Thoughts on HBO’s Winning Time, Revisited

So, Winning Time basically wrapped up in two seasons, and the final episode had an epilogue after Boston won Game 7 of the 1984 NBA Finals, which basically meant that Winning Time was getting cancelled.  Sure enough, HBO and David Zaslav decided to cancel Winning Time, so that means there won’t be a third season on their network.

So how good was it?  Let’s break it down.

I guess season 1 kind of had me hyped, more than I probably should have been.  Season 2 I felt had its good moments, but it was more disappointing overall, especially the finale. 

Sean Patrick Small and Quincy Isaiah play Larry Bird and Magic Johnson on HBO’s Winning Time.

(Photo: HBO, via The Chicago Sun-Times)

Winning Time’s Michael Chiklis and Sean Patrick Small as Red Auerbach and Larry Bird, in a rather humorously absurd scene of them both smoking cigars in the locker room after having won the 1981 championship.

(Photo: HBO, via Variety)

Positives

1) The acting was really on point.  The portrayal of the players really looked like the players, at least up close and if you don’t pay attention to players’ heights.  Also, their personalities seemed to really mirror their real-life counterparts, especially Quincy Isaiah’s portrayal of Magic Johnson, Sean Patrick Small’s portrayal of Larry Bird.  They were able to show their characters as complex, interesting, and complicated.  The only real egregious acting was Jason Clarke’s absurd, over-the-top portrayal of Jerry West, but it was toned down in Season 2.

2) Season 1 of Winning Time was bold, ambitious, and it didn’t care who it offended, even if they did.  I found it both refreshing and shocking at times, but it often tended to straddle the line of boldly interesting and downright problematic.  They really didn’t give a hoot about if people would like their show or not, they made it.  

Tracy Letts as Jack McKinney.  Tracy Letts did a masterful job of portraying the late Lakers’ head coach, Jack McKinney on Winning Time.

(Photo: HBO, via Variety)

3) I really liked how Season 1 went into some nitty-gritty details, some which I didn’t even know about prior to the start of the show.  That it actually made me look up head coach Jack McKinney, and for the most part, they seemed to do a really good and accurate job of portraying his time with the Lakers.  They emphasized that he was an important member of Showtime and helped engineer it, and he could’ve been remembered more had it not been for his untimely, gruesome bike accident that he suffered early in the 1979-80 NBA season that almost cost his life and caused his significant memory loss.  I also liked how they covered the Lakers’ interest in Jerry Tarkanian and how an incident involving a close friend of his led him to turn down the Lakers’ job and to stay at UNLV.  

Tracy Letts did a tremendous job of playing Jack McKinney in both seasons.  I also loved how in Season 2 that Jack McKinney shows up, tells his friend and coach Paul Westhead that he’ll expose him, and then he goes right back to inquire about his food, as if nothing happened.

4) The tensions they set up made for terrific entertainment.  Magic and Kareem, Magic and Norm Nixon, Magic and Paul Westhead, Magic and Larry Bird, Magic and Pat Riley (spoiler alert those who haven’t seen Season 2), Jerry Buss and Red Auerbach, you name it.  They were a master of weaving in tension, and it was great to see the characters at loggerheads with each other, especially with stakes on the line, and a championship up for grabs.

If you want to blame a legitimate reason for Winning Time’s cancellation, Jason Clarke’s obscenely odd portrayal of Jerry West might be a good place to start.  His portrayal of West looked like a downright fabrication and an exaggeration taken to extreme lengths, and his Season 1 portrayal was equal parts humorous and absurd, but also grossly vulgar and offensive to the real life Jerry West, especially when there really isn’t any indication that the real-life counterpart actually behaved that way.

(Photo: Warrick Page/HBO, via Los Angeles Times)

Negatives

1) Season 1 Jerry West was way too outrageous and absurd.  Jason Clarke’s portrayal of Jerry West was to portray him as a vulgar, cartoonish, resentful caricature of a man that loathed his NBA experiences, to the point where he would be humorously cursing up a storm, and one scene in season 1 has him having angry sex with his wife, which was completely outlandish and farcical.  As a basketball fan, I do not regard these sex scenes as essential to the plot.  As a fan of arts and entertainment, I found the scene absurd and kind of amusing, but also distracting, because it takes away from basketball.  Also, to me, Clarke’s season 1’s portrayal of him just looked like a completely irresponsible and reckless portrayal of Jerry West, because there doesn’t seem to be anything that would actually indicate that he did half the things he was shown to do in season 1.  Sure, that it’s a dramatization, but that doesn’t make their portrayal of him any less reckless.

