Girls Gone Canon Cast - Succession S4E8: America Decides ft. PoorQuentyn

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

Spoilers! Succession S4E8: America Decides ft. PoorQuentyn from NotACastASOIAF NotACast Patreon | My Brother, My Captain, My Podcast Patreon | @PoorQuentyn GGC Patreon | @GirlsGoneCanon the motherfucking funny tweet re:succession mountain goats ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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, our fifth Succession minisode. Season four, episode eight, America Decides, or did they? I am one of your hosts, Chloe. And I'm another one of your hosts, Emmett. America sure did make a decision Sunday night. It reminds me of the episode of Veep right after the election when Selina Meyer gives the big speech and she says it's a you know it's a beautiful thing when America comes together and elects their president and that is what you attempted to do last night. Yeah before this episode we actually watched a little Veep to to pre-game to pre-game we did some election night Veep episodes, and I'm

glad we did because it felt like there was a lot of Veep in this episode. So we'll jump on that soon. But for those of you listening for the very first time, hello, welcome. Usually Girls Gone Canon covers A Song of Ice and Fire, His Dark Materials, Sailor Moon, and other stories that we wish to cover. But today, you're listening to us cover Succession. So if you haven't watched up until Succession season four, episode eight, log off now. We'll see you after. And I am joined by a wonderful co-host, my very good friend and roommate, Emmett, from the Nauticast ASOIAF podcast. Emmett, thanks for joining us

once more. You'll be here till the end of the season. Tell everyone where they can find you, Nauticast, and what the fuck is happening with Nauticast right now. So again, my name is Emmett, also known as Poor Quentin. You can find me at Poor Quentin on Twitter, and I host the Nauticast podcast

with our friend Manu, aka Manu Clear Bomb. We also go through A Song of Ice and Fire. We're boring and basic, so we just go through it in order, unlike your guys' cool POV thing. So right now we're coming up on The Red Wedding, everyone's favorite slash least favorite part of A Song of Ice and Fire,

right in the middle of Storm of Swords. We are coming up, we're doing that over the course of three episodes where we're covering all the Arya and Catelyn chapters that make up that horrible, beautiful event. I can hear the wedding bells ringing now. And I also cover our Star Wars and Lord of the Rings episodes for patrons over on patreon.com slash notacast, A-S-O-I-A-F.

I do monthly Lord of the Rings and Star Wars episodes. I just covered the destruction of the ring. Spoilers, I guess, for Lord of the Rings that the ring gets destroyed. Oh my God. So I'm covering

the aftermath of that. I know. Sorry to ruin it for you, Chloe. And in Star Wars, I just finished covering the prequel trilogy and I'm kicking off the original trilogy

next month. My usual A-SWOF co-host Manu is joining me for that. That'll be out for patrons in early June, so again, you can check it out at patreon.com slash notacast A-S-O-I-A-F, where patrons get

early access to our regular episodes and a bunch more benefits besides. Yes, I can't wait for my new Star Wars episodes. Excited to watch my new episodes, listen to them, stream them at a place where you listen to podcasts, so like, a place where you listen to podcasts. So like, subscribe, follow.

If you got some extra money burning in that wallet, you know, throw it for some fun bonus episodes. That's what's up. You guys have a great back catalog of bonus episodes. So if you're a fan of Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire and you're looking for a back catalog of stuff to listen to. I know we're all listening to podcasts and watching shows more than ever these days. These guys are it. We'll link it all below. Check it out below.

And what's up with Girls Gone Canon? Well, here's the mini spiel. Eliana's coming back. When's she coming back? Very soon. Very soon. I am going to talk to her. Yes, IRL on this Friday. You'll be

listening to this episode probably while I'm recording with her. But we're going to be recording for patrons in the stranger tier and above over at patreon.com slash girls gone canon, which may I add these strangers tier these stranger tier patrons do get bonus episodes every single month. We were on a little bit of a hiatus, but we're putting out Victarion 1 from the winds of winter. Kind of a cool discussion. Keep your ears peeled for that. And if you are a patron in the $10 and above tier, which is the Thunder tier and above,

you are going to have an opportunity to attend Discord Happy Hour slash brunch. That's happening on May 27th at 3 p.m. Eliana time, E.T. I can't wait to see some of you there, chat with you, and play some Jackbox games or chat about Game of Thrones, Succession, etc. It'll be finale night, right, is the next day, the Sunday after. So if you're a Succession fan, maybe that's for you. Again, check that out at patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon. And make sure you subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform so you can hear what's to come in the next month.

There will be the return of A Song of Ice and Fire with Erin Greyjoy, Sailor Moon, and much and more. But not Succession, right? This is it. The next two episodes after this, that's it. Then we part ways forever. Never to see each other again. Ever again. We'll never speak.

Not once. Oh my god. Oh shit. Have we met? Do I live with you? Anyway. Now it makes sense. Spiel over.

Thanks for listening, everyone. let's jump into this episode and the first thing i want to call out is the director for this episode it's emmy winner andrej parak and he got best directing for drama series through succession rightfully so right because he actually directed some of the greats. Which Side Are You On? Right? The initial president episode in season one, episode six, ends with that banger. You know, which side are you on? Yeah, you know it. And 202, Walter. Oof, oof, messy episode. Kendall the Destroyer and an iconic episode. Hunting, 2x03, which was an Emmy winner. And 3-6, What It Takes. Again, presidential episode with Jared Menken, his intro.

And 4-5, The Kill List. So here he is again. Here he is to direct away our amazing Night of Democracy. I didn't realize that he directed the only other Justin Kirk episode we've had so far in the show. Definitely, clearly a good actor's director in that regard. But Justin Kirk's always good, so probably doesn't take that much to get something good out of him. Molten gold, right? Like you're just working with gold.

And I will say it's cool in a way that this season there's been a lot of that. There's been a lot of like directors linking to episode arcs. season, there's been a lot of that there's been a lot of like directors linking to episode arcs. So Andres did the first presidential episode in season one, where Logan, you know, gets off the phone with the raisin, and he's a badass. And he also did the Mencken episode in season three. And now he's doing this episode. So it's also cool, I feel like from a director standpoint, that he gets to kind of finish out his directing arc, right? His presidential arc. That's kind of cool. There was a tweet this week.

You sent this tweet to me, Emmett. And it just... Guilty as charged. Yeah, it warmed the cockles of my heart. The broken electoral cockles. I don't know how many you need to win, but it broke them. It was just really fucking funny. It was from Walt Hickey. And he said, they they said whoever they are they

said i love tom and shiv but to be clear i am in no way rooting for them i love them in the way i love all mountain goat songs about the alpha couple as a self-destructive disaster that's beautiful for all the same reasons a meteor is wow as it comes crashing down yeah i love that i would love a mountain goat that i would love a mountain goat song i would love a whole mountain goats concept album just about tom and shiv what would we call that no children that's that's really i hope that song plays over the final montage of succession please oh please it would be beautiful and then john darnielle get quite a bag out of it so good for him good for for nerd springsteen as as I call him. Gotta plug Weeds, like I do all the time.

