Girls Gone Canon Cast - Succession S4E9: Church and State

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Spoilers! Succession S4E9: Church and State ft. PoorQuentyn from NotACastASOIAF NotACast Patreon | My Brother, My Captain, My Podcast Patreon | @PoorQuentyn GGC Patreon | @GirlsGoneCanon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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 9 The Penultimate Episode Church and State featuring Poor Quentin. I am one of your hosts Chloe. And I am still another one of your hosts Emmett. Emmett, thank you for coming back for the penultimate time you ever have to come back it's true, it's true you got me on the hook for one more one more, thank you, I am in your debt can't wait for the finale

after last night that was amazing, that episode was very good we're going to talk about all that and more if you're listening, this episode will cover everything and anything and speculation for succession, season 4 season 3, season 2, season 1 this episode will cover everything and anything and speculation for succession. Season four, season three, season two, season one,

especially last night's episode, Church and State, and of course next week's episode. We will definitely talk about probably what we think we'll see as we get towards the end. Emmett, please tell everyone at home where they can look you up. So I go by Poor Quentin on Twitter. That's where you can find me. 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 like Girls Gone Canon does,

but we just do it chapter by chapter because we're boring like that. And I also do Star Wars and Lord of the Rings episodes for patrons over on patreon.com slash notacast A-S-O-I-A-F. I do Star Wars episodes every month and Lord of the Rings episodes every month. My next Lord of the Rings episode covering book six chapter four The Field of Cormallon the one right after The End of the World that's going to be out for all of our five dollar and above patrons next week and Manu is going to be joining me for our next Star Wars episode, kicking off the original trilogy with C-3PO and R2-D2. That's going to be out next month.

So you can listen to us wherever you listen to Girls Gone Canon, wherever you listen to your podcasts, and you can check out our patron content at patreon.com slash notacast, A-S-O-I-A-F. So pumped for next month to get to the OG with Manu. I didn't know what was happening even when I found it out for you listening at home. I was very excited. I'm still kind of pretty thrilled about it. So I just love to listen to you and Manu go back and forth. And you know, I will say I was at the bar the other night and other people thought that your podcast idea of doing the books

like a normal sane person was good. Well, I'm glad some people are behind the normies on this one. Not the crazies. Not the crazies. Well, unfortunately, we're going to talk about more of those crazies soon. Speaking of crazy. But quick Girls Gone Canon updates for those of you that listen to our A Song of Ice and Fire episodes, our His Dark Materials, our Sailor Moon,

any of that content, we will be returning next month with Eliana, who is usually one of your hosts. That's why I had to bring Emmett, the other e-name, in. Had to keep with the canon, you know, but she will be back. When she comes back, we are going to start up covering erin grayjoy in a song of ice and fire this month we did get a chance to record our patreon episode for victorian one the winds of winter if you are a patron in the bonus tier stranger tier five dollars and up you get bonus episodes every single month except for last month sorry that was a fluke but we're back on it for June and for May here but we put out some fun content come stream it come listen and if you are in the thunder tier and above which is the $10 and up tier you're gonna get access to our private discord server

where every single month we host a brunch slash happy hour. This month is happening, if you're listening to this in real time when it's released, it's happening Saturday, May 27th, 3 p.m. ET, Eliana time. So we would love to hang out with you, chat with you, maybe play some Discord games. It's a fun little server to be on. We love our Discord server, so check that out that's over at patreon.com slash girls gone canon and of course next week emmet will join me for the final succession episode it's gonna be good it's gonna be a good solid goodbye to it i think a good movie length goodbye yeah end it strong end it one and a half hours we're lucky lucky that's my motto i mean hell people might not get a show like this for a long time probably not that's something i think

maybe we'll talk more about length next week is that it uh even though it's very much of the the digital era in the streaming area it does also feel like we're we're entering the last gasp of that semi-true semi-ridiculous thing called prestige TV. I think in some way Thrones was the death knell for that too, but Succession feels even more to me like the very end. Yeah, from everything we hear from the actors and the crew, the production staff, the directors, everything we hear from them, it was a special experience. It was different. Kieran Culkin just did an interview I was watching online earlier where he was talking about how he's kind of scared for his next job.

He's like, man, I was spoiled. Like, they spoiled me. So Masterclass show. We'll talk about some of the parts that make it Masterclass this episode and the funeral. I mean, this is such a huge chunk of the entire episode. episode and the funeral. I mean, this is such a huge chunk of the entire episode. How do you lay to rest the man, the monomyth, the legend that is Logan Roy, right? And even before then, we have Kendall being caught up in terms of how he's going to live through his dad's legacy. He sees the protests in the street after the quote unquote election in the previous episode. And when he's

talking to Roman, he sounds nervous about it and says he wants Mencken to tone it down and to you know at least to try to respect the day but then as soon as Raba starts taking it seriously that immediately pushes Ken in the other direction and suddenly he's not taking it seriously and she's taking everything way out of context the same things he was worried about just a second ago which is is a common trait of, I think, a lot of these characters and also just a lot of people in media and politics is that, you know, it all depends on who they last talked to. That's what's going to sway them most

because I don't think the kids have much in the way of core convictions, which is part of what I think is going on in terms of the semi-nostalgia, semi-hatred of Logan in this episode. It reminds me of how, like like the gangsters are treated in movies like Goodfellas and The Godfather where it's they don't shy away from how blunt and brutal and awful and frequently sexist and racist the activities of these men are but they have a distinct face and a distinct personality and they come from somewhere and there's something about that that feels lost when you get to Ken's generation. And they just seem completely unmoored from any actual beliefs

or actual goals or actual culture. And they're just kind of free floating and anxiety and dread. And so when Ken sees the protesters, he's freaked out by that. And then when Ken hears that Rava might be taking his kids away because of that exact problem in the city then suddenly it's nothing and he he you know his family created the tempest that rava is running away from when he tries to make her stay with family ties like you're going to take these kids away from their grandfather's funeral well it's because of the world your your grandfather helped shape and that you're continuing you know he can only think about it in terms of him that you know you don't fuck with me today yells or you're he hit pretext

he says you know whenever any of the characters just say one word because they're so angry like when um connor said uh what did he yell at the people who were working for him complacent during that one event you're fired pretext ken yells uh you're just doing it to hurt me he can't process the idea that this might not actually be about him at all because then he'd have to honestly reckon with the cost to his family what he's doing i think it's so funny when he says yeah i'm gonna lie down in front of your car i'm gonna do it you have to run me over and then immediately backs up i mean it's like there are moments in the show when ken would have been suicidal enough to do that but it's not right now he's a he's got a

taste of getting something out of it and it's um also funny when he what he's he's yelling at her about being about too online which Kendall you should never accuse anyone I remember bad tweet Ken you should not accuse anyone else of being too online also I think kind of a confession on the part of the writers and the showrunner that they are they are very clearly terminally online people themselves uh and I think it's also interesting how the siblings react when Ken tells them that robin the kids aren't coming like roman specifically agrees with ken that it's a bad decision he says that's dumb and shitty and shiv doesn't say that shiv says i'm sorry ken which i think she means it's you know it's hard on him and she feels for him but she you can tell

that she's like yeah if i if my baby bump was a real live kid right now, I might be leaving, too. Yeah, not only that, you can almost see on her face that she's like, man, if this wasn't our fucked up relationship with our dad's funeral today. She's like, if it wasn't today, I would almost say if only someone told you this was going to happen if you called the vote early on her face and she doesn't say it. if you called the vote early on her face and she doesn't say it. There's also something interesting in a deleted scene that surfaced through some of the script books, which I am working on buying promptly, as you and I have discussed off the record. They're very sexy. They have some stuff that just didn't quite make it to real where Rava and Shiv have kind of a relationship where they'll talk once in a while. And maybe they used to talk a lot more when things weren't as bad, but that they meet up a little bit after all this election nonsense starts, after Shiv is in the picture with Menken, and she kind of checks in on Shiv and says,

oh, yeah, I've been reading Twitter lately, and they're, you know, they're saying a lot of shit about you online. And Shiv's like, oh, I don't check that. So, interesting. I wonder if that was written, too, with that kind of context right in mind. Maybe Rava doom scrolls like we do. so interesting i wonder if that was written too with that kind of context right in my maybe rava doom scrolls like we do but uh i thought that relationship between them is pretty interesting you guys got to look at it online check it out i'm sure you can dig it up but interesting scene i love that tea kettle of violence just slowly bustling in the background of the protests and maybe the bubbling to the surface Roman was the pimple at the top

that popped or something, right? But I'm wondering. A beautiful image. Thank you. I thought that you needed that image of it. Just kind of the time. Vivid and striking. Vim and vigor.

