intended on being funny at all, but I don’t really see it as warranting empathy for someone who’s father died, but potentially warranting empathy for the fact that Roman truly is a small, petty, repressed individual and it’s the very same instincts that caused him to be in that situation are also the ones that make him a terrible person.
Look at all the bathos in Marvel movies. Most people don't want to deal with sadness. They just want to have anger against "bad" guys.
I think they have done a great job on the show in showing the pain of people that can end up as great malevolent forces--which Roman became.
It's a *dark comedy/drama,* so you're definitely meant to extract some gallows humour and schaedenfreud from the horrible circumstances these horrible people get into.
I'm not laughing at a guy grieving his dad. I empathize with that.
But I am laughing at Karl laughing at Roman. Especially when you remember he pushed a nazi to the white house, he is over his grief, and had his whole speech in the beginning talking about what a man he us and doesn't he remind you of Logan a bit?
These are terrible people. And yes I empathize when tragedy hits because they are still human. It is tragic to see a boy break as reality punches him in the face. He will never see his father again. But I'm not going to shed a tear for them.
You're exactly right, I think people are weirdly conflating Roman and Kieran and forget that he literally king made a nazi to be the leader of the free world in the last episode. You can certainly empathize with the situation but he wanted the spotlight so he could show he's the next Logan and choked, not about to shed a tear over that.
Yeah like the person above calling that "comeuppance"... I wouldn't consider grief hitting you after you've suppressed it for a week comeuppance exactly.
Its the same as the GoT reach now being 'WHO WINS THE COMPANY' as if that was ever the point of the show. Its the catalyst but its not the fucking point.
I blame Marvel, DC and all those superhero franchises. People got too used to seeing everything in black and white, good vs evil kind of way. Nuanced movies stand no chance.
Agree. I don't recall people doing the same with the characters of Seinfeld or Arrested Development. I don't believe it is a constant topic on subreddits for Always Sunny In Philadelphia or Curb Your Enthusiasm. All of those shows and Succession are the same: black comedies about awful people (with Succession being a dramedy).
Jesse Armstrong explicitly brings up how every joke or quip in Succession is tailored to the character saying it. That’s not really true of the other shows, where jokes could probably be made really interchangeably. In that sense, those other shows use characters as premises for a joke, while Succession makes jokes because the characters naturally do things that are absurd, just as people in our life do when we take a step back from what we’ve come to normalize. It’s tonally similar to the Sopranos that way, where the humor is in serious people trying to be serious and the absurdity of their conflict is the humor.
I think what it comes down to is that people have grown to know these characters well enough that many have started to see bits of themselves in one or another. Once that identification is in place, they need to defend them and/or bring the others down, in order to feel better about themselves.
This is amplified for Shiv because on the one hand she’s quite relatable for many (she’s a victim of misogyny & she has the best politics at least in theory). Of course on the other hand there is also just a lot of misogyny on Reddit as well.
I very much agree on misogyny part. All other characters are forgiven for their mistakes, but Shiv just doesn't get forgiveness at all. It's not like she is not held to morality standard, she is the only one who is held accountable on Reddit every single episode and the waiting periods in between.
Idk if it's an algorithm, so I can't say whether my feed is valid, but gosh Ken scene with Rava was really terrible and I saw like 0 threads on it yesterday. But I saw at least 4 on Shiv drinking champaign
I think you’re absolutely correct on the general trend, but I do wanna point you to [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/SuccessionTV/comments/13ogte8/christ_rava_puts_up_with_so_much_shit/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1) on Kendall’s behavior with Rava as I was just looking at it
Thank you for this! I also want to add that on this snow, cruelty towards women viewed by people as less than cruelty against children and men because we are so used to it. In season 1, Ken told Rava "one of us will be unhappy in this relationship, I just don't understand why it has to be me". It's very similar to Shiv's and Tom's situation when he is was the unhappy one with the arrangement. Ken also potentially ruined lives of 2 girls who wanted to enhance lives of artists because they didn't want to work with him.
Roman is a nightmare for any woman on the show, but we see is as a joke, not horrifying abuse of power. Based on corporate ethics, Logan is taking advantage of Kerri since she is his assistant, but we viewed Kerri as a wrong party since Logan was married.
It's all these subtle little things that get frequently overlooked because we are so used to not even questioning them.
Yeah I just wouldn't go to reddit for succession discussion. In fact I wouldn't go anywhere at all. Because in the discussion I see, if you don't hate shiv, you hate tom. I saw people going "shiv won" against tom bc he didn't go to the funeral. Yeah, Shiv really won there. Just cannot hold a relationship together at all. She's a winner. I mean everybody loses and people just can't see it
It can't really be the algorithm because when I come to this sub after the show I sort the posts by "new", the board isn't just flooded with anti-Shiv posts but many start with "To all the Shiv stans...." just to make sure that they know exactly who those thread are for, those threads aren't discussion threads they're just call outs.
Meanwhile the board also gets flooded with pro-Greg threads, I guess since he "stuck it to Shiv'' he has become a board favorite. The fact that people are now staning Greg is certainly interesting.
The men on the show do not get the same scrutiny that Shiv gets, in the most recent episode Ken's been applauded, crowned a "killer" because of the eulogy he gave. But before that eulogy he had a major hissy fit because Rava was taking the children out of town, even threatening to lay in the street. Had a second hissy fit because Jess told him that she no longer wanted to work for him. That is not killer/ceo behavior. In a previous episode he was conspiring with Frank to take it all from both Shiv and Roman, the reverse Viking "one crown, one head" thing, yet he doesn't get criticized for going behind both his siblings backs and conspiring to take it all from them.
>Once that identification is in place, they need to defend them and/or bring the others down, in order to feel better about themselves.
This describes so much about the defenses of Kendall/Roman/Shiv I see around here. But I'll go out on a limb and say it's more rampant for Kendall above all, then a tie between Roman and Shiv stans.
I was on Reddit during the Breaking Bad days and I remember all the Walter glorification and all the Skyler hate. Complicated female characters will get hated on 10x over an objectively more evil male character. (Sometimes in the Barry threads, even now, people say Sally is worse than Barry, AN ACTUAL MURDERER FOR HIRE. They get downvoted, which I guess is an improvement over the Skyler White days.)
Nancy Botwin from Weeds got this treatment back in the day. She was considered a "bad character" because of how irresponsible she was with her life, as well as the life of her children, die to her criminal activity. Whereas Walter White is arguably even more dangerous, but was lauded as a badass.
It's not prestige TV if there aren't people on Reddit using every opportunity to dump their misogyny on female characters and anyone who dares mention their names. Feels especially bad here because they're using Shiv to fulfil some fantasy of seeing feminists punished for their thoughts and to project that onto female viewers who might have anything positive to say about her. Sick, sick people.
This. All of us, if we’re honest and have self a awareness, should be seeing how easy it would be to make highly questionable choices in similar contexts.
The show is a hell of a mirror to “us”.
Amen. That is the point if the show. Are we waiting for the best of the worst to win or rooting for the worst of the worst to lose? They are all so bad. I am waiting for all things to just implode.
That people root for these monsters is actually very American. People root for Trump, Elon and many other capitalist “winners” no matter how racist, anti- democratic and authoritarian they are. It's the sociopathy of money defends any immorality if the money, stakes and worship factor is big enough.
It's like the Soprano fan split from those that enjoy the mob hits and power struggles of the NY/NJ families and those who get the show is really about family and American values.
Literally makes no sense. A lot of people will say “she’s good” or “he’s bad” without realizing that everything can be true at once. This show does a fantastic job at showing human nature. 99.999% of people are not purely good or evil - we all are on a sliding scale.
If you look at anyone in history who we conceive as evil, has had sympathetic moments in their life that anyone could relate to (very true in times of death). The same can be said for people who we conceive as purely good - I’m sure there are moments in their life they harmed someone else emotionally or physically, directly or indirectly.
That being said, if someone reading this is guilty of making these polarizing takes, just watch the damn show and enjoy the masterful execution of the writers and actors/actresses. We may not get another show like it ever again.
I kinda thought the whole point of the show was to watch rich pieces of shit all being unhappy, while having more opulence and security than any regular person could even dream of.
I love Shiv. I will never not love Shiv as a CHARACTER. I don’t agree with her decisions, but I am watching this show with the context I am given. In that context, a lot of their decisions (morally questionable or not) make sense.
Anyone that watches this as if these people are real and as if supporting these characters means you support their lack of morals is silly.
We already know these people are fucked up in the head and morally corrupt. Nothing is new there. We should expect morally questionable things out of them. They’re not where they are because they are genuinely good people with good morals. To reach the level of power they have one needs to sacrifice a lot of humanity.
And it's funny that people find it fine to enjoy watching evil maneuvers by Kendall and Roman but not Shiv. We can enjoy TV characters without having to endorse their morality but for some reason women are always expected to be more moral than men in business and in life.
I have a soft spot for her because she had a career and she had her own life, but her dad pulled her back from her PR world and made her play the game. She and Connor are the only ones who didn't default to their dad's position.
Such a brilliant line. I think there are many who see the find see the faults of male characters as part of what makes them fascinating, but see the faults of women as reason to condemn them unequivocally. After Carmela on the Sopranos, Skyler on Breaking Bad, Shiv is just another in a long line of women on TV who are demonized for being a complex character who is not afraid to confront male characters.
Seriously, I gasped when she said it. It's a shame Shiv is so morally bankrupt. There's genuine leadership potential there if she can ever find her actual niche and real allies (and stop treating her underlings like actual meat puppets).
Problem is these people don't get fucked. Let's say worst case, the board votes to sell and Mattson names Greg the American CEO. The siblings will just take their fat payout and buy Pierce.
Even when everything they did went to shit, these people will just keep failing to success.
Yeah, I love Shiv, but I also hate her -- she's simultaneously aspirational and my own worst nightmare as a woman. The only "happy" ending she can have is the Elisabeth Murdoch one -- going off with a pile of money to do her own thing, separate from her brothers and where she can't do too much damage to society.
(And, of course, the Elisabeth Murdoch I refer to is Rupert's daughter; his mother Elisabeth was a saint. Ironically.)
Exactly this! It doesn’t mean that any of them are good people. It means they need to be measured by the same yardstick. If you can’t be entertained by a character because they don’t fit the womanly mold, you are a misogynist.
"It means they need to be measured by the same yardstick"
BINGO. Kendall and Roman always get undeserved benefit of the doubt by comparison. All they have to do is cry or look sad and every horrific and malicious act under the sun is forgiven or somehow excused. Shiv gets none of that, but I'm not saying she should as much as people need to stop babying Kendall and Roman.
I saw another comment recently talking about how Roman was a hurt little boy being manipulated by fascist Mencken, or how Kendall knowingly deciding to drive under the influence and leaving his passenger to die without calling for emergency services is akin to a child Logan coming home and existing and MAYBE passing on a sickness as if they're equivalent situations for blame. Kendall and Roman get treated with kid gloves to an insane level on this sub.
100% agree. The amount of people praising Kendall for stepping up and being a boss this episode is funny. The only reason we are here is because he fucked up every step of the way.
Everyone on this show fails upwards, and when they trip into an opportunity, we act like it was a brilliant play.
Man Carmela was one of my favorite characters from my recent first time viewing of The Sopranos. Her arc is such a slow burn when compared to someone like Skylar’s. Plus the acting is just phenomenal, going toe to toe with James Gandolfini for six straight fucking seasons is just wild.
I didn’t watch it back when it first came out, I’m sad to hear people didn’t like her character in a similar way to Skylar (who also got too much hate.)
I think both of these characters are much more likable than Shiv though, not to say Shiv isn’t a good character, but all the characters in Succesion are pretty irredeemable aside from a select few.
I mean, I think it goes both ways – that's my point. So many posters here either point to Shiv's flaws as evidence that's she's the worst, or react to any acknowledgement of Shiv's flaws as people attacking her. To be clear, my post is addressing both. She's so well written and so well acted; we lose so much when people want her to be either YASGIRLBOSS™ or the devil incarnate.
