Girls Gone Canon Cast - Succession S4E10: With Open Eyes ft PoorQuentyn

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Spoilers! IT IS SO OVER!!! Succession S4E10: WITH OPEN EYES ft. PoorQuentyn from NotACastASOIAF NotACast Patreon | My Brother, My Captain, My Podcast Patreon | @PoorQuentyn GGC Patreon | @GirlsGoneCanon   *** there was a slight issue where the end was cut off - reuploaded!  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The following music was used for this media project: Music: Modern Jazz Samba by Kevin MacLeod Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/4063-modern-jazz-samba License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Hello and welcome to Girls Gone Canon, Watches Succession Season 4, Episode 10, with open eyes, featuring poor Quentin. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. And I am another one of your hosts, one last time, Emmett. And yeah, we just wanted to get you all here today to say... Yo. Yo. As Kendall Roy would have it.

His last words, put that on his tombstone ellipsis yo kendall roy yo to the very end not yolo just yo just yo damn it's really over four seasons uh i know we've been saying that we uh thought i could use one more to get to get it fully done one more in the chamber what do you feel about that now? No. It was good. It was solid. It might have overstayed its welcome. Yeah. I don't think they could have done one more.

I think they could have done two to four episodes. I do think we're owed one episode. You know, that's COVID rules. Because there was only nine in season three. It's true. It's a blood debt. When will it be paid? Them's COVID laws.

Yeah. But that's okay. We still got a lot this season and it was i think that's a solid ending and we will be discussing the final episode of succession as well as the other episodes of succession alongside it today if you haven't watched that finale log off now avoid the spoilers uh emmett before we jump too far in, one last time here, or penultimate time, tell everyone where the hell they can find you on the internet. So my name is Emmett, also known as Poor Quentin.

You can find me at Poor Quentin on Twitter. I co-host the Not A Cast podcast with our friend Manu, a.k.a. Manuclear Bomb. We go through A Song of Ice and Fire chapter by chapter every other week. We release those episodes for patrons first and then for everyone. And on the alternate weeks, I do episodes just for patrons on Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. I'm going through right now.

We got coming up on A Song of Ice and Fire. We're in the middle of Red Wedding month. All in June, our episodes are going to be all about the Red Wedding. Our latest episode is with Arya and Sandor as they make their way to the Twins, and then we're going to get to the really good bloody, gory Catelyn chapters to come. And then in Lord of the Rings,

I just covered book 6, chapter 4, The Field of Cormallon, the chapter right after the one in Mount Doom. And then in Star Wars, we got coming up, me and Manu are going to cover the beginning of the original movie, kicking off A New Hope with R2 and 3PO, so that's going to be out for all of our patrons at patreon.com slash notacast, A o i a f and then you can listen to our general release episodes or

a song of ice and fire episodes wherever you listen to your podcast wherever you listen to girls gone canon i just got it a new hope no it's my new host my new hope oh my god she cracked the code a new host she got there folks i was really sitting here and you said a new hope and i'm like my new hope and i'm like a new host i'm like my new host i watched the sunrise behind your eyes amazing well please go check out not a cast we'll link it as usual below on these apps it has been such a pleasure to do this uh this here business with you this final final board deal you know as we go down in flames with them thank you emmett it's been the opposite of hostile hostile hostile yes in many ways glad we agree on that if nothing else

and hey uh if you have not checked out our regular podcast if you've been hanging out here listening to emmett guest on girls god canon watching succession welcome yo and we are a podcast that covers a song of ice and fire chapter by chapter however we do it pov character by pov character a little different a little remix a little refresh it a little refresh. It's kind of fun. We're kind of fun. Come listen to us with a twist. That said, we will be starting The Damp Hair, Erin Greyjoy, this month, starting in June. It won't be here today while you're listening to this episode, but we're coming back in June, next week.

Keep your ears and eyes peeled, and you can check out all of our episodes on your favorite podcast platform or over at patreon.com slash girls gone canon c-a-n-o-n that is where we post our stuff as well you can always check that out and we have some funky little treats for patrons right if you're a patron in the stranger tier and above five dollars and up you're gonna get a bonus episode every month of course it's going to be of our choosing. I'm sorry, that's the one gotcha of that deal, but it will be bonus content. This month, we just put out in

May, Victarion 1 in the Winds of Winter, a discussion on what has been released of that chapter, which is, of course, just transcriptions, which is very fun. So we talk a little bit about all that. And this coming month, we'll be talking about one of Emmett here's favorite chapters, The Forsaken from The Winds of Winter. So come check that out in June. Well, it's been a very long succession season. Shout out to the patrons over at the Discord in the Thunder tier and above that have been chatting about it. I've enjoyed chatting every week with them and it's fun you have like one of every personality we've got someone who always just comes and posts memes someone who's like a couple people who are like i'm a little bit behind but i'm catching up i'm catching up we have some people on season one

we have people all over the place uh and this is a hard show i think to remain unspoiled about it's it's another one of those Sunday night football shows, right? There's a reason they told everyone to watch the Logan Dies episode live. How do you think all the succession characters would be in the Discord? Who would be posting memes? Who would be getting spoiled and getting angry about it? Roman would be sending super edgy memes. And no one would want to open them.

Roman is extremely Reddit, unfortunately. Yeah, he's like forge x4chan rehabilitated reddit right now he's just he's like a 2013 epic bacon guy now yeah like the uh what what are the people that made the food the cheeseburger guys remember those guys the epic meal time exactly epic meal time guys but with dank memeage uh shiv would absolutely be posting like guardian articles right like she wouldn't do memes she'd be posting articles about the show like look at this interview um with us kendall would write like unhinged 3 a.m discord rants where he's like i finally figured out the whole show what's gonna happen the whole

season and connor would be the one that gets spoiled. Absolutely. And he would, you know, be passive-aggressive about it. Yeah, Connor would have, Kendall would have long prediction threads and then, like, have little feuds and vendettas he would work into each one. He'd be real pissed off about people who didn't believe in his theories. As the doubters and haters knew, back before episode seven, I guessed that that's how every Kendall post would be. Am I Kendall?

Are are we not all Kendall Roy? Doubters and the haters. Oh not today. I'm not a I'm not a girl fail like Ken. Oh man we're gonna get into that. Ah yeah fun season. So Emmett on the overall before we jump in, are you happy? What do you think? Yeah, overall, absolutely. I think there was stuff that they bit off more than they could chew. I think they, I don't know, part of me thinks they would have been better off not drawing too much into politics at all, given how little it matters or has to matter in this final episode, really.

The election stuff was more kind of self-contained you know it's its own episode and there's not really much in the way of ramifications and ripple effects of that stuff in the finale but it is really laser focused on character and that is where i think it worked really well in terms of putting everyone through the the meat grinder and turning them into paste one last time um and i think it was really effective at forcing them to confess things to each other that they would not have previously like you got to get to the end of that episode and doesn't feel like anyone has anything more left to say no one held anything back everyone got every every ghost and demon and repressed fear and desire and frustration out in the open

hurled them at each other and then quit life what could be better yeah there's definitely a few moments even in the finale where they really shoehorned like very succession things in just moments or like callbacks that didn't have like real weight but they were just things to be like yes we are still in the succession verse which i liked i didn't dislike it but it was funny to me because i'm like oh my god lauren Laurence ye oh my god this oh my god uh you know like Shiv being like you killed a kid in the most like off the wall you didn't expect it coming kind of way that it finally came back up and this is the repercussion and I guess some of that's like my own expectations for the story that they did not have the same for which was fine uh I I don't know i the first time we watched it it was too much

too much episode in a good way but it was just so meaty i was like and long absolutely yeah like where does my brain go to first how do i kind of break this down but then our second rewatch was a lot better a lot clearer and i needed a structure a bit more yeah and i needed a couple days honestly to really watch it like i was just overladen with content content content succession everything and i'm like i need a day off uh in fact honestly i could have gone with like one to two weeks before re-watching it because i just was like let me soak in all that it was a lot it was meaty and everything a finale should be right like it shouldn't feel hollow or empty or simple it should be complex it should be you know like your big end piece of your symphony and your orchestra like you want it all to come together and the big

clanging clashes and finally it fizzles out at the end and you're spun out and you're just left there like wow what a fucking symphony And that's kind of what it was. Big strokes, big, big, big strokes. Big, big strokes. Big swings. Wow. Well, of course, the title. We got to talk about the title. We haven't talked about Dream Songs on this podcast.

