The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Scary Suns and Mobley’s Rise With Rob Mahoney, and the Incredible Season 1 Finale of 'Succession' With Derek Thompson and Joanna Robinson

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Rob Mahoney to discuss the challenging Suns, and the Nuggets biggest rival in the Western Conference (1:45), the Timberwolves rounding into shape, Evan Mobley's development, early playoff thoughts, and more (21:37). Then in an excerpt from The Ringer's Prestige TV Podcast Bill is joined by Joanna Robinson and Derek Thompson to discuss 'Succession' Season 1, Episode 10: "Nobody Is Ever Missing" (49:27). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Rob Mahoney, Derek Thompson, and Joanna Robinson Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So that's the last part of this podcast. The first part is Rob Mahoney. And we're talking about a bunch of NBA stuff. So buckle in. Rob Mahoney next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, Rob Mahoney is here from The Ringer. We are taping this on Tuesday morning. Let's start with Phoenix.

Lucille and I didn't talk about them on Sunday. They looked awesome. No surprise, it's really hard to stop a team that has Kevin Durant and Devin Booker on it. Who knew? The double-barreled action was great. The questions, I guess, would be, who's the fifth guy? Kevin Durant and Devin Booker on it. The double-barreled action was great. The questions, I guess, would be, who's the

fifth guy? Wainwright was playing crunch time for them. Can they get 10 weeks out of Chris Paul, et cetera, et cetera? They gave up so much for Durant that I almost, when we did our trade deadline podcast, I almost couldn't wrap my head around

everything they gave up. Because Mikael Bridges, you watch him on the Nets, it's like, that guy's really good. That guy might be a top 40 player in the league on top of Cam Johnson. And then all of these picks. So it's the ultimate all-in move. And they have all these different ways they can go sideways. And yet I watched the game on Sunday, and I'm like, here's the one team in the West that could beat Denver. Because I think Denver, with the home court, with the way Jokic is playing, with just the way they've been able to pull out these games last five minutes, last night with some help from Scott Foster, you're going to have to outscore them and work mismatches and get Jokic and, you know, like Russel said Sunday night, get Jokic into these

little, where he's always trying to guard somebody who's smaller, faster, whatever. So I could see Phoenix doing that. What did you see Sunday that made you think, oh shit, how high is the ceiling for this team? I think some of it is just like putting yourself in the shoes of an opposing coach, of an opposing player, and just thinking like, what the hell are you supposed to do with this group?

How are we supposed to guard them? Because as you mentioned, you can leave the Ish Wainwrights of the world and the Josh Akogis of the world open in the corner. And against the Mavericks, the Mavs got away with that for the most part. Akogi missed a lot of shots. But he's had a really good season.

And there's going to be games where he hits. And there's going to be games where Ish Wainwright or Terrence Ross or whoever's in that position is going to hit. And you look at everything else that they're doing, and in particular, the fact that they're doing something very smart, which is coming out of the gate in these games, they run some action for Durant or Booker to basically be a decoy.

They're basically trying to set up DeAndre Ayton for a dunk. It's kind of like the 2023 version of posting up Ben Wallace on your first play. And it makes opponents take Ayton seriously as a dump-off option. it's kind of like the 2023 version of posting up Ben Wallace on your first play. And it makes opponents take Aiden seriously as a dump-off option. It gets the ball moving. It's just like a really smart way to set the table for the fact that

ultimately when we get into the heat of this game, there's not a lot you can do to stop Kevin Durant. There's not a lot you can do to stop Devin Booker. And look, as a student of the game yourself, as an All-star game celebrity coach, what would you do against the Phoenix Suns? How would you try to stop these guys? So Dallas is terrible defensively. And yet when I watched the last six minutes of that game, the shocking thing was how easy and open the shots were that Phoenix was getting.

Yeah. And I really want to see them against an awesome defensive team to see how much that translates. Because with the Booker and Durant, the defense just has to lean one way or the other. And then the other thing you think, like Durant made a crazy Durant shot that he's made a thousand times in his career when the shot clock's kind of going down.

He's going to his left. There's two people on him. And he does the thing that he's been doing since he was at Texas in 2006, where he jumps up in traffic and any other guy in the league, even like maybe Jason Tatum, the shot gets blocked or tipped and he just keeps going up because he's seven foot, seven foot one, whatever he is. He keeps going up and he just shoots it over people, even though they're draped all over him. And he made it. And you think like the combination of the open shots that they get,