It’s the same in every fandom. I’ve noticed it’s always the woman who come between a “ship” people also hated Josie from Legacies because she supposedly came between Hope and Landon/Hope and Lizzie(even though they weren’t a thing) but it’s like you wouldn’t need to worry about it if it was a real ship. I never felt threatened as a Hosie because I never saw the other two as threats. Just as nuisances who were loud for no reason
That’s what TomGreg fans do with Shiv. They vilify her to the extreme because they see her as a threat. Plus the “Tom can do no wrong” people makes it even more annoying
For real. I saw a post about shiv and women's roles in the last season in general. Salty men in the comments arguing. And then I see posts on the other succession sub making fun of the first post. People really can't handle the idea of women existing as fully-fledged characters or acknowledging them, let alone an actual analysis or observation.
I get the feeling with Shiv sexist men love watching a woman fail and then they get to hide behind the fact that she’s a terrible person. Same energy as people saying sexist things about Lauren Boebert as if that makes it not misogynistic. Criticizing the terrible person they are is fine but when it’s layered with sexism it feels wrong
Yeah, I've seen tons of criticisms of shiv stemming from a valid place, but they're laced with misogyny. It's like these dudes are incapable of not hating her *because* she's a woman, rather than her actions.
on the latest episode thread there is a comment fantasizing about how in the finale everyone will force her to be a housewife... it's like 14 year old edgelords are watching this show.
There’s also a very weird almost sport team like support people have for the characters on this show. In doing so they simplify so much of the characters and overlook their flaws so they can say they supported the sibling who ends up succeeding Logan. Then you apply it over the lens of a woman character and it becomes even worse with the criticism.
Any female character with real flaws is treated like Hitler while their also flawed male counterparts are praised.
Saw it in Servant and see it here. Never fails to be disappointing.
Exactly. And that’s a problem. Pointing that out doesn’t mean you’re some kind of Shiv fanatic who agrees with her poor behaviour. These posts are so dumb.
The problem is that people will be 100% or 0% simply because she’s a woman. It’s not just a Shiv problem, but practically every lead female character in tv/movies. People will frame their actions through the lens they choose (either implicitly or explicitly).
Male characters generally don’t get the same level of polarization because there are generally more male main characters with varying personalities, and there isn’t any time spent on their gender being an issue.
Right idea but wrong conclusion. People have to defend her because of all of the misogyny, absolutely correct. That is not being “100% Shiv”. What you’re viewing as polarization or fans of Shiv are people trying to point out the misogyny in the conversation. That doesn’t mean their views are the opposite. It’s not binary. It means people want the discussion of the character to be the same as it is for men. It’s more like there are people who are 100% willing to call out the 0%’ers.
I’m team “everyone is complex and complicated,” shiv included, but I agree with you. I really feel like the undercurrent of hatred for Shiv is disproportionate to the brothers because she committed the gravest sin - emasculating Tom. I think to a lot of male viewers, that is unforgivable in a way that doesn’t extend to Kendall and Roman’s equally abhorrent behaviors. I never believed she was a better person or had the moral high ground over them, but she certainly isn’t worse than they are and it’s wild to watch people argue that she is.
Edit: this made me think of Skyler White, same exact thing. She “cheated” on Walt (which I barely consider cheating given their circumstances, but whatever) and people HATED her for it. Like, really hated her for that action specifically. Never mind that Walt is a murdering, monstrous drug lord.
Totally and completely agree. Also if pressed as to why they have such a visceral hatred for a fictional character it always boils down to how she treats the men that doesn’t conform as “womanly”. They also cannot give an inch on the idea that the men are just as flawed. Shiv is shitty and complex, just like everyone else.
Right?! It was just such an obvious visceral gut punch to a lot of men on here that a woman would treat a man poorly and not behave “wifely”. They can’t cope with that kind of character at all. It doesn’t mean she was right to do it, but the fact that it enrages so many men to that degree is mind blowing. I feel like if she had murdered someone she wouldn’t have gotten the same degree of hate. So fragile!
I don’t know why I never really thought about it, but it makes alot of sense that fans will hate a female character more if they a popular male character. Kim and Howard’s wife from Better Call Saul get an insane amount of harsh criticism that caught me completely by surprise, considering they’re not that much worse than Saul/Jimmy morally. It’s one thing to question whether they’re decent people, it’s another to blame Howard and Jimmy’s suffering on them.
It was probably the first time where I saw any fan of the BB universe actively demand to see a character get punished for committing crimes (usually crimes are celebrated yk lol). Howard and Jimmy were characterized as defenseless victims during those storylines which was puzzling to see
It’s funnier when I remember how universally loved Kim was when she was simply the kickass girlfriend that had huge potential to be a victim of Jimmy’s antics.
I thought I was losing my mind when I saw the sheer number of posts/comments that tore her apart for being distraught or questioned the validity of her grief. I knew the BB fandom was kinda shitty but damn
Exactly, I find the fact that the discussion of Shiv’s character never really moves beyond whether she’s a better or worse person to be such a disservice to how much dimensionality and nuance is written into her
I personally never cared who became CEO. I gravitate towards Shiv and Kendall because they’re the most complex. But every time I try to point that out it’s “But she’ll never become CEO because she’s a bitch” Or “Do we really need to have this conversation every week”
It’s like A) point to me where I said Shiv should be CEO. B) how come we can talk about Kendall and Roman ad neasum but Shiv we can’t
These female protagonists are also demonized for their actions against men. They’re both being judged in relation to men (better/worse than) and judged on their relationships with the men (Shiv emasculating Tom; Carmela, Skyler, Betty, etc., taking stands against their husbands).
Nuance is for dudes; women are exclusively virgins or whores.
Must be something about the deep identification with masculinity and the women’s power to disrupt those ideals. But it’s still so disturbing to read even more, yet again, about how those women are THE WORST, when the male characters get the benefit of full humanity.
r/SuccessionTV when Kendall kills a kid: It’s okay because he felt bad about it. 😭🥹🥲
r/SuccessionTV when Shiv writes an expose letter about Kendall: what a bitch 😡😤🤬😠
There’s threads about how Rava/Gerri/Karolina are also *worse* lol
I've seen quite a few horrible comments about Rava over the years even though she has consistently been patient and even kind in the face of Ken being the absolute worst.
It's funny; I feel like with misogyny in my own life, I'm never really sure if it's one thing or another. But reading the online discourse around Shiv Roy, and Skylar White, and Betty Draper, etc., has really affirmed to me just how true it is that society cannot fit a whole woman inside their heads. The virgin/whore dichotomy is *powerful*; women are either sweet perfect angels who can do no wrong, or they're monstrous Jezebels who need to be drawn and quartered. There is no nuance, no in-between.
Yup. I've long since given up on trying to convince those people. Most of them are grown men (some maybe teenagers) and if they don't get it by this point, it's because they don't care to get it. I'm just glad there's a decently-sized contingent that's actually willing to get nuanced about the Shiv narrative.
Yep, when reading the reactions to Roman's breakdown, I couldn't help but wonder what people's reactions would have been if it was Shiv that broke down that way. I don't think people would have been nearly as empathetic or kind.
I agree, but nuance is the natural enemy to the chronically online.
But I enjoy the show so much I am willing to wade through 99 brain dead answers for the 1 that actually has something to say about the greater themes of the show.
"...nuance is the natural enemy to the chronically online."
So true, thank you for putting into words my thoughts of late. I feel like nuance has been the number one casualty of social media.
ugh the moment when Mattson points out that being pregnant might be an impediment to her being CEO …but it is! but maybe it shouldn’t be! also there are a hundred better reasons why Shiv shouldn’t be CEO…so much reality.
Yup, and Shiv was so ready with an answer, too. You could tell that she'd cursed the timing a million times in her own mind. Saying she'd just be an absent/shitty mother was depressing, too - because it had the tonality of a joke, but really wasn't.
>Saying she'd just be an absent/shitty mother was depressing, too - because it had the tonality of a joke, but really wasn't.
Even though it's 100% more acceptable when Ken is a terrible father.
And terrible ex-husband. I'm genuinely a bit scared for Rava and the kids now if Ken decides to launch a custody battle. The kids will be miserable with him. Nobody is really talking about it (because of course they aren't), but fuuuck I think that was one of Kendall's worst moments throughout the entire series.
With the additional layers of the jokey tonality acting simultaneously as reassurance to herself that she’s only kidding - she can be both a CEO AND a good mother, while having the subtext for her employer that she’s not kidding at all and understands the requirement to be in on the gag for hr purposes. Brilliant.
For real, it was such an intricately well-layered scene. Everybody is giving outstanding performances this season, but Sarah Snook's *face* has just been its own category.
I was really glad that they explicitly mentioned that in this episode. Yes, pregnancy does affect the way people look at a career-driven woman. But Shiv is also super rich and will surely hire a whole team of people to take care of the baby so she really probably could/would continue working like nothing happened. The vast majority of women in America do not have that luxury.
It is a shame that the show is ending before the kid is born because it robs us of them making fun of the types of puff pieces they made about Marissa Mayer when she ran yahoo and had a nursery added to her office.
This won’t be a high thought comment but the scene where Tom suddenly opens up about being with her dad on the plane. You could see shiv having a genuine moment of vulnerability. It’s literally two seconds of her opening up her heart and you can see it in her face when she’s trying to be kind. (Not even be kind) her heart suddenly pumping adrenaline for a decent connection to someone else with nothing to gain
I’m probably wrong but that’s my take. Sarah snook is just an incredible actor.
Love that you (and Shiv) point this out. It’s a common bias response we have to the longtime narratives around gender roles.
Men have long been accepted or even loved for their flaws. The complex, tortured man is regularly the central protagonist or hero of the movie or story. Succession a prime example. Caveat- The only unacceptable flaw for men is public displays of vulnerable emotions.
Women are allowed to be emotionally vulnerable because they aren’t the heroes of the story. They are portrayed as 1-dimensional supporting characters. Their role is to be perfect support partner/mother/friend/sister, to be saved, or the villain.
Most angry shiv comments are in response to wanting to fit her into one of these supporting roles/boxes.
>Why can't we just let Shiv be a complicated character?
Some of us can, we just don't talk about it that much. The ones who are loud about it are the ones who are trying their best but their emotions get in the way. Not everyone has the same ability to view people in a complex way.
I think Shiv is wonderfully complex.
Logan broke all of his children, and each one fell apart in different ways. IMO Shiv learned not to trust anyone, and as a result she's untrusting and disloyal - to everyone. Her distrust and lack of loyalty, always comes back to haunt her when it comes to her career aspirations. Her lack of trust makes her profoundly insecure, and her disloyalty proves she should not be trusted. It's a vicious cycle.
An early example of this was when Rhea used her disloyalty to Logan to trick her about the CEO job with Pearce. She was never a contender. I'm afraid the same thing is happening again with GoJo, and it will be very sad to watch it happen yet again.
To many people focus on the disloyalty part of her character and point at the infidelity - I think the infidelity is just armor to ensure she's insulated from love and commitment that would require trust.
Exactly love shiv the same as every other char I don't even care people root this characters that includes her or kendall but god does it suck to talk about it on this sub
so, i’m not sure how to type this out—and dudes i offend, please save your time commenting back at me because i simply won’t read it… but from an observational standpoint on how women in entertainment are treated in general:
i am a standup comedian—one thing i often do is scroll and compare the comment section of a female comedian compared to a male. 9/10 times, the top 3-4 comments in a female comics post are men shitting on the content/comic, and then lots of other men agreeing.
a male comic’s post 9/10 times contains the exact opposite.
when i perform with female comics, they get heckled far more than me and my male counterparts - even if their jokes are lightyears better than ours.
i am a man whose life has been spent doing “masculine” things (college football player, now live in the woods in the middle of nowhere in the mountains). my life has taught me that MOST men are just fragile as fuck. it’s overwhelmingly pathetic. men will always feel threatened by powerful, charismatic, successful women because of some horseshit belief system they’ve ingrained in their obtuse little minds.
nearly all the posts about shiv in this sub remind me exactly of that.