The Dream Songs is a compilation of two books of poetry. It's 77 Dream Songs and His Toy, His Dream, and His Rest by American poet John Berryman. It was originally published 1969. The summer of 69. I don't think he was singing that, but I was. Could be. And it's a guilt-riddled exploration into the mind of a character

named Henry in this specific poem. He's sad, troubled, depressed. Berryman's known for writing confessional poetry, so think, you know, autobiographical, shocking, shameful, like Robert Lowell, his contemporary. Or Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath. Cutting, sharp, you know, not unlike Succession itself. Dry, dark, real. Sometimes it's comedy, because it can't always be drama and tragedy and suffering until it is.

Berryman was an alcoholic. He was an addict. His poems often spoke to his suffering through that addiction, and this poem itself has almost like childlike wonder at first to it, which I feel is so perfect for this episode. But as it continues, it kind of slaughters that said child and its innocence, that loss of innocence. It fits in with a lot of the other Dream Song's themes. I really also recommend Dream Song 143, sidebar, because that's where he writes about his dad threatening to swim them out to sea to drown both of them, the boy and the dad. So very Succession, very thematic there has its applications. But yeah, keep some of those themes in mind. Succession has had four episodes, each finales of each season titled after part of Dream Song 29. Specifically, they're in the last one and a half stanzas, which I will cite as we go. Emmett, with that in mind, could you read to us...

There sat down once A thing on Henry's heart So heavy If he had a hundred years and more And weeping, sleepless, In all them time Henry could not make good. Starts again always in Henry's ears The little cough somewhere An odor, a chime and there is another thing he has in mind like a grave scene his face a thousand years would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of episode 10. Blind. All the bells say. Season 3, episode 9. Too late. This is not for tears. Season 2, episode 10. Thinking. But never did Henry, as he thought he did, end anyone, and hacks her body up and hide the pieces where they may be found. He knows. He went over everyone,

and nobody's missing. Often he reckons in the dawn them up nobody is ever missing season one episode 10 well annotated thank you thank you uh yeah you can download that annotated version of every no i'm just kidding at patreon chloe annotates poetry is it that's an idea yeah you know poetry if you Oh, cloetry. It has a certain rhyme to it. Makes sense. Thank you, Emmett, for your services, for rendering them upon me. Upon all of us. You know, Robert Lowell gave a really great review of all of the Dream Song poems,

but he quoted Dream Song 29 and said the following, which really stood out to me, especially in regards to the episode, so I'm going to share it with you all. The voice of the man becomes one with the voice of the child here, as their combined rhythm sobs through remorse, wonder, and nightmare. It's as if two widely separated parts of a man's life had somehow fused. It goes through the slow words of Henry could not make good, to the accusing solemnity of the Sionese face, to the frozen automatic counting of the limbs, the counting of the bodies, to the terrible charm and the widening meaning of the final line. I think that all the Roy children could really be represented in this poem, but I think we know who this poem

is screaming about the most, and it's Kendall Roy in this poem but i think we know who this poem is screaming about the most and it's kendall roy in this episode especially i was gonna say lawrence from bolter oh my god well maybe anyway but uh yeah it's about kendall right the series was about him fumbling the ball so fucking hard in this episode the monster that came out of him that was logan roy writ tall i don't know tall skinny shaking yeah that's uh that's great stuff um yeah that's great stuff i think john berryman's such a perfect kind of source a kind of great emotional reference for the show you know he uh yeah all that the the hard drinking a kind of great emotional reference for the show. You know, he, yeah, all that, the hard drinking and kind of sad, bleary, on-the-road

life that inspires a lot of his stuff. I think about Jack Kerouac and that whole scene, and he comes up in a couple Hold Steady songs, so that's why I always think of John Berryman and that kind of hangover-after-the-party atmosphere you kind of have to a lot of his stuff,

and those those congealed doubts and despair set in and you can see that informing a lot of uh a lot of the characters in succession kind of blown up to like you know nathaniel hawthorne scale destruction of an american family but that sense of uh of crippling self-doubt and and guilt and impotence uh which makes for a lot of great, I think, stories about families crumbling in on each other is when the succession question gets very literal and they start talking about bloodlines, which they do at one explosive point in this episode, but that's always kind of the ghost haunting them is that making good for them has to do with

family, has to do with being able to carry on to the next generation and and capture the meaning from the previous one and that's that's what they kind of break down and fail to do ultimately here yeah it's a lot it's interesting the focus without being focused on the purity of the blood that that sits upon the throne and how much that mattered right that you don't realize that of course obviously you see the struggle back and forth with logan and kendall and this episode really carves it into place everything i think we learned most of the things we really needed to learn from hanging plot threads in this episode that were left agreed agreed it doesn't even

doesn't even start with dad's ghost the uh the first kind of big set piece the first big emotional scenes happen at mom's instead yeah we started off with caroline right uh she's inviting all of them over singularly in fact it's not unlike the family therapy episode where logan gets them all to come to austerlitz and come to connor's ranch in a guise of we're getting the family together this is we're a family and this isn't what we do but of course she just like Logan trick them into being there to hear Peter's spiel right under the guise of their little brother like Logan exploiting them for his image in the magazine and for good press on I'm fixing the family with this therapist which as we see ends in in blood. Quite literally, yeah. And the emotional hook that she uses to get Kendall and Shiv to come

is that that's where Roman has retreated in the wake of his self-induced, richly deserved beating in the previous episode. And at first, we don't even see him on screen. Roman's kind of a structuring absence for the first chunk of this episode. He's, you know, someone you might want to see, as Caroline says on the phone to Shiv. And Ken only knows that Roman's actually there because of

Greg, actually. Greg is the one who kind of hears about it through the grapevine from Shiv via Tom and then passes it on to Ken, which nicely sets up Greg later telling the siblings that they're out and Tom is in. And then Tom, during that whole back and forth,

feigns ignorance about his own promotion to Shiv for just a couple minutes just so he can find out that the source is Greg. So a lot of good skullduggery and corporate backstabbing going on among the more kind of emotional character fireworks. Yeah, the pacing's great that while the siblings get wrapped up in this home life stuff greg and tom are out there fighting for their lives as usual on phones back and forth you know whenever anyone's on a goddamn phone it's tom i feel like like if there's a scene it's tom on the phone with someone is it greg is it shiv is it kendall is it logan we don't know we don't know it takes a special talent to use a phone as your scene partner because that's what they're called upon a lot to do a lot of the time. It reminds me

of a lot of great scenes in The Departed or just, you know, one great actor or another just acting at their cell phone. You have to be able to get across the kind of the anger at not being able to bash the person in the head in front of you. You have to just yell at them through a phone. They always get that seething anger across real well. It's a testament to the chemistry between you when you're not even there. You know, you have to make the audience really believe that you're on the phone with your estranged wife or with your little fuckboy. Little lord fuckboy to you. Yeah, now he's a lord. Sorry, sorry.

Comes back to last episode when he says, information, Greg, it's like a bottle of wine. Right? That is what ultimately wins Tom and Greg the throne. Just kidding. I would say it's not big enough for the two of them, but I bet if Greg scooches, you know, if he sits sideways a little bit, I'm pretty sure there's room enough on that throne.

Greg only takes up like a tenth of a cushion. Emmett, what are you saying? It's not big enough for them. We've already heard. It's like a red sequoia. There'll be nothing left to greg after that and so we're at we're at caroline's pad uh what what the the kids call hell hole in paradise which nicely sums up the whole show that they're always you know in the nicest possible environment have all the money they could want have all the attention they could

want but they managed to turn it into hell every single time everywhere they go yeah and i love that uh roman when they get there you know ken's always got his business outfit going shiv has her her slay girl look and then roman is just hanging out in like the the dumpiest little t-shirt and shorts combo he is in full don't give a shit mode he's actually it's a boy's shirt from walmart so i need you to understand that it's a thirteen dollars and ninety five cent shirt from Walmart from the boys section, which, first of all, it's the cheapest piece of clothing that's ever been worn on this show. Think back to Roman ripping up that check in front of the kid in the first episode. And now this is what he's wearing. Now he buys at Walmart. He's practicing to lose the firm.

