“Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom.”
Spring arrived, the flowers blossomed, and so did our calendar. Once we shook off whatever winter was and welcomed in the sun, our lives all of sudden got very busy! So, instead of writing, over these last three months, I’ve been riding the wave of 70s degree days and backyard hangouts. I’ve played tourist both locally and out of state, celebrated all the spring baby birthdays (including my own), I went to the mountains to watch one of my best friends get married and then we danced at her wedding reception back in Texas while a thunderstorm boomed behind us. I completed my first-ever writing workshop and allowed myself to finally take on the title of “writer” (gulp). So…things have been hectic, to say the least. Good! But hectic. And throughout these last few months, we’ve had time very little time for movies, but the one thing we have had time for is Succession.
When Art and I read that this season of Succession would be its last, we literally turned to look at each and gasped as if we had received some truly Earth-shattering news. What did they mean this would be the last season? Things were just heating up! Season 3 ended and we were going to see the Roy children strike out on their own after the ultimate parental betrayal. They couldn’t end now when there was so much uncharted territory to cover?! But hearing that our chaotic, years-long journey with the Roy family was coming to an end, and someone was finally getting a kiss from Daddy, it was time to go back and relive all the rich folk magic and mayhem over again. It was time…for a rewatch baby!
We started watching Succession during our maternity/paternity leave in April 2019 when, after exhausting the entire Drag Race catalog and needing something new to watch or risk cabin fever, we asked ourselves, “Hey, should we check out that rich people show everyone keeps talking about?” and down the rabbit hole we fell. I remember speeding through Season 1 in a haze of board votes and baby bottles and being incredibly bummed we had to wait until the fall for Season 2 to start. I had never seen a show that was so whip-smart, so second-hand embarrassing, so offensively rich. I found myself so desperate for more disgustingly rich people content I actually started watching Million Dollar Listing shortly afterward just to feel a thrill anytime they would show a cold, white marble floor that can only be found in a 1% home. Needless to say, Succession easily solidified itself as a top-tier show in our household.
So we got to work at the end of this March and went back to the very beginning. This time with a 4-year-old sleeping in his own room instead of a newborn sleeping soundly on top of me. I actually let out a little squeal watching the transition of Kendall gliding from the Waystar office into the show intro in the first episode, getting a tingle of nostalgia and excitement as we prepared for the end of an incredible show. Seeing things with fresh eyes is great, but hindsight is 20/20 for a reason and we were ready to watch with eagle eyes this time around.
Quickly into our revisit, I realized how much I missed during our first viewing. So many business terms and shareholder dynamics that went over my head either due to the postpartum haze I was in at the time or just generally forgotten about from Sunday to Sunday night. This time I was able to soak in the brilliance of Sarah Snook and Alan Ruck’s performances, and also the writing itself of a show that is so fucking funny. I paid attention to the subtleties between Jeremy Strong and Brian Cox when they were on screen together and definitely got a better understanding of how Strong could be so annoying to Cox. Even though both play such intense characters, Cox brings a certain ease to his performance that Strong does not. He’s looser, more limber. Strong embodies Kendall too much. It’s fascinating to watch knowing an extra layer is folded into this Oedipal mille feuille that no one will actually eat.
Of course, there’s so much I could unpack from our rewatch: Tom and Greg’s disgusting brother chemistry, the Pierces and what makes “good” rich people, Kieran Culkin (that’s all), and the fantastic meme culture around Kendall. Topics that increasingly become stomach-churning and hit closer to home as we reach this week’s series conclusion and helplessly watch our world burn under the control of rich capitalists just like the Roy family. But the one moment that has stuck out to me the most came from Season 3, Episode 1. Logan, seething, though secretly impressed by the public betrayal Kendall enacted on him in the Season 2 finale, encourages his advisors to “Go on. Speak! Let a hundred flowers bloom” while deciding their retaliatory move.
When I first heard this line I thought, “Oh what a beautiful little phrase! I can’t wait to somehow use that in a blog post!” I thought about all the lovely ways I could let my own flowers bloom through my words, assuming it was something that either came from a poem or the writers themselves. I spent so much of March learning what it meant to craft my words, to help craft the words of others, I knew it just had to be from something lovely. But when I looked up the line, I immediately learned that um, no, it wasn’t a beautiful line from a poem I had never read, but instead a famous quote from Mao Zedong. Whoops. I was way off!
Mao, as I learned, would use this phrase as a trap to encourage his dissenters to speak freely but secretly weaponize their “flowers” against them and eventually kill them. It was a way to flush out disloyalty and is a phrase that makes much more sense for Logan to use rather than encouraging remarks from those around him (though it is interesting to point out that Kendall himself reshapes and repeats this same line in Season 4, Episode 1, encouraging Roman to “Let a thousand sunflowers bloom, Romey.”) Oh well, I thought, maybe I’ll find something else to write about for Succession and we’ll file that one away.
And yet, I couldn’t let it go! For weeks the phrase kept rolling around in my head. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, but what if the flowers come from inside the house? What if the flowers you hear don’t come from some disloyal lackey, but from your own disloyal brain? How do we handle the emotions and thoughts that come up that aren’t friendly or kind? Do we cast ourselves out? Do we let them go and play the game, so to say? I marinated on this thought throughout the rest of our Season 3 watch in April and until Mother’s Day (of all days!), during Savasana in a comically awful Mother’s Day yoga class with my best friend, I realized the flowers didn’t have to be a negative thing. They didn’t have to be a betrayal from a dictator or a fictional character, or even the dark part of your brain, instead, you could also let a hundred flowers bloom for yourself. No, the verdict is love, your honor.
As I laid on my yoga mat I thought back to those postpartum days when we first watched Succession and the tired, terrified girl I was back then. I would never want to cast her out, I wanted to let a hundred freaking flowers bloom for her. I wanted to give her a field full of bounty and blessings and let her know that she will be ok. I’m pulling Kendall and I am going to let this be a beautiful, complicated phrase mean what it means for me and move forward with a bouquet in hand. I’m speaking. I’m letting a hundred flowers bloom. And aren’t they pretty?
I sure will miss this show.