But Weeds, you got some mountain goats once in a while on there. So good shows include Mountain Goats on it. You're absolutely right. Nicholas Bertel would probably know this. He would probably say, I won't write a fucking banger for the absolute betrayal. I will let the mountain goats do it. Maybe we need an orchestral version of No Children for the final episode. Like how they do pop songs on Bridgerton.

They should just do that. If Nicholas Bertel would do a cover of No Children. Would you spontaneously combust? Would you not outlive Succession after all? That's the twist ending of Succession. Chloe dies. Oh my god, finally. I've been waiting.

I've been waiting four seasons for that one. Four whole seasons in the ultimate finale. I would also you and I were talking about this this weekend. You too. One has you know, it's obviously not quite a breakup song, but it could be it's one of those like is it isn't it and that's them to a T there's some lyrics in there that I was like, Oh my god, this is so painful. Tom Shiv. Tom Shiv. Yeah. We'll come back to Shiv, unfortunately, for Emmett. But we'll get some Tom out of it. I did make Tom a subcategory this week. I don't know if you noticed that, Emmett.

I did. Very impressive. Thank you. Had you not in previous ones? He gets his own section once in a while. Once in a while, he gets his own compartment on the train. Yeah, me and the siblings all agree, though. Fuck Tom.

So, open up the episode, and it's ken and his family once more i'm loving the the centering of rava and sophie no iverson yet this season i got it gotta cut some corners guys you know gotta keep the cash in the bank for the big jared menken episodes here and all of the crazy filming that goes along we'll talk about. But Natalie Gold, who plays Rava, did a cute little great little interview and kind of talked about what she's allowed to tease for the remainder of the season, which is not a lot. And she said, it's safe to say we're going to see the funeral and that Rava is very scared about this election and for her kids, terrified for the country, and she knows Kendall had something to do with this, right? His network made the call.

Nothing happens without his okay on the network, which I'm like, ooh, like those cruises, Ken? Like those cruises? But yeah, she thinks Rava's beside herself, terrified, and knows that, you know, in her mind, she thinks Kendall's picking Kendall first and the family first. And in the phone call, what's going through her mind is that she's scared. There's a little unrest coming in the world, she says. She teases very lightly. And she says again, that this all takes place in a compressed amount of time. It's actually really happening over 10 days. So when he says, I'll see you at the funeral tomorrow, election's happening on Tuesday, funeral's Wednesday. I can tell you episode 9 will be the very next day.

The funeral of America itself in the form of Logan Roy. That is it, right? Like, that is the fucking metaphor. It's dark. It's dismal. Shit's going down the toilet. There's something so dark at the front where you learn that Kendall, instead of being a fucking father

and picking up his phone and telling Sophie, you know, like, hey, what's up, kid? I'm here for you. He instead thinks that the safest thing as a father that he can do is hire a covert surveillance operation in a big, dark SUV to tail Rava and Sophie and Iverson throughout the city. And they obviously assume that it's the same people who've been harassing them before. Because Ken, why would Ken let them know what was going on? Why would he actually

pick up the phone? And yeah, that's just perfect. That just sums up Kendall. Like in in trying to protect his family from the bad guys, he becomes the bad guy. He becomes the person who's scaring them. And he doesn't even seem to fully, I think he gradually realizes over the course of this episode, quietly, that that's what's happening and tries to reverse the tide, but doesn't for stuff we'll talk about later. later. Yeah, Roman is investing in becoming his father and Ken is aghast realizing he's becoming his father, right? He's so shocked and Roman's so yes, finally, and Shiv's horrified of both of them. It puts a new light on everything Logan has done, quote unquote, in the name of love for his children, right? And you see that moment where love turns and it's not love, it's poison that we'll talk about throughout the episode. Kendall thinks the only way to protect people now is for him to throw money at it, to throw Roy money at it. That's the only shield he has. He says he's going to change the world

for his daughter and then he turns around and manipulates the world with a man who wants marginalized people like his children, his neurodivergent son Iverson, and his daughter Sophie, who's being harassed for the color of her skin and her family that she stems from. And then also the hatred and poison that drips from that family into the public eye. He's sacrificing them, turns around and does it for them, to invest in this guy that wants them to pay

such a big price for existing in the world compared to everyone else. And it's very interesting that for Ken, it really does come down to family in this episode, not so much ideology. I mean, he puts up a little bit of a fight when he says to Roman, you know, America, it's a nice idea. All the people getting together, which I think he does believe. But it's such a like, you know, he barely gets the sentence out. And it's like when Logan asked him, what is it you would even want to do with the company? And Kendall just says good things like his heart's in the right place. But he hasn't actually structurally thought through how that would work, because I think like a lot of tech guys, he's bored with that part.

He likes he likes being an ideas man. He doesn't like building and inhabiting a space to live in. That's a problem with a lot of those guys and definitely a huge problem for Kendall. And I think he's just, he's kind of burnt out on the ideological aspect and the big picture and the better America after season three because that was his whole idea at the end of season two, going into season three and being a knight errant saving the day,

as he said to his dad, didn't really work out for him. So instead this becomes about his love for his kids versus his loyalty to his siblings. That's Ken's kind of big conflict now. You know, on the one hand, you've got the right-wing assholes that were harassing Sophie in the previous episode. And he brings that up on the phone. He says, I won't let the world push you. And he offers his comfort, don't worry, the Democrat the democrats gonna win connecting right there the the political and personal for him because the only way his family's going to be okay is if the election goes that way and then he

might contribute it to going the other way by the end of the episode and on the other hand you've got you've got shiv betraying her brothers betraying the dumpster brothers for mattson as finally comes to the fore in this episode. And it specifically happens in such an intimate, vulnerable way that he confesses how he's feeling like a shitty dad. He confesses that to Shiv. And she says, no, essentially, you're a good guy, that there is a core to you underneath all the kind of mistakes and decisions you can scrutinize that is good. And you see Jeremy Strong's face kind of slacken and the puppy dog expression come into his eyes. And he's like, he's feeling inspired to do the right thing politically. But then he asks about Madsen because that's really why he wants to potentially back Mencken is to block the deal with Madsen.

And that's where Shiv can't help him because she's working with Madsen. And that's what makes it such a blow when he finds that out later in the episode is not just because she betrayed him, but because she said he was a good guy and was lying through her teeth about this. So now can he even trust what she said about that? Can he trust that good feeling she momentarily let him have? And I think the fact that he let his guard down for a moment, I think is part of why he gets so angry about that and spiteful and decides to throw the election to Mencken

basically to tell Shib to fuck off. Yeah, he decides Pinky can't dance after all, and boom, that's his reaction. And it is such a vulnerable scene because, like you said, for him, it's coming down to his family versus his family, right? The future versus the past. Do I dwell on the abuse of my father and the fucked-upness of my siblings, and this company that is the poison in the rod of all of it manifested into a fucking corporate debt zone like do I is that love is that love

do I find love there or do I you know what is power love and they're both seeking that right like I'm actually I really love having those parts of the episode combined because that's kind of where Shiv is mentally too right like she part of her has the horrible fake liberal feminist bullshittery going on but part of her is like I could bring a kid in the world to say fuck you to my entire upbringing and toxicity and family and I could do it right but what about the world I'm bringing it into and what about the world that we're all creating the masking of vulnerability for Shiv and Ken in this episode and even with their outfits right Ken's back to no tie so he's looking vulnerable as shit in his little empty Stuart little suit and Shiv is back with her turtleneck no longer the

blazing titties out outfit of the last episode that you didn't pay attention to. Of the titties. But they're not out. They're covered. She's back to her black turtleneck. She's got a chain necklace across her neck. I do too. Besties.