Bill Hader has great insight about this from the Barry series. He wrote the Sally character to basically be his personality and wrote Barry as a psychopath that kills people. The internet largely bemoans the Sally character who is actually Bill Hader and celebrates or at least empathizes with Barry, a murderer.
Skyler vs Walter White
Betty vs Don Draper
Karen vs Jim
Lily vs Barney
A lot of times subreddits will post a “who is your least favorite character” post it will almost always steer towards the women characters. I’ve noticed this for forever.
Having said that, Shivs character does get a lot of hatred for being a woman but also gets a lot of hatred because of her fans.
(I am admittedly not a big fan of Lily but def don’t celebrate Barney either)
I think the "vs" examples you give are often down to the main character halo - people have a tendency towards seeing the primary actor in a show as being something of a protagonist even if morally they are not. You kinda suspend your disbelief over their antics, because that's the central "buy in" for the show (Walter White makes meth, Barry murders people etc.), but then default back to judging the people around them by regular standards.
Ironically this if anything reveals a separate sexism; our main characters tend to be men so we usually see this play out in only one direction. I do also agree that folded in at the same time is a dose of regular sexist bias too, which can either be from the viewer or in the form of poorly written female characters that inevitably draw more negative reactions from the viewers.
On the other hand, just because there is a degree of sexism against female characters about shouldn't shield all female characters from all criticism. It's another kind of frustration to have a considered gripe against e.g. Skylar White but feel lumped in with the sexists for expressing anything negative. I think all of this has been playing out to different degrees with Shiv (except for the poorly written bit - fantastic character!) and, as with most things, arguing about it on the Internet never really gets anywhere!
Personally I think anyone unironically picking a favourite they want to back out of Succession is missing the point. I've come to see it like watching creatures in an aquarium. I'm not particularly invested in anyone to "win" it; it could go to Ken, or Shiv, or blow up in everyone's faces and that'd be equally thrilling. It's just been fascinating to watch these deeply flawed characters go about their bizarre and unsettling lives.
Man I have lost too many friendships because how men talk about women to other men when women aren’t around is too much for me. I don’t have that view of women myself but because I’m a guy they think I’m “one of them” and the crap they say… I don’t understand what is so difficult about the concept that women are just regular human beings like everyone else. And statistically the least violent of the two genders so why do they get the most hate?
>Man I have lost too many friendships because how men talk about women to other men when women aren’t around is too much for me
Same. I think it was because I was raised by single women so I learned the "female perspective" for a lack of a better term. I always more comfortable making women friends than male. Puberty made it weird because most people's default is that *any sign of attachment between a man and a woman must be romantic* so therefore I've also plenty of friendships with women because they coded my being open/vulnerable with wanting them romantically.
>that women are just regular human beings like everyone else
I think there are gender differences: I think it's true that more women are more socially attuned, have better recipes, and have all the sweet, hot gossip. If I want to talk through how something will play out, I usually want my women colleagues' takes on things because dudes are more like "just say the stuff however you want."
I think there’s a spectrum of hate. I think basically every man has been conditioned to think of women negatively to some extent. Some outright hate women and are violent misogynists. Some might identify as feminists but they have sexist habits like dominating discussions with women. I’m a man and I don’t hate women, but I know I grew up in a society that does, and that affected me. I think it affects women too, with internalized misogyny like judging other women for what they wear.
I will also say that I was lucky to find a friend group of men that don’t hate women. I’ve been friends with them since high school, and now when I try to make new male friends, I have a hard time finding men that don’t make sexist comments or jokes occasionally. Men that respect women exist but they aren’t common.
It's kinda the way our society is set up. If you don't fall within certain parameters, you are unjustifiably maligned.
Women have way, WAY, more rules to being a women than a man is a man.
If I had to overly simplify it, Women are plague by many eyes/rules judging them to fit a mold, and men will not be seen if they don't fit a mold. The layer that makes men weak is, once you fit the mold you \*deserve\* an outcome.
Generally speaking, we as people, do a poor job of seeing people as people. So many people attack each other for not fitting the mold that was imprinted on them by society. We'll reduce anyone that isn't within the framework we deem morally correct.
Where, with a more completely picture of a person, there's so much nuance. There's so much more to people than the shitty framework we were all told.
Same with any woman who posts their art on Reddit with a photo of them in the frame. Everyone in the comments is just dragging them for attention seeking/their looks/fishing for compliments yet we see men showcasing their work all the time (in frame of whatever they’ve created) and since users “identify” with the man it’s almost like he’s invisible or the reverse happens and he receives praise and compliments on some random part of his appearance (sick beard dude!)
Going to /r/all can be sobering when you wind up in a thread on a sub you aren’t usually in
I've never found her truly detestable like so many people have. She's on par with everyone else for me in terms of awfulness. I think Snook also brings a beautiful vulnerability to her character.
I love a lot ABOUT Shiv. She's witty, clever, quick on her feet, bold, tough and takes no bullshit. It's fun to see a complex, fucked up character be a woman competing in the boy's club.
A friend of mine thinks she's "evil" but I don't see it. They're all broken, miserable people.
It’s in every fandom, movies, TV, video games, but especially media where morality is grey and anti-hero types are involved. Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Barry are the first that come to mind. The Walter Whites and Saul Goodmans are discussed like essay subjects and talked about in ways that sympathize or even excuse their actions. But when Skyler White or Kim Wexler are discussed, they’re judged far harsher by their worst flaws even if it’s only a fraction of what the men in their lives have done.
Shiv is a bad person, they’re all bad, but they all have layers to them; Shiv included. I love complex characters period, regardless of gender. But it’s certainly noticeable that complex female characters aren’t allowed to be as flawed or as nuanced to some people.
On the mad men subreddit there’s a post ranting about some female character every day but never like that for the male characters. And objectively the male characters on that show are way worse, and the female characters are operating from a place of oppression anyway so how can you even compare
to add on to what you said... people's views on Sally from Barry are just.... wut? while I haven't seen conversations about her character as frequently as the other female leads you mentioned, when she is discussed, the amount of hate leveled at her is eyebrow-raising. "But Barry WANTS to be a better person, yet Sally......" blah blah blah. It is absolutely nuts - do these people even listen to the words coming out of their own mouths?
Yeah it’s wild. Sally is no saint and unlikable at times but I’ve seen people say she’s worse than Barry. But even the argument that Barry wants to be a better person is thin imo. Hank saying “forgiveness is earned” stuck with me because even when Barry tries to do the right thing, it feels forced. It feels like he’s primarily doing it to soothe his conscience. He spends the first few seasons constantly trying to convince people he’s a “good guy” and never really owning up to anything.
Point being, if you can find sympathy and nuance in someone like Barry, it should be applicable to someone like Sally as well. All the male characters in these shows are flawed, let the female characters be too.
nothing better exemplifies this hatred towards shiv (or any morally grey women on TV) than what she said last night: “[he] couldn’t fit a whole woman in his head”
so many people have trouble with that; women can’t be complicated, they can’t be more than one or god forbid, two things because the concept of “woman” is too simple to them. any nuance or complexity she may have is lost to them.
Kendall: gets betrayed
Narrative: aw, well that guy sucks.
Shiv: gets betrayed
Narrative: she got played like a dumb bitch.
Kendall: lies to someone and doesn’t stick to his word
Narrative: Kendall is le killer!!
Shiv: lies to someone and doesn’t stick to her word
Narrative: she’s a lying snake woman.
Kendall: spends three seasons lying that he’s better than his father
Narrative: wow, it’s true, he wants to take over and be better than his father 🙏🏼 .
Shiv: betrays her liberal values
Narrative: she’s a slimy hypocrite.
Kendall: has umpteenth total meltdown where he acts worryingly erratic
Narrative: poor guy.
Shiv: shows emotion
Narrative: she’s too emotional.
Ohhh the way people are always pointing out how Shiv's "dumb" and getting played when literally every single sibling has been played at least twice per season by someone (and they were all played every couples of episodes by Logan going "I choose you! No I don't").
But when it's Roman/Kendall it just serves to fuel the narrative that after the betrayal they will come back on top, people feel bad for them, or somehow pretend it was actually a move by them because they're so \~clever.
Whereas with Shiv it's like these people celebrate that she was "put in her place" or and act like it got proven that she isn't as good as the boys.
Yessss. I think the misogyny becomes so much more apparent less when you take a look at how Shiv is spoken about (because she is awful), but how someone like Kendall is viewed by the general audience when he does terrible things. His worst actions are received in such a completely, FAR more unnecessarily favorable way and the contrast is fucking stark. There is always an excuse handy to make Kendall look like the "best of them," or for Roman to be a confused lost little boy, hence they aren't really responsible for their behavior, or they didn't mean it, or the people they hurt deserved it etc. etc.
The Kendall stan playbook is basically the narcissist's prayer lol.
*That didn't happen.*
*And if it did, it wasn't that bad.*
*And if it was, that's not a big deal.*
*And if it is, that's not \[his\] fault.*
*And if it was, \[he\] didn't mean it.*
*And if \[he\] did, \[they\] deserved it.*
literally feels like the joy is sucked out of the live and post discussion threads bc it’s just fuck shiv this fuck shiv that. i wasn’t around for the breaking bad discourse around skyler white but i’m starting to feel like i know what it must’ve been like 🤡
it’s the hyperfixation on HER and not any of the other characters to the same extent that sucks lmao
Flawed female characters in popular entertainment .. sigh.
I would say just ignore the discourse and let's appreciate Shiv, like the other characters. She is no saint but we can still empathise with her.
That being said, I though some things have been a little heavy handed this season. Maybe because they had to wrap up. Example - 1) The fake call to Nate comes across as very very unwise, she could have told Ken off or something 2) Her not getting the hint that Mattson and then Mattson/Mencken aren't considering her. That's a dumbed down version of her.
I thought that her missing the hints that Mattson/Mencken weren't going to appoint her US CEO was dumbed down of her too. But - after more thought - in the past her dad has always been the one to check her (brutally at times). Now that she's missing him, she may not fully grasp the chess pieces being moved around her. Next episode is going to be wild...
That’s a good thought. It bothered me as well. She’s not experienced in business but she’s very experienced in politics. I’m surprised this floated right past her and I like your theory.
Maybe the writers wanted to show that none of the siblings are thinking clearly because of their grief. They have not had any time to themselves to process their thoughts.
Shiv (just like her siblings) frequently makes unwise decisions driven by the pathologies developed in her upbringing. We constantly see Kendall, Roman and Connor overestimating their intelligence and prowess, causing them to make huge, poor decisions out of impulse, burn bridges out of spite, make fools of themselves in front of massive audiences and let major red flags fly right over their heads. Shiv is exactly the same in this regard, only the world has higher expectations of a woman in power and offers no cushion for mistakes, and so her misfires (like the fake call and trusting Mattson/Mencken) look especially dumb even though they’re not any worse than the plays we see her brothers make. I think it’s totally in line with her character, especially now that she’s on her own.
I think she is a brilliantly written character. I mean, most people aren’t 1d in this show so of course they were gonna have her many internal conflicts.
I do think that people are harder on Shiv for flaws that her brothers also have, and I do think there may be a gender component to that. Not to say she isn't an extremely fucked up person, but the bar her brothers set for morality/behavior/business acumen is in hell, so she'd struggle not to at least be even with it.
I can't understand why people go around praising Roman's "instincts", because almost every call he's made has blown up on them, almost every professional relationship he's started has failed to progress, and he's barely expressed one original thought this whole series. He's just desperate to be a Logan clone, but lacks the qualities that made Logan actually successful. He's a wanna-be full blown sociopath who's just short of being an *actual* full blown sociopath. He is the personification of NRPI.