2) Season 2 Magic Johnson whined way too much.  As fun as it was to watch him play on that series, there were some moments where it was really grating to hear that much whining.  It’s clear he and Paul Westhead didn’t get along in Season 2, and Westhead certainly overstepped his boundaries, but he did a lot of whining to Cookie in the second season.  Some less time whining on the phone would’ve been nice, and they probably should’ve established Magic and Cookie’s relationship better to ensure that the audience would root for both of them to be together, because for 1 1/2 seasons, it seems like their relationship was forced upon the audience, as it seemed like they were estranged acquaintances before Magic flew down to San Diego to meet up with Cookie in person.

3) Season 2 Pat Riley was portrayed as losing too much when initially hired, but in looking up his Basketball-Reference, that wasn’t actually true.  The 1981-82 Lakers actually reeled off four straight wins after Westhead’s firing and ballooned their winning record to 11-4, as that would’ve been in November 1981, and it would be months before Riley lost two games in a row, which would be in early January, and the most he’s lost in a row that season took place in the months of February and January.  That said, the Lakers did finish 57-25, and went on to become the 1982 NBA champions.

4) In regards to Season 2, Honey Kaplan (or Honey Buss) is not a real person, but rather is an amalgam based on real people.  But it’s shown that Jerry Buss was kind of lecherous and maybe not a great person, and he  was sued by multiple women in real life, so I’d rather they show real people rather than fictional characters that were based on real people in a show that is about real people. 

5) They missed a golden, comedic opportunity to explain away how they got James Worthy, as they immediately just put in only a single sentence, with Jerry West saying that Bill Sherman gave them a gift.  In real life, the Lakers traded Don Ford and a first round pick to be named later (which became Chad Kinch) for Butch Lee and the future 1st overall pick of the 1982 NBA Draft, James Worthy.

Normally, bad teams would get the first overall pick, but this is important because the Lakers had just won the 1982 championship, so they were the best team in basketball, and they then got the best player in the NBA draft.  That trade was essentially the Lakers trading away a middling role player (Ford), a first round pick that became a future benchwarmer (Kinch) to Cleveland for a little used, non-essential reserve on their 1980 championship team (1981) and…a future first round pick that became an All-Star, key player to their NBA championship teams, and future Hall of Famer in James Worthy!  

That was a terrible trade for the Cleveland Cavaliers, by the way, and an amazing trade for the Lakers, of course.  Also, I’m wondering, didn’t anyone protect their picks back then?!?  Who would allow themselves to give away future top five picks, let alone future first overall picks?

6) They zoomed too quickly through the 1982 and 1983 NBA Finals.   Also, Moses Malone ended up being a Hall of Fame center, as he was also on the 1981 Rockets’ team that beat the Lakers in the playoffs, and he was on the 1983 76ers’ championship team, so they should’ve made the media put Kareem and Moses Malone on more equal footing, as both should’ve been viewed as great players on the show.

7) They made the egregious error of ending Season 2 on a loss to Boston in the 1984 NBA Finals, even though the latter really did happen, especially when it was not guaranteed that they would be picked up for Season 3 (which they weren’t).  If a show is in danger of getting cancelled, they should always end the final episode on a win.  

While the final episode was well crafted for the most part (with the exception of Claire Rothman’s absurd yelling, which was extremely over the top), and the NBA Finals sequence really had me on my seat on edge, I thought that should’ve been a couple of episodes prior to the final episode.  That they ended the episode on a loss and rolled an epilogue really cheated viewers of the Lakers’ “Winning Time” experience, as the Lakers won 5 NBA titles in the 1980s, and we were only shown two of them.  That said, I was really concerned how they would handle Len Bias, as I was concerned that they would’ve handled that inappropriately. 