For Shiv and Ken, Shiv sees Mankin as the monster for her future and Ken sees Mattson as the monster to his future. You know, watching them lie to one another and him be open to her and her lie and then vice versa throughout the whole episode, that vulnerability is really just, they're so close. They're always so close. They're so close. That moment where Ken says to her, maybe I'm not a good father. Maybe the poison drips through. Maybe I'm not a good father.

Maybe the poison drips through. Shiv, what she says to him, although, yes, all the lies. It feels like a lie in the face of the reveal of the Mattson. She needs it to be true. She needs what she says to him when she says, no, that's not true. She needs that to be true, right? For her, for herself, for her own child. Like, this can't be all there is to them. And it really sticks out

that in the past episodes, you know, all this emotion and drama, they've been able to push on people with the heart of their of their conflict, like my father just died, build me a laborious house workers. And that's like bad. It's a bad it's bad the way they treat people, themselves, each other, people that work for them, servants, you know, all that stuff, the serfs. It's bad the way they treat people themselves each other people that work for them servants you know all that stuff the serfs it's bad the way they treat people but like that this episode they all three of them are willing in so many ways to influence and make people make unethical decisions about this election for their personal pursuits insane Insane. Ken and Roman pushing on Darwin like that as we get through this. Absolutely insane. He ethically cannot lie the way they want him to. And they

almost get him there. And then Greg ambushes him as we see he ruins it. It's one thing to force laborers to work like 80 times as hard in bad conditions. But it's a whole other ethical problem to spread disinformation as one of the biggest news networks in bad conditions, but it's a whole other ethical problem to spread disinformation as one of the biggest news networks in the nation that affects everyone's life. Like this is big. This is all bigger than they've ever really fucked up. And we get that great ending for Ken

worrying about the poison at the very end of the episode when he just wants to lick it on his kids, but he can't. He can't, they're sleeping and he just has to keep trying to tell himself that he's building a better world for them. But yeah, it's the same question you were saying with Shiv. That he fears he might be building a terrible future for them.

He is. And then there's Rome. Then there's Rome, the antagonist of Succession in the final episodes. And yeah, he's just such a pathetic little puppy dog in this episode. Yeah, he's just such a pathetic little puppy dog in this episode. It's just his need for approval is so naked and so blatant and so kind of free-swinging and nihilistic after Dad's dead because now Dad can no longer approve of you, so you've got to seek it elsewhere.

And he ends up, I think, embracing hard right-wing politics. He ends up going with the fascists, as Ken says, I think for a lot of the same reasons men in his class do because it's a it's a shortcut to making money but it it also just it makes you it makes you feel cool somehow roman gets like an anti-authority buzz out of this that he he gets to tell himself and kind of in kind of the same way connor did just more dangerously that he's up against the establishment even though there could be no one more establishment possible than Roman Roy and it's it's a nice little feedback loop he creates where anyone like Shiv who's shocked by what he's doing that just proves he's ruffling the right feathers and that just proves he's a disruptor so there's no there's no way to falsify him or challenge his

beliefs he'll just mutter false flag and China is coming at you until the conversation is over and it's because, as he says to Ken, that is at his core, Roman really believes that none of this matters, that nothing has a consequence. And that, you know, that has a, again, a feedback effect where, you know, if we just tell everyone that nothing matters, they'll eventually believe it and then nothing will ever matter again. Yeah. Damn. We're just vaping nihilism now he is something special in this episode i have to add the other thing that he's doing to embrace fascism is that haircut like he was never escaping the allegations here of the hitler youth thing holy shit it's true he's uh he looks he looks

pretty richard spencer in this episode he's becoming one of them for sure. I'm struck by how 2D and cartoon villain he is in this episode and like in other shows, it wouldn't work. But in this show, we've had kind of this great thing this season of focusing on each sibling, each episode, right? Each sibling has a little mini arc or has their own agenda that they're pushing, right? The last couple episodes are were heavy Shiv and Roman. Ken was kind of in the back. He he did have his great too much birthday, Electric Boogaloo part two moment. But he was more otherwise he backed off for an episode. So we've had some shiv Roman spotlight. And here Romans in the back, we've done the developing. This is who Roman is now we don't need explanation. That has been the last couple of episodes. And this is the developing. This is who Roman is now. We don't need explanation. That has been

the last couple of episodes. And this is the result of that. He ends up taking a backseat to the siblings and Tom in this episode, though, just barely poor Tom. And he has no real subplot except just being an evil little pixie. And I really like that for him. Like I love just on the whole that it works, you know, that it works on the whole not every not everyone can hold that up yeah i think it's a logical endpoint to everything we've we've seen him do in in the recent episodes and you know he's right that nothing will matter for the people in this room because it's a game we saw that last episode and we see it again here where ken compares it immediately to the super bowl at the start of the episode you know i only watch the election for the commercials really like that's that's where they're at and i think that that is why this episode works on the whole

like i don't think succession actually has a lot to say about politics like it's not the wire or you know what's another great show about politics it's not it's not deep space nine which is just like what if star trek was the wire it's you know and i think another great show about politics? It's not Deep Space Nine, which is just like, what if Star Trek was The Wire? It's, you know, and I think it's also, once it lost, it stopped checking back in with Gil and Nate. I think it got less insightful about politics as it's gone along, because that was kind of the connection to that world.

That's where more kind of the Veep-style scenes happened. But I do think it works in context with these characters, because it just reflects how detached they are from any consequence of this. And Roman at one point just pretty much quotes Scarface when Tony Montana says in Scarface, this town is just a great big pussy waiting to get fucked. And then Roman says basically the exact same thing

word for word in this episode, that that's the kind of... I don't think Succession has a lot to say about American politics specifically, maybe in part because so much of the talent behind it isn't American. But I think it taps into the primal kind of greed and ambition and ego that ends up behind the scenes of a lot of political maneuvering. And also in this episode, Roman and the whole kind of situation reminded me. I compared Succession to Lucino Visconti's The Leopard in a previous episode,

and this episode reminded me a lot of probably my favorite movie of his, The Damned, which is just this insane, baroque, ridiculous downfall of an industrialist family that signs up with the Nazis and kind of makes the deal with the devil even though they know they shouldn't, and they just collapse and redond themselves in the stew of paranoia and blood and incest and that's that's definitely very much the the vibes that you get off roman in this episode of it's not not really the politics of fascism but more just the psychology of it and what what makes it attractive to to a guy like him yeah for roman like this is their royalty in his eyes he grew up as a little baby prince right he's a prince uh so did so did Kendall so did Shiv they grew up as royalty Connor well

Jon Snow of the whole thing but we don't have to go into that you know he was a bastard I'm just kidding he was he was he was half he was half Roy he got treated like a half Roy okay but I love the media portrayal of politics in this because it's not about the politics. It's not about the Congress meetings in the end. Yes, that was some of the most riveting TV of season two. But as Roman says, here we are, we've made the best night of American TV again. And of course, in a meta sense, hell yeah, that was a fucking awesome episode. But also, I mean, you don't need all of the numbers to mesh. They threw a little jargon out there.

