the one thing i feel pretty certain about for this episode is that america will not decide the election. a decision will be made, a president will be elected, but america will not be the deciding factor.
succession can’t mimic 2016 or 2020 point blank, that would be boring and have nothing to say. it can’t try to outdo trump because it’ll go too whacky and fall flat like veep’s last season (sorry conheads, no way he’s winning). but what it CAN do is illustrate the immensely corrupt, often arbitrary, and hugely influential nature of news media and conglomerations on political processes. i think probably jimenez will be in the lead, then atn/waystar does something to, i don’t know, discount votes or cast suspicion on jimenez or call the election for mencken early, and the tide will shift, even though the votes are already in. the votes don’t actually matter. the actual result doesn’t actually matter. that’s the power logan (and as an extension, billionaires and CEOs in general) hold. shiv says it herself to logan in s4e2: “just cause you say it’s true doesn’t make it true. everyone just fucking agrees with you and believes you, so it becomes true and then you can turn around and say like, 'oh, you see? see? i was right.'” but it doesn’t matter that logan’s “a human fucking gaslight,” everything he says comes true anyways. not because he was right, but because that’s how it works. he says things and then they happen, regardless of what the truth is or what should actually come to pass. that’s been one of the key throughlines since the very first episode of the entire show when, in response to kendall calling logan out of touch because times are changing and logan isn't changing with them, logan hisses that everyone always says you’re wrong until you do it and prove you were right: “you make your own reality.” you can't miss the bus if you're the one driving it. the election, the votes, the political process? none of that matters. it was always going to come down to the roys and their ilk (allies or enemies, just the top 1%) — that was the whole point of “what it takes” (the mencken episode) last season, after all.
i’ve seen lots of theories about what america will choose and how the candidates will respond and all that and i just don’t think that’s the show’s focus; i think the whole point is to demonstrate the lack of agency, the illusion of democracy. because, i mean, we’ve already seen the fall of democracy via fascist election and fascist election-denial, both in real life and in the countless (usually mid) satires created afterwards. it would be disappointing to see succession use the election to reiterate that same point of 'ohhh alt-right ahhhhh!!!' i don’t think it’ll be about ‘fascism’ at all — at least, not ‘trump-y’ fascism. it’ll be about fascism in the broader sense, the kind that doesn't sport a KKK hood (even when it keeps one tucked away in the attic). it's the fascism that every single roy (very much including shiv and kendall) aid and abet -- the fascism that so many succession fans don't seem to regard as fascism, despite it quite literally being the definition of fascism. trump wasn’t the entrance of fascism into our political process. he wasn’t the lone sign of the failing of american democracy. democracy in america has long been illusory, trump just made it more blatantly evident with his particular brand of hate-speech-ridden masculinist in-your-face fascism.
so i think that’s what this episode will hopefully focus on — america will not decide. corporations, news media, and the roys will. thus, the president will most likely become president not because the country supports his policies the most, but because he’s likely to agree to help block a business deal for a major media empire, and the other candidate is unlikely to. and this will likely come to pass due to said major media empire's interference and influence: they create their own reality. they say it, and everyone agrees with them and believes them, so it becomes true.
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random tokrev rant ahead !!
when i first started this blog it was going to be for random shitposts, groupchats once in a while, and mostly tokrev analysis but i was so scared of discourse that i just chose to do the funnier stuff 😭. when tokrev was at it's peak i'd be reading 20k+ words of analysis and it was so fun!! but i felt like i couldn't word what i wanted to say properly so that discouraged me but i wish i'd ignored that because there would have been at least one person who understood what i was saying yk?
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weird mile thought that just occurred to me: so mile has said he'd been asked to take other bl roles before right? and never really expressed any hesitation about taking one - like he was confident that it'd be his choice even though he wasn't a known actor, hadn't ever had an actual acting role before? and i was wondering at like this casual assumption that he'd be able to do a role, like he was almost deigning to take it rather than being insecure or worried about being good enough. and while i realize some of that is just mile (and the life experience of being rich and good-looking lol) i think some of it probably would also have been to do with the kinds of things he'd been offered?
i was thinking: someone described mile as kind of like a thai kim kardashian because he previously was sort of famous for being basically a rich socialite-type. and one thing you learn about thai bl shows if you pay even a little attention is that they love a cameo guest role from other bl actors or cps. there are always these little moments where some random encounter with a walk-on background character in a bl show seems to be dragged out a bit and given a confusing amount of time and significance where later you'll see everyone going crazy in the chat "omg it was so&so from last year's drama! they were the couple at the fashion show!!!" etc etc.
so how likely is it that the "roles" mile was offered were of that kind - attempts to take advantage of his celebrity and followers to bump the viewership of a bl drama with a cameo turn by "extremely handsome restaurant patron mile" or "extremely handsome businessman mile " or maybe even "extremely handsome suave beach-goer mile"?
it just seems very likely, considering how celebrity can function and also mile's kind of supreme confidence about picking and choosing from among offers.
but what i love, and what i realized might have been a little bit of an "f* you" on mile's part for the implied assumption that he maybe couldn't pull off a real role, is that he decided to go in and actually audition for kinnporsche when he heard about it, not for some kind of gravy star cameo, but for the full leading role, when he hadn't acted before.
like we all laugh that he heard it was based on himself and saw a chance that apo might be involved and jumped at it, but seriously. seriously, think: if kim kardashian one day just decided to audition for a genuine movie/tv role in idk succession or something - not a gimmick part, not a walk-on as "herself" - what would the reaction be??
do you think most celebrities could handle a full lead role like that? just ... decide to do it, and then not only pull it off, but do a brilliant job?
just, with all the sort of interpersonal stuff with daemi that's been sort of an avoided discussion and the way mile has said he'd read yok's work before, i'm speculating that going for a much bigger and more demanding role than maybe what he'd been offered before was a way for mile to make a kind of statement of his own, staking his own worth as an actor not just some 'pretty face with nice tits' (which is kind of how i feel like sometimes the whole cast got treated by the writers)
and that fills me anew with a kind of gleeful appreciation for his style and boldness.
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Heyy besties, I've got a question for the group:
We know that Noé is forced to see some amount of memory from someone the first time he drinks their blood, but he can still choose to see memories if he bites them again after that point, yes?
Like, it's a question of him being able to decide whether or not to look with subsequent bites, and not a case of one and done?
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