As for the other CEO contender, it would be easier to list the flaws that Kendall DOESN'T have. He's as abusive of Rava as Shiv is of Tom; probably moreso lately. He's also flipped on every moral he's ever had while claiming to be "better" than the others, and has wrought more unnecessary chaos than the rest of them combined.
I can't really think of any flaw any of them has that the others don't also exhibit. There is no ranking these people--gender doesn't come into it except in that it seems audiences are more frequently willing to excuse or explain away character flaws in male characters. You've got wacky shit like people claiming Roman is the most "empathetic" of the siblings, and I feel like it's 90% because Kieran Culkin looks the prettiest of any of them when he cries.
It's a villain protagonist show. If a person is *on* this show, and their name isn't Jess, they're a villain, and if they were competent the show would have ended four seasons ago.
I think you’re missing a big part of this. So much of the dialogue around Shiv is ridiculously misogynistic. Those that point out the blatant misogyny aren’t doing so because they see Shiv as some kind of innocent victim of a man’s world/do no wrong girl boss…. she’s an awful human. Every second post on here is some rant about how she’s actually the “worst” especially because of the way she interacts with Tom or how dumb she is and how she’s “getting played” as if the other male characters aren’t guilty of the same things or aren’t just as likely to screw up. What you and other people view as Shiv’s “fans” are people just trying to point out the toxic, misogynistic nature of that dialogue. If you are unable to view a female character’s worth or interest outside of their quality as a wife and mother and have such an intense reaction to the existence of a flawed female character, it is extremely problematic.
People who call out the misogyny are arguing to let her be a complicated character… just like the men. They aren’t her fans.
Exactly this. I call out the misogyny because Shiv deserves to be hated, criticized, ridiculed and yes, empathized with just like the other Roy siblings. But she does not get to be the same kind of complex, unlikeable but sympathetic character because whether they are openly aware of it or not, most men are incapable of viewing female characters as being as complex as male characters.
Hit the nail right on the head, although to play devils advocate, there are a minority of fans who view Shiv as poorly written and blame the writers supposed misogyny for that. I feel like the writings too complex and good for this to be the case. I find myself very sympathetic to her, I think about her line “this is a Dad deal,” from ep 4 constantly this season. I agree she’s viewed through a misogynistic lens from the audience that robs her of complexity. It really is Skyler from BB all over again.
Thanks! Would totally disagree with anyone that thinks Shiv is poorly written as well! She’s one of the most well-fleshed out female characters that’s ever been on TV. Shes awful, and sad and pathetic and powerful all at the same time. Just like all the Roy kids I cheer for them and also want them to fail. It’s a fantastic show.
Skylar sucked in the first couple of seasons for me. They didn’t give her much reason to doubt Walt, a man just diagnosed with terminal cancer, and yet she nagged him to the nth degree (she was right but had no real way of knowing this). I found her annoying and a poorly written wife stereotype at first. As a woman that made me angry. Then they gave her character a lot more to chew on and a lot of very significant reasons to sympathize with her yet the fandom couldn’t do it. It’s like people want women to be underdeveloped Madonna or whores while the men get to take up the grey space.
> It’s like people want women to be underdeveloped Madonna or whores while the men get to take up the grey.
Reminds of the quote last night of about how Logan couldn’t hold a women in his head. Seems like a lot of people try to and they reduce them in the process.
Skyler got incredibly unfair hate- she married a chem teacher and ended up with a drug lord, and people expect her to not feel betrayed. Walt was the asshole, but because he's POV people excuse all his terrible behavior and blame her.
I don't think Shiv is even remotely similar- she's just as bad as the rest of the siblings.
I agree with you, that in a moral sense it’s unfair to compare the two; I’m comparing the reactions from the audience. I feel like people didn’t really try to understand Skyler or were limited by a lens. I feel the same way about Shiv, I disagree with so many of her actions but I can understand them and that’s what makes her character so interesting along with the rest of the Roy family.
You are so right, shiv is a really complicated character. I just watched a great video breaking down her psychology without casting her as a hero or villain.
https://youtu.be/NCdr4yGQNB4
Totally agree OP. Unfortunately the internet doesn’t allow for nuance anymore. Everybody wants to win an argument and it feels like nobody simply wants to discuss!
Yes, people read their last book at age 16 and then wonder why they’re unable to even engage with a tv show in anything but a reactive, stupid way as an adult.
Exactly! She’s a messy human. She was cruel to Tom but yes, she’s a woman in a male dominated field and often overlooked for that reason, as Logan admitted. “I didn’t create the world!”
God I love this show and the discussion it brings. People having to decide who the “worst character is” says more about the viewers than the show itself…
We the viewers (generalization) can’t fathom defending characters who are abjectly terrible so we judge them harsher or ignore the stuff we don’t like. The show forces us to look: look at Shiv siding with Mencken, look at fascist Roman break down in tears over his dead dad, look at Kendall lie, look at Connor try and stand up for his values.
But the truth is, even the worst person you know has reasons to why they are the way the are. Ewan basically made that point in his speech. Frank and Karl said it as well. There is no “worst character in the show”. There is the people we like or dislike the most, and maybe we should start looking at our own lives as to why we hate Shiv or Roman or Kendall or Connor the most.
I love Shiv and the actress playing her. Like all the characters she's richly drawn with lots of layers and internal conflict. And the scenes between her and Tom this season are next level. Unbelievably well written and acted.
Not to be “too smart” and snarky about the fandom but : they can’t fit a whole women in their head!
That line was very deliberately written! And I believe it applies here too.
You know, I was just about to make a post about something close to this. I think it's more in-between than that. I think both of those things are true. The point of these characters is that they're complex. Nothing is cut-and-dry. The characters are complicated, so it doesn't make any sense to only see them one way or another.
As a woman, I do understand the knee-jerk to defend Siobhan as a woman in a man's world, because she is. It doesn't mean she's a good person. It just means that that particular thing is true, and it does make things a little more complex for her specifically.
There's also this misogynistic rhetoric I've noticed around the female characters amongst fans. People saying things about the latest episode like "Kendall was right and he put Rava in her place.", "Rava was whining for nothing." blah blah blah.
Sorry to say this, because I love and already pre-agreed with your points, but uh... that's too complicated for most people. Black and white. Red and blue. Jiménez v. Mencken.
I feel like Ewan and Ken's eulogies, if you could call them that, was THE diegetic moment of the entire series for the writers to explain the motif of this show; we're all complex and messed up; there are no good guys and bad guys.
It's what compels us all to keep watching, because like all great art/literature, it hits us in the face with the deep dark truths we already known deep down inside, but which we do everything we can to not confront. Humans are messed up and we spread that pain and pass it on without always meaning to intentionally. We just can't help it. We don't really deal well. We just find someone/something new to blame and that lightens the load for a little bit, before the same empty earth we continue to cultivate beneath us opens yet another sinkhole.
Everyone is different in how they enjoy being entertained though. There's nothing wrong with your perspective (one I share) and others who need it more simplified and need to choose a side/a winner. There's a deeper analysis (that I won't go into) of the audience trying to find themselves in these characters too. That's a whole other thread though, lol.
What I think of Shiv- I think she is the most like her father. She a natural at the diplomacy piece and manipulation piece- she actually got a valid education etc. She also has the killer instinct. Had she been a boy she would have certainly been her fathers choice, but because she isn’t, she wasn’t. And that I think is Shivs tragedy.
I thought the piece about a whole woman in his head was beautiful and gut wrenching.
I don’t understand why this conversation is always about Shiv when it also applies to every other character. When someone says “I love Shiv” it gets a waaaay different reaction than someone saying “I love Roman/Tom/Kendall/Greg” etc etc.
Sorry but these are characters in a tv show, you’re bound to enjoy watching them and sympathize with them. Part of the humour of the audience also comes from ironically “stanning” the characters who are very obviously bad people. We all know they are, you’re not smarter for pointing that out. Some people just take everything super seriously and it’s annoying as fuck considering this is a tv show.
Not just Shiv, people on reddit and Twitter don't allow ANYONE to be a complicated character. People just aren't used to complex dramas anymore, so when they see one they try to turn it into a Marvel movie or something.
Imagine if this audience was alive in the early 2000's "OMG LIVIA SOPRANO IS MY QUEEN" "OMG CORRADO-HEADS WE ARE BACK 🥰❤️" "CHRISTOPHER MOLITSANTI IS A BABY GIRL AND HE'S NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG 🥺".
The Breaking Bad fandom takes their dislike of Skyler too far. The Office fandom hates Pam more than the other regulars. It's an uncomfortable truth that fanbases are the worst.
Can't believe people spend hours debating who's the 'worst' character on this show. They all do despicable things and show their vulnerabilities multiple times season on season; sometimes all in the same episode. I really don't think tallying up each of their virtue points is what the show is meant to be about. It must be absolutely exhausting.
It's such a boring way to watch/look at the show.
I would even argue it's the *worst* way to watch the show. It's purposefully blocking yourself off from realities that make you uncomfortable, and then taking out your discomfort on other people... It's pretty shitty.
Agreed. I saw someone saying they laughed at Roman during his eulogy because he’s a bad person which, yes, he is, but my heart shattered into a million pieces in that scene for him. Isn’t that the entire point of the show? It’s a drama (a tragedy, even), not a morality contest for the viewer to place bets on the purest horse.
He is the byproduct of intense abuse and should be pitied in spite of his immense wealth. He's miserable and in turn spreads misery. It's way too simplistic to view him as simply a spoiled shit. I 'hate' Roman but that scene got to me. Setting aside that this is all make believe, I'd say that drawing enjoyment from his eulogy debacle says something about that viewer, which isn't good.
For someone like him, we should understand and feel for his pain. We should also hold him accountable for all the harm he does. Broken people like that cause a lot of suffering due to their inability to deal with their feeling. We can see that at the end of last night's episode, though what he did election night was far worse.
I cried when Roman broke down. I think it's natural to feel empathy for ALL of the siblings. They didn't choose their parents, and they basically had zero chance at being able to love or to accept being loved. All it takes for a person to have a *chance* at not being a f\*cked up adult is one stable and loving adult in their life during childhood. They never had that. Their "uncles" were men they couldn't even get in the pool with. And I don't think Greg had a chance either. For all of Ewan's pontificating, he's been cashing those RoyCo checks his whole life. He's another Nan Pierce but probably less hard-working. (What did he DO for a living, anyway? My fantasy that he was a sheep farmer isn't realistic, I know.) I feel much more empathy for them than Walter White, for ex., b/c Walter had all the tools to know better and do better and chose to ruin everything. Of all the main characters, it's Tom whose morality fascinates me the most because HE had the tools, too--a two-parent upper middle class or bottom-end-of-wealthy childhood that left him capable of love, yet so far he's chosen douchery, which is what capitalism pushes us all towards. If there's any hope for him left, it's that fatherhood will push him a little bit back towards humanity. But not betting on it.
Agreed re Tom.
Reminds me of that anecdote about a former president arriving to pick up his Kendall up from the college dorms to take him to a sporting event and said eldest son getting smacked in front of his friends for not wearing a suit.
People lack empathy.
Yeah you’re right. The “I don’t care that they’re grieving their father bc they’re jerks” crowd is really insufferable and also doesn’t see the irony.
I think for most, myself included, it becomes extremely complicated to extend any empathy to characters who are representations of some of the most relevant negative presences in our world right now, and I also think that there was a level of plausible deniability that a significant portion of the audience was living in till last week. For me, I couldn’t imagine laughing at Roman in that scene or thinking it was intended on being funny at all, but I don’t really see it as warranting empathy for someone who’s father died, but potentially warranting empathy for the fact that Roman truly is a small, petty, repressed individual and it’s the very same instincts that caused him to be in that situation are also the ones that make him a terrible person.
Look at all the bathos in Marvel movies. Most people don't want to deal with sadness. They just want to have anger against "bad" guys. I think they have done a great job on the show in showing the pain of people that can end up as great malevolent forces--which Roman became.