It worked. It's about those big egos, like you said, getting over there and saying, I want the power. I want to control what's happening on a screen. I mean, even from the beginning, Roman makes it a game. He says to Shiv, well, my team's going to beat your team. And what's even spicier is my team's going to shoot your team after they beat your team. What the fuck?

That's what makes it spicy. That's why you tune in. Yeah. It was the greatest night of TV for America, right? They were on the edge of their seat. Maybe they were terrified. I don't know about you. I know Emmett loves horror. Many people love horror. Okay, it keeps you riveted,

keeps you gripped. The thing is, is that what gets chosen very plainly by especially Roman and Kendall is that they're not concerned really fully with the consequences. Roman is 100% not concerned. He's all in. Ken and Shiv are showing these signs of slight concern, right? But Roman Roy doesn't have to live up to what the rest of society does. He has never had to be normal. He's never had to know the price of milk. He can go jacket to snuff porn all day long and get paid a bajillion dollars while he does it he like i don't know he huffs crypto all day okay like he lives his life freely with zero consequences but also with zero love also with zero anything good right at the end of the day he lives it with hatred the episode reiterates

that logan thought that he was above the law in season season one, episode six, Logan is pissed and throws a bitch fit at the president because the president isn't bowing to him. He wants him to bow to him. And that's what Roman has grown up with, right? Logan was a God bigger than what he thought the president was. We see that with the FBI raid. We see that with his attitude towards all of everything with Congress. Roman has absorbed that. This election means that if they win and they're tied to that winning racehorse, no matter how many camps get set up to put people into them or, you know, we strip them of all their rights and money, no matter about that, it means that the Roys win. This election means they can do anything.

And yeah, Roman says that's how Logan operated and he's right I think Logan did it in Logan was more risk averse than Roman is like I remember Logan saying when he was annoyed about Connor's presidential announcement he said you don't go yelling about tax we have arrangements basically confessing no we don't pay, but we don't talk about that in public where people can hear us. But I think he is right that anything else has always been a convenient fig leaf. And that takes us to president of the fig leaf fan club, Shiv Roy. And this is, yeah, this is definitely a culminating episode for her. Definitely more significant for her character development, as you were saying, than Roman.

And I think it really sums up her position that she is on the right side of things relative to her brothers. She is saying the right things in terms of trying to restrain Roman from going all in on Mencken. She's right to want to count every vote and to take some time to not throw their institutional legacy behind this guy. But she can't effectively, all she can do is say it. She can't effectively act on it because there's such a corrosive lack of trust among all of them. She loses any chance to sway Ken, who is definitely less into election fraud than Roman. She loses any chance to sway him when she lies to him about calling Nate, which is definitely in the top 10 dumbest Shiv moves, because what happens next is completely predictable. Ken calls Nate, just to confirm. She didn't see that coming and

there's the horrible tension when she watches Ken leave the room and you just see the glances back and forth as you see Ken figure it out and then go to Greg. And as soon as it's finally revealed then that she's in league with Matson, she can't really claim the high ground anymore. She makes it very easy for Roman to just say, no, there's no values involved. There's no higher cause. This is just your guy, your secrets versus our guy and our secrets. We're just factions. We're just fighting it out. And she can always intimidate Greg into silence,

you know, when it's just one-on-one, when she has that nightmare robot spider expression on her face when she goes, do you find me attractive, Gregory? And it became an episode of Dead Ringers for two seconds. She's always been able to intimidate Greg. That's easy. Remember when she basically mugged him in season one and

like took his last $20? Because, you know, who says no to Chivroy? But, you know, she can't, she can't stop him from being Ken's little spy weasel too. And that's ultimately, it's, you know, Greg without, I think, ever thinking that that's his main job. He kind of undoes shiv in this episode you know speaking as a wife as a wife that's me that's my um borat but peter from mindy project borat voice i don't do the borat voice i do peter from the very specific very specific yeah thank you it's a good impression my wife ring win gretzky michael scott as a my wife there's like a certain amount of power you have as a wife as a friend like to friends you know like you have as a wife, as a friend, like to friends. You know, like you become the second boss to your husband's boss.

So like Greg could never do anything against Shiv before because he was Tom's. And we kind of see those lines start to break up as we'll get to pretty soon in this episode that maybe his loyalty is waning as we see he's also with Matson because like if Shiv can just defect to Matson Greg's doing it pretty easily too and winning quote unquote um he wasn't it was the wrong approach it was the very wrong approach with him that she went with and all of this was the wrong move on her part like nate nate and ken are friends they were friends way back when they ran around in shanghai and probably did a bunch of drugs together like there's a genuine affection between them nate still hugs him even though he's like you're a total douchebag bro but here's your hug in the last episode um shiv choosing to intimidate greg

instead of trying to befriend him in that moment or killing him in that moment, like dropping it and saying. Literally or otherwise. Yeah. I mean, the second Mattson told her, like, play dirty, Shiv. Like, you're not in a position to play clean anymore, apparently. Gregory Peggery or whatever he called him. He specifically didn't call him normal, but said he was a normalist, which is the dumbest thing ever said by a person. Yeah, she should have just reminded him like, hey, I'm in a lot of those same meetings that you're going to be joining.

Did you know that? I don't know. He may not want to leak her and think maybe that's an alliance if I want to play both sides. There's also kind of a certain amount of restraint she's showing in the episode in that she's hoping that omission of information will make problems go away. So I really relate to that. That happens to me all the time. She's like, well, if I just don't call Nate, then maybe they won't try to do all this shit. Like maybe like they'll just like not call it. She thinks that's the right way. It's not. And the same thing when it comes to Mattson. Mattson's on the phone with her and he's like, so are we still cool? Like everything's good.