You guys probably ran into that kid he probably took his shirt right oh you want that shirt it's my shirt it was the last shirt that's too bad my shirt you feel old that's the guy from season one episode one the kid's shirt roman stole it from him not only is this like a 14 walmart shirt but also that it is a child shirt and it obviously looks like it. You mentioned the shorts, you mentioned the shirt. It's very much we're regressing to infancy, not just for Roman as we come to see, but the whole theme of kind of that front half of the episode becomes their childhood, uh, straight up on the place. And Roman really is regressing out

of them though. You can see that he's very upset. He's had a very horrible, traumatic time. So much so that he went to his mommy, to Caroline, who's not really a great mommy, as we've discussed. She's kind of a cold mommy. You know, Peter had to do the eye drops, one of a bunch of little, some subtle and not so subtle nods to the title of the episode. Yeah. With open eyes. Roman had to keep his eyes open when his not-dad Pete dropped a little,

little drops in. Which I have to add, but wait, eyes wide shut? Yeah, I love that Caroline calls them face eggs eyes. She's like, they gross me out. What doesn't gross her out? Right. That's kind of something that I immediately noticed, right? Because you know, she's so physically disconnected from them I don't know

it's like there's a certain physical intimacy with immediate family members right and like there's none of that with them like she probably never wiped their butts or with their vomit or anything she just paid people to like she can't even barely touch them yeah she's it's well it's you know uh Logan had the rapacious appetite and Caroline is the opposite. She's the anti-appetite. Yeah, that comes through in this episode, especially when you see all the things she doesn't keep in her kitchen. You see the bare fridge. That's the funniest bit. It is, but it's also horrible because you realize there's a bit that doesn't really come through that they cut from a lot of the episodes.

But in the scripts and several of them, you learn that the roy kids have a really dangerous eating like relationship like they have eating disorders straight up and it's kind of like commented in the side in the script that you know they just don't eat normally food doesn't come to them like that and it's very uh you can see where some of that disordered eating could come from probably her kitchen and lack thereof. Makes sense, unfortunately. And the sibling dynamics immediately get fraught here when Ken shows up and is being very aggressive at Roman, and Shiv immediately, you know, not just objects,

but puts herself physically in between the two of them, kind of sensing that it's going to spill over and become violent, as it later does. And like I said, Roman is just in pure nihilism mode. That's where he starts the episode. That's where he ends the episode. Everything is that's his that's his motto now whoops i don't give a fuck it's sad it's kind of where he started the show he started the show like this and now this is where he's ending it yeah in the first episode he looked at the office full of

everyone working so look at all this bullshit and you know part of that with him has always been in a feeling of inadequacy like he can't do the job, which is true. But there's something freeing in him, I think, when he embraces that, yeah, all of this is meaningless, including us. Yeah, we're bullshit. So why would I try to live up to an ideal that is not real? Yeah, he's it's pretty sad throughout the episode. You could see he's a little broken from everything. He's finally post-grieved and kendall just kind of descends on them in this scene so aggressively like maybe like logan would

have after a long day coming home is kind of how i saw it like that we're seeing a scene from their childhood being played out on this stage roman a small child kendall logan caroline powerless and useless against the kendall logan and shiv trying to step in and guard roman from her father and you just imagine that like before the divorce this might have been it this was their childhood and now they're recreating it yep and uh kendall stepping into that role where previously he would have been roman's protector and now is turning on him pretty hard and kendall is talking about getting his votes in from from Dewey and Stewie and all of Donald Duck's other nephews everyone else he has on the high council table up there and uh I

think it's Roman who says it Roman sums it up as the scorpion party which is just perfect going on the the scorpion gift from Tom to Shiv that they're all they're all scorpions with no one to take over the river and they're just fighting over just the sad little fragments of the empire left behind and uh Shiv at one point when talking about what kind of relationship they're going to have going forward given the divide over what to do with the company she asked the question like are you know or is is my kid gonna see their uncles and that's a legit question even through the end of the episode like even as Shiv carries the bloodline forward it's not going to see their uncles? And that's a legit question, even through the end of the episode. Like, even as Shiv carries the bloodline forward, is that going to be a family in any respect?

Are they still going to get together and be able to look at each other in the face after everything that goes down here? And maybe not. And I love, yeah, Shiv just, you know, boils it down for them. Sorry for winning, but I did. And it's a great twist how that works out in the episode

that, you know, you see that set up at the beginning. Then you might think, oh, okay, so we're being set up so she's on the losing side. She gets nothing. She walks away from it entirely. But by the time you get to the end, Shiv does end up on the winning side, just not at all how she thinks it's going to work out here. So it's a nice kind of reversal of expectations, but they also kind of have you on the hook for a deeper reversal that doesn't end up happening yeah it was uh so cringe actually it's amazing that you can start this episode

with shiv being as shiv as she's being and i say that with the full love of what an idiot she is but she like is being so shiv like she's like i'm the winner you guys aren't winning and i'm sorry because it's me and i'm on the winning side and i chose mattson and he has my total trust and i trust him and he trusts me and i got him on the puppet strings and she doesn't not one bit and i love meanwhile yeah peter is running his little real estate grift or whatever he's got which is just so clearly just a lower scale version of their grift that they're running he's just like a much pettier you know lower on the class tier version of them but he's he's making his pitch like they make their pitch and they make fun of him for it but theirs is not any more

successful yeah you see that later when it comes to tom giving his pitch right in a way you realize that like if the roys had been in the room, they would have rolled their eyes, walked off, stomped away. Oh, that's a stupid thing to say. They don't know how to pitch. They don't know how to pitch real things. Kendall makes everything up all the time. The others have not pitched, have not successfully been able to have a pitch without theatrics and bullshit getting in the way. Like Tom and Peter's friend, whatever his name is, and I'm not buying into his grift. Yeah, they're real actual businessmen that are just trying to fucking get by and these guys are just like it's our time to shine and well because they they think they should be pitched too ultimately

is that how they think it should work always and uh so yeah when they when they do have to convince someone of something they always they're always just hilariously blunt or aggressive about it. And sometimes it works when Ken leads with we should kill Mattson because he killed Dad. That's what they're all trying to decide in these last few episodes of the show. Who's responsible for that, really? Who do we get to blame for killing Logan? Is it Shiv? Is it Tom?

Is it Mattson? Is it the government? Who did this? Since, obviously, the answer is Logan's heart killed logan they can blame whoever they want it's a nice little rorschach plot so whatever you need whatever anxiety you need to project you can say they killed dad and uh he does get ken does get shiv on his side when it comes to that that she would love to kill mattson after hearing the news that he is stabbing her in the back he's shipping shiv and that she's not going to be the ceo

she's on board but then Ken immediately loses her and Roman again by insisting on the crown. And they immediately break it down to the only standard that matters is who dad told, who dad said was going to be in charge when. He said it to me first. He said it to me last. He said it to me the mostest. But what they don't realize is that, yeah, he told all of you it would be them, which is the same as telling none of them because none of it was singular or meant anything relative to anyone else ken starts kind of filleting roman on emotional terms some of that's even harder to watch some of the physical stuff just talking about his performance at the funeral and romans roman makes the points like oh i cried

at my dad's funeral so i'm just forever it's like no that's not fair but that is that's the game you're in it's vicious and shallow and it's based on performance and appearance and ken acknowledges yeah maybe that makes you well adjusted maybe you're right and i'm a psycho but that's the job we're talking about it's not a job for nice people it's not a job for decent people it's not a job for love you have that kind of constant repetition between ken and shiv of i love you but which is always what they're saying to each other and they think i think they mean the I love you part but what comes next is ultimately more important for them both

yeah and it starts off we hear it at the front and then we get the devastating one at the end and he ultimately Ken's ground his argument to Shiv about the kids about the next generation we gotta secure Waystar and ATN

and the whole crown jewel. We've got to secure it all for them, which is ultimately what ends up splitting them apart, or ends up being kind of the spark to split them apart towards the end of the episode. Yep. Man. Thank God Shiv married matrilineally. I play CK3 and CK2, so I know what that means.