Chris's ability to just find people and push the ball, combined with they have two kind of defense breakers, because Booker does it too, right? Yeah, absolutely. Booker's another guy in the last five seconds of a shot clock who just pull a shot out of his ass and make it. And when Durant made that shot, that was when I went to another level with that trade. And I'm great. And it's a Sunday, it's Dallas. I get it. But you think like, all right, not only

are they getting great shots, but then they also have the defense busters and they have two of them and in the playoffs, that's what you want. Because over and over again, the playoffs slow down. You have these possessions with six seconds left, five seconds left, four seconds left with the crowd going nuts. And you just want those guys and they have two. So I really thought this was going to be Denver's year. I cannot wait till they play because it does feel like a bad matchup for Denver. And then we're, it's, and we're going to talk about the Yic MVP stuff later, but if they don't beat Phoenix, then it opens up this Pandora's box for Jokic. Oh my God, what did we do? He won three straight MVPs. He can't even get to the finals. But this is a bad matchup for him because Aiton is the one guy in the league,

other than maybe some Nurkic times, that it seems like he's actually not afraid of Jokic and at least makes Jokic work for his points. And then on the flip side, they have all these other ways to torture him on defense. So if I'm a Denver fan, I am praying that somebody handles Phoenix before they get to us, right? Absolutely. I mean, just the thought of,

I mean, you think about Monday night's game, for example, which as you mentioned was a little, there was a thumb on the scale at the end of that game. I will put it that way. To say the least. You watch Jokic, like the Raptors put Jokic in a lot of pick and roll. Like we're just going to run stuff at you

all night. We're going to make you defend in space. We're going to put you on your heels. And sometimes Jokic did okay. And sometimes it's like Pascal Siakam is taking a wide open 15 footer. Like Jokic isn't even getting a hand up much less like actually trying to close out on him needless to say with Kevin Durant you can't do that stuff and and the you know the scout would be different the approach would be different

Jokic would be playing that stuff differently but you still put him in the position where Jokic as a defender can be good if he has time to read the play and position himself well. Where he struggles is he can't adapt mid-play. If he takes one wrong step, if he's a little bit out of position, if he needs to adjust on the fly to read or to react to a dump-off pass, he's just not explosive in that way. He's not a shot blocker in that way. So he's going to give up those looks.

And that's where you see one thing Durant has done really well in Phoenix so far is he gets chased off the three-point line or he comes off a screen. The big comes up because you have to contest a Kevin Durant mid-range jumper. And just little dump-off passes to whoever's in the dunker spot. And it's one of those things with Durant where because he's not a LeBron-type

point forward, we kind of forget that this guy's a really good passer. He really has all the guard skills in a seven foot body, including the fact that he's just going to connect those dots whenever you need him to. I have a thought on that one second, just to finish the Jokic point.

And I'm not, this is not a Jokic defense because when he's trapped on an island with the wrong person, it looks awful. But I also watch basketball every night and everybody just about who is trapped on an island against the wrong person looks awful. Like the Celtics got destroyed by Emmanuel quickly on Sunday night and it didn't matter who was guarding him. It was basically everybody except for Derek White. He was going by or doing whatever he wanted. And over and over again, Grant Williams ended up on him and quickly was going by him. I think the difference with Jokic

is it looks bad as it's happening, right? Most bigger guys in the league when you get a switch, and that's the goal of most of these teams, every playoff series we watch is to put a bigger, clumsier guy against somebody who can go by them. It just looks bad when it's him. I actually think he does some stuff defensively that, you know, he gets a lot of steals. He's in the right spots for the most part. He's good at, like, verticality and jumping up, and he's got quick hands.

Like, he's not, I don't feel like he's a disaster defensively. Like, Harden just gave up on defense five years ago, right? And when he tries, you actually notice like, oh, he's trying this possession. Jokic tries. It's just, there's some limitations with what he can do. But we're also in a league now where every game I watch, there's limitations.

Like Mikael Bridges had 39 points on Friday and I can sell it. Celtics are just giving 40 point games to everyone in the league now. And they have Tatum, they have Brown, they have Marcus Smart, they have Derek White, they have Grant Williams. They have good defenders.

So part of me thinks this is just the league now. And if that's your biggest limitation, is that your best guy can be trapped on an island, it's like, okay, well, welcome to every other team's situation in the league. So does that make sense? Or do I sound like a Jokic apologist? No, it does make sense.

And to be fair, he is a decent to good defender on balance. He's just not a great one. And so when we get into MVP stuff, that's where the contrast with Embiid and the contrast with Giannis is a little pointed because he's not that level defender by any means. But there's something here about, you know, you were saying with Durant, like there are times where he raises up and he hits shots that nobody else can make. Like he hits the hard stuff, like the really, really hard shots. And I think Phoenix has the infrastructure to create the easy stuff too, right? And defensively, you can look at that the same way where it's like Jokic is pretty good at the base shell. We are running our defense level stuff. What he's not good at is he's not going to come up with like, he's not going to get the Embiid block on John Moran at the rim in crunch time.