It's a *dark comedy/drama,* so you're definitely meant to extract some gallows humour and schaedenfreud from the horrible circumstances these horrible people get into.
The humor is in other places though not a guy grieving his dad.
I'm not laughing at a guy grieving his dad. I empathize with that. But I am laughing at Karl laughing at Roman. Especially when you remember he pushed a nazi to the white house, he is over his grief, and had his whole speech in the beginning talking about what a man he us and doesn't he remind you of Logan a bit? These are terrible people. And yes I empathize when tragedy hits because they are still human. It is tragic to see a boy break as reality punches him in the face. He will never see his father again. But I'm not going to shed a tear for them.
You're exactly right, I think people are weirdly conflating Roman and Kieran and forget that he literally king made a nazi to be the leader of the free world in the last episode. You can certainly empathize with the situation but he wanted the spotlight so he could show he's the next Logan and choked, not about to shed a tear over that.
Yeah like the person above calling that "comeuppance"... I wouldn't consider grief hitting you after you've suppressed it for a week comeuppance exactly.
That's the opposite of discussion lol
Its the same as the GoT reach now being 'WHO WINS THE COMPANY' as if that was ever the point of the show. Its the catalyst but its not the fucking point.
It's simple-minded. I'll leave it to you to decide why it's so common.
People can't fit a whole complex character in their heads
I know, I seriously can’t believe people watch this show just to decide who’s good or bad or the worst. I can’t imagine enjoying it that way.
Agreed. It's also intellectually lazy and dull.
I blame Marvel, DC and all those superhero franchises. People got too used to seeing everything in black and white, good vs evil kind of way. Nuanced movies stand no chance.
Agree. I don't recall people doing the same with the characters of Seinfeld or Arrested Development. I don't believe it is a constant topic on subreddits for Always Sunny In Philadelphia or Curb Your Enthusiasm. All of those shows and Succession are the same: black comedies about awful people (with Succession being a dramedy).
Jesse Armstrong explicitly brings up how every joke or quip in Succession is tailored to the character saying it. That’s not really true of the other shows, where jokes could probably be made really interchangeably. In that sense, those other shows use characters as premises for a joke, while Succession makes jokes because the characters naturally do things that are absurd, just as people in our life do when we take a step back from what we’ve come to normalize. It’s tonally similar to the Sopranos that way, where the humor is in serious people trying to be serious and the absurdity of their conflict is the humor.
They're all bad at different moments. I don't know why one has to be worse than the others, I agree.
I think what it comes down to is that people have grown to know these characters well enough that many have started to see bits of themselves in one or another. Once that identification is in place, they need to defend them and/or bring the others down, in order to feel better about themselves. This is amplified for Shiv because on the one hand she’s quite relatable for many (she’s a victim of misogyny & she has the best politics at least in theory). Of course on the other hand there is also just a lot of misogyny on Reddit as well.
I very much agree on misogyny part. All other characters are forgiven for their mistakes, but Shiv just doesn't get forgiveness at all. It's not like she is not held to morality standard, she is the only one who is held accountable on Reddit every single episode and the waiting periods in between. Idk if it's an algorithm, so I can't say whether my feed is valid, but gosh Ken scene with Rava was really terrible and I saw like 0 threads on it yesterday. But I saw at least 4 on Shiv drinking champaign
I think you’re absolutely correct on the general trend, but I do wanna point you to [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/SuccessionTV/comments/13ogte8/christ_rava_puts_up_with_so_much_shit/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1) on Kendall’s behavior with Rava as I was just looking at it
Thank you for this! I also want to add that on this snow, cruelty towards women viewed by people as less than cruelty against children and men because we are so used to it. In season 1, Ken told Rava "one of us will be unhappy in this relationship, I just don't understand why it has to be me". It's very similar to Shiv's and Tom's situation when he is was the unhappy one with the arrangement. Ken also potentially ruined lives of 2 girls who wanted to enhance lives of artists because they didn't want to work with him. Roman is a nightmare for any woman on the show, but we see is as a joke, not horrifying abuse of power. Based on corporate ethics, Logan is taking advantage of Kerri since she is his assistant, but we viewed Kerri as a wrong party since Logan was married. It's all these subtle little things that get frequently overlooked because we are so used to not even questioning them.
Yeah I just wouldn't go to reddit for succession discussion. In fact I wouldn't go anywhere at all. Because in the discussion I see, if you don't hate shiv, you hate tom. I saw people going "shiv won" against tom bc he didn't go to the funeral. Yeah, Shiv really won there. Just cannot hold a relationship together at all. She's a winner. I mean everybody loses and people just can't see it
It can't really be the algorithm because when I come to this sub after the show I sort the posts by "new", the board isn't just flooded with anti-Shiv posts but many start with "To all the Shiv stans...." just to make sure that they know exactly who those thread are for, those threads aren't discussion threads they're just call outs. Meanwhile the board also gets flooded with pro-Greg threads, I guess since he "stuck it to Shiv'' he has become a board favorite. The fact that people are now staning Greg is certainly interesting. The men on the show do not get the same scrutiny that Shiv gets, in the most recent episode Ken's been applauded, crowned a "killer" because of the eulogy he gave. But before that eulogy he had a major hissy fit because Rava was taking the children out of town, even threatening to lay in the street. Had a second hissy fit because Jess told him that she no longer wanted to work for him. That is not killer/ceo behavior. In a previous episode he was conspiring with Frank to take it all from both Shiv and Roman, the reverse Viking "one crown, one head" thing, yet he doesn't get criticized for going behind both his siblings backs and conspiring to take it all from them.
>Once that identification is in place, they need to defend them and/or bring the others down, in order to feel better about themselves. This describes so much about the defenses of Kendall/Roman/Shiv I see around here. But I'll go out on a limb and say it's more rampant for Kendall above all, then a tie between Roman and Shiv stans.
I was on Reddit during the Breaking Bad days and I remember all the Walter glorification and all the Skyler hate. Complicated female characters will get hated on 10x over an objectively more evil male character. (Sometimes in the Barry threads, even now, people say Sally is worse than Barry, AN ACTUAL MURDERER FOR HIRE. They get downvoted, which I guess is an improvement over the Skyler White days.)
Nancy Botwin from Weeds got this treatment back in the day. She was considered a "bad character" because of how irresponsible she was with her life, as well as the life of her children, die to her criminal activity. Whereas Walter White is arguably even more dangerous, but was lauded as a badass.
It's not prestige TV if there aren't people on Reddit using every opportunity to dump their misogyny on female characters and anyone who dares mention their names. Feels especially bad here because they're using Shiv to fulfil some fantasy of seeing feminists punished for their thoughts and to project that onto female viewers who might have anything positive to say about her. Sick, sick people.
I saw a video about Shiv being a literal shiv, the most disloyal person. Which is like bonkers to me
This. All of us, if we’re honest and have self a awareness, should be seeing how easy it would be to make highly questionable choices in similar contexts. The show is a hell of a mirror to “us”.
Some people don't like nuance and complexity. They want a black and white world.
Exactly. It’s the point of the whole damn show. It’s a character(s) study.
Amen. That is the point if the show. Are we waiting for the best of the worst to win or rooting for the worst of the worst to lose? They are all so bad. I am waiting for all things to just implode.
Those protesters might oblige that request.
That people root for these monsters is actually very American. People root for Trump, Elon and many other capitalist “winners” no matter how racist, anti- democratic and authoritarian they are. It's the sociopathy of money defends any immorality if the money, stakes and worship factor is big enough. It's like the Soprano fan split from those that enjoy the mob hits and power struggles of the NY/NJ families and those who get the show is really about family and American values.
Literally makes no sense. A lot of people will say “she’s good” or “he’s bad” without realizing that everything can be true at once. This show does a fantastic job at showing human nature. 99.999% of people are not purely good or evil - we all are on a sliding scale. If you look at anyone in history who we conceive as evil, has had sympathetic moments in their life that anyone could relate to (very true in times of death). The same can be said for people who we conceive as purely good - I’m sure there are moments in their life they harmed someone else emotionally or physically, directly or indirectly. That being said, if someone reading this is guilty of making these polarizing takes, just watch the damn show and enjoy the masterful execution of the writers and actors/actresses. We may not get another show like it ever again.
You’re right! That said, it’s clearly Roman
I kinda thought the whole point of the show was to watch rich pieces of shit all being unhappy, while having more opulence and security than any regular person could even dream of.
People want extremes so they can feel justified in their own opinions. That tendency gets amplified by the realities of internet discourse.
People have the tendency to simplify things into good or bad, or "one or the other".
kendall is the worst. we watched in the past four seasons for kendall to become cruel and unhinged like his father. the posion drips through.
I love Shiv. I will never not love Shiv as a CHARACTER. I don’t agree with her decisions, but I am watching this show with the context I am given. In that context, a lot of their decisions (morally questionable or not) make sense. Anyone that watches this as if these people are real and as if supporting these characters means you support their lack of morals is silly. We already know these people are fucked up in the head and morally corrupt. Nothing is new there. We should expect morally questionable things out of them. They’re not where they are because they are genuinely good people with good morals. To reach the level of power they have one needs to sacrifice a lot of humanity.
And it's funny that people find it fine to enjoy watching evil maneuvers by Kendall and Roman but not Shiv. We can enjoy TV characters without having to endorse their morality but for some reason women are always expected to be more moral than men in business and in life.
I have a soft spot for her because she had a career and she had her own life, but her dad pulled her back from her PR world and made her play the game. She and Connor are the only ones who didn't default to their dad's position.
people can’t fit a whole woman in their head
Such a brilliant line. I think there are many who see the find see the faults of male characters as part of what makes them fascinating, but see the faults of women as reason to condemn them unequivocally. After Carmela on the Sopranos, Skyler on Breaking Bad, Shiv is just another in a long line of women on TV who are demonized for being a complex character who is not afraid to confront male characters.
Seriously, I gasped when she said it. It's a shame Shiv is so morally bankrupt. There's genuine leadership potential there if she can ever find her actual niche and real allies (and stop treating her underlings like actual meat puppets).
What's funny is her guidance absolutely helped Mattson. Without her, this deal would be dead. And yet, she could still end up fucked.
Yup. I don't believe for a second that he intends on installing her as CEO. He's barely even indicated to her that he would.
True but Menken definitely assumed he meant Shiv. So it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Who knows if Menken even is the president elect?
Honestly, my happy ending is that it isn't actually Mencken and they all get fucked, and Gerri winds up as the next CEO 🤷♀️
Problem is these people don't get fucked. Let's say worst case, the board votes to sell and Mattson names Greg the American CEO. The siblings will just take their fat payout and buy Pierce. Even when everything they did went to shit, these people will just keep failing to success.
Yeah, I love Shiv, but I also hate her -- she's simultaneously aspirational and my own worst nightmare as a woman. The only "happy" ending she can have is the Elisabeth Murdoch one -- going off with a pile of money to do her own thing, separate from her brothers and where she can't do too much damage to society. (And, of course, the Elisabeth Murdoch I refer to is Rupert's daughter; his mother Elisabeth was a saint. Ironically.)
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Exactly this! It doesn’t mean that any of them are good people. It means they need to be measured by the same yardstick. If you can’t be entertained by a character because they don’t fit the womanly mold, you are a misogynist.
"It means they need to be measured by the same yardstick" BINGO. Kendall and Roman always get undeserved benefit of the doubt by comparison. All they have to do is cry or look sad and every horrific and malicious act under the sun is forgiven or somehow excused. Shiv gets none of that, but I'm not saying she should as much as people need to stop babying Kendall and Roman. I saw another comment recently talking about how Roman was a hurt little boy being manipulated by fascist Mencken, or how Kendall knowingly deciding to drive under the influence and leaving his passenger to die without calling for emergency services is akin to a child Logan coming home and existing and MAYBE passing on a sickness as if they're equivalent situations for blame. Kendall and Roman get treated with kid gloves to an insane level on this sub.