Good thing she had that setting in place. She'd have to quit the game, start over. Well, thank God she had enough prestige. You can't just go doing that. Shiv's got nothing but prestige. Well, that's why she married below her. Like, Logan really acted like he didn't know why. Anyways. I married a merchant from Pentos or some shit. And now he's above her. Kendall was the only one willing to swim in the water obviously shiv and roman were using it as a little bit of a distraction too so that they could chit chat about what the fuck to do where they kind of balance back and forth do we kill him do we fuck it do we just stay out of it what do we do and then they decide ultimately to support him and this was the last good happy-ish Kendall shot right in the water

the last shot we get is again another devastating shot but this one is uh it's great to watch him just plunge in but also that he was the only one willing to plunge yeah and meanwhile his siblings are talking about whether they should swallow their pride and put Ken in charge and ultimately Shiv Shiv hits on it that, yeah, dad didn't really care. Dad was focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Dad was both putting out fires all day and was also just so caught up in his own ego that he didn't really think about what was going to happen after he was gone because he couldn't conceive of that. Like for Logan, his death was the end of the world.

And what happened after that is like you know it's like arranging deck chairs on the titanic who cares it's over and that that knowledge should liberate his kids but it ends up breaking them because it means they're never going to find the closure they seek that it was never there for them in the first place so we may as we may as well put ken in charge because he seems to want it the most. And so he gets his little anointing with his holy oils and his holy grail of absolute vomit and garbage. They give him the ambrosia from the blender. I love the gag that they come up with the disgusting meal fit for a king for Kendall,

not only to, you know, put him through his hazing rituals, but also because, yeah, Caroline literally cannot feed them. There is nothing. There's no non-disgusting food in the house. The only nice food is Peter's cheese. We can't, we can't lick Peter's cheese. He gets so boring about it, she says, which I love. Not that he gets so fussy or, no, just boring. Then they do. Yeah, is there anything that says, like, domestic bliss than someone's special cheese? Don't fuck with it. I've had, I, because, you know, how many times has Caroline tried that cheese?

And then Peter had a long lecture to her the next day where she was like, you know, nursed her forehead and thought about killing herself. Yeah, exactly. That's what you have to look forward to, Shiv. Cheese. Cheese. You know, Tom loves cheese.

He's from Iowa. Wisconsin, but yeah, more so. Oh, I know, I know. Just in the area. Oh, okay. I'm like, Wisconsin is the cheese one. I know. I'm being bigoted against the entire Midwest, honey.

Oh, well, we don't talk about the left part of it. Only the Michigan side. Yeah, like you keep it in that little circle, like Michigan, Chicago. Actually, that's about it. You can just keep those parts. You only claim Michigan and Chicago. That's fair. Yeah, the rest.

The meatiest parts of the bone. The rest, I kind of. That's fair. Yeah. Mediast parts of the bone. The rest. I kind of wonder what's in the water, but I've been there. I know what's in the. Yeah. Meal fit for a King. They didn't think that this scene was going to make it in.

It's kind of a funny scene. Like they filmed it and they got out of control and rowdy during it. Sarah had said in interviews, she was like, I just didn't think there's a scene we did. That's so fun. And I don't think it's going to make it in. And lo and behold, it, the fucking one of the most

poignant scenes in the series. It's, uh, it's amazing. It's very much shut up. I'm experiencing childlike wonder right now. And, you know, it goes back to what Shiv said at the funeral, right, that they were little kids outside of Logan's office making noise, hoping he'd just give them an ounce of attention. Even if it was to say go the fuck away and fuck off, they just hoped, right, that they would get that attention. And this is them. This is them as those children. And the entire scene is obviously like a ragged nightmare of a metaphor. Can you relive in one night and remake, rebuild your childhood to fix it, to make it good, to erase all the pain you felt and erase all of the jealousy that you felt, you know, out of involuntarily, right? That jealousy that you pit against your siblings and that resentment you've built for them over these several decades.

Can you fix that and no after this scene which is the happiest part of the episode i just need you all to know that as soon as that happened i'm like oh it's over from here like good this is gonna be brutal because after the scene you can't fix it you can't fix that rot there's no fixing that rot there isn't and it's so sad because shiv is deciding throughout this entire episode what to do what the fuck does she do right and this scene is one of the last times you get to remember her happy with her siblings neurotic and crazy but happy with them and it's her last happy memory for one last night she'll have with them before she remembers her

whole life how she had to betray her family one more time. Yeah, that's a good call. I think you can see her working through it that she starts and just rage because she hears that Madsen's gone behind her back. She's just kind of breaking down and then they pick her back up. So you can see kind of a fragile bond being forged there like it was at the end of season three. But I think they, Ken and Rome, just ultimately feel like less serious people to her than Tom does. And when she asked Tom about,

about wanting a real relationship, I think she asked that in part because she wants it with him and for their kid, but also because she, she doesn't have that relationship with her brothers and she thinks that they're, they might never have it with anyone. And she's terrified of that for herself.

So I think she, you know, she, she saw their plan and Tom's plan was better. Hey, at least she somehow found a little bit of that remorse, right? To give a fuck about, oh, my God, like I'm having a real child and it's not going to be a real human. Like, holy shit. How do I stop what happened to them and me happening to them? And yeah, it's interesting the power flip happening so early too in that usually we get what, Shiv doing big money moves and Tom on the phone like, remember me, remember me.

And here, he's the one that has the big money move going on and she's the one left in the dark the whole episode waiting for his phone calls to tell her what's going on. And that stands out really boldly in the front of this episode oh and i'll also add smoothie real quick back to the meal for a king i love first of all jeremy strong's a fucking insane man he drank that smoothie irl uh real life he drank that smoothie i'm literally gonna puke just thinking about it and sarah snook did the whole little spit in there, you know, improv. But the way she looks at that camera,

it was just like when she spit in Kendall's page in the book when he played Rate Me by Nirvana during the press conference. It was the same spit. That was when we should have known. Well, let's talk about roman roy kendall pulls roman back from his rehab a little bit too early just like logan does to kendall back in season two and then does exactly what logan does to kendall right throughout the whole episode Kendall uh manipulates him abuses him makes him dependent on his esteem and validation and it really shows I you know me I'm not like a huge Roro fan fan but like I felt very sad about Roman the whole episode because he was in such a bad place and

Ken is like not letting him leave he makes him stay at Waystar when he's like I just want to go oh that was so sad but he was like I don't want to be here just like Kendall in season three I want to go home do you Kendall a different place maybe and that's how Roman felt he couldn't be there and Ken wouldn't let him leave and there's that horrible line the whole episode right why isn't it me? He's left wondering, why wasn't I ever enough for dad? Why aren't any of us? This episode's so horrible for him. And then Ken with the stitches where it's like he pops them open to give Roman a reason why he doesn't have to do this anymore. It's like a hateful love. I'm sure that's how he

thinks about it. But yeah, that's that's a brutal brutal villainous moment where where rome is like i look i look too good for it to be plausible that i'm stepping down which is just kind of hilarious and sad because like roman even if you came out without a scratch on you if you came out looking better than ever still no one wants you in charge but roman has to tell himself that i look bad enough and that's that's what's going to give the cover that's what's going to allow me to get out of this with my dignity intact so Ken perversely is like okay I'll I'll hold you so close your stitches pop open I will make you bleed with a bear hug in order for you to look pathetic enough that you can tell yourself that's why you were getting rejected it's just this Ouroboros of pain and love and rejection. Perfect, horrible, disgusting dumpster brother moment.

Yeah, there's a moment right after that where the camera pans over to Logan's desk close up and you see a Roman centurion helmet. A Roman centurion helmet. You know, Romulus. And then there's a photo with Shiv in it and him. and then there's a photo with shiv in it and him and there's a photo that's kind of representing his home of a man in a kilt with bagpipes but there's no kendall not a single kendall on there and it felt it felt very telling that there's no moment of kendall in the entire office no piece of love in logan's office for kendall you know, maybe and we'll never know and it doesn't matter, but maybe it wasn't an underline.

Maybe it was a strikeout because you know what? Caroline Cher doesn't have photos of them in her house. You know who she had a photo of? Shiv on her wedding day. Just saying. Happiest day of everyone's life. Well, mostly everyone's. Just not Tom's.