Other Thoughts:

In my opinion, Season 2 should’ve wrapped up in one of two ways.  They should’ve either had season 2 close with either the conclusion of the 1982 NBA Finals, or with the conclusion of the 1985 NBA Finals, and both of those would’ve resulted in Lakers’ wins, which would give fans the joy of the “Winning Time” experience, instead of having it seem like it was more of a Larry Bird, Red Auerbach, and Boston Celtics’ series without us viewers knowing it.  (And man, their portrayal of Larry Bird was a really impressively mean and talented basketball player that really owned 1984!)    

If they were to have delved into the 1985 season, they could’ve had Westhead fired sooner in the season rather than linger in the summer (even though Jason Segal is a really good actor, but Westhead was fired 11 games into the 1981-82 season), had less of the Jerry Buss-Honey Kaplan story, and end season 2 by showing the conclusion of the 1985 NBA Finals, which would’ve showed the Lakers ending that on a win, with the intention of showing the 1986 and 1987 NBA Finals for season 3. 

The other way would’ve been to show much more of the 1982 NBA Finals, and have them winning the 1982 NBA Finals as season 2’s finale.  Did we really need to fast forward through one of their championships?  By doing so, it seems as like they robbed the viewers a chance to really get a view of how tough that journey was and to really enjoy the title as much as they did.

Also a minor pet peeve, couldn’t they have shown Danny Ainge more, who did play for the Boston Celtics in that era, and would go on to become their championship winning GM?  As a fan of the Chicago Bulls growing up, I remember Ainge was a pesky role player that would get into some altercations with opposing players, and he was also a solid role player on some of those 1980s Celtics’ teams.  He is an interesting figure and that could’ve been mined for potentially some source of extra humor.  Also, I would’ve loved if they had shown a young Bill Simmons rooting for them too, even if he were just a fan in the crowd back then, since they also had someone portray Jack Nicholson on this show.  A potentially missed comedic angle somewhere in there, I think.

I’m also not sure how I feel about the alternating cuts of Lakers’ people chanting F*** Boston, and Celtics’ people chanting Beat LA in Season 2.  It was equal parts humorous, but also absurd and cheesy at the same time.

Winning Time’s Season 1 Grade: B (3.5 out of 5)

Winning Time’s Season 2 Grade: C- (1.5 out of 5)

Winning Time’s Overall Grade (Both Seasons): C+ (2.5 out of 5)

So essentially, what I’m saying is I liked season 1, low key thought season 2 could’ve been better and wasn’t as good as it could’ve been, and overall, it was okay.  So, I’m giving the show a mixed review grade overall.  Fans on Twitter were really down that there won’t be a Season 3.  

From a TV perspective, I found this show to be entertaining, though it certainly has its ups and downs, but I think I’m a little burned out from watching this show, so maybe we all could use a break.  But as an avid basketball fan, I really do think they should’ve made sure that they could have aired all aspects of the Lakers’ Showtime era, as it was a missed opportunity to show the Lakers in years 1985 to 1991, and also maybe later to show other eras and teams as well.

For those that are wondering, here is the key to my scale.

Scale:

5.0 - A or A+

4.5 - A-

4 - B+

3.5 - B

3 - B-

2.5 - C+

2 - C

1.5 - C-

1 - D+

0.5 - D

0 - D- or lower

Anyways, that is my review of Winning Time, a TV show that aired on HBO for two seasons in 2022 and 2023.  If a different network picks them up for season 3, maybe I’ll give it a watch, but it’s uncertain and probably doubtful if that’ll happen.  Thanks for reading this article and thanks for reading.

7/3/24 Update:

I have to downgrade Winning Time’s Season 1.  I’m sorry, but the portrayal of Jerry West is too ridiculous, outrageous, offensive, and inauthentic for that season to warrant a good score, and hiding behind “it’s a dramatization” is a serious cop out.  As for Season 2, speeding through the 1982 NBA Finals where the Lakers win the title and not showing enough screen time to highlight the importance of them winning the NBA title that year is inexcusable.

Winning Time’s Season 1 Grade: C+ (2.5 out of 5)

Winning Time’s Season 2 Grade: C- (1.5 out of 5)

Winning Time’s Overall Grade (Both Seasons): C (2 out of 5)

Anyways, that’s my review, and thanks for reading.

How Much Do Leeway Should We Give TV Networks In Depicting Real Life People That Are Based On a True Story?