There it is. Yeah, there's that vim candle. I wonder if Roman's the peak of that plot or if there's going to be more next episode. I'm interested to see if it keeps growing, if it comes to a bigger head. I don't know. I imagine there should be at least a little more, especially because there's something about how the presidential election is not the big vote to them, right? The big vote is the vote on Waystar. For Kendall, especially in Roman, the presidential

election was a game to them. The big time is this episode. The big time is them facing Waystar Royco and deciding the fate of the company. And it's in the middle of this that Shiv finally drops the bomb, that she's pregnant. And she's like, she just feels obligated, you can tell, because it's like, I'm going to tell mom, and then mom's going to call you, and then you're going to be mad I didn't tell you, so I kind of have to, but she doesn't want to,

and you can immediately see why and how they react. Roman, of course, says, is it mine? Naturally. Thank you, Tyrion. Thank you for contributing. And then even funnier, though, is how badly Ken wants to ask if it's Tom's and can't, so Shiv just finally has to go, yes, it's Tom's, for fuck's sake.

Now, that's a nice, nice uh you know you get the big laugh line from Roman but nice little subtle bit of acting for Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook as they both clearly know what they want to say but it's too awful to say out loud um a lot of good laugh lines from Roman kind of early on before he you know by necessity has to disintegrate performance wise as the episode goes on he also when Kendall's trying to be tough and keep the whole group together as they get out of the car, and Roman just says, yeah, you're just going to be strong, and thus emerge the winner of the funeral, which is just so funny and perfect,

because that's kind of what they're all trying to do, just like they did at the hospital when he seemed like he was dying at the beginning of the show. They're just trying to, you didn't, Shiv, say something of, like, Ken, stop trying to be the mayor of the hospital or some some line like that they're they're trying to win situations that can't be won and they look ridiculous when they do it i mean you know rome is unfortunately also trying to do that as we see with his little pump up raging bull boogie night speech to the mirror at the start of the episode

i'm the man i'm the dong i just expected mark walberg's big fake dick to come hanging out of his pants during that's roman wishes he had mark walberg's big fake Boogie Nights dick. I think all of Roman's problems might be solved if he had Mark Wahlberg's big fake Boogie Nights dick. Thoughts? Or his dad's love. I mean, these are equivalents. I love Roman at the front of the episode. He's being ridiculous. But I have to say, honestly, some of his lines at the end when he's being ridiculous but I have to say honestly some of his lines that at the end when he's you know traumatized and upset are also equally as funny and I really that's inappropriate agreed no you're totally right and I think it's intended to be good because I was sitting on the couch next to you like laughing like a psychopath while he's sobbing and saying things and we'll get to that as we get through the episode but I was sitting there next to you and I was looking over

and I'm like oh no he's not laughing am i am i a sociopath horror and comedy are basically the same thing as i always say uh and then we get uh speaking of cringe scenes that are wonderfully done we get jess uh quitting or attempting to schedule a quit later but then being forced to do it on the spot and a wonderful little scene that shows Kendall breaking down so many scenes of Kendall starting off reasonable and then just talking himself into being unreasonable as we see here with Jess where at first he goes yeah okay sure because she's talking about moving on up and like that you know the logical part of Ken's brain knows that's inevitable like she's not always going to want to work for you she's's young. Then he starts immediately thinking, why?

Oh, is this a judgment on me? Is this a sign that I'm doing something wrong with Mencken? Because Ken is just obviously externalizing his own discomfort, which we saw at the start of the episode, and projecting it onto other people. We saw that with Raba. And now we see it again with Jess. And it's so funny that, like,

he can't understand why she would want to quit the wonderful, wonderful job of working for Kendall Roy. When right before she quits, right before he sees the little meeting she put on his calendar, he was talking about taking Rava to court to get full custody of the kids. Which is exactly the kind of simultaneously evil and hopeless bullshit that defines Kendall at this point. So yeah, gee, Ken, why would she want to not do that job all day long? simultaneously evil and hopeless bullshit that defines kendall at this point so yeah gee ken why would she want to not do that job all day long why would she not want to set up that kind of ridiculousness who would not want to work for you and that that blind spot just just leads him over the top he just can't and this is going to lead directly into what how they react to ewan's eulogy they can't deal with their own dark side that's's, that's the, you know, if you have to

dig down to maybe the core, core communal problem with the Roy kids, it's that they really can't handle parts of themselves. So they just compartmentalize like hell. The devastating part that he could win his kids by dumping money on the situation, just like Logan would do. And that crux of Jess staying with him versus Rava also staying with him and that the money's never enough. You can't just keep a person and think feeding them cash is going to keep them happy. Unless they're Hugo.

Unless they're Hugo. Which is funny. That does work with Hugo at the end when Ken says the scraps are worth millions and Hugo just goes, woof, woof. That's what he wants everyone to do, but not everyone is going to be willing to do that. Yeah, Hugo and Tom fall into that spineless git category, don't they?

It works for them. You think about Jess and Rava, I mean, look at Connor and Willa. I know there's a lot of talk always about how awful it is that Connor is basically Schoenhornder and, you know, being trapped to his money, even though they kind of genuinely seem to at least care about each other more than Kendall ever cared for Jess. That has gone differently than i expected with willa because that's kind of where i thought the relate like if you look at how it's set up when they meet and they're in the compound like it literally like and she's like oh can i get a starbucks

like it looks like we're trapping this woman and that's the plot which may originally have been the plan because you know succession has changed paths writing wise a couple of times but it's it's it's evolved in an oddly sweet way where i still don't think they're being a hundred percent honest with each other and i think connor is lying to himself at least a little bit but there is genuine affection and it feels like a relationship of equals oddly enough and one that might end up lasting uh longer than any of the relationships the other ones have. Yeah.

Which is not what I would have expected at all in previous seasons. I know. It's funny because we used to talk about that. And I was very team, no, protect Willa. She's going to get to the end. Girl's going to get her bag. And I actually didn't expect this evolution either. And I love it.

And especially in light of Jess, right, who did everything for Kendall and never balked when she was asked to do something slightly unethical, even though she wanted to. And here she is trying to get out and he won't let her go. It's insane. And she tries to be so sensitive about it. So sensitive. She doesn't want to do it on the day,

you know, unlike a lot of the other assholes who are forcing their agendas in. And Kendall basically makes her come out with it. And then as the conversation ends, he says, yeah yeah thanks a lot for doing it today real nice like you didn't just stop her on the sidewalk and make her talk like as soon as jess says why don't we why don't we talk about it when we talk about it like you know what that means that's quitting there's nothing else that means so kendall you all you could have you could have said okay okay jess and then gone on with your funeral day you made her talk and then blamed her for it and it's so obvious that he's dealing with his own inadequacies and that

he fears she's right because you know she says that she's sorry she has to do it which is just you know that's just something everyone says when they quit that's just something you say but ken takes that literally and it's like well if you're sorry then you shouldn't do it and he thinks he's defeated her in the reddit debate when it's like you know you're talking about yourself if you're feeling so uneasy and sorry about menken which you were at the beginning of the episode maybe that means you shouldn't be doing it but he doesn't take his own advice and uh you know he just he just starts yelling you're being dumb everyone's everyone's being dumb which is also exactly what roman says at the end of the episode to and about the protesters which is just funny because that's just that that's just, that's what kids say when they're storming off the playground.

Everyone's being dumb and you get the little Charlie Brown, you know, cloud of smoke over your head. Yeah. They're stuck in the ages that they lost their everything at, you know, because of their parents. They're children in this episode, absolute children. And those implosions are so interesting because somehow Kendall makes out of pressure, out of coal, a diamond. and roman collapses inward like a diamond mine like there's no like they are opposites right

like they just go blue uh it's horrid and sad to see roman die in this episode they're going down a drain but they just think it's a champagne glass that's just that's just what they're doing and so we get to the funeral we get to the to the eulogies for Logan Roy, and we get this kind of a red herring kind of a tease with Connor, because Connor is basically the only important one that doesn't end up talking. But he offers this little eulogy he's written, like this pages and pages of eulogy he's written to Shiv, because, you know, I can still do it. I thought we were leaving it open. And, you know, I would love to read some of it, because apparently it's not just like, Shiv says, you know, this is incriminating. So it's not just that Connor is finally spilling the beans as he always threatened to.