That play is not in him. He's clutch in other ways and he's unbelievable. He's having an incredible season. But he just doesn't have that next gear of defensive play. His baseline is actually, I think, a lot better than people give him credit for. It's certainly better than the low lights and some of the open shots he gives up. But he just doesn't have that thing that some of these other great players in

the league have right now. But to your point, maybe it doesn't matter. Like maybe in the NBA right now, you're just going to have to live with some of those things regardless. And Dallas dealt with it with Nowitzki during his prime and finally figured out the right infrastructure to put around him. So, you know, it didn't hurt them as much as maybe it could have. And we've had other great players that, you know, Harden's another good example

of somebody that just was a real limitation on D. Durant, back to that Durant point, because I thought of this Sunday and I thought of it again as you were talking. It's interesting. He's been in the league since 2007 and he's played with all these great players, right? He's played in OKC. He played with Westbrook and he played with Harden and he played with, uh, Abaka. Very good player. Um, goes to Golden State. He plays with, uh, with Curry and he plays with Draymond and Clay.

Then he goes to the Nets. He gets to play with Kyrie. And yet somehow he's never played with certain types of players that are pretty prototypical NBA players. Like he's never played with a real point guard, right? He played with Westbrook. He played with Curry and he played with Kyrie. None of them are like conventional old school point guards who were like, I'm just here to set the table for anyone else. Curry's not even really a point guard. He dribbles the ball up, but I don't, I would never call him a point guard. He's never really played other than with, with clay, just a shooting guard that could get his and Booker is at a whole other level as like a face up going to the basket guy. And then the

other thing, which is a little sleepy. And I thought of it cause you just mentioned it is the Aiton piece of it. Has he ever played with a center that he could just lay off little passes? The guy who had long arms and could just easily dunk? I guess he had Jared Allen for like a year, but it was an early version of Jared Allen. Nobody

really on the Warriors. Maybe Looney, the closest, but Looney didn't have the size. Yeah. Oklahoma City, I guess Abaka. Yeah. Late Stephen Adams. I think't have the size. Yeah. Oklahoma City, I guess, Ibaka. Yeah. Late Steven Adams. I think there was some overlap. Yeah, Steven Adams.

And then Nick Claxton this year a little bit. But nothing like Aiton. Like, Aiton's a guy who can get 35 points in a game. So it's just interesting that he's been in the league this long and he hasn't played with three totally normal prototypes for three of the five positions we have in the league. And even the closest prototype, which, as you said, is probably Klay and Booker. That's probably as close as you're going to get in terms of the stars he's played with previously. Those guys are really different just in terms of how they handle the ball. Klay is not a guy

you want running a lot of stuff off the dribble and Booker is to the point that, again, Phoenix can run all this elaborate action or they can do, we're just going to dump the ball to Kevin Durant. They can also do the thing in the middle, which is in some of these games, they've been running this play that almost looks like a perimeter option, where it's like a dribble handoff going one way for Booker. Durant goes the other way and takes a handoff going in the other direction. And if you just freeze-framed at the end of that,

every defender is in the wrong place. Nobody is where they're supposed to be because they've now had to freak out twice in a row. And it's like, that is just on-command stuff you can dial up whenever you want. And that's the luxury the Suns have now. And the problem for everyone else is going to have to figure out how to stop it.

So the Wainwright, Okoji, whoever it is, I feel like every team is in this spot. Any good team usually has the one guy where they're like, man, I hope that guy makes some shots. I know the Celtics have those guys, right? Grant Williams, Game 7. Well, it's going to come down to Grant Williams, who really, last night I guess he made some threes,

although he missed the two biggest free throws of the game, and my dad decided to take a hiatus from the Celtics and watch the Bruins for the next week and a half. Very tough. But yeah, every team has those guys, you know, Philly has Phillies.

It's going to come down to PJ Tucker and whoever else in Milwaukee has their slew of Jay Crowder, Connaughton, all those dudes. That's not the thing that worries me the most. It's the, it's gotta be the Chris Paul thing just from what we saw last year. I think they're really going to need him on this team,

even with the scoring help. I just don't like their backup guards. I don't trust Payne. Can they kind of ease him along? And is he at the point of his career where it's a little like what we thought Nash was going to be like on the 2012 Lakers. And then we never really saw it because he just, his body broke down, but could he just ease back and then still have those moments where it's like, all right, now I'm going to do it's time. I'm going

to do my little, I'll dribble to the foul line, pull up on the right block and hit my little 15 footer. And can he still do that in big moments? Cause if he does that, I can't believe I'm abandoned in the nuggets, but I'm really wavering. And I don't want to waver because I choked in football. I had the Chiefs all year and then I choked

and I switched teams. So I had Milwaukee-Denver before the year. I still think that's a really good bet. But Phoenix is the one now over Philly, over Boston, over everybody else. I think Phoenix is the one

that could mess that up. I mean, Kevin Durant will put the fear of God in you. You know, that's what he does. And Chris Paul is really at an interesting intersection of those ideas that you mentioned, where if he can be the Chris that we've seen, the playmaker we know, then he can stave off some of that.