You're going to do things like and still do them for me. And she's like, yeah, we'll see. We'll talk later. I got to go. It's a busy night, which to be fair, very busy night. But like Tom says, like, you know, you could choose a side someday, honey, like you're going to have to. Choosing nothing is still choosing that blows up in her face. She can't control the narrative. Again, the powerful narrative, capital N narrative, we keep hearing so much about in this episode. She is not powerful enough on her own to control it. And she has to kind of face that in this episode very brutally. Yeah, her narrative, I think, falls apart from underneath her because she wants to believe in this set of normative values that

cuts across ideology, that cuts across greed. But those values are hollow, and Roman horribly is right that they don't actually motivate people, and that nothing in Shiv's worldview or career has prepared her for a moment when they're literally setting the votes on fire. In allegorical terms, I think Shiv is increasingly standing in for a political establishment whose hollowness is what has allowed the likes of Roman and Matson to tunnel in like termites and take control. Same thing with Darwin, our chief from the great or Elliot from Breaking Bad coming in for this episode. And he talks up front about how we have to maintain our integrity and we have to maintain stability because any leaks that we have that suppress turnout could lead to our ejection from the election pool. And the way he says that, or worse, expelled, that's the worst

thing he's ever considered in his life is to be ejected from the election pool. And Shiv is stuck in a position where all she has is rhetoric and there is no concrete way for her to defy the right wing. And what it ultimately boils down to, as we saw in the other Jared Menken episode, is that she just doesn't want to be standing next to him. She'll even be in the picture. She just doesn't want to be standing next to him. And that's ultimately the concession that she's forced to make. And that's how it's going politically for her. And it's the same problem personally, in terms of trust. Like, Shiv finally tells Tom that she's pregnant with his precious prison baby, but he doesn't believe her and why should he why should either

of them believe each other anymore like there's no there's no foundation for trust between them it's like ken said the poison drips through yeah tiv roy is going to be so poisonous and here for her pie yeah i think naming her tiv is probably the core of the poison there i would i would rebel yeah tiavon tivon tiv is the nickname i see yes t-i-o-b-H-A-N. T-I-O-B-H-A-N. Tiv is the nickname. I see. T-I-O-B-H-A-N. That is a war crime to do to a child. That child has done nothing to you. By the poison, I think you mean the cocaine, Emmett.

I do. Again, the Scarface echoes run pretty strong here. Yeah, we'll get into the coke a little more in a moment. Well, we won't, but Tom will. And what a bear he was real blunt real sharp um the whole episode actually like tom was running around freaking the fuck out being very flippant and short and aggressive and temperate with everyone and i know he's stressed under tons of stress but wow also under tons of coke it's probably not helping

the whole like you could name this episode this coke is making you aggressive tom like holy shit aggressive we just saw goodfellas in theaters and this from tom's perspective i think this whole episode would look like the the the downfall scene in goodfellas the famous scene where henry's on too much coke trying to do five things at once and you got like muddy waters and the who playing in the background may 11th 1980 and it's just like a nervous breakdown with the helicopters chasing him like that's that's Tom's whole perspective I understand he needed to stay awake and energized but like having all the Roy's yell at you at once is stressful enough without being on coke while it happens can't imagine being his blood vessels while that was going down

I think uh Tom just didn't learn the lesson from the last time he had coke. You know, like he said to Greg, I did the wrong drugs in the wrong order, and now I can't get happy. And that's just his whole life now. Yeah, the cocaine is, it kind of surprised me. The cocaine kind of really surprised me from Tom. And there was so much going on with it that I found really fascinating, especially with the dynamic with Greg. But Tom is unable to stay up

leading through to the election already. Like we know he's already exhausted. He's desperate and he's stressed. You can see that the Shiv conversation and fight is wearing on him. You can see he's not doing well. And you can also see that he's being puppeted this entire episode, unable to do anything for himself, pulled in every which direction by Roman, coming in and undermining him in front of a bunch of his underlings at ATN. Him having to beg Greg to please don't leave me because Greg is literally about to leave him. That was really obvious to me by pressuring him to do coke, you know, blood brothers and shit. Like this keeps us together. Disgusting bro.

He's losing Greg to Mattson. It's why he kind of like re, you know, hires him as assistant without any choice for Greg, which I guess if you're being anyways, you're Greg and for me tonight, you're Greg and for me tonight, you know, Greg was a verb. Yeah, that semblance of control with their relationship, right? When Tom is alone and Tom needs something, Greg is that person because Shiv isn't there because they're usually fighting. And Shiv, it's weird because the last two episodes with Shiv and Tom, those moments where they almost broke through once more, you can see they're better when they scheme together.

Going back to Shiv not having quite power on her own, with Tom, she did have power, which is kind of what makes this episode's betrayals that much darker, right? When Tom, on coke, all hopped up, you know, kind of poo-poos her prego, and then on top of that, goes ahead and like pushes the narrative of menken winning without really pushing back much at roman or ken fucking pontius pilate she says right as he fucks himself for all of america to watch because you know pontius pilate right like so wait a minute is shiv calling herself jesus there or? Or is America Jesus in this metaphor? I think America's more Jesus, right? Because so-

Your mom would never be prouder of you than saying that. America's Jesus, mom, if you're listening. So after the hearing, Pontius Pilate decides, he's like, Jesus can't be charged after his trial. The crowd then demands his death and the release of barabbas and he thinks pontius is like i'm gonna be overthrown so despite his best efforts to distance himself from the order to put jesus upon the cross burn the cross he ends up being responsible for it by like not saying anything by not putting against it. And so when

they asked Tom to do this, there's a couple ways you can look at it, right? But like for Shiv invoking that it's basically saying that he's setting fire to the cross himself by having a Mankin presidency, like that he's burning America, he's burning Jesus. In some aspects, that might be some of the only parts of her that he actually does know of her beliefs. You know, like, sure, some of it's pretty fake. But also, she does believe at least in the decency of like, maybe we count a couple votes. Like, damn, maybe we finish counting the votes before we go ahead and lie on TV. It makes us look bad, too. And Tom knows that.

Tom knows her feelings. And still, he saw, he said, you're nothing to me anymore. You do not have power for me to worry about what your feelings are. I'm going with these two. Like he said, I got PGN to the left and FVA to the right. And he's just stuck in the middle with Greg, the worst place to possibly be. And he, at the start of the episode, we see him ignoring some of the setup for the the fire in milwaukee which is set up constantly peppered into the first half of the episode before it kind of takes over

the second half of the episode nate brings it up a couple times robin mentions on the phone with kendall that things are on fire she says clearly she's just heard about it on the news and instead tom wants them to cover this story of a woman who voted for jimenez 40 times and when his producer says yeah we got like we got in touch with her. She's clearly unwell. And Tom just flips out like, what are you, a doctor? Just put her on. He's very clearly manipulating things. So then when he has the gall to say later that, look, there are millions of data points in the country. We have to choose what's newsworthy. Okay, so the unwell woman voting 40 times for Jimenez was newsworthy, but Mencken's followers torching a voting center in Milwaukee, not newsworthy. And he, it's a, it's a slimy way of pretending he's not setting the agenda when he

is. Yeah. It was like the one thing he could control about that moment, right? That he was like, they want me to talk about the fire or they want me to cover the fire. Fuck them. And also misdirection, right? i felt really interested i mean it's very fox news of them very much in their fox news era uh it's misdirection to cover up and show even from the front like they were giving obviously we know this listeners and viewers at home know this but they were giving special coverage to jared menken i mean that's really it he heard what was going on with the fire. He put it in the back of his mind and said, that's not important to me right

now. And for Tom, it's that monomaniacal ambition. It's the power as a high that he keeps pursuing. It's what he said to Greg back in season one, that being rich is like being a superpower. And that feeling is something he loves more than anything like some of the funnier lines in the first half of the episode comes from that when he's like saying you know you have to greg for me probably you have to give me the right lunch or or you know i'm gonna call the wrong state and it's gonna lead to this chain reaction and then china's gonna launch the tactical nukes and then we're back to amoebas my digestive process is basically in the constitution for the night that uh that hilarious put on of a rich guy ego he just tries to tries to wear like a nice suit uh and he just i love how much he he collapses

mentally when the touch screen touch screen curtain starts going out and his producer says it's okay no one saw it and he says well i saw it am i no one am i no one and tom's fear of course is that yeah yeah he's no one reminds me of the famous famous Henry VIII quote when he flipped out at an ambassador saying, am I not a man like other men? Am I not? Am I not? And, you know, Tom feels that high, chasing that high, the same way that Roman and Matson do. It's just more obviously pathetic with him because all he has to back it up is ATN.