There's also something so sad and aching in this episode of Jerry and Roman that everything has Jerry in it for Roman you see the way he looks at her the way when her name comes up the way his face looks like a sad puppy dog there's almost this dawning realization that everything she's ever told him for three seasons was true you know about how the world worked and what was going to happen to the company, that the siblings thought they had some sort of dynamic disruptor thing going on and they were going to come in and make the company great and they were going to be the heads of it. And they're so business.

And Jerry straight up said, like, this this isn't how it works. None of you get this. First of all, it ends with none of you getting the company. Second of all, it ends with it being taken apart for money by other people in parts. Like, everything she said came true. And even his very end, right, his final scene, is Roman ending the episode drinking Jerry's favorite drink, a martini, at the bar. And in a way, it's almost hopeful. Like, I don't think Roman's going to go

out and just get better and start like going to like therapy every other day and trying to fix his life. And then suddenly he's an activist and he's a great guy and he's going to make friends. And I don't know how it ends for him. None of us will. That's not what's important about the show. But part of me does hope maybe there's something there for him. Maybe him and Jerry can, not get back together, but maybe forgiveness is there, and maybe hope, and maybe he gets his life back better than any of the other siblings could. For me, it felt like Jerry

was kind of a ghost in the same way Logan is now. That he's drinking her drink as if she's dead. Ah. And imagining that she's with him. And that's all I can do. But anyway, onto someone having a better time. What about Willa? Willa won the game of thrones i mean the succession willa succeeded the true the true goal of the show willa succeeded she won a very sad scene for connor she busted him down she broke him down so hard and he is going to slovenia without her rip you see the sadness in his face

yeah connor both wins and loses here hilariously enough he gets he gets out you know i think he he's banished the memory of his dad pretty effectively he gets the nice place but then yeah he has to go off on his his quixotic uh ambassadorship to central europe and leave willa alone with her her perfect her perfect bar Barbie pad as she will remake it in her image. And yeah, as he gradually crestfallen realizes that she's played him completely, but that was always in the works. And yeah, I love they're going to try the long distance thing for a while. That is assuming he ever gets the post at all, which is left ambiguous because, like

I said, election, what election? We kind of just leave that unresolved. I will say in the background, we're hearing that there are going to be new counts and that it's not looking great. And Shiv even kind of says, she's like, yeah, you might get to keep him forever, Willa. Don't worry. Gee, thanks. Just what you wanted.

Yeah. We'll both suffer, Willa, is what Shiv said. They have the bidding system on dad's items, which is funny. Very specific. It reminded me of when when when uh bilbo leaves town to go on the hobbit and all his relatives start selling off all this stuff yeah they just start holding an auction for all of bilbo's things yeah through capitalism right the good old day like this is this is what dad would have wanted through stickers because they can't just be normal

people and tell each other the things that were meaningful to them about their father that is in his house that they really want for their home and their families they can't be respectful of one another either so obviously Connor's like this is the only way and then there's the other part of this that obviously they couldn't be bothered to be a part of the process for any of this like if they really gave a shit like Shiv immediately goes where are the medals con and he goes oh I had the first round. Sorry. And it's like, if you were there, maybe you could have also been a part of the first round. If you, Little Red Hen, if you helped get the ingredients to make the bread, if you helped make the dough for the bread, if you helped knead the dough, if you

helped watch the dough rise, if you helped put it in the oven, and maybe if you helped watch it cool and cut it, you also could have the medals. But no, they did not. So they have no rights to any of the first grab of stuff. Like, that's literally it. Did you help with the end of our father's life? The end to end, not just the death? No.

You wouldn't let me speak? You ruined it. You fucked the funeral. So I'll take this instead yep it's his his material reward is all connor can get out of it so he he gets it out of it good for him you know we'll talk a little bit about some judases in this episode but speaking of last suppers or like the crown fit for king last supper last supper with pop King Last Supper. Last Supper with Pop. Digital Last Supper with Pop. And they weren't there. And you feel so sad watching it because it's like, they didn't know this man. This man that's

talking to all these people that were his family members now and they weren't. Not him. And the way Carrie looks at him, oh, it's very sad. You can see that they all feel at home. It reminds me of that game they play on Thanksgiving in season one, right? I went to the market and I brought home or I brought back and how he couldn't memorize and spiel off what he remembered. But here he can list all of the losing presidential candidates of the country. And he listens to his friends sing songs that reminded him of the home that he refused to share with his kids and one day they quit asking him to share carl sings a song about about love and the memory of love being better than money which is the lesson they all just really

failed to internalize and i love the bit with logan listing off all the major party candidates who've gotten to the election but then lost in american history i just think that's so funny that he bothered to not only memorize them put them to a song which is great because on one hand that's logan saying uh you know losing is the worst thing you can do look at this long road losers you don't want to be like them you want to win but on the other hand hey you know their names yeah they lingered long enough in history for you to memorize them so despite the fact that they lost the presidential election they live on because you remember them so like legacy is a complicated thing especially at over time a win can become a loss and a loss can become a win and you know i have to say that i have three

favorite losers and that's kendall roy shiv roy and roman roy my favorite losers which elections do they lose all of them the biggest one biggest one. Season four, episode 10. Oh, Emmett, Emmett, Emmett. Do you want to talk about the walking, talking, living train wreck, Kendall Roy? Someone's got it. He's not going to. It was a very devastating end for Kendall. I will say, you know, last week we gave our little predictions.

We weren't off of the money necessarily. We just... No, we weren't off of the money necessarily we just no we weren't i mean tom was the ceo we did get to tom being a ceo that was you know could happen i was kind of surprised at how simple it was and maybe this is a finale thing because that is kind of how i felt during game of thrones i was like oh this is what they're choosing. That's pretty simple. Interesting. Interesting. So at first, I was like, oh, Tom is just the CEO. Okay. Okay. Hack off my second part of the prediction. It could be Tom or Kendall. It was not Kendall, though. It was very much not Kendall. In fact, Kendall did exactly what he's really good at doing over every single season where he failed. It was a big rehash of the season one failure

is really what it felt like to me, right? Like we had a lot of parallels to have this be exactly like the first boardroom meeting, except this time Kendall shows up confident. Kendall thinks he has the votes. He thinks he can talk his way through it. Baby Hamlet here, he's told repeatedly he doesn't have the numbers.

Telly, the old guard, they all are like, Ken, you don't have the numbers. This time he can't make the numbers. Telly, the old guard, they all are like, Ken, you don't have the numbers. This time, he can't make the numbers up. This isn't Living Plus where you can just fudge the numbers in front of shareholders or releasing bad streaming numbers during your dad's funeral. These are numbers that matter. You can't make these votes up. You can't fuck this election over, Kendall.

Like this one is it's a real democratic vote in this room and yet even when he's losing and he's told that he doesn't have it he pushes harder yeah it's the election of microcosm for sure but these are these are votes they can't burn when they're inconvenient for him and right from the start of the episode when he's he's confidently totaling up his votes and he's asked about roman that makes him flip out he just starts saying i don't know i don't know and that definitely yeah that definitely takes us back to season one, to which side are you on when Ken first makes a play for the throne and Rome ends up crumbling at the last second and voting against him. But that also ends up kind of being a red herring

because Roman actually isn't really the ultimate danger from Ken's perspective in terms of the faction controlling the company, Shiv and Tom are. And also teased early in the episode is the idea that Stewie might be a little, a little shaky, a little weak. Maybe they can't count on him for a vote, but that also is a red hair. He ends up,

he ends up in Ken's corner forever. Team Ken, baby. Oh my God. Why did he have to say that? Stewie, why did you say it like that? Like,

okay. They were giving him one last line on the show. He went all in on it. He had some great liners in this episode ken stew forever grilled cheese with a suck dick oh that whole entire bit about uh how he is soft that he acts very hard but yet he is soft he makes out with boys on molly i very much respected this we obviously know ken and stew have made out now thank you that's all i needed honestly i was