Jason Clarke as Jerry West in HBO's hit TV show, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.  Clarke's manic, aggressive, and furious portrayal have won him both fans of the TV show, and also perhaps enemies from those that worked for the Lakers in the 1980s.
(Photo: Warrick Page/HBO, via Los Angeles Times)

More and more this year, people have been tuning to the glamorized, sensationalized storytelling of semi-autobiographic depictions of real-life subjects that are based on true stories.  Only that more TV networks decide to make wild exaggerations and some really bold choices that teeter the line of audacious storytelling that make for good television, and towards being absurdly unethical.

Case in point, exhibit A is where in Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, Jason Clarke portrays Hall of Fame basketball player, and former coach and general manager Jerry West on the Showtime Lakers TV show.  On the television show, Jerry West is portrayed as an angry, pessimistic, foul-mouthed individual, and it really leans into this persona for humorous purposes, although there are some touching moments where we get glimpses into his sadness and trauma due to his upbringing and failures to defeat the Boston Celtics as a player.

The real life person that is Jerry West and many of the actual former Los Angeles Lakers’ players and members were said to have very upset at the HBO’s portrayal of the fictionalized version of Jerry West, but HBO stood their ground, saying that it is a dramatization, which gives them the creativity and license to portray Jerry West to their liking.

Wood Harris gave a riveting, nuanced complex portrayal of the beleaguered Spencer Haywood, whose tortured mind state and battles with drug addiction come to a head during the 1980 NBA Finals on HBO's hit TV show, Winning Time.
(Photo: HBO, via MEAWW)

Wood Harris gave Spencer Haywood a nuanced portrayal of a hardened, veteran basketball player that has dealt with having fought the judicial system and NBA front offices’ retaliation of allowing high school players to enter the league, as well as dealing with drug addiction.  One particular end to an episode was rather shocking, as the fictionalized version of Haywood threatened the Lakers right after they dismissed him from their team during the NBA Finals, but the actual version of Spencer Haywood was said to be okay with the TV show portrayal, and was said to have liked Wood Harris’ portrayal of him, so all is well in that regards.

Rachel Deloache Williams (on the left) is portrayed on Inventing Anna by Katie Lowes (on the right), and Rachel Deloache Williams was less than pleased with her portrayal on Netflix's TV show.
(Photo: Getty Images/Netflix, via BBC)

Now, in exhibit B, Vanity Fair’s editor and writer Rachel Deloache Williams wrote a book called, “My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress,” which was about her having been friends with Anna Sorokin, who had pretended to be an heiress named Anna Delvey, and then sold the rights to HBO, and it inspired Netflix to create a hit TV show, “Inventing Anna,” which was created by Shonda Rhimes.

Unfortunately, while Inventing Anna has become popular, and has notable actors such as Veep’s Anna Chlumsky, Inventing Anna had somehow used Rachel Deloache Williams’ material, and it was said that it had spun it around to portray Rachel Deloache Williams in an unfavorable light, as it may have done so dishonestly.  Nevertheless, it seems that creator Shonda Rhimes made a rather curious choice to paint Rachel Deloache Williams this way, which has now paved way to Rachel Deloache Williams’ lawsuit as she is suing both Netflix and Inventing Anna for taking too many liberties and for their purportedly malicious, dishonest, and false portrayal of her.  (That is between them, that's all I'll have to say about that.)

I’m well aware that Jerry West is a Hall of Fame basketball player that won with the Lakers as a player, and he also won as a general manager of the Lakers.  But I don’t know Jerry West as a person, and I don’t personally know anyone that was involved with the Netflix TV show.  Therefore, since I don’t have firsthand knowledge of how things went behind the scenes, that’s between them.

TV networks easily can say that it’s based on a true story or that it is for dramatization.  But there’s a line between audacious storytelling, and going too far and crossing over to the point where it’s unethical.  Inventing Anna definitely seems like the latter, where it uses material from Rachel Deloache Williams’ book, and then the show makes it seem like she’s just as bad as Anna was or worse.

