I've been arguing with two of my best friends for days and months about Shiv and her supposed "morality" that she just dangles over everyone's head but gives no one -- ESPECIALLY the audience -- reason to believe in it. She has no backbone, and she was out and could have stayed out. Even if the men in her life disrespected her or felt she was an easy mark, she rarely proved them wrong. And that has people's brains tied in knots for some reason.
I need to wait a while before I rewatch the show but I can't wait to watch her trajectory with the whole thing in mind, because (perhaps like the women of Mad Men) she has the most significant change of any of the main characters, save maybe Greg.
super weird that people think Jesse Armstrong and the rest of the writers are misogynistic for writing a female character whose fatal flaw is her own hubris, too.
Jun 3, 2023·edited Jun 3, 2023Liked by Marion Teniade
Succession was a wonderful exercise in that oh so human feeling of wanting whatever you don't have. Which in their case, they never got their father's brutal intelligence or his love.
As for Shiv, I still think it was *devastating* when Lukas was like, "I want to fuck shiv, and she'd fuck me, so maybe I'll sidetrack that and hire you, tom, the guy who put the baby inside of shiv." Because fuck if my success and my labor and my everything isn't just that secret sauce for my cis male partner to enjoy.
After the finale, I went back and watched the pilot and was struck by how the plot was exactly the same: Kendall being crowned CEO when his dad was incapacitated and Shiv protesting and doing whatever was in her power to stop it. I was also struck by how real her and Tom's relationship was in the pilot and how it deteriorated over the course of the four seasons.
All that is to say, while I have some issues with how the writers chose to dismiss entire aspects of her life and personality that were present in season 1 in subsequent seasons, her issues with Kendall, desire to be loved, and chronic self-interest and air of self-importance has been baked into her character since we were first introduced to her.
I've been arguing with two of my best friends for days and months about Shiv and her supposed "morality" that she just dangles over everyone's head but gives no one -- ESPECIALLY the audience -- reason to believe in it. She has no backbone, and she was out and could have stayed out. Even if the men in her life disrespected her or felt she was an easy mark, she rarely proved them wrong. And that has people's brains tied in knots for some reason.
I need to wait a while before I rewatch the show but I can't wait to watch her trajectory with the whole thing in mind, because (perhaps like the women of Mad Men) she has the most significant change of any of the main characters, save maybe Greg.
super weird that people think Jesse Armstrong and the rest of the writers are misogynistic for writing a female character whose fatal flaw is her own hubris, too.
Succession was a wonderful exercise in that oh so human feeling of wanting whatever you don't have. Which in their case, they never got their father's brutal intelligence or his love.
As for Shiv, I still think it was *devastating* when Lukas was like, "I want to fuck shiv, and she'd fuck me, so maybe I'll sidetrack that and hire you, tom, the guy who put the baby inside of shiv." Because fuck if my success and my labor and my everything isn't just that secret sauce for my cis male partner to enjoy.
After the finale, I went back and watched the pilot and was struck by how the plot was exactly the same: Kendall being crowned CEO when his dad was incapacitated and Shiv protesting and doing whatever was in her power to stop it. I was also struck by how real her and Tom's relationship was in the pilot and how it deteriorated over the course of the four seasons.
All that is to say, while I have some issues with how the writers chose to dismiss entire aspects of her life and personality that were present in season 1 in subsequent seasons, her issues with Kendall, desire to be loved, and chronic self-interest and air of self-importance has been baked into her character since we were first introduced to her.