But also she's like, it's hard to follow. Which she means in the sense that literally, like, I can't read what is this. And I love that Willis says it's formally inventive. Like it's the James Joyce of eulogies. Like Connor's done some sort of weird experimental Burroughs writing this eulogy and she was like is this poetry but also i mentioned it'd be hard to follow in the other sense that once connor dropped this bomb no one else would want to go up there but yeah poor connor he doesn't get to deliver his speech like his like his wonderful all-timer hall of fame funeral speech when it came to mo lester and i

love shiv of course is the political guard of the family as usual she's the one that has to step in and the one that can reason with connor right just like with the tax speech and everything else she's the one that has to step in and say to their big brother you're being unreasonable and canon rome find it very hard to shield the contempt they have for connor yeah very, because he's the real number one boy that they... That is a gender thing, I think, that they find it funny that he was basically disinherited, and Shiv is like, yeah, I kind of get that. Yeah, a little bit of empathy comes from some areas of the family, I guess, but not all.

If only functional, if only to get him to shut up. Someone's gotta. And we have, of connor's speech which could have been incriminating and cruel and caused the stock price to fall which they're all worried about for the big meeting tomorrow instead they have ewin's speech which leave them it leaves them going huh maybe connor's speech wouldn't have been that bad funny that his last big speech at a funeral was written then rewritten by willa to show no emotion and to not assign accountability but here it's open and honest about their father however formally inventive slam poetry of abuse that it turned out like this is you know it's his truth dude it was

his truth and shiv once more not escaping the silencing people accusations on their abuses, but instead you get Ewan's speech. Oh my god, Greg. I can't handle Greg in any episode anymore. He's grating sometimes, which sometimes it's like a good character to be grating. That's good for me, I think, to be feeling tension with the show, uh, because I like a lot of these characters either way. But Greg, I mean, I cringe through the whole scene when he tried to- he also tried to silence Ewan. Okay, Greg, taking the shiver out, sitting there, you know, and he just confirmed and enforced that Ewan was going to say everything. Maybe Ewan wasn't going to read his whole speech, you know, maybe he just wanted to say a snippet. But no, this was his first real and only real time to say goodbye and say the things he never got to say. And it

hurts that even Greg, his own grandson, like you're disrespecting, I'm sorry, but like no matter how you feel about your grandparents, you're supposed to somewhat respect them. And he's disrespecting his grandfather, sticking his femur deep into his own small intestine. I cringe into eternity. his femur deep into his own small intestine i cringe into eternity you try to take this from him you just follow roman of all people roman's words of no don't let even speak it'll ruin everything like dude this guy is next right like his funeral's next and no one's gonna be there it sounds like from how they treat him the elder the eleanor rigby of succession yeah and good on him right but let him have whatever he wants like you're already disinherited greg now you're like extra disinherited you could

have just shut your fucking mouth somehow you owe you in money now yeah and greenpeace and greenpeace exactly nice to see his mom again though uh we're getting some great really subtle integrated cameos from season one and two people. Nothing feels unnatural about it either. We got a couple really fun surprises this episode, including her. My favorite part of the episode was probably Ewan's eulogy. I love James Cromwell as an actor. Loved him since I was a kid in the Babe movies. Obviously, he's a little pricklier here, but this is such a great vulnerable scene for him

where he really, he lays it on a line in a way that basically really makes it impossible to refute and i could easily imagine a much more barnstorming political version of this speech of the kind he's given before that would just make an opening for an obvious just counter ideological comeback from the kids but that's not what he does and it really kind of devastates them especially how he starts by directly addressing greg trying to stop him what kind of people would silence a brother over their share price just kind of nakedly exposing not just how greedy the younger generation is, but how that greed has just overwhelmed everything else in their lives. It's the question of human connections and how they get corrupted and alienated by access to

this much power. I mean, you look at someone like Mattson, who genuinely seems like he does not care about another human being besides himself. And, you you know he might have always been that way but everything he has now has only made it worse especially with the fear of losing that power and according to you and that's what really happened to Logan he set his own heart on fire and you and yeah he doesn't bring up he doesn't bring up climate change he doesn't bring up racial inequality any of the specific kind of policy charges he has laid at logan's feet before although usually saying it to greg not logan directly instead he talks about it in more more emotional terms almost spiritual which fits the church setting logan he says he logan closed people's minds he fed this this dark flame in people's

hearts he spread meagerness and i think that's that is more powerful in this context not only because it's harder to refute I mean I love the faces of the kids in the front rows he says that because they want to be defiant but it's like no he was all of that to them and you know he wasn't racist to them and he didn't take their money away he didn't

destroy their pensions but the meagerness and the meanness and the solitude I mean shiv talks about that too and kendall even acknowledges it and roman is basically evidence of it he's a he's a and it's also powerful i think because ewan admits that it's also true of him that he's guilty of that that he he also is a meager man which is something we've seen throughout the series that he's a he's a he's a terminal grouch and he kind of takes people for granted like as horrible as greg is to him now like you know ewan waswan was not exactly nice to Greg in the early going there.

And the difference, though, as Ewan says, is that he's still trying. Like, he did try to help Greg a couple times, too. And at some point he said that it wasn't that Logan didn't have that in him. It's that Logan just stopped trying and let it wither on the vine. And he just, Logan just accepted himself as he was and foreclosed any possibility for growth. And that, Ewan is arguing, that's really Logan's sin in personal terms,

that he accepted his alienation from anyone and everyone. And we saw how miserable that made him, but also that he did love that about himself. And he thrived on it at some level, that he was happy to be a beast when kendall said you're a fucking beast and logan just smiled and nodded that was affirmation for him and that's why as ewan said he brought he brought the most terrible things which obviously includes atn and all his political corruption and and you know obscene wealth but also his kids he

brought some some terrible things there and the And the only real political beat in this whole speech comes when he describes them being hunted by U-boats, the German subs. So as a child, Logan was hunted by the fascists whose politics he's now aiding and abetting in the present day. But even then, that is more about this moment of intense intimacy between the brothers. That is why Ewan never stopped loving Logan. But it also means Ewan just knew Logan so well that I think Logan's corruption on a personal level hurt Ewan more than anyone. It's interesting. There are a couple of those bitter ironies there, right? Like how we learned the simplicity of what actually happened to Rose that Ewan thought—Ewan and Logan as children, right, or young adults, I should really say. They had to be men at a young

age is really what we learned, what we knew, but what we learned. And that Logan thought that he brought polio home to Rose. And that's what killed her polio is what killed her. So it's funny that now they have a network that thrives on anti vax propaganda. Again, like you just said that they were hunted by German subs, they have a network that thrives on anti-vax misinformation and now his kids are basically consulting with the nazi president that they put into power like welcome to your fucking hellish life that you brought yep he uh he just perpetuated it as you know when when ewan talks about rose the immediately cuts over the shiv the daughter of that generation and she's thinking about how you know logan blamed himself for that and maybe

that's why he had some intimacy with shiv but also maybe why he kept her at a distance and like i like what ewan says he doesn't say that that their aunt and uncle blamed logan what he says is that they did not disabuse him of the notion he was responsible. They didn't do what they should have done, which is say, no, absolutely not, you are not responsible. Which is what they should have told him even if he was, honestly. Because, like, it's not, you know, you're not in charge of what disease you bring along, and it obviously broke his heart.

But they kind of let that fester in him. And that's not why he became the way he did, but it's something else we didn't know. And it adds that in the same way that, you know, as soon as they bring up Rose in someone's backstory, the obvious comparison is to Citizen Kane with the Rosebud sled. And I think sometimes people will get the wrong lesson from that, where they act like Rosebud actually is the key to unlocking everything about who Citizen Kane was and if only they'd uncovered that they would understand him. But no, the journalist in Citizen Kane who's investigating him says towards the end, like,

it doesn't matter what Rosebud is because it's ridiculous to think one puzzle piece is just going to give you this ultimate, you know, psychological explanation of who one man is. And that's what Ewan says, Like, I can't judge my brother. That's not big enough. I'm not big enough for that. I can give you a couple instances. And that's all he does.

