As for Shiv’s assignation with her ex-boyfriend turned new colleague Nate, everything I said about it last week still stands: Sex between ciphers is definitionally not hot. Note that this is different from saying sex between strangers is definitionally not hot. When you don’t know someone, the element of anonymity and mystery involved in watching them fuck is erotic. We know Shiv and Nate just fine, and that’s the problem, since there’s nothing to know. They’re not idealists, that’s for sure. Nor are they monsters like Logan or scoundrels like Roman or just repulsive like Tom. They’re barely pragmatists, since that would imply goals, and we don’t have any clue what attracted them to politics since they express no actual political viewpoints. Shiv says whatever will get a rise out of the person she’s currently trying to act tough toward and reverses course without compunction when the need passes, hence going to work for a guy she jokingly called Stalin and less jokingly called too radical within about five minutes of meeting him. Nate himself comes right out and says, “I don’t believe in anything.”
Nate and Shiv are dull, the way only people who are handed everything in the world and can’t be bothered to use the spare time to develop even the most rudimentary and idiosyncratic beliefs or personalities can be dull. Under normal circumstances? The lay-it-on-the-line, “I want to fuck you, here’s where and when we can do it” transactional flirting, the all-business hand-down-the-pants initiation of intimacy—whoa nellie. Here it’s like watching the weather report. I’m supposed to get hot for this? Heroes, villains, rogues, by all means have at it, but orgasms for bores I will not abide.
[…]
I’ll tell you what works here, beautifully and unequivocally, or rather I’ll tell you who works: Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy. Watching him handle the prodigal son’s near-instantaneous collapse of sobriety (aided and abetted by his dad planting stories that he was running through the street muttering about a coup; now we know the plot purpose of his otherwise unnecessary dash through the streets) is gripping stuff. Once he makes the decision to leap off the wagon, he’s in it all the way. He’s determined to have a great time, and so he does, whether he’s chatting with the locals, calling his brother with the firmness of purpose of the incredibly high, disrupting the family gathering, goading his father into near violence, or just kicking back in the wilderness enjoying the coke and the view.
Strong handles all of this with restraint and without cliche, from the anger, frustration, and feigned toughness as he takes the plunge to the chemical relaxation and goofy good cheer that follows. The irony is that in the ease of his interaction with the local burnouts, whom everyone else in his family would (and in Roman’s case, does) treat like sentient dogshit, you can see him find even more ways to convey Kendall’s innate, if relative, decency. In fact, when one of the methheads gives Roman shit in turn, Ken sticks up for him, too. It’s like watching a performance from Deadwood show up on Petticoat Junction. On this show there’s Strong and then there’s everyone else.
Tags: decider, reviews, succession, TV, TV reviews