But he's a little closer to the Josh Akogi-ish Wainwright category in some respects than we like to admit. I want to say this fully asterisk. Chris Paul's played quite well recently. I think he's done a great job kind of like getting all these pieces into place for the most part. But you could even see in that Dallas

game, the Mavs were doubling Durant off of Chris Paul. Yeah. And saying, we're going to live with either you're going to live with, either you're going to have to take a quick-fire three, which we know you don't want to do, or you're going to try to reset the offense with 12 seconds left on the shot clock, and we're going to try to live with that.

I think defenses are probably going to force Chris Paul to hit a lot of those shots if the Suns are going to go on a deep run. Because you can't always funnel it to the role player in the corner. Sometimes you're going to have to double off of other places. You're going to have to help off other places. You're not helping off Devin Booker.

That's for sure. And like, so Chris Paul is the natural kind of release point unless you want to give up a DeAndre Aiton dunk. So how Chris responds to that, if he can hit those shots, we've seen him kind of have a very weird relationship with his three-point shooting in particular, where he'll go through games and stretches where he does not

want to take them. Yeah. He's going to have to. He had a nice little comeback in December and January. He's basically at 50% for those two months. And then in February, March,

the stats have dipped a little bit. Eye test-wise, he seems pretty much the same, but the three-point shooting went way down. Like he's in the mid twenties, basically for 13 games here. And then you think in the playoffs, especially when we get to that every other day

stretch of the playoffs. Yeah, it'll be interesting. It's the best team he's ever been on, I think. I think that's fair to say. I think this is a more talented team than any Clippers team he was on. It's more talented than those Rockets teams when Harden was at his absolute peak.

And even that 2011 Suns, 21 Suns team, I think this is a better, I mean, Durant, Booker, and the way Durant, Durant's ability to just come back from long injuries and just look exactly the same. I also think with Booker and KD, they have two guys who could be on the floor that could actually dribble the ball up and initiate offense to take that pressure off him.

Cause that's been in like a hidden Durant's goal for a long time. Just be like point, I'll just bring it up. And I can't wait to see how it goes. If you look at the actual standings. So right now Denver is a 100% going to be one. And Phoenix looks like they're pretty locked into four unless the Kings kind of fall apart here down the stretch. They're three games behind the Kings in the loss column.

And they would either have to pass them or Memphis would just have to continue to trend the wrong way. But we could see Denver-Phoenix round two, and that could be one of those, this will decide the final thing. We also could see Phoenix-Golden State in round one, and then we have a Minnesota situation

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Must be legal drinking age. All right, so Minnesota, only 34 and 32.. Russell and I talked about them a tiny bit on Sunday night. I think we're all kind of seeing the same thing. They look a little more professional the last couple of games and I've actually enjoyed watching them. And the Gobert trade is one of the worst of all time, but at least they have, if you just like remove what they gave up, it's like, okay, at least they have him and Mike Conley. Those are two guys who've been in some games. And Edwards has played so much better the last three months. And then McDaniels, as he's come on as a defender,

could you see them winning a round? Is it possible? It could be Sacramento, Minnesota, 3-6 in round one. I absolutely think they could beat Sacramento. There's a funny twist with that, which is, I would say the Wolves overall have been pretty competent defensively lately.

They've really leveled out as a net positive team, solid top 10 defense. There's a lot to get into there in terms of how that's all working and figuring out, but McDaniels is a big part of it. Edwards defending pretty well for the most part is a big part of it. Edwards defending pretty well for the most part is a big part of it, and obviously they have Gobert. The one catch,

they just cannot fucking guard the Sacramento Kings. The five-out thing is... Nobody can! Nobody can, but the Wolves will be having a great defensive stretch for a couple games. They'll roll into Sacramento and they just implode. Some of it is the five-out thing is uniquely challenging. Sabonis is very challenging for a lot of teams, like the

action he enables. They just cannot get through it. And so while if you're any other team on the six-and-down part of the Western Conference ballot, I could see you saying, okay, maybe we could beat the Kings. Maybe we can get in that matchup. Maybe we can roll over the Kings in the first round. Minnesota might have the worst case for it, unfortunately. But I do think they're better. They've steadily climbed over the course of the year. They're really getting into a place

where with towns looming and coming back, there's going to be a lot to figure out. But at least you're feeling solid about what you do defensively. At least you're feeling a little more secure in the fact that Rudy Gobert isn't the player he has been historically. But At least you're feeling a little more secure in the fact that Rudy Gobert isn't the player he has been historically, but at least you're getting

to the point where it's like, okay, we are a good defensive team and we can figure out the rest and we're going to have to play really hard and there's going to be nights where our role players are going to have to hit shots, but at least we know this about what we are and that's at least comforting for them. The Towns part is interesting for this because you look at that Minnesota-Sacramento game the other night, which was just some of these scores now.