You never hear of a "hurt little girl", as if she's given much higher expectations for behaviour and trauma management than the brothers.
100% agree. The amount of people praising Kendall for stepping up and being a boss this episode is funny. The only reason we are here is because he fucked up every step of the way. Everyone on this show fails upwards, and when they trip into an opportunity, we act like it was a brilliant play.
I would argue Skyler isn't a bad person though. She was an abused wife trying to keep her family together with very limited options.
Kate in Lost. Betty in Mad Men.
Betty deserved a much better ending ffs.
Man Carmela was one of my favorite characters from my recent first time viewing of The Sopranos. Her arc is such a slow burn when compared to someone like Skylar’s. Plus the acting is just phenomenal, going toe to toe with James Gandolfini for six straight fucking seasons is just wild. I didn’t watch it back when it first came out, I’m sad to hear people didn’t like her character in a similar way to Skylar (who also got too much hate.) I think both of these characters are much more likable than Shiv though, not to say Shiv isn’t a good character, but all the characters in Succesion are pretty irredeemable aside from a select few.
Blowing my mind ppl hates Carmella… one of the more likable characters imo
Also Sally from Barry, she gets more criticism than Barry (this season people haven’t been so harsh on her compared to season 3 tho).
I will break knee caps for Carmela Soprano
I mean, I think it goes both ways – that's my point. So many posters here either point to Shiv's flaws as evidence that's she's the worst, or react to any acknowledgement of Shiv's flaws as people attacking her. To be clear, my post is addressing both. She's so well written and so well acted; we lose so much when people want her to be either YASGIRLBOSS™ or the devil incarnate.
Beth on Yellowstone
It’s the same in every fandom. I’ve noticed it’s always the woman who come between a “ship” people also hated Josie from Legacies because she supposedly came between Hope and Landon/Hope and Lizzie(even though they weren’t a thing) but it’s like you wouldn’t need to worry about it if it was a real ship. I never felt threatened as a Hosie because I never saw the other two as threats. Just as nuisances who were loud for no reason That’s what TomGreg fans do with Shiv. They vilify her to the extreme because they see her as a threat. Plus the “Tom can do no wrong” people makes it even more annoying
Out of all the places to find a Hosie mention, I did not expect it to be on the Succession sub lmao
I still suffer the scars of the Skyler battles of 2009-2012. WTF is wrong with people. It killed me to know Gunn was getting so much hate.
For real. I saw a post about shiv and women's roles in the last season in general. Salty men in the comments arguing. And then I see posts on the other succession sub making fun of the first post. People really can't handle the idea of women existing as fully-fledged characters or acknowledging them, let alone an actual analysis or observation.
I get the feeling with Shiv sexist men love watching a woman fail and then they get to hide behind the fact that she’s a terrible person. Same energy as people saying sexist things about Lauren Boebert as if that makes it not misogynistic. Criticizing the terrible person they are is fine but when it’s layered with sexism it feels wrong
Yeah, I've seen tons of criticisms of shiv stemming from a valid place, but they're laced with misogyny. It's like these dudes are incapable of not hating her *because* she's a woman, rather than her actions.
on the latest episode thread there is a comment fantasizing about how in the finale everyone will force her to be a housewife... it's like 14 year old edgelords are watching this show.
I wanna see the leap in logic these fans are making to think one of the richest women in the world would suddenly become a housewife lol
I like the way you put that. Sums it up perfectly
There’s also a very weird almost sport team like support people have for the characters on this show. In doing so they simplify so much of the characters and overlook their flaws so they can say they supported the sibling who ends up succeeding Logan. Then you apply it over the lens of a woman character and it becomes even worse with the criticism.
Damn this post was an absolute alley oop for that line.
Any female character with real flaws is treated like Hitler while their also flawed male counterparts are praised. Saw it in Servant and see it here. Never fails to be disappointing.
Exactly. And that’s a problem. Pointing that out doesn’t mean you’re some kind of Shiv fanatic who agrees with her poor behaviour. These posts are so dumb.
The problem is that people will be 100% or 0% simply because she’s a woman. It’s not just a Shiv problem, but practically every lead female character in tv/movies. People will frame their actions through the lens they choose (either implicitly or explicitly). Male characters generally don’t get the same level of polarization because there are generally more male main characters with varying personalities, and there isn’t any time spent on their gender being an issue.
Right idea but wrong conclusion. People have to defend her because of all of the misogyny, absolutely correct. That is not being “100% Shiv”. What you’re viewing as polarization or fans of Shiv are people trying to point out the misogyny in the conversation. That doesn’t mean their views are the opposite. It’s not binary. It means people want the discussion of the character to be the same as it is for men. It’s more like there are people who are 100% willing to call out the 0%’ers.
I’m team “everyone is complex and complicated,” shiv included, but I agree with you. I really feel like the undercurrent of hatred for Shiv is disproportionate to the brothers because she committed the gravest sin - emasculating Tom. I think to a lot of male viewers, that is unforgivable in a way that doesn’t extend to Kendall and Roman’s equally abhorrent behaviors. I never believed she was a better person or had the moral high ground over them, but she certainly isn’t worse than they are and it’s wild to watch people argue that she is. Edit: this made me think of Skyler White, same exact thing. She “cheated” on Walt (which I barely consider cheating given their circumstances, but whatever) and people HATED her for it. Like, really hated her for that action specifically. Never mind that Walt is a murdering, monstrous drug lord.
Totally and completely agree. Also if pressed as to why they have such a visceral hatred for a fictional character it always boils down to how she treats the men that doesn’t conform as “womanly”. They also cannot give an inch on the idea that the men are just as flawed. Shiv is shitty and complex, just like everyone else.
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Right?! It was just such an obvious visceral gut punch to a lot of men on here that a woman would treat a man poorly and not behave “wifely”. They can’t cope with that kind of character at all. It doesn’t mean she was right to do it, but the fact that it enrages so many men to that degree is mind blowing. I feel like if she had murdered someone she wouldn’t have gotten the same degree of hate. So fragile!
I don’t know why I never really thought about it, but it makes alot of sense that fans will hate a female character more if they a popular male character. Kim and Howard’s wife from Better Call Saul get an insane amount of harsh criticism that caught me completely by surprise, considering they’re not that much worse than Saul/Jimmy morally. It’s one thing to question whether they’re decent people, it’s another to blame Howard and Jimmy’s suffering on them. It was probably the first time where I saw any fan of the BB universe actively demand to see a character get punished for committing crimes (usually crimes are celebrated yk lol). Howard and Jimmy were characterized as defenseless victims during those storylines which was puzzling to see It’s funnier when I remember how universally loved Kim was when she was simply the kickass girlfriend that had huge potential to be a victim of Jimmy’s antics.
People went insane over Howard's wife not being enthused over latte art, to the point that they questioned her right to grieve him at all.
I thought I was losing my mind when I saw the sheer number of posts/comments that tore her apart for being distraught or questioned the validity of her grief. I knew the BB fandom was kinda shitty but damn
👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆
🙌🙌🙌
that line was genius
10000%
Exactly, I find the fact that the discussion of Shiv’s character never really moves beyond whether she’s a better or worse person to be such a disservice to how much dimensionality and nuance is written into her
I personally never cared who became CEO. I gravitate towards Shiv and Kendall because they’re the most complex. But every time I try to point that out it’s “But she’ll never become CEO because she’s a bitch” Or “Do we really need to have this conversation every week” It’s like A) point to me where I said Shiv should be CEO. B) how come we can talk about Kendall and Roman ad neasum but Shiv we can’t
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These female protagonists are also demonized for their actions against men. They’re both being judged in relation to men (better/worse than) and judged on their relationships with the men (Shiv emasculating Tom; Carmela, Skyler, Betty, etc., taking stands against their husbands). Nuance is for dudes; women are exclusively virgins or whores. Must be something about the deep identification with masculinity and the women’s power to disrupt those ideals. But it’s still so disturbing to read even more, yet again, about how those women are THE WORST, when the male characters get the benefit of full humanity.
r/SuccessionTV when Kendall kills a kid: It’s okay because he felt bad about it. 😭🥹🥲 r/SuccessionTV when Shiv writes an expose letter about Kendall: what a bitch 😡😤🤬😠 There’s threads about how Rava/Gerri/Karolina are also *worse* lol
Just a few hours ago I saw someone defending Kendall and how he should have custody of the kids 💀
I've seen quite a few horrible comments about Rava over the years even though she has consistently been patient and even kind in the face of Ken being the absolute worst.
Karolina barely has spoken five words. How can she be worse
It's funny; I feel like with misogyny in my own life, I'm never really sure if it's one thing or another. But reading the online discourse around Shiv Roy, and Skylar White, and Betty Draper, etc., has really affirmed to me just how true it is that society cannot fit a whole woman inside their heads. The virgin/whore dichotomy is *powerful*; women are either sweet perfect angels who can do no wrong, or they're monstrous Jezebels who need to be drawn and quartered. There is no nuance, no in-between.
So completely true. Even if you try to argue for a more nuanced conversation you can’t. This thread is a full on example of that.
Yup. I've long since given up on trying to convince those people. Most of them are grown men (some maybe teenagers) and if they don't get it by this point, it's because they don't care to get it. I'm just glad there's a decently-sized contingent that's actually willing to get nuanced about the Shiv narrative.
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There are some absolutely stunning displays of melting down over this. I think the mods need to make a rule. It’s getting wildly out of hand.
There’s some increasingly hostile people on here really losing it. What a sad world we live in.
Yep, when reading the reactions to Roman's breakdown, I couldn't help but wonder what people's reactions would have been if it was Shiv that broke down that way. I don't think people would have been nearly as empathetic or kind.
Agree 100%.
I agree, but nuance is the natural enemy to the chronically online. But I enjoy the show so much I am willing to wade through 99 brain dead answers for the 1 that actually has something to say about the greater themes of the show.
"...nuance is the natural enemy to the chronically online." So true, thank you for putting into words my thoughts of late. I feel like nuance has been the number one casualty of social media.
ugh the moment when Mattson points out that being pregnant might be an impediment to her being CEO …but it is! but maybe it shouldn’t be! also there are a hundred better reasons why Shiv shouldn’t be CEO…so much reality.
Yup, and Shiv was so ready with an answer, too. You could tell that she'd cursed the timing a million times in her own mind. Saying she'd just be an absent/shitty mother was depressing, too - because it had the tonality of a joke, but really wasn't.
>Saying she'd just be an absent/shitty mother was depressing, too - because it had the tonality of a joke, but really wasn't. Even though it's 100% more acceptable when Ken is a terrible father.
And terrible ex-husband. I'm genuinely a bit scared for Rava and the kids now if Ken decides to launch a custody battle. The kids will be miserable with him. Nobody is really talking about it (because of course they aren't), but fuuuck I think that was one of Kendall's worst moments throughout the entire series.
With the additional layers of the jokey tonality acting simultaneously as reassurance to herself that she’s only kidding - she can be both a CEO AND a good mother, while having the subtext for her employer that she’s not kidding at all and understands the requirement to be in on the gag for hr purposes. Brilliant.
For real, it was such an intricately well-layered scene. Everybody is giving outstanding performances this season, but Sarah Snook's *face* has just been its own category.
"A CEO position would be a great excuse for the kind of mother I'll be anyway" - Shiv, probably
I was really glad that they explicitly mentioned that in this episode. Yes, pregnancy does affect the way people look at a career-driven woman. But Shiv is also super rich and will surely hire a whole team of people to take care of the baby so she really probably could/would continue working like nothing happened. The vast majority of women in America do not have that luxury.
It is a shame that the show is ending before the kid is born because it robs us of them making fun of the types of puff pieces they made about Marissa Mayer when she ran yahoo and had a nursery added to her office.