Yeah, it makes the following eulogies really emotional. That simplicity of Rose, that simplicity of their history, all in that eulogy. And like you said, the fact that it wasn't politicized. It was honest. It was complex. It was about the fact that it wasn't politicized it was honest it was complex it was about the brother that he once loved once knew and the brother that grew apart from him and the man that he became the boy that he loved and the man that he became and it's very heart-wrenching and it makes what follows right uh roman losing it and not being able to do the

speech because how do you follow that when your whole ideology is you love your daddy and he's perfect and nothing could hurt him and you've spent two seasons telling everyone he's invincible. How do you follow that when Ewan just told the truth that you also know is real? Right, and that he didn't

specifically his point was not just that Logan is evil, but his point was Logan was small and petty and he fed those things in other people. Like what he fed was not actually the grand vision Kendall is about to outline, but something very kind of grubby and pathetic and childish, as we were saying about the kids. And that's just, yeah, it gets too real too quickly for Roman. And a lot of that is just the physical fact of his father's death, which affects him more than the other kids, who I think are mostly caught up in the concept of dad being gone, as you can see in their speeches.

Like, it's literally like the bones and skin are going over to maggots. I think that's what, like, breaks down Roman here. He can't handle that. And it's interesting to consider you know what do you think if Roman had gone first like was this inevitable was Roman always going to break down as soon as he got up there or do you think that Ewan pushed him over the line and if Roman had gone first he might have made it through I kind of think that subconsciously he probably knew that he wouldn't be able to go if Ewan went first. That's probably why he tried to block it so hard and said no.

That's a good point. And it comes back to a lot of controlling the narrative, right? We know this phrase outside of succession. It's not a new phrase. The spin is important when it comes to politics and news and media. The narrative, the spin. And the kids consistently over the last season have talked about writing their dad's history now that he's gone.

Controlling the narrative. Hey, Mencken, I'm the narrative controller. No, Matson, I'm the narrative controller. Like, that's literally a whole episode of Succession. Wait, I have to throw in a couple. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, yeah. But that's literally it.

You gotta mention someone's taint at some point. Yeah, well, your fickle tainted taint isn't tainting today you know shakespeare thank you it was a roman roy quote that they cut no i'm just kidding it's in the scripts look it up buy the scripts like i'm gonna do yeah there's something reactive in the way that this goes down because he looks to roman kendall looks straight to roman and says you know like you're gonna go fix this right The narrative that Ewan just spun, because Ewan took the narrative by the reins, by the horns, and he said it straight from the get-go, which ruins their reaction time. But Roman can't bring himself to, so Kendall takes the stage.

He takes that narrative in front of, I mean, everyone. He diminishes Ewan's speech, providing just enough of the Waystar, Buzzword, corporate game to, you know, misdirect and make people forget about it. A little kindness on Logan, a little snark at the things Ewen said, and a little honesty. Very little though, like I'm talking 20 percent, not a lot of honesty here, this ain season three but just enough to make it go over and just like living plus right stick in their hearts and souls and as it goes on it becomes not even a speech about logan but it becomes a speech about capitalism and about how capitalism is awesome it did you know it builds things where nothing existed ken says it drives progress it drives innovation

and he's consistently tying it to the creative impulse, the way he describes Logan Roy. He was like an artist of money, the art of the deal, as some might call it. And it's interesting that he moves in this direction, even though, like we were just saying, Ewan's speech wasn't actually about that. But Kendall feels the need to defend it in those terms which reminds me of a of a there will be blood the movie where uh you know it's kind of about capitalism in the sense that it's about businessmen moving to the frontier of california and setting everything up but the main character is just very specifically motivated by like this this sour misery and greed and a

dislike of other people and a desire to get away from everything and he kind of ends up those kind of traits kind of end up embodying the larger system around him and it's the same deal here that ken is trying to put everything in terms of logan's fervent desire to to have a legacy to leave something behind it reminds me of boris lermontov in the movie the red shoes where he's talking to the dancer the protagonist and he asks her you know in a very kind of bored i'm half paying attention to you kind of way why do you want to dance and she asks him why do you want to live and like that's the moment he first starts really paying attention to her and he kind of like mumbles and stumbles over his words and later he says look i didn't have a good answer to your

question what do i want to live i want to create something i want to make something big out of something small he says and that's kind of how kendall is talking about logan and you can see you can see it working on the audience you see mattson getting into it even more so you see menken getting into it he even like says to kendall that was great afterwards shakes his hand because that is like you know like menken says in the episode he had a broad ideological sympathy with logan and that's what this is that even if they thought you know even if he and mattson thought thought that Logan was a dinosaur in terms of his personal attitude or his approach to the media, this kind of way to spin avarice and greed as a net positive that has always been the ideological core of capitalism, this is something they really believe in and they have in common with him. What's missing from Ken's speech is any context at all.

Like any examination of what it is Logan created and why. Like the closest Ken gets to specifics are, you know, ships, steel hulls. Yeah, that was Logan's main thing was ships. Like why aren't you talking about ATN, buddy, if you're so proud of what Logan Roy built? You know, what's the impact of everything he did? And that's what makes it such a great mirror image to you in speech kind of a perfect opposite of it because you know you and speech was so painful and so poignant because it was personal it was about the person he knew before he became you know the man the myth logan roy and ken really only knew

the persona as shiv is kind of getting going going to get into here he only knew the image and he swallowed it whole because otherwise he would be left with the reality that he once again admits that his father was the boar on the floor was a beast and I love the line he says that you know what made my father special

in spite of everything was he acted in spite of a thousand reasons not to act which is one of those dead-on Hamlet moments that Kendall gets sometimes because that's what all of Hamlet is about is Hamlet giving himself reasons not to do a thing he's supposed to do. And Kendall, he just can't, again, like I was saying earlier, Kendall cannot

engage in basically critical thought at all, or just really any self-examination the way Ewan has done. Like we gave Ewan authenticity and credibility as he also turned it back on himself. And I just compare this to like another ken barnstormer speech when he was taking on gill in congress on behalf of his dad and gill appropriately for that setting kind of made it easy on kendall because he really was purely talking about ideology he's saying like i don't have anything against you logan roy i'm talking about what you're doing to america and ken said no america he's guys like my dad bald eagles and flags and ewan kind of disarmed the kids by not going down that route at all. And just by looking at them and saying, you do realize that your father was just like, there was something wrong with him, right? Something missing? And yeah, they know that. And so that messes them up entirely. There are bits of Ken's speech that are honest, like I said, the 20%, those small bits.

But the rest is smoke and mirrors from him, which is exactly what Logan always gave. Ewan's estimation of his brother and the man and the boy he knew and loved and hated was honest, compelling, and full of life. Logan, Logan's, oh God. Kendall's about Logan was reactive and hollow. He truly becomes Logan reborn though, in this episode and in that speech, right? From hiring Colin while gaslighting him for going to a grief guy, although he is the best grief guy. Hugo in his pocket, gaslighting him being like, well, you're going to be a little bitch, but you're going to be a rich little bitch. And of course, Roman, right? When he really embodies Logan the most,

the phrase they learn from him the best, when his father told him he fucked it. When Keonteshire, when Roman tells him he fucked it. And here, Kendall, in a raw moment at the end of the episode, tells Roman, you fucked it with Jared. It's okay, but you fucked it. Uh, you know, Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss, the Kendall Roy story really just keeps rolling on. And at some point, like Ewan says, right, and this is the point for Kendall, this is the pivotal moment for Kendall where he embodies Logan from Ewan's speech the most. At some point he quits trying. And it was a terrible shame. For Kendall, that day starts today. There was pain in that speech, hidden in those margins, as well as power. A push for it, a hunger for it, a craving for that validation. And

a lot of people have pulled out some great parallels from season 3, Keonteshire, again, when he and Logan share that kind of last supper, last war supper moment. Kendall says, I don't want to be like you. I want to be good. But here he is. He's given up on good because good doesn't pay you. It doesn't keep ATN. It doesn't keep legacy. It also brought for me to mind, though, another speech going back to what you were saying with Gil, right? I thought that speech at the very end where, of course, the final season two speech, where Ken gives his huge speech against Logan on TV. And some of the clips that I thought stood out a lot against his speech were, the truth is my father is a malignant presence, a course, he says,