I don't know whether people have just given up on defense or they're just going, it's just more fun to play offense or what. But it's just a random 138 to 134 final, which we seem to have more and more of those. And I think the pace, the fact that they quickened up the pace in a whole bunch of different ways over the last 10 years plays at least a piece of that, but also you're not allowed to really play defense anywhere. But Gobert plays 31 minutes in that game, and Nas Reed, who, if you're making the all-bench, all-NBA team, Nas Reed has at least has been a third teamer for the last couple months.

I don't know where Towns gets the minutes when he comes back. Because Slo-Mo has been really helpful for them. And he's kind of another adult in the room. One of the reasons I think they've looked good lately is Conley and Slo-Mo and Gobert. At least these are adults in the room. So Towns, if you give them the Nas Reed minutes, that's weird. If you give them the slow-mo minutes, you're kind of unraveling

something that was really working. You can't give them the McDaniels minutes. So it feels like Nas Reed loses and probably Gobert loses. And now we're talking about a completely different team. On the other hand, we might not see Towns again this season. Who the hell knows? That we'll have to see. But it's so weird that the Wolves have gone through this whole trade cycle, really turned over their roster, multiple trades now with the D'Angelo Russell one too.

And they kind of ended up in the same place, which is they're very reliant on Jaden McDaniels and Kyle Anderson to be what they are. Like to be a good defensive team, those guys have to be out there and have to be good. And they really have been for the last couple of months, similar to how before they were really reliant on Jared Vanderbilt and Patrick

Beverly, these role playing guys to kind of give them the identity of what their team was and was supposed to be. And ideally you can get that more of that from Gobert and maybe in time when Gobert and Towns, like if they have an opportunity to really get some minutes together we'll be able to to stabilize that but as it is now like that is why this team does even now feel a little bit wobbly it's like towns comes back anderson who's been one of the most critical players in the league just in terms like how

important he is to his team you're now going to have to shift him into a different position into different roles it gets a little messy that way like you're now going to have to shift him into a different position, into different roles. It gets a little messy that way. There is going to be a lot to figure out when Towns comes back. There's no question. Last year, they were one of the dopiest playoff teams we've seen in a while, and there are real reasons for that.

Edwards was a baby. He was like 19, 20 years old with big reps at a playoff series. Towns has been one of the strangest hoops IQ players of any good player that we've had in the last 20 years. Russell will take some of the worst shots and do some of the dumbest things defensively of anyone. And then you have Pat Bev, who is just a complete wildcard at all times.

So that's one of the most erratic kind of nucleuses you can put together. Now, I think one of the reasons I've enjoyed watching the T-wolves a little bit lately is, is there's kind of a savviness to them now. And it's slow-mo brings that and Conley brings that where the team makes sense. And Edwards is a year older and Edwards, he'll still go off the rails every once in a while,

but for the most part, he's been 27 a game and playing hard for three months here. So just putting Towns back into that, who to me, I'm just not sold on his hoops IQ at all and his decision-making, it could unravel some of it, but they're way more interesting than they were, I don't know, a month ago. And it's funny, I have some T-Wolves fans in my life

who are like, oh, looks like you were wrong about Daniels. And I was like, was I wrong? I made fun of the Timberwolves last summer because they gave up more for Gobert in one of the most ridiculously lopsided trades in the recent history of the league. And then they tried to spin it as we kept McDaniels. And it's like, you lost every pick you had and you gave up Kessler and Vanderbilt. Like you can't brag about the guy. He didn't give up when you already got absolutely pillaged. But McDaniels has made a step up.

I read a good piece from what's that guy's name? Britt Robson. Yeah. Britt Robson. Chronicling the T-wolves forever. And he, he had a really nice breakdown of everything that's changed with McDaniels over the last couple months. It's funny, there's this new wave

of really effective swing defenders. These under 25 guys that just a bunch of teams have them. I think the guy Philly got from Charlotte, who I have no idea what he's going to look like in a playoff series, but he's another one that he's got size. Vanderbilt on the Lakers

just as this defender slash, he gets 13 rebounds in these games. How did he get 13 rebounds? I was watching the game. There's this new wave though of these long kind of I don't give a shit defenders. Anyone else you like in that group? Are you there with