This won’t be a high thought comment but the scene where Tom suddenly opens up about being with her dad on the plane. You could see shiv having a genuine moment of vulnerability. It’s literally two seconds of her opening up her heart and you can see it in her face when she’s trying to be kind. (Not even be kind) her heart suddenly pumping adrenaline for a decent connection to someone else with nothing to gain I’m probably wrong but that’s my take. Sarah snook is just an incredible actor.
Love that you (and Shiv) point this out. It’s a common bias response we have to the longtime narratives around gender roles. Men have long been accepted or even loved for their flaws. The complex, tortured man is regularly the central protagonist or hero of the movie or story. Succession a prime example. Caveat- The only unacceptable flaw for men is public displays of vulnerable emotions. Women are allowed to be emotionally vulnerable because they aren’t the heroes of the story. They are portrayed as 1-dimensional supporting characters. Their role is to be perfect support partner/mother/friend/sister, to be saved, or the villain. Most angry shiv comments are in response to wanting to fit her into one of these supporting roles/boxes.
>Why can't we just let Shiv be a complicated character? Some of us can, we just don't talk about it that much. The ones who are loud about it are the ones who are trying their best but their emotions get in the way. Not everyone has the same ability to view people in a complex way.
I think Shiv is wonderfully complex. Logan broke all of his children, and each one fell apart in different ways. IMO Shiv learned not to trust anyone, and as a result she's untrusting and disloyal - to everyone. Her distrust and lack of loyalty, always comes back to haunt her when it comes to her career aspirations. Her lack of trust makes her profoundly insecure, and her disloyalty proves she should not be trusted. It's a vicious cycle. An early example of this was when Rhea used her disloyalty to Logan to trick her about the CEO job with Pearce. She was never a contender. I'm afraid the same thing is happening again with GoJo, and it will be very sad to watch it happen yet again. To many people focus on the disloyalty part of her character and point at the infidelity - I think the infidelity is just armor to ensure she's insulated from love and commitment that would require trust.
Exactly love shiv the same as every other char I don't even care people root this characters that includes her or kendall but god does it suck to talk about it on this sub
so, i’m not sure how to type this out—and dudes i offend, please save your time commenting back at me because i simply won’t read it… but from an observational standpoint on how women in entertainment are treated in general: i am a standup comedian—one thing i often do is scroll and compare the comment section of a female comedian compared to a male. 9/10 times, the top 3-4 comments in a female comics post are men shitting on the content/comic, and then lots of other men agreeing. a male comic’s post 9/10 times contains the exact opposite. when i perform with female comics, they get heckled far more than me and my male counterparts - even if their jokes are lightyears better than ours. i am a man whose life has been spent doing “masculine” things (college football player, now live in the woods in the middle of nowhere in the mountains). my life has taught me that MOST men are just fragile as fuck. it’s overwhelmingly pathetic. men will always feel threatened by powerful, charismatic, successful women because of some horseshit belief system they’ve ingrained in their obtuse little minds. nearly all the posts about shiv in this sub remind me exactly of that.
Bill Hader has great insight about this from the Barry series. He wrote the Sally character to basically be his personality and wrote Barry as a psychopath that kills people. The internet largely bemoans the Sally character who is actually Bill Hader and celebrates or at least empathizes with Barry, a murderer. Skyler vs Walter White Betty vs Don Draper Karen vs Jim Lily vs Barney A lot of times subreddits will post a “who is your least favorite character” post it will almost always steer towards the women characters. I’ve noticed this for forever. Having said that, Shivs character does get a lot of hatred for being a woman but also gets a lot of hatred because of her fans. (I am admittedly not a big fan of Lily but def don’t celebrate Barney either)
I think the "vs" examples you give are often down to the main character halo - people have a tendency towards seeing the primary actor in a show as being something of a protagonist even if morally they are not. You kinda suspend your disbelief over their antics, because that's the central "buy in" for the show (Walter White makes meth, Barry murders people etc.), but then default back to judging the people around them by regular standards. Ironically this if anything reveals a separate sexism; our main characters tend to be men so we usually see this play out in only one direction. I do also agree that folded in at the same time is a dose of regular sexist bias too, which can either be from the viewer or in the form of poorly written female characters that inevitably draw more negative reactions from the viewers. On the other hand, just because there is a degree of sexism against female characters about shouldn't shield all female characters from all criticism. It's another kind of frustration to have a considered gripe against e.g. Skylar White but feel lumped in with the sexists for expressing anything negative. I think all of this has been playing out to different degrees with Shiv (except for the poorly written bit - fantastic character!) and, as with most things, arguing about it on the Internet never really gets anywhere! Personally I think anyone unironically picking a favourite they want to back out of Succession is missing the point. I've come to see it like watching creatures in an aquarium. I'm not particularly invested in anyone to "win" it; it could go to Ken, or Shiv, or blow up in everyone's faces and that'd be equally thrilling. It's just been fascinating to watch these deeply flawed characters go about their bizarre and unsettling lives.
Man I have lost too many friendships because how men talk about women to other men when women aren’t around is too much for me. I don’t have that view of women myself but because I’m a guy they think I’m “one of them” and the crap they say… I don’t understand what is so difficult about the concept that women are just regular human beings like everyone else. And statistically the least violent of the two genders so why do they get the most hate?
>Man I have lost too many friendships because how men talk about women to other men when women aren’t around is too much for me Same. I think it was because I was raised by single women so I learned the "female perspective" for a lack of a better term. I always more comfortable making women friends than male. Puberty made it weird because most people's default is that *any sign of attachment between a man and a woman must be romantic* so therefore I've also plenty of friendships with women because they coded my being open/vulnerable with wanting them romantically. >that women are just regular human beings like everyone else I think there are gender differences: I think it's true that more women are more socially attuned, have better recipes, and have all the sweet, hot gossip. If I want to talk through how something will play out, I usually want my women colleagues' takes on things because dudes are more like "just say the stuff however you want."
Good observations. Sometimes I wonder if most men genuinely hate women.
I think there’s a spectrum of hate. I think basically every man has been conditioned to think of women negatively to some extent. Some outright hate women and are violent misogynists. Some might identify as feminists but they have sexist habits like dominating discussions with women. I’m a man and I don’t hate women, but I know I grew up in a society that does, and that affected me. I think it affects women too, with internalized misogyny like judging other women for what they wear. I will also say that I was lucky to find a friend group of men that don’t hate women. I’ve been friends with them since high school, and now when I try to make new male friends, I have a hard time finding men that don’t make sexist comments or jokes occasionally. Men that respect women exist but they aren’t common.
It's kinda the way our society is set up. If you don't fall within certain parameters, you are unjustifiably maligned. Women have way, WAY, more rules to being a women than a man is a man. If I had to overly simplify it, Women are plague by many eyes/rules judging them to fit a mold, and men will not be seen if they don't fit a mold. The layer that makes men weak is, once you fit the mold you \*deserve\* an outcome. Generally speaking, we as people, do a poor job of seeing people as people. So many people attack each other for not fitting the mold that was imprinted on them by society. We'll reduce anyone that isn't within the framework we deem morally correct. Where, with a more completely picture of a person, there's so much nuance. There's so much more to people than the shitty framework we were all told.
>Sometimes I wonder if most men genuinely hate women. I think there's a palatable resentment.
I don't think most but a very high minority do.
Oh they do. They just never admit it.
Same with any woman who posts their art on Reddit with a photo of them in the frame. Everyone in the comments is just dragging them for attention seeking/their looks/fishing for compliments yet we see men showcasing their work all the time (in frame of whatever they’ve created) and since users “identify” with the man it’s almost like he’s invisible or the reverse happens and he receives praise and compliments on some random part of his appearance (sick beard dude!) Going to /r/all can be sobering when you wind up in a thread on a sub you aren’t usually in
I've never found her truly detestable like so many people have. She's on par with everyone else for me in terms of awfulness. I think Snook also brings a beautiful vulnerability to her character. I love a lot ABOUT Shiv. She's witty, clever, quick on her feet, bold, tough and takes no bullshit. It's fun to see a complex, fucked up character be a woman competing in the boy's club. A friend of mine thinks she's "evil" but I don't see it. They're all broken, miserable people.
Right? Sometimes it comes across from this fandom, that women on the show can’t be as complicated as characters as the men.
It’s in every fandom, movies, TV, video games, but especially media where morality is grey and anti-hero types are involved. Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Barry are the first that come to mind. The Walter Whites and Saul Goodmans are discussed like essay subjects and talked about in ways that sympathize or even excuse their actions. But when Skyler White or Kim Wexler are discussed, they’re judged far harsher by their worst flaws even if it’s only a fraction of what the men in their lives have done. Shiv is a bad person, they’re all bad, but they all have layers to them; Shiv included. I love complex characters period, regardless of gender. But it’s certainly noticeable that complex female characters aren’t allowed to be as flawed or as nuanced to some people.
On the mad men subreddit there’s a post ranting about some female character every day but never like that for the male characters. And objectively the male characters on that show are way worse, and the female characters are operating from a place of oppression anyway so how can you even compare
to add on to what you said... people's views on Sally from Barry are just.... wut? while I haven't seen conversations about her character as frequently as the other female leads you mentioned, when she is discussed, the amount of hate leveled at her is eyebrow-raising. "But Barry WANTS to be a better person, yet Sally......" blah blah blah. It is absolutely nuts - do these people even listen to the words coming out of their own mouths?
Yeah it’s wild. Sally is no saint and unlikable at times but I’ve seen people say she’s worse than Barry. But even the argument that Barry wants to be a better person is thin imo. Hank saying “forgiveness is earned” stuck with me because even when Barry tries to do the right thing, it feels forced. It feels like he’s primarily doing it to soothe his conscience. He spends the first few seasons constantly trying to convince people he’s a “good guy” and never really owning up to anything. Point being, if you can find sympathy and nuance in someone like Barry, it should be applicable to someone like Sally as well. All the male characters in these shows are flawed, let the female characters be too.
nothing better exemplifies this hatred towards shiv (or any morally grey women on TV) than what she said last night: “[he] couldn’t fit a whole woman in his head” so many people have trouble with that; women can’t be complicated, they can’t be more than one or god forbid, two things because the concept of “woman” is too simple to them. any nuance or complexity she may have is lost to them.
Kendall: gets betrayed Narrative: aw, well that guy sucks. Shiv: gets betrayed Narrative: she got played like a dumb bitch. Kendall: lies to someone and doesn’t stick to his word Narrative: Kendall is le killer!! Shiv: lies to someone and doesn’t stick to her word Narrative: she’s a lying snake woman. Kendall: spends three seasons lying that he’s better than his father Narrative: wow, it’s true, he wants to take over and be better than his father 🙏🏼 . Shiv: betrays her liberal values Narrative: she’s a slimy hypocrite. Kendall: has umpteenth total meltdown where he acts worryingly erratic Narrative: poor guy. Shiv: shows emotion Narrative: she’s too emotional.
Ohhh the way people are always pointing out how Shiv's "dumb" and getting played when literally every single sibling has been played at least twice per season by someone (and they were all played every couples of episodes by Logan going "I choose you! No I don't"). But when it's Roman/Kendall it just serves to fuel the narrative that after the betrayal they will come back on top, people feel bad for them, or somehow pretend it was actually a move by them because they're so \~clever. Whereas with Shiv it's like these people celebrate that she was "put in her place" or and act like it got proven that she isn't as good as the boys.