So, of course, in this episode, some of those things do have reflections in his speech, but they've been minimized. They've been glossed over. Like I've said it and it's true what I said, what my uncle said. Yeah, my father was, um, a brute. He was, he was tough. And of course, yes, he had a terrible force to him and a fierce ambition that could push you to the side, but it was only that human thing, the will to be, to be seen, and to do, and now people might want to tend and prune the memory of him to denigrate that force, that magnificent, awful force of him, but my god, I hope it's in me. Chilling. I mean, his eulogy hand in hand with Ewan's was chilling. And it was like,

this is what Ewan just warned us all about. I think the saddest reality of the funeral, and not surprising, right? This isn't surprising. This is just an observation. But the saddest part about this funeral for me and Kendall's eulogy is that simply put, Logan has won. Kendall didn't end Logan's reign like he said he would that day. In fact, Kendall's extending his reign. He's declaring Logan and Logan's way was right, whether you agreed with him or not. He stands untrembling on the podium and speaks confidently in the man that his father was, reassuring them all of where he and his family stands on the matter. But the truth behind Logan,

he was comfortable in any room he was in, right at the expense of others. He could create civilizations from mud, imbibe them with lifeblood. That's how he was able to do those things. But he wasn't. He was not just clever, which he was, but he was able to accomplish these things at that cost of thousands of backs, minds, bodies. The truth is that while Kendall screams about Logan making steel holes, I mean, how many steel holes did people get tossed off of dead on his cruises? His father was a narcissist with a deep need for love, no empathy, and a man that was made of grandiose. He was self-serving. He hid his own fragility, as Ewan reveals. He was a man without the power of apology. He was unable to accept doing anything wrong, any accountability. As you and I have talked about, Philip Larkin said,

right, they fuck you up, your mom and dad. They may not to but they do they fill you with the faults they had and add some extra just for you well said really really well said across the board and the funny thing for me about even even the compliments kendall comes up with are so overblown or just wrong like yeah no america that was not a civilization built from mud it was a civilization built from blood there were people here first. England didn't just come over and find a little swamp all to themselves. How convenient. And Logan was not comfortable in every room he walked into.

One of the very first scenes of the show was Logan wandering around his own house and not recognizing anybody or anything. What Logan did was force everyone else to be less comfortable than him. So he was relatively the most comfortable person in the room because everyone else was shitting their pants in terror. And that's not the same thing as being able to find a genuine comfort within yourself, for yourself. Logan, I think, ultimately had bravado more than the kind of quiet self-confidence that powers Ewan at his best moments. Ewan can also be, of course, very petty and overblown and arrogant. But again, I think one of the reasons Ewan's speech is so devastating is how quiet and confident it is and how much he does not care if you believe him or agree with him or not.

Yeah. And can need you to agree with him and believe him. Because how else will he know that he's valid to exist, especially now that his dad's gone? Yeah. Something that makes makes succession all the more Shakespearean, to your points, is that, you know, in academia, when a child has a narcissistic parent who zaps the strength and emotional life and well-being out of you when you carry that emotional weight, it's called emotional incest. So just to throw it a little Shakespearean on us, Shiv, Kendall, Roman, they have two narcissistic parents. This is major emotional incest. And

Connor, of course, has done this his whole life too. Children don't know how to look after their own emotions, let alone their parents. And it's detrimental that from a young age they were expected to beware, be wary, and be ready for both of their parents' emotions and juggle those expectations. And there are separate sides to parent roles, right? Where a mother's side sometimes can take a little more of the emotional welfare, a narcissistic father's role can be too aggressive, crossing boundaries to prove that he can just because, showing up uninvited to events, like when Logan came to Shiv's wedding when they were fighting, because he can, focusing on your flaws, failing intentionally, right, telling you you're doing that,

making you fail intentionally, because then you crave the praise. You crave the world that's been created that you live in where you could never measure up to their ideals or learn to reject, you know, the bad. You accept every good thing that comes into your life. The children learn to be accountable for the emotions their parents refuse to be held accountable for. And a child shouldn't need to win or earn a parent's love. It should be unconditional, especially at the loss to their siblings' lifestyle and safety. The need to belong to that parent to please them can become kind of this lifelong side quest, making it so you can never get over anything else, which we see in all of these kids. They're going to be chasing a ghost's approval all the way to the gates of hell.

For Kendall to spin this speech, just like the Living Plus meeting for the shareholders, manipulating the crowd with his father's face and love for him. But now he almost feels like he has to defend his father from the truth that Ewan gives. It's terrible, right, that Logan won. Because in the end, Kendall will lose his children, his ex that did care for him and that he did care for and that tried so desperately to love him no matter how unlovable he declared he was he'll lose his siblings he'll lose his soul he'll be left with hugo and colin or their kids maybe at the end of his life he'll you know be with countless slime bags and soulless rat fuckers and many hanger honors and that's when he'll go not unlike how

logan died don't let this be the day that defines you, Logan tells him, when the waiter dies because of Kendall's actions and his lack of responsibility. And because there was a deer and the waiter swerved at it, right? Or grabbed his wheel, I mean. Made him swerve at it. All the deer's fault. The deer, too. The deer maybe was a bad thing.

I'm not saying you should do ketamine and drink and weed and drive, but I'm just, anyways. We need the whole extra season about the deer's guilt and the deer starts drinking and writing an essay. His deer family is worried. Logan saved him, quote unquote, from being taken down for the waiter. The same Logan who hid behind his guilt all of his life at thinking that he was the one that killed his sister. He thought Kendall's mistake would destroy everything, not just Kendall, but everything Logan worked for. The fantasy world he built so that he never had to digest his sister's death and the abuse he suffered as a kid. His brother's abuses at the hands of their uncle, right? Their hardships that have been hinted at. Everything he built that he hoped erased those things or ratified them just put him into a standing in society so he could forget and move on.

Kendall has chosen not only to let that day but every day that he spent fighting his love and his hatred for his father for Logan he's let every one of those days define him. He's just lost his lifelong battle. That day that the waiter died should one of those days define him. He's just lost his lifelong battle. That day that the waiter died should have defined something bigger for him. His season two finale speech should have meant something bigger for him. But it's not that kind of story. And in the end, Logan Roy and everything he would and would not stand for won. Even better. You're on a roll. Everyone, everyone give it up for Chloe. Thank you. Give me the Emmy.

I mean, that's, you know, as messy as season three was, in retrospect, season three is definitely easily the weakest season of Succession. And, you know, part due to circumstances out of their control. But one thing I really liked about it was the through line of just watching Ken slowly collapse from his righteous stance at the end of season two. Because I think that sums up the problem with with all three of them is that they really you know they want to do good or they want to do better but they really don't actually have any concept of what that would be or what that would even look like and so of course they come back to Logan because Logan as everyone is trying to say in their different ways whatever you want to say about Logan Logan was real and Logan was a thing and Logan was his exact self. That self was horrible,

but it's an identity that the other ones can, the other characters can wear like a mask if they so choose. And Kendall is the one who, you know, made the most direct declaration of war against it. And so Kendall is the one who will ultimately come back. Yeah. And wear it the most as we see,

I think increasingly through the end of the episode. I mean, that identity provides you safety and passage in this world so it means you don't have to question yourself that's what being logan roy meant is never having to say you're sorry what did he tell marcia i just can't eat shit and you know where you learned that great phrase you know what that really means thug from weeds when you turn says thug means never having to say you're sorry everyone should be watching weeds of course i was thinking of the the phrase of love means never having to say you're sorry which is some bullshit too these are all lies yeah you always have to say you're sorry say what you will but

logan roy was a gangster i mean that's certainly what kendall thought l to the r to the i t at least no one did that. Yeah. That was, if we'd seen Connor's speech, that was actually all Connor's speech was when Shiv went up. Were you like cringing? Was your butt puckering?

Were you like, Oh no, what's about to happen? Because I was a little, I was like, Shiv, don't fuck it too. Like,

come on. What? I think I knew after Roman, she wouldn't fuck it entirely, but yeah, Shiv's speech was, it was, it was interesting in terms of you can see her calculating mind at work, like editing the other speeches. It was raw.

Yeah, you could see that she went up. And I have to say, I did this at my grandma's funeral. I spoke at her wake, basically. And I didn't know I was going to. I just did. I decided to. and of course i like cried half like a second into it it was very hard so i was roman i have to give him the empathy card today because ben there it's not easy it's not easy i don't know how she held it together

in the speech i was expecting her to lose it too because of that uh it's projecting everyone but her speech is definitely reactionary you mentioned you sorry her speech is definitely reactionary. You mentioned you... Sorry. Okay. Her speech is definitely reactionary. You mentioned, you know, you can see her calculating during Kendall's speech. And there is.