And while Roman is in the driver's seat for what happens with Mencken here, clearly, he's the one making the call. Everyone else is just reacting to him. Tom is the one who is immediately and publicly tied to what is basically fraud. And, you know, which he deserves for not just for going along with Roman about Mencken, but for covering up the fire earlier in the episode. Like that's kind of a poetic justice that he should be connected and tied to this forever now. And I love his attempt to cover his ass by saying the call for Darwin on Wisconsin is only pending. You know, that's just his way of excusing to himself. It's just pending.

But of course, Roman takes that as a win, takes that as a guaranteed call for Mencken, which is obviously what he was doing. I would love to hear a learned hands breakdown breakdown from our friends over at the Learned Hands pod, a lawyer breakdown of exactly what the criminable charges could be here for Tom. If this was a real life thing, what would they get Tom on? Because it's very funny that at the very front of the show, he ends up in a position where he didn't necessarily do anything to contribute to the scandal slash the abuse of employees and other visitors that was going on with cruises and parks. He didn't do anything, right?

He gets fucked. He gets charged. He tries to cover it up. He goes to Congress and makes a fool out of himself. But in the end, that wasn't Tom's crime to answer for. charged. He tries to cover it up. He goes to Congress and makes a fool out of himself. But in the end, that wasn't Tom's crime to answer for. How he acted was. But this, this is a crime. This is a real fucking like bad thing Tom is doing by going ahead and I mean, he's launching the tactical nukes himself. Well, making Greg launch them as we see. It's interesting that

he's bent over so easily for this power to Kendall and that he sees Kendall kind of as this obvious protector now that Logan's dead, especially because the last time he was one one with Ken, he kind of told him in season three, I've seen you get fucked before and Logan doesn't get fucked. With Logan gone, Shiv's Kendall, the boys are back on top and everything Tom's doing is so knee-jerk and reactionary to get some sort of control back, so he gets some sort of power back as everyone puppets him. Even them going onto the floor where they're not supposed to be.

The siblings show up, and Tom's like, this is my floor. This is my station. And that is why it makes this his call on his broadcast, because he broadcasts the news. that's that's why it's perfect that you know if he's if he's going to take ownership of it then he has to own the consequences from making that call so we see at the end with pgn broadcasting his face and he says i think that's a little pointed yeah yeah it is so was calling the fucking election for Mencken, you dildo. And Greg, Greg's character or lack thereof, as he continues to be a fuck up this season, you know, he's, but he's certainly interesting to

watch. Certainly interesting. And I like that he's gone from it's not very democratic for us to choose the president in a hotel suite to basically being someone cementing the call of Mencken's downfall or by someone cementing the call of Mencken and the downfall of you know America as they all know it or whatever well it's easy to be uncomfortable when you have no skin in the game but now Greg potentially stands to benefit and that changes the calculus for him and yeah Greg as we've said before I think Greg is losing out from how quickly the show is ending he's often just just kind of a gag machine in scenes at this point one one recurring greg bit that i like is how he just like uses weird old-timey words for no reason like how he just he just like picks strange words when he gets flustered like when he says that mattson treated

him abominably and i'd like you know maybe he just got that from hanging out with grandpa ewan grandpa ewan likes his five dollar words so greg has just absorbed that or when he says he has to wrangle roman shiv off the floor and roman's like stop saying wrangle or when he said like you know i'm afraid of the roustabouts that grandpa logan will hire uh and this is you know the first half of this episode is funnier than the second half the second half the jokes pretty much fall out in the same way they did in the episode where logan died which is perfectly appropriate but there is still one great pure gag in the second half of the episode when when gray gets the wasabi in darwin's eyes and then tries washing it out with the the lemon lacroix to the face it reminds me that that

great bitten veep when uh gary uh selena myers's aide doesn't give her her glasses before speech and her other age like why have you blinded the president, Gary? So funny. There were so many veepisms in this episode. I was waiting for Dan Egan to appear. I was like, please, he should be on this show. Oh my God. Can we talk about the Jess and Greg moment? Because I, okay, first of all, Jess, when he tells her, like, I have to do this thing. She's like, do you? Like, you don't. That means she doesn't say it. She trails off. She's like, or do you? Because it's like, you actually don't have to. You could be the person that stood up and said, no, this is wrong. And you could say, no, I won't do that. Or you could not say anything and just not do it.

Which we saw doesn't work for Shiv, right? The not doing it. But Jess doesn't look happy about it. I can't imagine Jess wants to live in a world where Minkins the president, especially again, coming back to Kendall, who thinks that all he has is money to offer people. He thinks at the end, I was kind of like grossed out when he got in the limo and was like, or into his car. And he's like, some people can't scheme, can't, can't hatch a plan, fic rat, about Shiv. I'm like, you're fucking all of your people. Like, so many people work for you that are people of color, that are marginalized. Like, your, your money can't save those people's lives in the face of this. Like, you might get away unscathed

with nothing affecting your life because you're above the law, but Jess can't just go walk down a street and be unchanged from this when she's outside of your view as you, as her employer. How could he do this to Jess? I'm like, actually mad. I'm like, how could you do this to Jess? Not your kids who, who knows their names? You don't, man. I mean, sure them but jess jess is like your life just keeps you on track jess is like then the one person that's like been there even through your benders through your craziness she's still been there to schedule shit for you but you did this to her and to fic rat who takes you everywhere wouldn't have happened with connor as president i tell you that right now

amen brother and i love i love his little love his little delusion of dignity that he has. Like when he loses Kentucky and Willa trying to be supportive says, fuck Kentucky. And Conor's like, no, no, no, must respect the process. I shan't become that. He says, alas, Kentucky. I love Conor's little Shakespeareanisms. I love that he has this sense of weird honor that has basically nothing to back it up. Like there's no reason for him to think of himself this way. But it kind of, it's why I think he's less harmful

than his siblings is that he has that kind of delusion about himself. And it is, yeah, it's in the same way that Shiv wants to respect the process without being able to back that up. Connor can't make his dreams come true.

But there is something oddly, oddly kind of moving about his, his, his ridiculous sense of himself. It's almost touching, right? Like it's almost touching. It's very borderline touching in a way that like, he's more democratic and more patriotic than fucking Mankin. You know, put that in your pipe and smoke it. He says, no, Kentucky would have been my child too, Willa.