happy at that point i was like i mean i don't have to finish the episode you know we could just that's all i needed cut it off right there yeah and yeah and ken is just super paranoid uh at his mom's place he's he's ranting the you know the signature kind of little stuttering little threats and accusations where he's so performatively outraged he can't even get through a sentence which shiv and roman hilariously make fun of at one point. You murdered me? That is not at all what you're supposed to do. He doesn't like his own Logan tricks eased upon him. And the vote is so intense. God, Frank voted against him. Frank- and we knew they wanted their golden parachutes. This was out for them and as we see it's a good thing because they were going to get shit canned uh which is fine that's what they want but so much betrayal was gathered up and

stacked right every single betrayal for him like everything he took very very personally and it's so ultimately bloodless when you get to the event itself and the the different factions that are conniving and and biting at each other and all frank puts it as is you know the ceos will offer strategic alternatives that's that's what it gets smoothed over to when you get to the official level. Underneath that is just the childishness of how Kendall himself approaches it. His big speech is just, it's a bad deal. It's bad. And then he just grins like that, that should be enough. Yeah. The one time in the speech, he tries to invoke his dad. He's like, let's do it for my dad, where it's worked all season. And everyone's like, it's been over a week kendall first of all he died a while ago so we're over that now that

was episodes ago multiple episodes ago we're scratching the name off the company actually was our thought you know it's not gonna be royco anymore it's just gonna be co that's gonna be oyco you know what you're saying oy uh but yeah it doesn't work all of his previous cheap tactics that he uses here that he's been able to get away with for a season because his dad's not there anymore um fall flat and god even as we get to the ultimate moment when shiv hesitates and she just doesn't answer and she says she needs a moment if only kendall had just let shiv talk herself out of it because she was moments i do think she was 50 50 i think she was moments away from making this life-changing decision that she could have gone that way but

he talks her into it through his actions through his words through his violence through turning into a child when she's like, and she pulls childish bits on him too, obviously, but his reactions to it are totally unmeasured and obviously show like you are not fit to handle adult things, Kendall. You are not a fit person to handle an adult company, let alone a company that is worth all of this money. You know, she says, you murdered a guy. You can't have this job. A very emotional moment. And he turns into a child. He's like, I lied. I didn't kill that kid. I lied. Uh, no, Ken. No, you didn't kill that kid. I made it up. We were all at a bad time. I mean, it's pretty obvious he did kill that kid. Everything added up. Shiv herself in season three was standing there like,

huh, this does make sense about why everything was really weird after my wedding with the kid dying. Yeah, right there, Ken, I think forecloses any possibility of closure for himself there or moving on from it anyway. Like, you deny it happened. That's a, in some ways, that's a crime that goes in your book along with the deed itself you know that you you're what an insult to that person that now you're pretending you weren't even involved in

their death at all and so it's so craven and obvious and yeah it's not it's it's it's how kendall reacts that gives the game away here it's not even the the content of what they're saying because like yeah kendall did kill someone and logan was responsible even the content of what they're saying. Because, like, yeah, Kendall did kill someone, and Logan was responsible for the deaths of many people, and that didn't stop him from being in charge. It's how Kendall handles the situation that reveals that he shouldn't be in charge. He kind of ends up proving Shiv's point in how quickly he drops to name-calling and just foot-stomping and then eventually throwing fists.

In just a miniature way way you see Logan's life and what Logan was willing to sacrifice and compromise and his ethics and morals and the things he loved and cared about in order to win. And you see Ken embrace no real person involved here, right? Like he is willing to smooth it over and pretend that he and his

father did not cover up the death of an innocent kid who was just trying to get Ken drugs. Who amongst us have not. not yeah I mean if Kendall Roy came up to me in the street I too would try to get him ketamine and we'd be dragging your body out of the pond the next day oh please I love that Chloe who exactly though like he was willing to even embrace that the one thing that he did stand up against and that he's willing to disregard his children, right? His kids who he told everyone meant the world to him.

Not like Logan hasn't ever said that too. We get that huge bombshell drop, which I actually thought was a crazy reveal and didn't expect it. Personally, a family is a family. I don't really usually think about it. I just figured, all right, he's got a family. But we learn his daughter's adopted and his son was from a sperm donor. And kind of an interesting info drop that reframes everything about Kendall, right? You talked a

little bit earlier about impotency being like a theme of some of those poems and some of the darkness surrounding things and that. I mean, Kendall's illegitimacy of his children stings so much in the face of shiv being pregnant and that reframes the past 10 to 20 years of kendall's life it's all been a big dick contest that he feared he was going to lose and yet tying that's a that's a classic tradition especially in american stories of tying uh concerns over wealth and uh and and inheritance to questions of sexual potency and the ability to produce the next generation for whom that wealth is for. There's a great 50s movie called Written on the Wind that is in part about a playboy heir to a fortune who's kind of wasting his life and is

worried that he's literally and figuratively impotent. So that's a rich vein to draw from. And yeah, they drop it so quickly here roman throws it out just to hurt kendall but he he hits at something very deep which is that kendall always was able to position himself as the oldest boy even though he's not as she points out and that means he's the big dick he's going to carry forward the line he's got the sacred logan roy sperm he's going to pass on to the next generation and then roman says no actually the girl is doing that the girl is the one carrying forward the bloodline and even if you were competent you can't do that uh and that that is the lowest blow that he could possibly strike uh and it causes kendall to completely flip out and lose it and that

that display ultimately is what he has, but put Shiv over the line. Yeah, the violence there is so sad. It's it's very sad. That is what makes her lose it. That's why that's what makes her realize, like you said, like, oh, they aren't serious people. Tom is a serious person. There's a chance at a real life for her child if she goes that way and not this same life. And, you know, I think it's season two. and not this same life.

And, you know, I think it's season two. Logan says to Tom, when Tom starts speaking out of turn at the table, he says, you know, like, ah, once you have given me a grandchild, you can talk. And then he says, what's wrong with you? You shooting blanks? Well, you know how much Logan was worried about Roman being queer.

That is how the power gets structured. That is what, you know, Kendall has tried to perform that role and has failed miserably and that's um that's just what leads to that just a horrible empty feeling as roman says we are bullshit you know the greatest corporate motto ever just put that on the building instead of logan's name we are bullshit and it carries uh you know carries beyond the financial carries right into the sexual realm as well yeah very sad for kendall i really did think maybe he would take it and it would just be awful

and that's how it would go on. But somehow they gave us something I think is actually better. I've really come to terms with the Tom win. Wom scans, taking it all, all being an empty puppet job, but taking it all. Yeah, as Matthew McFade

said in an interview afterwards, you know, people have been telling me I won, and my response is, win what? Like, it's just the next stage in this corporate hellscape. You know, Tom's, it's not like Tom is retired. Now he gets a much harder job that he's going to have to navigate for however long. And it's interesting. It's

like I was saying with the play with information about what she was going to do when. Tom starts this episode thinking he's completely screwed. Worse than ever, he says he's got a bad feeling later he says he knows Madsen's going to fire him so all that great setup for the reversal of him being made CEO at the end uh you know he's constantly saying I don't know I don't know I don't know about what's going to happen next he says I don't know to Shiv about you know a possibility of a real relationship just like Ken was saying I don't know about Roman that's the big motif of the episode is no one knows anything and she wants to shiv wants to talk to tom seriously but he he

rebuffs her uh as she did in a previous episode when he wanted to have a serious talk and he did the tom thing of like weaponizing his light polite little sarcasm like he never says anything too blunt or regressive but he just very quietly and politely lets you know that he thinks you're full of shit and you can fuck off yeah he fights like you he's fucking mean and he fights also like caroline yeah it's something shiv i'm sure is used to yeah you can see why there's a lot of submission in their relationship in this episode finally and like how he wins that because he fights a lot like caroline it's not nice. It's very underhanded and cutting. It's very, very English appropriate for the actor. Yeah, she even goes, you know, she becomes a little vulnerable and says,

is there anything left for us in this nightmare we've experienced together? Can we stay together without divorcing? Right? The end of the episode is kind of a team up in a way for them but it's also like he'll never let her in like that again well people have compared it to the end of the graduate when they get together and they're smiling and they're happy and they sit in the back of the bus and then you watch the smiles fade as they go okay so now what and uh mike nichols who directed the graduate was asked about what happened to those two characters afterwards, and he said they became their parents. Yeah, that is really it. That right there, I mean, that coming off of the, like, most horrible fight between her, Roman, and Ken, what a low blow. It got guttural and gross and just downright nasty. Like, not only was it nasty, but it was embarrassing and also very sad because everyone could see this happen.