Okoro yet? He's had some really good moments moments i think he suffers from not having the length that the mcdaniels is due yeah uh which puts him in a tough spot like jayden in particular like his ability to deny off ball like if you're trying to get your star the ball and jayden mcdaniels is just like blanketing them i mean it makes it really tough it really destabilizes your whole your whole situation your entire offense to then that's when like okay rudy gobert looks like rudy gobert again right like if you are whatever defense around him you're shortening the shot clock you're controlling the situation you're you're really setting your team up to succeed to a point where like yeah like that's easy to believe

in like that crux of a team. But I mean, defense is a young man's game for the most part. Like you want to be old enough to have the reps in the league. And so you're not committing really dumb fouls. That's one area where McDaniels has gotten a lot better. Just like easing up on some of the pressure sometimes. But you need to be young enough to

have those legs to have those springs like PJ Tucker is the anomaly for a reason, right?. He's still getting after it, but otherwise, 35-year-olds, that's not really what they're doing anymore. You see it a little bit now with Marcus Smart this season, who I think physically just seems banged up to me and doesn't seem like he has the same athleticism that he had a couple years ago. It's just little small signs, guys going going by him and him where it used to be a charge. Now it's a block and thing.

It's you hit your late twenties and it's just a different stage of where you want to be. And it, whereas somebody like white, um, white's like challenging shots. And I don't even think white's that much younger than smart, but,

um, it's, it's kind of sad. We're at a point with the NBA where the good defenders kind of jump off the TV now. We're like, oh, that guy's playing defense? Okay.

Well, the deck is stacked against them. Unless you are a Matisse-Thibault level defender who has his own problems on the other side of the ball. I don't know that you're going to make a big night-to-night presence or big night-to-night impact. I still kept my Thibault stock. The Edwards piece with Minnesota is the most fun part of it because

every year after the All-Star break, we see a young guy elevate. I thought it might be Edwards. Starting to look like it might be Evan Mobley, our guy. Speaking of big, big, big stock holdings that I have. I mean, it's expensive, but I bought a ton of it. Awesome against the Celtics last night. And in general, there's been a lot of signs on both ends of somebody kind of putting it together here. Yeah, what are you seeing? What is the highest gear on the Mobley propaganda machine?

Like, is there an overdrive we can shift into? Like, what is maximum capacity? Probably maximum capacity is when somebody in your life goes, yo, you might have to settle down on the mobile thing. You actually sound like he's your son. It's probably the level of LeBron tweeting last night that Bronny was better than some of the guys in the league. That's probably the last level of the Mobley machine where it's like, dude, take a breath. That's just quality dad work right there.

I have no problem with it. Is it? Is it quality dad work? No, I don't know. You have to be an advocate for your family, you know? True, I guess. I guess that's one way to look at it. What do you see with Mobley? I think some of it is, it feels like he's just learning

in so many different areas of attack at once. Defensively, I was already pretty sold. Offensively, I was kind of in wait-and-see mode, like cautiously optimistic. You can see the skills. You want to see him as, you know, be able to hit turnarounds in the post, like have that kind of life-lanky offensive game inside

that he can finish. But now it's learning how to attack off the dribble when guys play off him on the perimeter. And he's just going in, nailing these running hook shots. It's learning what to do when teams do get cute and try to guard you with smalls or smaller players. And in that Celtics game,

he just battering rammed through Grant Williams' chest. And that's something that Giannis has problems with. All kinds of bigs have problems with. It was shocking. Legitimately shocking. Especially, look at the builds of these two people and that Mobley is creating that kind of force where he's able to get clean looks against Grant. On top of being

eight inches taller. Absolutely. But just the fact that he's able to, I think, more consistently stay involved in plays. I think in the initial blushes of. I think in, you know, the initial blushes of action from him, it was like if he rolled to the rim and it didn't quite work out, he didn't really know where to go.

And now he hangs around, makes himself available. Like he is always a dunker spot pass away from a massive dunk now. And that's why you see some of these like takeover stretches, right? It's like you cannot take him out of the action

in the way that you used to be able to before. And I know if you look overall, top-down, season over season, you may not see a lot of growth in the box score stats. It feels tangibly different in terms of the way he is impacting these games. The takeover stretches of five or six minutes in the middle of a second or third quarter

that completely change a game. Those are happening a lot more often now. He feels more immersed in the game. There's still the three-point shooting thing, which they probably need to figure out. Giannis was at this point

earlier, in the early part of his career, was like, just keep taking him. Moby's just terrible as a three-point shooter. I mean, he's for, for the season, he's 21.3%. And my, my thing is if you can't get to 30, don't take them, you know, and maybe down the road, he's going to have to add that to the game. And I have full confidence he will, cause he's such a good athlete. But I wonder like, especially as they think of the playoffs, like every team is just going to be like, please take those.