You can see, like, the math meme going across her face. Like, some of this doesn't add up, Ken. Like, you gave a speech on live TV saying he was a sexist, horrible prick. Some of this isn't adding up. You know he's not great. And she kind of goes up to set the record straighter. Like, it's not even like straight. It's just like, oh, let me move it 45 degrees. Let me just move it over. It's almost a rebuttal, though. You're forgetting a couple things. And that eyebrow she makes about it rocks. And what

we hear from Roman in the front of the episode, you kind of realize each sibling all of a sudden is realizing we are not all on the same page oh interesting about how we feel about our father at least not in public very interesting she's like my acceptance of my childhood and life is now much different than Kendall's huh some great master class lines like pay your fucking writers, right? Gotta put that out there because again, we're not going to get TV this prestige for a bit. And not with lines like, when he let you in, when the sun shone, or if you're Australian, Sean, when the sun shone, it was warm in the light. I mean, that was how many times have we seen those kids thinking they're number one boy thinking they're the heir? Like how happy they are Shiv when she was secretly her dad's heir

was the happiest we've seen her in the whole series. She had something to work towards and live towards and felt validated. And it's the same language he used. Remember this slant of light? Yeah, remember this slant of light and of course he was hard on women he couldn't fit a whole woman in his head ugh it was so real because why else would he have fucking four exes sitting in the front row together during his funeral which you gotta

admit it's pretty it's pretty good it is interesting that Shiv is kind of landing in between the tones of the previous speeches cause that's that's centrist chivalry for you. Always trying to aim for the exact squishy ideological middle. That she's acknowledging both kind of you and Ann Kendall and kind of trying to reconcile the two, which she can't fully do, except in her, I liked her last line when she says that my father was a whole world.

Which is a good way of thinking about it. That he was, he encompassed everything that they're saying here, that no one, I think Kendall is completely full of shit, but I don't think he's lying, I think he thinks he's telling the truth, and that they're all describing the Logan Roy they knew, even though they're contradicting each other, and she says that, yeah, that makes sense, because they had different experiences of him, as you said. And for her, it's filtered through gender because she saw that he treated women differently. And, you know, someone like Roman would probably have to rejoin her. Oh, he was hard on men too. He hit me. He was awful to me.

But there was a sense of inside and outside and a certain price you have to pay and a legitimacy you can possess or not. And, you know, Logan himself said that to Shiv, that there's more to live up to because you're a woman. And he, you know, said, I didn't make the world. But, you know, who does if not you?

If you can't, you know, take a stand, who can? And that had an impact on her and that colored how she felt about him and she saw that reflected in how he treated other women too. And she't even she doesn't put it she doesn't frame his misogyny in terms of she doesn't even frame it in terms of hatred or disrespect although i think those things were there too she frames it in terms of of incomprehension which i think is true of a lot of men in the real world too is that they just they don't get most women they meet and eventually, like Ewan said, they stop trying.

And she said that he couldn't, yeah, couldn't fit a whole woman in his head, which is a great, it makes me think of Zeus and Athena, of Athena coming full-born out of Zeus' head, which is probably how she thought of herself and Logan at certain points. But yeah, that's a great way of putting it, that Logan was about control, you know, and not over every inch of his empire, and women were, like Asha says about Stannis, women just seemed like another species.

Clearly, you look at that front row, and there's a great camera pan to Jerry and Carolina, actually, while she says that, because think of what... Sure, as well they know, yeah. Think of everything they've suffered, Jerry, Hell especially. Literally every woman at that funeral, probably, that's had an interaction with him, had this experience with him. Jerry is more critical of Logan in the little conversation she has with the old guard than Carl. Carl says, I liked him.

And Jerry says, yeah, that's Stockholm Syndrome. Which is, yeah, the men can... It's not like Logan was nice to them either but they could delude themselves about him it was easier to delude themselves about him if you're a man they all had the promise of winning it's easier to ignore it's basically I guess how I would put it

because there's a prize at the end of the rainbow for you if you are the one that's the most abused and it's gonna be abstract if it's not you yeah love that Sally Ann was there we hear about her back in season two, when he starts his little affair with Raya, it's implied that his affair with things,

his affair with her left things pretty messy at Waystar. And I love that she's played by his real life wife, Nicole Ansari, Nicole Ansari Cox. That's exceptional. What a fun Easter egg. I'm like, I imagine how that went. Like, ah, we got to get your wife here for this one. That's exceptional. What a fun Easter egg. I imagine how that went.

Like, oh, we gotta get your wife here for this one. That'd be cool. Having his wife there was actually a really cool thing. I just thought it was a great plot. It's not something I expected, right? And I didn't expect Caroline to be involved in gathering them there. It's actually not like,

I'm not saying it's super feminist to have all of your exes at your right wing media conglomerate ex-husband fling bf whatever holding hands with all each other fair point like feminist but it's like to see women be fucking seen is is cool right all right that's cool that they existed there was something so powerful in you know caroline dragging carry over which i was so excited to see Carrie you know I've become kind of a Carrie fan uh I just I feel for her because you see these other women that obviously

went through exactly the same thing and then it's like and we make fun of her we saw him do this to all these other women he put Connor's mom in a fucking you know situation in a mental rehabilitation place and just left her there to rot like he's not a great man when it comes to women i like that carrie unlike the other because i think sometimes the like the the uber hyper competent media woman characters in the show like this can become kind of one note and predictable i like that she's vulnerable and you know kind of emotionally messy like that makes her very different from someone like carolina who car't, like, really have a personality. Because she's just business media woman.

Yeah. I mean, Marsha holding Carrie's hand, right, after she sits down to kind of just say, it's okay. It's all water under the bridge, and I'm sorry I emotionally tormented you for a season. Even though you shouldn't have fucked my husband. But it's okay. You know, like, that's a great forgiving moment. And they don't, they all don't have to be alone and isolated in his manipulative, abusive nature anymore.

He can't hurt them now. Like he's gone. They are actually really more powerful together in that row than they are separated, hating one another. Even in what Marsha says to the kids later, right? The simplicity in that he broke my heart and he broke yours too. The pain of the man, right? And that it hurts and it hurts us all in turn.

It's great to see that all these women, you know, a manipulator and abuser can act that way at all ages and all of them can accept, you know, like, hey, you're the new one, come on in. This was the pattern. Yeah, I love when Caroline said, this is my Sally. This is Sally Ann. She was my Carrie, so to speak.

Which is wonderful because it's both. That's true to, I think, Caroline's character because it's the most kind of generous and sweet she's been. But she's still kind of being impish. She's still kind of being a stone cold bitch, which is just pure her. I mean, that's like a moment like that where you can see like why her kids could have nice moments with her. Even though overall, I think she kind of let them down as a mom but like you know there are moments like that when you can see generosity poke through and this is unfortunately this is what the kids can't do really ultimately is they can't heal in each other's presence because i think they kind

of make each other worse unfortunately i was interested in how caroline uh she can't really give them emotional comfort right like Marsha what she says to Shiv is more emotionally comforting than what Caroline did that's true Caroline is yeah you get the sense she's kind of afraid of her own kids or just too guilty to look them in the eye

definitely too guilty and her moments are great though in this episode she doesn't say much but her actions say a lot like when she clocks Shiv's pregnancy right away. That might be the funniest moment in the episode, that it takes her zero time at all. Yeah, I'm sitting there like, it's the night that you told her not to, lol. I, you know, obviously it's, you know, you're just projecting what a fictional character is thinking. But I could imagine Caroline thinking, was it, dear, was it really that night?

I imagine she was thinking it, honestly, because it's a very shiv thing to do, get your hubby's spermo in your fucking spiz, but I don't know. Just to prove your mother wrong. Yeah. See, mom? Get knocked up.

I don't know. They just needed Rhea and, like, Connor's mom, and they would have been on their way to do their own rendition of Six, the musical. I would pay to see that. I don't know. They just needed Rhea and like Connor's mom and they would have been on their way to do their own rendition of Six, the musical. I would pay to see that. That would be beautiful. So this all kind of starts to get towards, right, the politics again of it all.

This becomes a political funeral. That second half of Kendall's speech stops being about Logan and starts being about Menken and Mattson. One of you suck my cock. Waystar. Go JoJoJo. Is no one else saying that? Because every time I think about it, I think about Mojo JoJo from Powerpuff Girls. And I go, go JoJoJo in my head.

Just got to put that out there. Now, Powerpuff Girls, they had a rogues gallery. Good villains on that show. That's not relevant. I'm just saying. No, Fuzzy Lumpkin, like, oh my God, him. They, but him. They, exactly. Waystar, GoJo, oh my God, him. They. But him. They, exactly.