TV networks have millions and billions of dollars, and they can easily take a real life person and materials from them and paint them in a negative way without their permission, and be able to win court cases because they have an endless pit of money, and they can afford the most expensive lawyers.  Still, I feel like it would be better if they were to take a more ethical approach instead.  It feels weird that Rachel Deloache Williams was a victim of Anna’s scheme, and Netflix chose to paint Rachel in a negative light anyways.  That seems like gas-lighting.  Instead, if they were to choose to do that for storytelling purposes, maybe they should’ve not used her name, and come up with an amalgam character instead, like maybe have the character be named Francesca Billingsley, or something.

As for the HBO show Winning Time, I feel very conflicted about Jerry West’s portrayal on the show.  On one hand, it was comedic and the fictionalized portrayal of West’s extremely vulgar and over-the-top sensibilities made him both humorous and edgy, which keeps viewers like myself on their toes.  I feel like their portrayal of him was both fun and also kind of unethical, but their unauthorized biography and fanciful portrayal of Jerry West is a rather fun one, albeit also over the top.

On the other hand, if he wasn’t vulgar or this angry or pessimistic in real life, then it feels like an exaggerated, slightly dishonest portrayal that was just done to humor me at the expense of the real life Jerry West.  I must say, Winning Time is kind of a guilty pleasure type of show, but I do understand why real life Lakers people that lived the Showtime era would be extremely upset at HBO’s portrayal of Jerry West on the show.

Jonah Hill plays the likable and intelligent, but at times socially inept intellectual named Peter Brand that manages to become the assistant GM of a Major League baseball team, the Oakland A's in the hit movie, Moneyball.

(Photo: Sqspcdn, via The 42)

At least with Moneyball, when Paul DePodesta didn’t want involvement or have his name in the movie when they chose to hire Jonah Hill over Demetri Martin (both very good actors), they at least accommodated his request, and they had Jonah Hill play an amalgam character named Peter Brand.  That way, creating a fictitious, amalgam character can give actors the license to freely play their character without the worry of harming the actual person that lived this role in real life.

There has to be a happy medium between a sanitized version of real life events, and absurdly, dishonest and extremely exaggerated portrayals of that.  A sanitized version of real life events feel dishonest in a completely different way, as that would be as if they are trying to clean up and tidy events or portray bad events as if they had never happened.  

Most television viewers don't want ham-fisted, overly sanitized autobiographies.  They want and crave the juicy stuff, the tidbits people want to hide away from the public, which is why Winning Time exists, to satiate those desires for people.  At the same time, the stories we are telling are about real people, or are at least dramatized versions of that, which may come awfully close to crossing the line, if it doesn't quite do so.  But some TV networks may opt to tell a story in such an overly sensationalized way that it may stray too far from the truth or may make up events altogether, and put it neatly under the umbrella of "dramatization," a creative license that allows them to fictionalize certain or whole events altogether while portraying their story as "based on a true story."

In the future, if real life people would like their stuff to be made by movies and TV shows, then they ought to make sure that they instill clauses that give them oversight and the right to refuse how a character portrayal of them would come across on the big screen.  Otherwise, without such clauses, this may give TV networks free reign to paint people as positively, negatively, or as vulgar and absurd as they want to paint them, which could come at some people’s expense.

Of the TV shows I have mentioned, I have not seen Inventing Anna, nor do I have plans to.  I have seen Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, and if you are willing to overlook the absurdities and vulgarities and take it in stride and just know you are watching a show that is full of comedy, drama, and action, then you may be in for a treat.  I'd say Winning Time was a solid (if not perfect) TV show.  Yes, some of the portrayals are absurd, outlandish, and over the top, but they go really in depth with some of the characters, and they do know how tell and weave a good story.  I'd even go so far as to say it's worth a watch.

That said, TV networks should have a crumb of a responsibility to tell their stories as honestly and accurately as possible.  If they don't feel obligated or tethered to real-life subjects themselves, they at least owe it to the viewers to tell the stories to make sure that it closely mirrors real life.

Is Kendall Roy Succession’s Jimmy Darmody?

Hello readers!  I decided to write up my thoughts on the latest Succession episode. 

For those of you who haven’t watched Succession’s season 3, or episode 8 Chiantishire, I’m just going to give a heads up, SPOILERS are below.

(Photo: HBO, via Uproxx)  Kendall Roy looks passed out in his pool at the end of Episode 8's Chiantishire after getting another verbal beatdown from his father, Logan Roy, as his dad won't let him out of the company.  Should we be concerned about Kendall?