And I don't know, I think Shiv was right to block Kendall from the seat for multiple reasons. I do think the biggest reason is not why she did it, though. I think a lot of that was, like Tom says, she doesn't want to fail a test. She can't be wrong. Yep. She's willing to stab herself in the throat to have been

right to stab herself in the foot to bleed out in order to stop kendall um and realistically kendall wouldn't have been maybe a great pick and i think it's sad because that job requires some sort of like levels of sociopathic like serial vibes. You have to be a killer. You have to be a killer. You have to look and turn people into numbers. That's why no real person involved became a thing in Waystar Royco, because that's what happens, right? Like, I just watched my entire plant

get laid off today, pretty much, at work, and they're numbers to those people, but I listened and I heard, and I'm like, those aren't numbers. Those are humans. Like, what happens when you lose that humanity? Like, yes, you can't, and Kendall was willing to do that. Uh, Mattson chooses Tom because Tom is willing to kill himself to get the job done, right? Like Mattson said earlier to Ken this season, I don't trust people who sleep well, and Tom? I don't think that motherfucker slept well all season. I guess

we should have paid attention to that. Huh? He showed he was willing to cuck himself, which is kind of funny for Mattson. I'm like, Ooh, you do get the big boy job, but you still know it's just cause he wants to fuck your wife. Damn. That's rough, Tom. He can see him acknowledge that possibility and make his peace with it. Uh, even as Mattson keeps going, talks about getting under the hood. You know, being pretty blatant there. But yeah, what he wants from Tom is when Tom says, I worry all night

about everything. And that's what Mattson wants, is someone to worry while he tries to fuck Shiv. He wants submission from Tom in order for Tom to win submission from Shiv. You know, what Robert said to Ned about being Hand of the King. I want someone to run the kingdom for me while I eat and drink myself into an early grave.

Yeah. And in a way, it's just like he did for Logan, right? I mean, that first episode of Succession is so based on the fury at Kendall for leaving the first day at the new job for Cuck executive officer, I mean, CEO. And here Tom is, right, skipping the funeral. Like, Kendall didn't skip the birthday. He was at the funeral, but Tom was working through everything. Shiv was right to give that vote to Tom. She chose her self-interest, and now she gets to live forever. Third fiddle, out of the light, the power always just one arm's length away but she can't

quite reach it because she's kind of short and that arm's kind of short too uh and that imbalance is spun right like she betrays her family to do so willingly like to their face like she tells kendall we support you and then she retracts it mark Mark Milad mentioned that the betrayal was inevitable in an interview and it really is. On rewatch especially, the looks of rage and pain that Shiv has in this episode but also throughout the entire series, they aren't new. She has a long-form resentment that has been built between her and Kendall with him being born with a penis.

And her being born and immediately they say, well, she could never be the heir because she's a penis. And her being born and immediately they say, well, she could never be the heir because she's a girl. Her father telling him he was the heir at age seven is something that she wanted so much, right? But everything she did in this world was kind of said, it wouldn't matter because she was the daughter. The daughter. Kept in a golden cage. Every step closer to that board room was the reality that she has to live in. Her husband is the safe choice. This season showed the boys would constantly sideline her, right?

The whole first half of the season, Roman tried to keep her involved. Kendall was willing to lock her out, not tell her anything. And Roman, we see, is now powerless against Kendall, so he can't pull any sway to keep Shiv involved. She's married to Tom. Like Tom says, it would absolutely be convenient to stay married to the man that you're married to, Shiv. Yes. Seems like it would save a lot of paperwork.

I wrote that one down for my husband. You might know him. Never met. Shiv was brushed aside at birth, while Kendall was deemed the heir and then biffed it in Logan's eyes with his wife, his children, his lifestyle, all of it. Yeah, it's the structure of the episode that's so interesting, like I was saying earlier, where you have Shiv starting the episode against Kendall and ending it against Kendall, but for different reasons and with a different outcome. That she goes full circle and you can see her just decide over the course of the episode. Like you're saying that she she resents Ken more than she resents Tom ultimately. And she also sees Ken disintegrate in a way that in the way that Tom has, but in a way that less less publicly and with less less tied to it so she can trust him more. And even, you know, even early in the episode, she's already talking about Etienne and Tom.

Like, it's all laid out in terms of the ending. It's just the twist along the way is how it happens and for what reason. And she's not at all wrong when she says Tom is just basically corporate matter. He's just highly interchangeable. But that's his advantage because that's what Madsen needs. Yeah. Later in the episode, Kendall calls himself a cog with only one purpose. Waystar.

Not interchangeable, adaptable, or flexible. And what's kind of the reality of being a corporate executive is that you have to be flexible and adaptable because you're all replaceable. A new suit can be placed in your seat any day to nod their head and say the things that need to be said in a meeting. I know that parts of this is like the structure of it being a TV show to entertain us and not real life. But also, there is a point where you look at the show and Tom is always working. Tom is always at Waystar. He is always working. He is always running back and forth and something's going on with programming. He's on the phone with Shiv. He's like, well, I gotta go because I gotta do this Shiv. So bye, bye. It's like every day the Roy kids come out and put on a kid pageant, right? And they're like, the Roy kids are here. Everyone get ready to clap for their little skit. Oh, come on, Kendall, Shiv, and Roman.

And Tom's working. They're standing on a stage yelling about how we could be important if you let us be instead of showing how they can be important. And Tom is busy running the company and they're just they don't even believe in the things that they say they take seriously shiv just neatly talks herself out of being afraid of fascism in this episode she she makes her peace with the idea of a potential menking government and uh and everything mattson wants to do as a part of it and all because all she wants is she says at the start is just a nice

fresh start she wants she wants unanimity across the board, she says, the literal board and otherwise. And that's not what she gets, but that's what she's desperate to have this not only work, but feel right to her, feel like the next necessary step. And that kind of emotional closure is just something she doesn't get.

Yeah, eat, pray, love. That's what she wants, is her own little eat, pray, love. This is honestly, you know, that Puppet Master cartoon that comes up. It's very funny because she tells Matson and tries to seduce him in the last episode with, you know, I hear that she's totally your puppet. And then the cartoon comes out, the Puppet Master cartoon. and then the cartoon comes out, the Puppet Master cartoon, and it's almost kind of like the dinner with the Pierces in season two, when she blows out that she's gonna be the CEO, and Logan's like,

no, no, no, and everything falls apart, and that's what she did. She totally biffed that one, like, she got a little too cocky got too egotistical stuck her foot in everywhere and then he quits calling her and it gets desperate and the mystery's gone Shiv loses I love the bit where where Tom is looking at the art with Mattson and company and struggling to say something smart about it and he just comes up with the colors go well, which he just goes over it with Greg afterwards. It's like, is that even a sentence? The colors go well.

It reminds me, a lot of time reminds me of Barry Lyndon, because that's also about a young guy trying to pull himself out of a lower class situation and marry rich and scheme and lie his way up the social hierarchy. And there's one bit when he's just become a nobleman and is trying to be fancy like all the rest. And he goes to a museum with them. And all he can think to say is,

I love the use of the color blue by the artist, he just says. And that's Tom here. I love that because it's not even about the art. It's just like, how am I looking to other people? Again, that's the whole game. It's this petty, mostly masculine status anxiety game that we see with him and mattson like we cut to him and mattson and their little cuck game right from shiv declaring victory that's what their victory looks like mattson's just he's not looking

for a partner like ken was saying to hugo in the previous episode he's looking looking for a dog and that's that's you know tom is willing to play that role and because he plays that role so well no one really sees it coming like when the brothers or or when ken and roman are trying to think about who it's going to be instead of shiv they don't even guess tom and that's that's why it works yeah i love that because like you said he's not looking for a partner he tells tom that he's like that's why she lost she had too many ideas i don't need ideas they have so many ideas he's not looking for another idea, man. He's looking for a bitch. And that's what Tom can do here for him. The absolute pain, right, though, is that Shiv spends parts of the show choosing Tom over her family, though generally reluctantly, and not always in ways he sees.