Waystar, Gojo, Menken presidency, lots of politics. Shiv and Kendall end up the sellouts of the episode, right? Like, as soon as they get out of that funeral and get to the after, to the wake, holy shit, they take off their cute little clothes and go, we're here to do fucking business with Nazis. Kenny won his ghost dad's eternal haunting approval so now shiv is seeking validation throwing her eggshell thin values right out the fucking window in an effort to win sub note she will not win arrested development voiceover she didn't she didn't

her pushing mattson to release his numbers all day was interesting and i'm glad it went over safely but part of me was waiting for it not to, because I'm like, is it ever a good day for it to come out that you're lying about your fucking numbers? Only less bad. Yeah, and I'm glad it gets softened for them all, because that's the least of their fucking problems,

I'm sure, next episode. But, hmm. Matson had a couple of good digs this episode, even though, of course, it wasn't really focused on him as some previous episodes have been. I like how, I like that he points out the fragility of American democracy, pointing out, hey, you weren't, you know, really letting black people vote into the 60s. So how mature a democracy can you really say you are? And I like how much that gets Shiv's back up, because, again, Shiv is the respectable liberal centrist,

wants to believe that the American experiment in democracy is righteous and good and can only possibly improve and the long arc of history bends towards justice and anything we do along the way like elective fascists is really just a deviation on that path and she does not like it pointed out to her that no that's not really the story of your country and you're kind of lying to yourself she hates that and it's also I also loved Matson pointing out the irony that that Mencken is against him for being a foreigner, an outsider owning the American company, even though like if you think of the kind of foreigner a Nazi would like, you'd think, you know, handsome, blonde, tall, white, Swede. He's got those perfect genes. But that is also one of those situations where like maybe even Nazi isn't the most accurate

term for someone like Mencken. Just call him an American fascist because he's not really interested in, you know, Hitler's specific Aryan ubermensch ideas. He's anti-immigration is functionally what Mencken is more than anything, even if the immigrant is, you know, the kind of rich white CEO that guys like Mencken might, under other circumstances, be okay with. I will say he seemed a lot more open to him i'm like someone's gonna make a deal and shut someone out and he seemed more open to madsen by the end well with an american ceo i think he'd be okay with it like they were saying although it was also funny when when madsen uh opened the conversation with velkommen it's like maybe maybe you don't want to open with the nativist with another language and she could see his face like say hello speak english this guy hates

everything that's not english like men can say they're people i don't want in the tent yeah there's even that line where he uh mankin says to shiv kinder kush kirsch which is translated to children kitchen church used to describe a woman's role in the german empire so he kind of playfully uses it the l lingo, but that kind of stood out to me. I was like, well, there he is. There he is being himself, which she, she navigated that. I was kind of surprised at how well, I mean, it's very easy to, you know, pick up the president and get him away from Greg. My God, Greg, you've blinded the president. And then there's Tom. Remember Tom? He's still on the show. Ticking Tom bomb, he stole in the show ticking tom bomb right he is

a ticking tom bomb that outline about the uh the timeline that was detailed the timeline of who said what when who the fuck leaked that jess jess maybe uh maybe darwin did they talk about him resigning in this episode i think it's so funny that tom is just pissed about how little trouble he's in like no one's paying attention to me no one's pinning it all on me even though it's so funny that Tom is just pissed about how little trouble he's in. Like, no one's paying attention to me. No one's pinning it all on me, even though it was all my doing. Will no one give me credit for the horrible thing I did? Like, he's not even getting attention from Mencken for basically handing him the presidency. I just think that's hysterical that Tom wishes he was in much deeper shit than he actually is in.

Interesting, because I'm like, you would maybe want to avoid shit right now, but I get it. But it's a tension. Just like Roman wants to be hit, Tom wants to be in trouble. And we see that echo back when he actually does show up at the end of the episode, at the after party, quote unquote, the wake. And I got to say, Shiv Tom back on. Tom Shiv, it's back on. I mean, it's so back on.

You know, they have it out a little in a quieter manner of like, hey, I'm sorry. Real tired. Shouldn't have responded that way about your baby drop. What's actually going on with that baby again? Kind of a little catch up. And at the end. Did Tom apologize? I don't remember that.

He did apologize. He says, I'm sorry. And then he goes into how he's tired and how he wanted to be at the funeral. I think he's more apologizing for the funeral. Right. Yeah. So he's to be at the funeral. I think he's more apologizing for the funeral. Right. Yeah. So he's apologizing for the funeral, but he seems to almost be saying sorry for all of it. Right. There's a little vulnerability, which to go to Shiv's dress real quick. It's dress watch. I know you guys really want to hear about the dress watch. She has very Cersei dress and Margaery

dress on for those that watch Game of Thrones with the neckline, right? Cersei has that great dress that kind of goes up with a high neckline. And Margaery has that insane Alexander McQueen copy piece with that neckline that goes all the way up kind of like a shield protecting her. But you see that ships half and half, right? She has that up kind of protecting her that neck piece, but also her chest is once more fucking bare booby watch, I guess we really should call it but it's out there. It's vulnerable. She's vulnerable, but she's not. She's trying to protect herself from those around her, but trying to keep an open heart. And Tom and Shiv have a little moment of that. Like, they don't quite get vulnerable, but she says, why don't you go back

to our apartment and you can sleep there for a while because you're tired? And he implies, you know, well, good, because the hotel really sucks because everybody knows and hates me there everyone sees me and they're like you're that asshole that ruined democracy it's so back on emmet we shall see we shall see uh in the tomb that was a great little moment yeah they were we learned the siblings have been too busy trying to kill dad for several seasons that, you know, it turns out they don't actually know their dad at all, especially not in his final days as we know. And Connor is like, oh, you guys, you didn't know about all this? So most of them, with the exception of Kendall, decides that this, everything the light touches will be theirs

inside this tomb, the eternal suffering suffering life with dad etc you know the house of atrius can tear itself apart forever and ever and ever in these marbled walls for generations to come tiv sophie iverson we'll see you soon you know i love that this is kind of a recurring point for connor that no matter how much his dad hurt him he was always still kind of in contact even via text right you have to set some sort of boundaries with narcissistic parents that he at least exchanged picture texts with his dad maybe he didn't see him all the time but his dad sent him pictures here's what i'm doing here's this it was uh it was kind of sad right that connor was the only one that really knew him as he went and yeah i mean for connor he was dad before he was silence you know as just should have

said him storming out of the office connor knew logan before logan was a persona and i think that's in part why connor was never in line to be in charge of anything because i think logan knew that connor was i mean he was still in awe of dad but he knew connor i think he felt more vulnerable around connor in a way he didn't like but also in a way that he sometimes did like you know in a normal dad relationship uh just just chatting back and forth he had that in a way that it was always just so um it was always so heightened and the stakes were so intense with the other siblings that you know that kind of normal conversation was just never in the works that's such a great point because it's like when he's telling shiv like i can yell i can you know make a storm about

what a racist asshole prick sexist guy our dad was if you don't give me a job because i've been there i've been playing with my blocks in the back of the room the whole time yeah and like his uh expose slam poetry he was gonna do you know he knew and there's this horrible sad but bittersweet moment where shiv asks carl and frank how bad really was he and clearly she she doesn't want the real answer but she does but she doesn't because she knows the real answer i mean kendall told them last season when they all got together at the apartment you know he was bad even though now he's worshiping him uh you know frank tries for a moment he almost is going to tell the truth but it's kinder it's kinder to

let her live with this lie of the dead man the memory of him instead it reminds me of when uh barriston reveals himself to daenerys in the in the Swords, and he says to her, look, is there anything you'd like to know about your dad? Like, I was Kingsguard, you know, I had to keep a secret while he's alive, but he's dead, they're your secrets now. And she starts to ask, and he starts to tell her the truth, and then she cuts him off, like,

do I really want to hear this now? And he's like, yeah, maybe not. And that's basically what happens here, too, that she just can't bear it, I think, like we were saying, in part because that's her only foundation and without that they don't have anything to cling to and i love that frank specifically says he was a a salty dog but a good egg just these these meaningless old man old timey phrases that basically exist to smooth over like the really kind of brutal force that was logan in a room you know salty dog, we'll go with that.