I’m worried for my man, Kendall Roy (played by Jeremy Strong).  There's a real concern that Kendall might not make it to Season 4 of Succession.  He’s not in a good state, and when we last saw him, he was dozing off to sleep in a flooding pool with a beer bottle that left his hand.  He really should not have gone to Tuscany.  He should’ve stayed home.  And where the heck is Naomi, who was his bed rock at the end of season 7, when his birthday party crashed and burned (though unfortunate, it was expected that his party would ultimately be a disaster)?  

Kendall is in Tuscany with his kids, but he doesn’t seem to have any adult allies in his corner.  He’s also depressed, on the losing end of his fight with his father, and that’s not a good recipe at all for him.  He should be concerned about his mental health, and people close to him should be worried about him if they care about him at all.  

(Photo: HBO/Newsday) Kendall's plan to leave his father's Waystar Royco company did not at all go as planned, and just like everything else for him this season, ended up being disastrous for him.

For most of the episode, Kendall sought his father to have a big sit down meeting with him.  As expected, it didn't go well for him.  His own father has blocked him from his phone.  His father doesn't even trust him enough to send him a plate of pasta, and he has Kendall's son taste it for him to make sure it isn't poisoned.  Kendall's treated like he's only a member of the family in technicality, but it feels as if he's been disowned in every other sense of the word.  After being on the losing end of the fight to his dad, Kendall wants out of the company, but his dad won't let him.  Kendall will be tied to Waystar Royco until he dies or quits, it seems.

He’s not a perfect person by any means.  At the end of season 1, he accidentally killed a waiter by wrecking his car into a pond while swerving from oncoming traffic after he and his newfound friend (the waiter) were high on drugs.

Kendall is a man that has been beaten down, and has gotten back up many times before.  He’s survived verbal abuses from his powerful father, Logan Roy (played by the brilliant Brian Cox), drug addiction, and he is one quirky individual that is fond of parties.  He had the cringe-worthy rap in which he rapped about his love for his father (which looks weird and ironic now), and he also had the equally disastrous 40th birthday party that was hailed as “the Notorious Ken: Ready to Die” party.

There’s something really tragic about him.  He’s habitually had problems with drug addiction, he’s lost a big fight and case against his powerful father in Season 3 where he sought to take him down in their cruise ship’s harassment case, and he’s been tumbling down into depression, ever since his siblings went behind his back to try to do a deal with Lukas Matsson (played by Alexander Skarsgard) at his birthday party in order to finish a business deal.  Add insult to injury, not only does his brother Roman Roy (played by Kieran Culkin) sneak into the treehouse without Kendall’s permission, Roman insults Kendall to his face and pushes him just as Kendall is on his way out of the party.

One of the subtly more tragic things is the supposedly funny headlines at Kendall’s birthday party about his family’s demise, but we’ve come to know that none of that will happen to them.  Instead, the very real demise could be Kendall’s own, as he was depressed, drunk, and fell asleep in his pool at the end of Episode 8’s Chiantishire, and he is at the risk of drowning and dying in the very next episode.

Jeremy Strong is a very good, yet has been since as a mercurial and intense method actor.  He’s one of the best actors most people don’t really know about, but if Episode 8 was the last episode we see Kendall Roy alive, the greatest sendoff for him would be if he wins an Emmy for his strong performance of Kendall in Season 3 of Succession.

Kendall Roy was supposed to be the most woke Roy, if there was a thing.  But as the show has progressed, that may not be necessarily good for him.  He’s an idealist at heart in a world full of cold, calculating business people, and he is essentially like a big fish in a sea of sharks.  He took a big chance by calling out his father at the end of season 2 by calling him a malignant figure, and he was willing to take down him and his company, Waystar Royco to try to expose their company’s cruise ship’s corruption scandal.  

However, he really struggled to give his side of the case at the deposition when he was with his then lawyer, Lisa Arthur. As a result, Kendall had a meltdown immediately afterwards, and his meltdown led to Lisa's chagrin, which disagreed with Kendall.  In turn, Kendall's meltdown and his public firing of Lisa Arthur doomed any chance of him winning against his father or the company.  As a result, Kendall was basically surrounded by enablers, and he didn't stand a chance to win the case once he fired Lisa, who was a powerful lawyer who remained objective throughout the process.