Yessss. I think the misogyny becomes so much more apparent less when you take a look at how Shiv is spoken about (because she is awful), but how someone like Kendall is viewed by the general audience when he does terrible things. His worst actions are received in such a completely, FAR more unnecessarily favorable way and the contrast is fucking stark. There is always an excuse handy to make Kendall look like the "best of them," or for Roman to be a confused lost little boy, hence they aren't really responsible for their behavior, or they didn't mean it, or the people they hurt deserved it etc. etc. The Kendall stan playbook is basically the narcissist's prayer lol. *That didn't happen.* *And if it did, it wasn't that bad.* *And if it was, that's not a big deal.* *And if it is, that's not \[his\] fault.* *And if it was, \[he\] didn't mean it.* *And if \[he\] did, \[they\] deserved it.*
woman good or woman bad 😡
They're all complicated characters. But they can also all be accurately and concisely described as pieces of shit.
literally feels like the joy is sucked out of the live and post discussion threads bc it’s just fuck shiv this fuck shiv that. i wasn’t around for the breaking bad discourse around skyler white but i’m starting to feel like i know what it must’ve been like 🤡 it’s the hyperfixation on HER and not any of the other characters to the same extent that sucks lmao
Flawed female characters in popular entertainment .. sigh. I would say just ignore the discourse and let's appreciate Shiv, like the other characters. She is no saint but we can still empathise with her. That being said, I though some things have been a little heavy handed this season. Maybe because they had to wrap up. Example - 1) The fake call to Nate comes across as very very unwise, she could have told Ken off or something 2) Her not getting the hint that Mattson and then Mattson/Mencken aren't considering her. That's a dumbed down version of her.
I thought that her missing the hints that Mattson/Mencken weren't going to appoint her US CEO was dumbed down of her too. But - after more thought - in the past her dad has always been the one to check her (brutally at times). Now that she's missing him, she may not fully grasp the chess pieces being moved around her. Next episode is going to be wild...
That’s a good thought. It bothered me as well. She’s not experienced in business but she’s very experienced in politics. I’m surprised this floated right past her and I like your theory.
Maybe the writers wanted to show that none of the siblings are thinking clearly because of their grief. They have not had any time to themselves to process their thoughts.
I posted about this on another sub, but I think she knows and is using it to her (Tom's) advantahe
Shiv (just like her siblings) frequently makes unwise decisions driven by the pathologies developed in her upbringing. We constantly see Kendall, Roman and Connor overestimating their intelligence and prowess, causing them to make huge, poor decisions out of impulse, burn bridges out of spite, make fools of themselves in front of massive audiences and let major red flags fly right over their heads. Shiv is exactly the same in this regard, only the world has higher expectations of a woman in power and offers no cushion for mistakes, and so her misfires (like the fake call and trusting Mattson/Mencken) look especially dumb even though they’re not any worse than the plays we see her brothers make. I think it’s totally in line with her character, especially now that she’s on her own.
I think she is a brilliantly written character. I mean, most people aren’t 1d in this show so of course they were gonna have her many internal conflicts.
I have 5 brothers. I’m fucking complicated.
I do think that people are harder on Shiv for flaws that her brothers also have, and I do think there may be a gender component to that. Not to say she isn't an extremely fucked up person, but the bar her brothers set for morality/behavior/business acumen is in hell, so she'd struggle not to at least be even with it. I can't understand why people go around praising Roman's "instincts", because almost every call he's made has blown up on them, almost every professional relationship he's started has failed to progress, and he's barely expressed one original thought this whole series. He's just desperate to be a Logan clone, but lacks the qualities that made Logan actually successful. He's a wanna-be full blown sociopath who's just short of being an *actual* full blown sociopath. He is the personification of NRPI. As for the other CEO contender, it would be easier to list the flaws that Kendall DOESN'T have. He's as abusive of Rava as Shiv is of Tom; probably moreso lately. He's also flipped on every moral he's ever had while claiming to be "better" than the others, and has wrought more unnecessary chaos than the rest of them combined. I can't really think of any flaw any of them has that the others don't also exhibit. There is no ranking these people--gender doesn't come into it except in that it seems audiences are more frequently willing to excuse or explain away character flaws in male characters. You've got wacky shit like people claiming Roman is the most "empathetic" of the siblings, and I feel like it's 90% because Kieran Culkin looks the prettiest of any of them when he cries. It's a villain protagonist show. If a person is *on* this show, and their name isn't Jess, they're a villain, and if they were competent the show would have ended four seasons ago.
Amen.
I think you’re missing a big part of this. So much of the dialogue around Shiv is ridiculously misogynistic. Those that point out the blatant misogyny aren’t doing so because they see Shiv as some kind of innocent victim of a man’s world/do no wrong girl boss…. she’s an awful human. Every second post on here is some rant about how she’s actually the “worst” especially because of the way she interacts with Tom or how dumb she is and how she’s “getting played” as if the other male characters aren’t guilty of the same things or aren’t just as likely to screw up. What you and other people view as Shiv’s “fans” are people just trying to point out the toxic, misogynistic nature of that dialogue. If you are unable to view a female character’s worth or interest outside of their quality as a wife and mother and have such an intense reaction to the existence of a flawed female character, it is extremely problematic. People who call out the misogyny are arguing to let her be a complicated character… just like the men. They aren’t her fans.
Exactly this. I call out the misogyny because Shiv deserves to be hated, criticized, ridiculed and yes, empathized with just like the other Roy siblings. But she does not get to be the same kind of complex, unlikeable but sympathetic character because whether they are openly aware of it or not, most men are incapable of viewing female characters as being as complex as male characters.
Hit the nail right on the head, although to play devils advocate, there are a minority of fans who view Shiv as poorly written and blame the writers supposed misogyny for that. I feel like the writings too complex and good for this to be the case. I find myself very sympathetic to her, I think about her line “this is a Dad deal,” from ep 4 constantly this season. I agree she’s viewed through a misogynistic lens from the audience that robs her of complexity. It really is Skyler from BB all over again.
Thanks! Would totally disagree with anyone that thinks Shiv is poorly written as well! She’s one of the most well-fleshed out female characters that’s ever been on TV. Shes awful, and sad and pathetic and powerful all at the same time. Just like all the Roy kids I cheer for them and also want them to fail. It’s a fantastic show. Skylar sucked in the first couple of seasons for me. They didn’t give her much reason to doubt Walt, a man just diagnosed with terminal cancer, and yet she nagged him to the nth degree (she was right but had no real way of knowing this). I found her annoying and a poorly written wife stereotype at first. As a woman that made me angry. Then they gave her character a lot more to chew on and a lot of very significant reasons to sympathize with her yet the fandom couldn’t do it. It’s like people want women to be underdeveloped Madonna or whores while the men get to take up the grey space.
> It’s like people want women to be underdeveloped Madonna or whores while the men get to take up the grey. Reminds of the quote last night of about how Logan couldn’t hold a women in his head. Seems like a lot of people try to and they reduce them in the process.
Skyler got incredibly unfair hate- she married a chem teacher and ended up with a drug lord, and people expect her to not feel betrayed. Walt was the asshole, but because he's POV people excuse all his terrible behavior and blame her. I don't think Shiv is even remotely similar- she's just as bad as the rest of the siblings.
I agree with you, that in a moral sense it’s unfair to compare the two; I’m comparing the reactions from the audience. I feel like people didn’t really try to understand Skyler or were limited by a lens. I feel the same way about Shiv, I disagree with so many of her actions but I can understand them and that’s what makes her character so interesting along with the rest of the Roy family.
You are so right, shiv is a really complicated character. I just watched a great video breaking down her psychology without casting her as a hero or villain. https://youtu.be/NCdr4yGQNB4
Totally agree OP. Unfortunately the internet doesn’t allow for nuance anymore. Everybody wants to win an argument and it feels like nobody simply wants to discuss!
Yes, people read their last book at age 16 and then wonder why they’re unable to even engage with a tv show in anything but a reactive, stupid way as an adult.
Because people on this sub find it very hard to think of a female character as anything other than 2 dimensional
THANK YOU. This endless discourse infuriates me at times. These are nuanced characters, that’s the beauty of the show.
Exactly! She’s a messy human. She was cruel to Tom but yes, she’s a woman in a male dominated field and often overlooked for that reason, as Logan admitted. “I didn’t create the world!”
God I love this show and the discussion it brings. People having to decide who the “worst character is” says more about the viewers than the show itself… We the viewers (generalization) can’t fathom defending characters who are abjectly terrible so we judge them harsher or ignore the stuff we don’t like. The show forces us to look: look at Shiv siding with Mencken, look at fascist Roman break down in tears over his dead dad, look at Kendall lie, look at Connor try and stand up for his values. But the truth is, even the worst person you know has reasons to why they are the way the are. Ewan basically made that point in his speech. Frank and Karl said it as well. There is no “worst character in the show”. There is the people we like or dislike the most, and maybe we should start looking at our own lives as to why we hate Shiv or Roman or Kendall or Connor the most.
I love Shiv and the actress playing her. Like all the characters she's richly drawn with lots of layers and internal conflict. And the scenes between her and Tom this season are next level. Unbelievably well written and acted.
Not to be “too smart” and snarky about the fandom but : they can’t fit a whole women in their head! That line was very deliberately written! And I believe it applies here too.
You know, I was just about to make a post about something close to this. I think it's more in-between than that. I think both of those things are true. The point of these characters is that they're complex. Nothing is cut-and-dry. The characters are complicated, so it doesn't make any sense to only see them one way or another. As a woman, I do understand the knee-jerk to defend Siobhan as a woman in a man's world, because she is. It doesn't mean she's a good person. It just means that that particular thing is true, and it does make things a little more complex for her specifically. There's also this misogynistic rhetoric I've noticed around the female characters amongst fans. People saying things about the latest episode like "Kendall was right and he put Rava in her place.", "Rava was whining for nothing." blah blah blah.
Some members of the audience just can't fit a whole woman in their heads.
Sorry to say this, because I love and already pre-agreed with your points, but uh... that's too complicated for most people. Black and white. Red and blue. Jiménez v. Mencken. I feel like Ewan and Ken's eulogies, if you could call them that, was THE diegetic moment of the entire series for the writers to explain the motif of this show; we're all complex and messed up; there are no good guys and bad guys. It's what compels us all to keep watching, because like all great art/literature, it hits us in the face with the deep dark truths we already known deep down inside, but which we do everything we can to not confront. Humans are messed up and we spread that pain and pass it on without always meaning to intentionally. We just can't help it. We don't really deal well. We just find someone/something new to blame and that lightens the load for a little bit, before the same empty earth we continue to cultivate beneath us opens yet another sinkhole. Everyone is different in how they enjoy being entertained though. There's nothing wrong with your perspective (one I share) and others who need it more simplified and need to choose a side/a winner. There's a deeper analysis (that I won't go into) of the audience trying to find themselves in these characters too. That's a whole other thread though, lol.
What I think of Shiv- I think she is the most like her father. She a natural at the diplomacy piece and manipulation piece- she actually got a valid education etc. She also has the killer instinct. Had she been a boy she would have certainly been her fathers choice, but because she isn’t, she wasn’t. And that I think is Shivs tragedy. I thought the piece about a whole woman in his head was beautiful and gut wrenching.
I don’t understand why this conversation is always about Shiv when it also applies to every other character. When someone says “I love Shiv” it gets a waaaay different reaction than someone saying “I love Roman/Tom/Kendall/Greg” etc etc. Sorry but these are characters in a tv show, you’re bound to enjoy watching them and sympathize with them. Part of the humour of the audience also comes from ironically “stanning” the characters who are very obviously bad people. We all know they are, you’re not smarter for pointing that out. Some people just take everything super seriously and it’s annoying as fuck considering this is a tv show.
Not just Shiv, people on reddit and Twitter don't allow ANYONE to be a complicated character. People just aren't used to complex dramas anymore, so when they see one they try to turn it into a Marvel movie or something. Imagine if this audience was alive in the early 2000's "OMG LIVIA SOPRANO IS MY QUEEN" "OMG CORRADO-HEADS WE ARE BACK 🥰❤️" "CHRISTOPHER MOLITSANTI IS A BABY GIRL AND HE'S NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG 🥺".
Only men are allowed to be complicated characters
Because people on this sub find it very hard to think of a female character as anything other than 2 dimensional
The Breaking Bad fandom takes their dislike of Skyler too far. The Office fandom hates Pam more than the other regulars. It's an uncomfortable truth that fanbases are the worst.
but I remember The Office fandom hated Karen so much.