It's like you said about Roman, just Roman being Roman. It's a, a language you use to excuse yourself. And she, and she exactly. And she, well,

yeah. And she sees right through it. And then we, you know, we get to, to Rome's own version of, of self-harm to end, to end the episode when he,

he flees the, the after party and goes, goes to find the protesters, goes to get himself beaten up. Because that's, you know, what he took from Logan is what he ended up associating with love and associating with physical connection

was that pain. He needs someone to hit him to feel alive. And I think he also needs that just because Roman is so detached from the world. You know, nothing happens, as he said in the previous episode, that this is his only way of making it feel real and making it feel like something actually matters and has

happened. And that's set up at the start of the episode when both he and Shiv are listening to the news about the protesters. And now he's out there with them, out there running against the current. Yeah, that's a great opening little scene with him where he has to he has to tell himself he's the man and you know but you know logan we never saw logan at that younger age when he was just starting out when he was married to connor's mom he probably also had to tell himself that in the mirror a few times so when roman says don't i remind you just a little bit of him like yeah you do in a you know i'm you writ small kind of way you know a more a more stunted and less powerful and confident version and you know romans rehearsing the speech he never gives of course so but we do in the same way that we see kendall uh rehearsing for honesty but never actually does it uh we the one kind of important

line we do hear roman speech is he's talking about how his father's death was announced on all his networks and all the information communication networks he built across the world and that you can see him smiling it's a powerful moment but then you think about it for a second it's like so so all of that atn and all of that is just his tomb too that it ultimately only existed so he he could announce his own death to the world that's all that microphone was for him at the end just make himself matter just a way to let people know a way to be valid as a person and i mean roman this episode was all that jazz he was literally from the start of it showtime hits his cheeks and then he dies that's who he was he it's a spectrum of feel nothing versus feel anything for Roman. And you can't really pinpoint exactly why

and how. He's never been able to from women from Tabitha to his dad to every day with his siblings. It's devastating. Couple of miscellaneous favorite moments gotta pop them out there. Again, some inappropriate laughter. When Roman is being held by Shiv and Kendall and he's like, is he in there? And they're like, like yeah like he better be or we've been we've been ripped off i guess after three days they should have checked right and then roman says well can we get him out it's amazing because you know he means like you know just move the coffin out of the church but i'm thinking like out of the with like a shoehorn we're just gonna get him out of the coffin like tear him out of the car i think he wanted him out of the church but i'm thinking like out of the like with like a shoehorn we're just gonna get him out of the coffin like tear him out of the car i think he wanted him out of the coffin

like get him out of there like he's suffocating like he can't breathe it reminds me of the scenes after the bear hug right when like sandy and that stewie and them are all in the room and he's watching through the big glass door windows and they're like is he watching us and they're like yeah and she's like well can we get him out of here? Like, can we write it in the minutes that he's watching us? It's similar because again, his watchful eye over his empire never ends, even in the afterlife.

I also love pasta pussy privacy making its comeback. That was one of my favorite lines from season three, as you know, because I tell you these things, you guys don't know, but congrats you all. You're hearing it here first but i love that shiv almost when he says what his policy is to mankin shiv's like okay let me translate this in a professional way and she's like uh anarcho-capitalist parmigiana you tried shiv how's that degree working for you exactly that's my favorite favorite favorite meal at Olive Garden. Bread sticks, too.

Bread sticks, too. All right. Final thoughts before the big finish, Emmett. Before next week, what's coming? I think there's a lot of good choices for who the American CEO ends up being. That's pretty clear the direction they're taking. That's how Mattson and Mencken are going to be cutting a deal for an American CEO.o and i think like you were saying it's pretty clearly not going to be shiv i think kendall seems like the choice being set up strongly here in this episode he's certainly making a play for it and i i agree with you know people including us who

said that you know the ending for kendall could be getting everything he wants and feeling empty about it. He's definitely being set up to lose his family in this episode. Tom, I guess, is also a possibility still. I thought Tom might be in serious trouble over the election, but the couple scenes we get with him in this episode doesn't make it look like that's the case. So maybe that's not what's going to happen. Maybe it ends up being Tom and the family is cut out of it completely.

I think that's also a possibility. What do you think? I don't think it's going to be Tom, though. That would be funny as a reaction to Shiv, like because Matson just wants to play with her for fun. Like I made your husband it. But I've been cooking something. I've been cooking. You've been letting me cook.

So here's what I got. I think Matson makes Gregreg or ken the american ceo uh and fuck shiv like that's clear in the car in the limo in what sense in the car in the listen that's a different story in the car in the limo when he's on the phone with her he's almost looking off like in the limo like in the, he's almost looking off, like in the limo, like in the car. He's not looking dead on at the camera. It's almost like he keeps looking at someone. Yeah, I was expecting it to cut to somebody, but they kept that a secret. Yeah, so that's why it makes me think Greg. That is why I'm like, maybe it's Greg, because he's been getting really close. And Madsen might think

that's a great connection, right? Greg helped fuck the election. But I do think Waystar fucks, eats, and buys Gojo for dinner. I think Kendall fucks Shiv no matter what. Whether he gets fucked or not, I think Kendall will deeply ruin her life and make it so she can never get back in the business because she betrayed him. And that's how you pay betrayals, whether you're in the family or not. It's for her own good, right? That's what he'll say to himself. It's for her own good, so she learns. I think Shiv ends up repressed. Back to her baby, whatever job she ends up getting. Loveless, somewhat marriage. Roman ends up probably subservient to Kendall, taking his scraps, and Kendall ends up the number one boy for eternity. Number one. Number one. Exactly exactly what he wanted and is it going

to fill all those holes no it's not and i think that's the end right like shiv versus ken and i think it's going to be hostile hostile hostile yeah i love that being the fight the outsider and the insider both of whom had various points both shiv and ken have thought of themselves as the knight in shining armor who's going to remake this empire instead they just end up fighting over the scraps i think that is perfect for both of them and yeah i think roman this was pretty much it for roman i think plot wise i think he kind of crumbles and collapses and tries to cause trouble and disintegrates over the course of the final episode and kind of ends up just a sad puppy it looks like we see caroline's beach house in the previews so i'm wondering if maybe he goes there sure live with mommy sad oh the womb. Well, who else can give you constant,

you know, validation or neglect? I was about to say, I don't think Caroline for the constant validation, but he can try. Maybe she wants that now, you know? Maybe she's ready to be a mom now. It's only been how many years? That cup ran dry a while ago. Dry indeed. Indeed. Huzzah, Emmett. Wrong show. Emmett. I'm scared.

I'm shitting my pants. I'm excited. I'm pissing my pants. I'm hyped. I'm ready. These poor pants. What did they ever do to you? I really need to change my pants.

Apparently so. And we're going to get out of here so I can go do that but i'm excited for next week thank you for coming along the journey thank you for attending the penultimate succession episode can you tell the folks for the penultimate time where the fuck to find you or fuck off well of course fuck off no once again i'm 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 aka man Quentin. You can find me at Port Quentin on Twitter. I co-host the Not A Cast podcast with our friend Manu, aka Manu Clear Bomb. You can find it wherever you listen to your podcast, wherever you listen

to Girls Gone Canon. We're going through A Song of Ice and Fire chapter by chapter. We're coming up on The Red Wedding soon. We're about to go through a few chapters related to The Red Wedding. Arya and Catelyn chapters leading up to and including the event itself. And we also cover Star Wars and Lord of the Rings for patrons over at patreon.com slash notacast a s o i a f woo get on there check it out look below in the

details in the description follow like subscribe throw some money if you got it hanging around jingling some change it's worth it some great backlog of episodes i'm talking like ages of episodes you will never get bored. Great dudes. Decades. Centuries. Exactly. Great dudes. Yeah.

As Emmett said, find us online as well. You can actually find us anywhere where you listen to Not A Cast, S-O-I-A-F podcast. Podcast. You got to say it like that, like you're just holding back a burp. Podcast. I don't know what that is. I don't burp. That's true.

You have to keep forgetting you're a different species. You just couldn't fit me in your head. You imitate humans real well. I'll give you that. A full Chloe couldn't fit in his head. My head is very small. Yeah. You can find us online.

As mentioned, Eliana will return soon. Who? We've got a lot of stuff popping off, whether that's our Patreon special episodes for the stranger tier and above, or Thunder tiering up with brunch slash happy hour, May 27th, 3pm ET, probably tomorrow if you're listening to this, or next month, stay tuned, you'll find out when we're doing that one. Make sure you subscribe to all those links below, and we'll see you back next week for the final episode. I have been one of your hosts, Tiv Roy.

And I have been another one of your hosts, Roman's bastard child he'll find out about in the finale. Ooh, maybe his ex is the stepchild or ex or whatever it was from season one. That's you. He's called Noman. Oh my god, he's gonna stop. Anyways, we'll do this next week. Thanks, guys.

Have a good one.