Him starting to realize, I need to actually do this instead. Will be a big one. I mean, I've talked about all this stuff before, but he's like a sneaky, really good passer. Like really good. And then the stuff he does defensively, how easily he does it at the age he's at,

how he just instinctively knows how to switch, how to jump off people. He's just always in the right spots. And it's something he had last year too, but it's just getting better and better and better. And we talked earlier about, you know, the Jokic thing of like,

Oh, he's on an Island. Like there's no Island for Moby. Like he's just, he's totally, he's very similar to Giannis. He's just very comfortable guarding any player in the league. So from a, from a ceiling standpoint, you know, he's the swing guy for that Cavs team. They're in the fourth spot right now, probably headed for a bloodbath against the Nets unless they can somehow jump the Sixers or Celtics, which seems unlikely.

And that Knicks series will be really tough if that ends up being the series. Those are, each team is a bad matchup for the other team. So I don't know how it plays out, but if you had to say who the two key guys in that series would be, Mobley is the key Cleveland guy. It's not Mitchell and it's not Garland. It would be Mobley in that series, because he'd have to shut down Randall on one end,

and I think he has real offensive advantages on the other end against Nick. If it's Nick's Cavs, who's the most important Nick in that series for you? Maybe R.J. Barrett. Oh, wow. Pol most important Nick in that series for you? Maybe R.J. Barrett. Oh, wow.

Polarizing Nick right now. Just because you could see him being in that X-factor swing position where he's not being prioritized in terms of who the Cavs are really guarding, really putting their emphasis on defensively. Can he have some huge games when it matters? Can he have those games where he pops off for a 15-point quarter and swings a game five? That's what you want out of people in that position, especially young players in that position,

where I would love to see him step into that kind of limelight and step into that kind of moment. I have more faith that Mobley will right now. And you mentioned the Randall matchup. He's been pretty good in that matchup. He's been great guarding Jalen Brown this season. He's had his moments guarding even guys like Giannis too. I just can't say enough good things about both the versatility of what Mobley does defensively and how far his offensive game is coming along just in terms of feel. when a guy has elite feel on one side of the ball, and you want him to be able to transpose it and just say like, all the things you know about how to move defensively,

you should know about how other players want to move defensively and how to navigate around them. I think he's starting to put that together. I think he's starting to understand how to use other teams' reads against them. And as a big, honestly, that's more than half the battle. Very close to

the Jalen Green over Mobley being like a borderline draft catastrophe. It's not great. It's not great. We're edging that way. It felt that way in the moment. It was like, man, this Jalen Green better be really good because Mobley is

I know what he is. And now with the way Mobley, that game last night was really crazy. I'm at the stage of the playoffs. It's getting close here. There's some teams that have played 64. Celtics played 66 games where you start looking at the matchups a little bit.

Cleveland Knicks is just an incredible four or five matchup with all the storylines, right? You have Mitchell not going to the Knicks. Ending up on Cleveland. You have Brunson, a chip-on-his-shoulder guy anyway, who's like, okay, people think I'm the third best guard in this series. I'll show them.

You have the random quickly piece. You have some good bigs, some above-average bigs just kind of battling. And then MSG, and I don't know, that's a really good one. And then, you know, there's still a Celtics Miami possibility in round one, which would be an absolute bloodbath. Always is.

And then the West, like every combination of a West series is fun, as long as it's the top eight that it's staying right now. Denver, Memphis, Sacramento, Phoenix, Golden State, Minnesota, Dallas Clippers. And it really drops off after that. Do you take any other teams seriously in the West after those eight? Not particularly. I take the Jazz pretty seriously in a regular season context,

but even they have huge caveats. The Pelicans, I might have folded pretty hard on them. They mean, they have squandered every bit of belief that anyone could possibly have had in them over the course of this season. Do you realize they were 23-12? I was a believer. Right now, they're 31-34. They were 23-12.

Oh, my God. That's steep. Now they're at the point, if you're the Pelicans, you're like, you know, it's March 7th do we see Zion again we're now in the probably don't see Zion again or if we see him we see him with two weeks to go and he's playing himself in shape they just might be better off just missing the playoffs again and you know if and hoping the Lakers miss too I think Portland and there's some big Portland games coming up,

but I think Portland is going to be in that top 10 just because I think they're going to really, it seemed like they were tanking for a split second, but now I think they're going to go for it. And then that would come down to Lakers, Utah. And I think maybe New Orleans just bows out. It doesn't seem like OKC cares either. But it's funny, like OKC out of those five

is probably the one I would be the most scared of in a playoff series. If they had SGA and all their long arms. I just wouldn't want to play that team. Well, look, the maxim is which team has the best player. And the best player is Oklahoma City's Jalen Williams, clearly. He is an instant Hall of Famer based on the last month of basketball. Unreal.