For most of the show, I’ve felt cousin Greg and Tom to be more or less the voice of the commoners in a land of the rich and powerful, and we need them to be heard more.  Unfortunately, cousin Greg has made some very questionable choices in season 3, as he decided to sign an agreement with Logan Roy and Waystar Royco, and he lost his inheritance from his grandfather to Greenpeace.  He ended up planning to sue Greenpeace, and he’s strayed further and further away from seeming to be the common man.

(Photo: HBO via Uproxx) Does Roman Roy really have the inside track to be WayStar's future CEO?  In Season 3, it seems that he'll do one thing to get in his dad and his company's favor, and he'll do another to sabotage himself.

Roman Roy has been one of the more intriguing, oddball characters on the show.  He’s showed business acumen and savvy by being able to rope in his political candidate, Jerryd Mencken to get his father’s seal of approval, and he also managed to get Lukas Matsson back in talks with his company to try to get the merger done.  But every time he makes a step to be Waystar's future CEO, he does something odd and really strange that makes me think that he won't be.  Roman's perverseness and oddball quirks have taken him sideways, and he ended up sending NSFW photos of his junk that went to his father, and that could result him getting fired from his company, or at the very least ostracized and humiliated.

(Photo: HBO/Inverse) Shiv Roy (played by Sarah Snook) really seems to want to be the CEO or at least get a board seat on WayStar Royco, and it seems she'll do whatever it takes, whether if it's rolling Roman or Gerri under the bus for her own gain, or by trying to do her dad's bidding and conduct business at Kendall's birthday party. 

Lastly, Shiv Roy has gone a 180 from working for a very liberal politician to really wanting the CEO position at her father’s company.  Of all of the Roy siblings, she might potentially the shrewdest and the coldest sibling of them all.  She went with Roman to try to do a business deal at Kendall’s birthday party even when he explicitly told them not to.  I wanted to naively believe that she was one of the most progressive of the Roys in the family, but that has been proven to not be the case at all, and she has been ruthless in pursuit of a higher position at Waystar Royco.

Shiv did help expose Roman for his photo gaffe to his father, but she also tried to push her interim CEO, Gerri around to use their secret relationship as leverage so she could gain a higher role within the company.  Lastly, she claimed to remember her mom leaving when she was 10, but her mother told her that Shiv was 13 when she told her mom that she wanted to live with her father, Logan.  

We’ve always known Shiv wanted to be the CEO, but the lengths she goes to is far more than most would be willing to go to get there.  While her mother seemed to make Shiv try to become a mother via reverse psychology, I’m still not convinced Shiv wants kids, and her husband Tom desperately wants to have them.  At some point, Shiv is either going to have to decide whether to have kids and get what Tom wants (Tom, who always seems to be emasculated by his wife and never gets what he wants), or to not have them and potentially leave Tom altogether.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on the show Succession for now.  Thanks for reading.

Side Note: 

For those of you who don’t know who Jimmy Darmody is, he was a central character on the HBO show, Boardwalk Empire.  Spoilers are below.

Jimmy Darmody was a main character on Boardwalk Empire that was played by Michael Pitt in season 1 and 2.  Jimmy Darmody was a protégé and surrogate son of Nucky Thompson, and he was a former soldier that came back from war.  He was born after the Commodore had forced himself and impregnated his mother, Gillian Darmody (in which the affair had been arranged Nucky).  When I watched the first season, I thought that Jimmy would end up supplanting Nucky to be his heir apparent to run the mafia, but that did not turn out to be the case at all.

Jimmy’s life was a very tragic one.  His mother seemed to have a stunted emotional maturity of a child, and Jimmy and his mother seemed to have an incestuous relationship.  Jimmy enrolled at Princeton, but was kicked out after getting into a fight with his teacher after his teacher wanted to date his mother.  On top of that, he was burdened by memories of war, 

Jimmy worked for Nucky, but then later worked for the Commodore, and after he didn’t call off a hit on Nucky, he ended up getting killed by his surrogate father Nucky Thompson at the end of season 2, who more or less disowned him by then.