We can't just smite Kentucky. He's like, they are one of us. We are all Americans. And you know, Conor Roy was interested in politics from a very young age. So this makes sense to me. When he was taking a shit in his sleeping bag when he was taking his brother's fish

and he was thinking about the White House. We erased that from history. He was thinking about corruption. We erased that. We got rid of that headline. And he makes the nice little compromise with Willa that he takes the Slovenia ambassador's job from Mencken. And I like that she says, you know,

it means we can have lunch in Vienna and dinner in Venice. Nice cities are right there. That's the little compromise they have to make. I don't think any of the other Roys would accept Slovenia. I don't think they would accept a second class ambassadorship. Yeah, the 50% Roy really comes out in Connor. You know, the only half. It is kind of interesting that she compromises on that

because it is a metaphor for what the siblings are doing too, right? They're happy to uphold oppressors if it means they get their fancy day trips to a glamorous place because they have the means to do so. Like not everybody can say I'm going to go live in this place that might not always be great for this right wing president. And you know, they have the means they can go travel there. Not everybody can just leave their place where they live and go somewhere beautiful and artsy and hip. Not everyone has that luxury. Everyone is placating Connor in this episode. I feel bad for him, right?

Like the filming crew is there doing nothing. Like this is the one thing that you're supposed to get out of being a nepotism baby, right? Like you're supposed to at least get a little coverage. Like ATN is in your house and Tom is like, we're going to use the film, but he's lying. They were never going to use it.

They had one narrative that they were going to push. In the same way that he promised Darwin he'd get his caveats and then didn't let him do it. Yeah, Tom's got a, he does get a little power back, huh? He's like, I can, I can play go fish here. Yeah, come on, come on, come hither. Oh, wait, no, no. I love that we also see he hates the election.

Like, he's actually having a boring time running, you see. You see him, like, say straight up to willie's like i guess it's not as fun as you know watching it but it's still fine he even when he realizes it's over turns the tv off he says done just done you know there's no point watching it but here he is with willa and then alone with a tv crew that doesn't give a about him sent by his family that also doesn't care about him. Horrible. His concession speech there is really great. And I really want to hear more about this story. Because we don't get any details about his running. Maybe it was filmed and cut or maybe they wanted to include that's what I was wondering. Is this a storyline that was filmed and cut? Or is it just being thrown in there as a joke about how hilariously inept Connor's campaign has always been?

Yeah, he's like, I would like to say my first running mate who I will not dignify with a name check. But had that woman not dropped out and then had I not had to replace her with another figure who turned out not to be able to bear the weight of public scrutiny, had I not been betrayed by those two jackrabbits who knows politics of envy ugly game i happen to be a billionaire sorry but honestly america you flunked it i guess you're gonna have to find some other poor mooks paps to suckle on i want to know all the insults he went through in his head before he settled on jackrabbits which is that's like that's like something david lyn Lynch would say to insult someone. I appreciate, too, the subtle dig at Mencken, right? The, you're gonna have to find some other poor mook's paps to suckle on.

Whoever you choose is really what he's saying. Vivid image. Vivid. When he was doing his little spiel about where he could go on the phone, he was like, do a coup in Peru and then he started kind of rhyming about these places and it just makes me think of the 50 ways to win Denver song from Veep this is a Veep podcast now sorry but it just makes me want to sing the 50 ways to win Denver I'm like do a coup in Peru ooh it's very it's a very good bop

and then last and also least we have our our monster hiding in plain sight jared menken uh played by justin kirk and he's just he nails this the mix of of charming and creepy and that you could see how this guy could win people over but he's also just palpably terrifying like the way he just emerges from the back of the room when roman first shows up the way he just he senses roman's need for approval and that roman will say yes to him just so roman can feel liked and how menken zeroes in on that weakness and i i love how he says i love how he just he pretends to be an honest straight shooting truth teller and then just is not at all like he says to roman the first thing he says is,

I want to say a couple things very directly, and then immediately starts spinning with his obfuscations and bullshit. That he says, I want to have it seem like I overperformed. I have to deal with what assholes call the narrative, as if he isn't, you know, one of those assholes. And how he's, you know, that I'm focused on how to lose and what he's you know he's suggesting that roman tilt the deck for him without ever actually saying it out loud and roman says yeah even if you're not the president you're our president which dovetails with what he said when they first

met that he his vision for atn would be everything set up for the star of the show president jared menken and i think menken talks roman into doing it it by framing it as just the future of their mutual brand of that project that they can do together. And I love his, you know, he goes on a classic right wing rant in his presumed victory speech about welfare kings and queens. And he talks about how the problem with democracy is it just becomes a transaction where you vote yourself other people's money, as conservatives always say, as if he's not doing the same thing, as if this election is not just a huge transaction for him and the Roy brothers, that they they're handing him the election so he can take care of their deal. And there's way more money involved in that deal than there are with all the welfare checks in the world. But somehow that's OK. And that's that's that's the hypocrisy of a lot of

conservative politics right there. Yeah. You can almost hear Logan in your head too, with them as kids, just being like, everything has a price, son. You know, that's what this is. It's all transactional. Everything in this world is transactional. That's what this show is about for them, right? Love is transactional. Family is transactional. It's all conditional upon money. Right. Love is transactional. Family is transactional. It's all conditional upon money. And I do have to ask before I go on, Emmett, were you happy? Because I know that you and I both are on the Justin Kirk was being wasted train. But was this did this make up for it a little bit? A little bit. I still wish we'd seen more of him in previous episodes because it's it you know, when Shiv talks about him as the nightmarish reincarnation of the devil, I'm like, well, I've seen him for five minutes.

So I need a little more than that to buy him as the worst person in the world. But I can't complain about anything we got. Everything we got was great. It was juicy. I didn't expect to have so much of him in the episode. I was kind of thinking we'd only have him on tv so i'm glad we actually got that little visit in and it looks like he is in the next episode at the funeral who knows if they'll keep that or not as we saw he was also at logan's house at the wake so where's my where's my justin kirk footage he's right here just off

screen i'm putting my arm around him right now you better let go of him he's mine i saw him first i saw him first menken's thinly veiled fascism bleeds in at the very front of the episode where he's giving a speech in the background on the news and it's blaring and he's like america's sleepwalking into oblivion and he starts you know doing all his little dog whistle words he's like cultural marxism and all these buzzwords. I love the trickle of him in the background throughout the episode. He's winning Kentucky. He's leading Georgia. His voters are burning down voting centers. Wait, what? Anyways, glossing over that part as Tom Wamsgans did, it's kind of big, right? Like it's crazy with his glimmering glittering eyes. He's peering down at them like a mantis, descending on its prey. He becomes almost that untouchable villain who's plastered on screens

above you across America, looming over the entire episode, trilling dog whistle after dog whistle on the stage as the siblings make mistake after mistake, hurtling him to his infinity gauntlet endgame I'm inevitable moment, right? His final speech encapsulates it all. This is what you just did, America, quote unquote, Kendall Roman Shiv, quote unquote. And even I mean, I was really kidding about the endgame thing. But it is that butterfly effect, right where each of them do something really stupid this episode, thinking they can save it or they can push it a certain way. And they fumble the bag so fucking hard. And here he is on everybody's screen at home, not just their screen,