When she makes this decision on what to do in the face of Kendall's horror in the meeting room, it's all empty, right? There's no love behind it anymore. It's hollow. That trust has been shattered by her, by him. And that's what she chose. And it's hollow. And it's real, right? She's a, you know, some people might say done in by womanhood. You know, it really got her in the end. Like it gets all of us it came for can't beat them birth their babies and eat on their salary am i right you know am i right number four boy number four boy number four boy number one girl is number four boy yeah that's kind of the problem here yeah that's that's the equation like that's why it sucks being the first born girl is because you're still the number four boy.

And then there's Greg Hirsch, the number zero boy, if there can be such a thing like negative numbers boy. That's a very Greg Hirsch voice you just did very good. It's like negative. Can there be negative number boys? Oh, that's so good. It's almost good as my Mindy. Do you think I mean, I loved and listen, if you haven't watched Veep and you're looking for something to tickle your fancy after this, highly recommend it.

Veep is amazing and has a lot of the same humor as some of the similar crews on it. So check it out. Now, that said, ignore this for like 12 seconds because I am going to spoil something from Veep. The very last episode of Veep, you know, Greg is kind of the Amy to Tom, Selina, right? At the end, there's a moment where Selina's like, Amy Bruckheimer, her devoted disciple, is there during her victory, her victory speech. And on the stage, Selina's like, yeah, but you're gonna go work for Jonah. I don't like the way you spoke to me earlier. And that is literally Greg and Tom at the end. That Tom was like, I don't like the way you spoke to me today.

So yeah, he definitely did betray Tom's loyalty just a little bit. So Tom castrated him, I would say. As promised. Yeah, exactly. Nero and Sporus. Yep. And they're in the position they were,

they've been in earlier where you know tom takes ship from above and hands it on down to greg he dominates greg so he can feel like a big man despite being dominated by mattson and that's how it's going to go henceforth but it looks like without any of the the brief bouts of affection and camaraderie that defined them before and in a way a lot like shiv and tom now that like the relationship is going to exist it's going to work it might even benefit both of them but relationship is going to exist. It's going to work. It might even benefit both of them, but it's going to be functional. It's going to just exist. And the warmth between them seems to be pretty much dead.

Yeah, I loved him putting the sticker from Connor's auction. That was a great payoff for that. Because Greg is just another object in the house. He's just Cousin Craig. He's one of the furniture. Yep. He gets knocked down a peg. He's going to get a pay cut, which 200K is amazing, right?

But I was very surprised that that's all Greg was making. I'm like, 200K? I thought maybe they gave you the family bump, you know, like 250. To be fair, what is it that Greg does? Emotional trauma. Makes copies is the most work we've seen greg doing to be fair he did a good job of that this one saves the day this one goes away 200k this one for 200k yep woof woof right like kendall says to he with hugo and hugo says woof woof greg is his bitch

for life yeah i think that's think that's a great end. I mean, you know, honestly, we talked about our favorite characters back in episode one, and I stay winning. I won because I love Tom. I'm happy. I love Tom, so I'm happy.

I love Shiv, so I'm not as happy, but I'm still happy. You know, I'm hollow happy. I love Kendall, so I'm sad, but I'm still happy you know I'm hollow happy I love Kendall so I'm sad but I'm still happy because I love what happened I think it was amazing holy shit all the awards for all of them I even like Romy a little

you know I feel real bad for the guy Greg you know the egg can do whatever he wants yeah I think it I think the show I think Succession was sloppy i don't think it was like a perfectly you know tightly written perfectly structured and paced show i think it was all over the place it was constantly trying new things but i think that was part of the exhilarating energy

of it and i think the it handled the the core of it with regards to its characters very well at the end where it did reveal the ultimate hollowness of everything they've been pursuing and anything they would do with it. You know, the constant question of do you even want to, what would you even do with it that they're constantly forced to recognize, constantly forced to reckon with on the show. And the answer is nothing and no one, and they never had a plan. This was all they ever wanted to do was, you know,

they're a dog chasing a car. They wouldn't know what to do with it if they caught it and i think i think the final episode made that point perfectly yeah it really reinforced that very well said emmet i think uh it's silly when you take the concept out right and you just say huh what happens if a huge deal for billions of dollars that my dad was in the middle of making when he died what if we just fucked it and then you try to take out the keys and like reverse ram your car out of it and also you don't have anyone's support and also you're being insane the whole season like realistically what does that math do well it does the last episode of succession and i think it's very the show is a very introspective character based show, right? There were big

events throughout the seasons, but it wasn't ever event based. You know, the big board meeting, I think jokingly, the internet was always like, oh, the big board meetings coming up, but you just wanted to know what the characters were going to do. And I think that's a great exploration of how to utilize characters to leverage emotions in your audience. I mean, we may not know what was going to happen every week, but we showed up ready to say, what the fuck are they going to do this week?

And that's a testament to those characters and the work done, not just the work done on them by the writers, but also the actors and kind of the collaborative spirit of the entire show. It was phenomenal how much freedom they all got in all the freedom they all got in production and, you know, being able to contribute to their story for each character and able to say, hey, I don't think this is going the way it should. Wouldn't this character do this? And they would rewrite it. That's incredible. It's something that as we watch the writers strike go on right now in 2023 it's something that not every show already was doing and it's something that a lot of shows won't do and we won't get back for a lot of

shows especially after the writers strike we might not get that spirit back in a lot of shows we might not see this kind of show for a very long time i think between the strike and what the strike is responding to the the streaming model and what that's done to how shows are written how long they last yeah i think this this is going to be maybe the last of its kind yeah hbo thrones was the beginning of the end this feels like the middle of the end yeah hbo was really this was the last waypoint. The Waystar Royco point. It's a sad end of an era. And I think there's definitely innovation and things are changing all the time.

I think a lot of these big spectacle shows are very fun. I didn't watch The Last of Us. I know a lot of our mutual friends really loved it. I'm just not into the zombie thing. For me, I me, I liked Walking Dead, and I'm not into gore very much, so that was already a little bit, you know, we fell off, what, season eight again, but I'll try again someday to get through it, but Last of Us, I hear, is gorgeous. House of the Dragon was fun, and it was a romp, and just a really good time, and great CGI spend, but I don't know, they weren't like this. This was every Sunday I have enjoyed

drinking champagne with you. And well, maybe not the after part, maybe no more champagne for a very long time. And then getting to maybe ever again. Yeah, ever again. I don't know the ritual. It was a ritual. It was one of those ritualistic Sunday shows. And I really loved it. I will very much miss it. However, I'm glad for a break. I'm overladen with succession, and I need to let it all marinate for a year. Agreed. Yeah. Well, Emmett, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a blast having my roommate on.

Will you please tell everyone at home where the fuck to find you one last time my pleasure and thank you for having me my name is emmet also known as poor quentin i go by at poor quentin on twitter and i co-host the not a cast podcast with our friend manu aka manu clear bomb we're going through a song of ice and fire chapter by chapter you can find our regular episodes on a song of ice and Fire wherever you listen to your podcast, wherever you listen to Girls Gone Canon. And you can check us out on Patreon at patreon.com slash notacast, A-S-O-I-A-F, where our patrons get, among other benefits,

exclusive episodes every month. Woo woo. Go sign up. We'll link it all below. And thank you so much for listening to our coverage of Succession. We had a little bit of a break in the summer as Eliana was traveling, but Eliana will be returning for Erin Greyjoy as we go under the sea to see what we see in the sea. And that'll be coming to you here this June 2023. Keep your eyes and ears peeled. Patrons should have early access to that next week per your tier. And make

sure you're checking out the other things we're doing this summer and that we have done. Like I said, patrons in the patron tier stranger and above five bucks and up will get access to bonus episodes every single month and a backlog of catalog of episodes, as well as patrons in the thunder tier and above getting access to perks like discord and a Discord brunch slash happy hour every month. This month has passed, but we will announce next month's on the Patreon. We will also have some bonus Sailor Moon episodes going up for public this month and next month. Keep your ears and eyes out on that one.

We're getting ready for the new movie coming out, and we look forward to checking that out and hearing everyone's reactions. As always, I have been one of your hosts, Chloe. And I, one last time, have been another one of your hosts, Emmett. Fuck off. Goodbye.