everybody's TV screen peering down at America. And if he does end up taking the White House, they've given him more power than they have ultimately. And they'll be in a situation where they need him more than he needs them, which was also set up in that that introductory scene with him and roman when they were fighting about really who needs the other if you give him the white house you know you you put a crown on joffrey and suddenly he thinks he's in charge by giving him what he wanted which was the screen time and the presidency there's nothing else he needs from you yeah you turning on him now would be less meaningful than him turning on you yeah in terms of uh just other kind of random things i liked in the episode i like that there was one one news anchor who said look this is going to come down to a handful of states it's going to be close it's going to go into the next days there will be litigation we just need

to calm down and wait sadly no one listens to this lone hero, the only guy speaking sense. We're going back to Congress, folks. We might go back. I mean, we might go back to Congress. I mean, you talked a lot about Connor kind of being the spoiler. And in a way he kind of was, but I really He leveraged it away from being a spoiler, which I was not expecting anything close to what ultimately happened. Yeah. However, I do think that you're still right, that the Dems will come out and win. And, I mean, just unlike the trailers ahead from the previous weeks, there's definitely footage of people in the streets

maybe causing some riots, maybe protests. And, I don't know, I'd be interested... I would be interested to see how this goes down right because next episode you figure Logan's funeral the actual funeral is not going to be more than 15 minutes I feel like it's going to be another one of these episodes where Connor's wedding the wedding is barely included Logan's funeral the kids are missing half of it because they're scheming uh I feel like this episode's going to have a lot of uh a lot of twists for us and that might be the big one and the uh the old guard of uh frank and carl and those guys barely in this

episode but they had probably my favorite line which is when connor's giving his concession speech and frank's watching tv and he just goes connor was running for president i love that carl was kind of nice he's like all right all. They're all chortling about it. How can you not? Pretty funny. I was like, did you put your compression socks on, Frank? Shut up. Leave him boy alone.

Hey, Connor looks like a fucking golden hero right now. Okay. I'm just saying. For supporting Jared Menken, yes. No taxes. Golden blazing hero across the sun. Up until then, he's not beating those allegations. Up until the thing he did, he was doing great.

I liked him when he wasn't doing things. He was doing great back then. Connor, much like a dog, is only good when he does nothing. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. You get it. I love all of the background material they shot for Jimenez and Mankin, and none for Connor Roy, bye. But all of that background material they actually shot in an interview, Justin Kirk said that they could have

shot like a mini episode full of footage and different things. They actually came out for a lot of the photographs and headshots to his house in LA and did some headshots for posters and for little bumpers in the background on the news throughout all the show. And I love those little bits of world building that make this show really come alive, make it feel like the real world because if you didn't have those shots and those speeches and those little moments behind you, it wouldn't feel as real. It wouldn't feel like election night at Waystar Royco. And there's an amazing shot towards the end when they're all in the room kind of

looking out as they're about to call it. And you can actually see a bunch of clips of B-roll and some digital copy that are out. And it's really cool. There's like a whole entire storyboard of it. And if you pause it and kind of play it real slow, you can see some of like the ATN bumpers. And then you can see Jared Mankin footage and you can see him and his footage and i thought that was really cool i'm kind of a nerd when it comes to that kind of editing stuff and software and brings me back to the old school days i was about to say av club girl coming out tv news you know i did the tv news assistant director i was i did headlines i actually did headlines i did the. So I would do like I'd cut together b roll and photos and slides and do a voiceover. It's very fun. That was a if only you were running

ATM. I know I did weather lookout carry. I did sports too. So it was cool. I like all the bits and baubles they show take a look at that. I think there was a lot of extra work put into this episode and love that like, while I'm not, you know, I'm no politics student here. I'm no student of the of the book, but of the law. But as someone who isn't deeply entrenched into that world and knows enough to get by every day, you know, I haven't gotten arrested lately. I mean, it was all very compelling. It was the stress was there. The emotion was there. I didn't need everything to be accurate.

Like these votes, these votes, these votes. I loved all the infographics changing. And you could see as different reporters on TV were doing things that you didn't necessarily see the reporters there. And I'm a nerd for that shit. I think they did a great job of making the world feel lived in, making it feel real, and making it feel like you were sped in the night at Waystar Royco on election night. Agreed. I don't I don't think Succession has a lot to say about fascism, but I think it's a it's a great exploration of how vapid modern media people respond to the actual threat of fascism, which is especially in Roman's case going. What does actual mean?

Yeah. What do you mean real? which is especially in Roman's case going, what does actual mean? What do you mean real? Like when Schiff says to him, things do happen, Rome, which kind of just boils it down to the core that Roman doesn't believe in actions and consequences.

And so there will be consequences. And I look forward to next episode when Roman, it looks like from the previews, is going to implode. It's his turn. Schiff's had a couple implosions. I feel like it's time for roman to really just bite one off i need it jerry was something i mean really he didn't stop with the

whole firings that one episode that was insane he should have stopped but next episode oh man everyone's gonna be looking at him yeah that's why it's gonna be good he's gonna be behind the lectern and we're just gonna see like the top half of his head because he's so short can i get a stool do you have stools Can I get one of the bigger Bibles? Maybe he'll get his Hitler Youth haircut trimmed, you know? I don't know. I think if you trim it, it looks even worse. You gotta wait for that to grow out.

But then you look like Charles Manson at that point. There's just a plethora, a range of right-wing crazy people looks. I'm so sorry, Karen Culkin, that that's your hair. It's not your fault. I'm sorry. That's your everything. You know, it's the height. It it's not your fault it is i'm sorry that's your everything um you know it's the height it's just not his fault roman just really roman roy is uh he's done for he's cooked can't wait to watch him be cooked like a goose next episode or a goose that shit a brick

as kendall said laughing my ass off at that we will return next week with the penultimate episode of Succession. That means second to last. Ever. Ever. So please join us, Emmett. Thank you, as always, for giving me a little bit of your time. I know you have much to do in the other rooms of your home. Please tell everyone at home once more where the fuck to find you.

So again, my name is emmet aka poor quentin you can find me at poor quentin on twitter and i co-host the not a cast podcast with our friend manu aka manuclear bomb you can find us on podbean or spotify wherever you listen to your podcast wherever you listen to girls gone canon you can find the podcast on twitter or instagram at not a cast a s o i a f and you can check out our Patreon at patreon.com slash notacastasoyaf, where patrons get early access to our regular episodes, multiple exclusive episodes every month, and a bunch more benefits. Yes.

Check them out. Everything will be linked below. And like Emmett said, find us on a streaming service near you. Go over to patreon.com. Check out the bonus episodes for Stranger tier and above. And of course, the Discord and Discord events for the Thunder tier and above. And if you don't like it, well, fuck off. Hey, I have been one of your hosts, Chloe.

And I'm another one of your many hosts, Emmett. We'll be back.