Fucking awesome, Jalen Williams. Yeah, we have Orlando is the only other one that like out of the lottery teams that would just be fun to see them get thrown into the mix. But it seems like they're too far back. They had a really bad loss the other night. That a winnable game that they just blew. But if they'd won that, they would have been three back behind the Wizards.

The one that can't be taken seriously is the Wizards. You just feel like they're out. I don't know what to make of Toronto because when I watched them, and I watched the fourth quarter of the Scott Foster Classic last night, the Van Vliet-Purdle thing, Michael Pena wrote about it on The Ringer, and it was even greater last night. The Van Vliet-Purdle pick and roll thing that they've kind of not stumbled into because they knew what they were trading for,

but it's kind of unstoppable. And it's making Van Vliet probably 20 million bucks because his stats are going to go way up the rest of the way. I just can't quit this Toronto team because I think they have talent. They're 32 and 34. It doesn't make sense when you watch them. They're in every game, right?

The Purt fertile part is funny because it really is like when you can get a little too galaxy brain thinking about switchability and versatility. It's like, what if we had all our guys in this kind of like

6'8 to 6'10 range of height? It's like, also, what if you had a seven footer who set really solid screens all the time? What would that do for Fred Benfleet? Like, how would his life change

and open up if you have him in those positions versus for all the things. What would that do for Fred Benfleet? How would his life change and open up if you have him in those positions versus, for all the things they do well, Scotty Barnes and Pascal Siakam and this lot of players. What if you just had a designated screen and roller at the core of your offense? And what could that do for you?

And it turns out it does a lot. The mechanics of that stuff, fundamental and basic and boring in some cases as it may seem, it opens up a lot for Toronto. It is fundamentally a piece that they can add on and build on and extend possessions into.

Ultimately, I wasn't expecting Jakob Röthl to be an important offensive player, but it turns out for this team, he's a pretty important offensive player. Well, he's enraged my father. Seems like a long list these days. He's like, we didn't need a center. Rob Williams, oh, there he goes again.

My dad's just done with Rob Williams. He just doesn't trust him. He's like, I'm just, my guard is up for the rest of my life with Rob Williams. But the fun thing about that trade with Toronto, because it's kind of a, what do you guys do in trade? You're in no man's land. You're a 500 team. There's lots of reports about

that the guys don't like each other. And there's some weird Nick Nurse stuff. And all of a sudden, Nick Nurse's salary is out there. And it's like, where is this going? And then they zag where it seems like it's an Ananobi sweepstakes and Trent's available. And who knows, maybe they'll trade Van Vliet and they'll just be a fire sale. And then they go the other way and actually get a center that they needed. I wouldn't want to play them. I think in a 1-8 or a 2-7, they're going to be a hard out. I certainly would much rather play the Hawks than the Raptors. And the Hawks are one game ahead of them in the standings. And you can make a make a case. Definitely, you'd rather play them over Brooklyn. You'd rather play Brooklyn over Toronto.

Miami is the one I'm probably overrating, but I just feel like they're fucking zombies. We've talked about it on the pod many times. I just don't want to see them in a playoff series. I don't care how bad their shooting is. I know they have no bench. I get it. Don't mess with them.

Stay away. If you're a with them. Like stay away. If you're a contender. Just stay away. Here's the thing. Like the Heat don't need to win the championship. They just need to ruin your season. And they like if you get in a seven game series with them, they might.

They might beat you or they might just beat you up to the point that you're not going to advance any further than that. All right. We're going to wrap it up. You have Jokic as your MVP still? Yeah, still leaning that way. It's just... Giannis lingering for you at all?

Absolutely. I mean, Giannis is always lingering in that conversation, but the Jokic case, I don't want to say bulletproof, but it's very hard to overcome. Very compelling. The 63% shooting is pretty outrageous. It of everything else. Although I don't know

what to make of all the stats this year, just in general, but you know, as I always say with the MVP, let's figure it out the last two weeks. Like we have Milwaukee has 18 games left. They should have beaten Philly the other night, Harden goes nuts, but, and then they win again. I mean, they could have been working on like a 27-game winning streak for all we know. They have a big West Coast trip coming up where they swing through a couple cities out here. And if they kind of lay the smack down on that trip, that's going to make me wonder like, hmm, okay, Giannis.

It's just, you know, I know everybody's arguing about the MVP and Perkins keeps throwing gasoline on a whole bunch of different things. But to me, it's a regular season award. Yes. And so much of it depends now on the durability piece versus what the old days were, where in the old days, everybody played as many games as they possibly could. And it really did seem like a good litmus test for who is the most important player in the league. And that really started to shift over the last eight years. And I,

you know, when people make the case of, Oh, LeBron hasn't won since 2013, how's that possible? And for so, and I went through every LeBron season last year and explained why he shouldn't have won the MVP and then in the seasons, durability has become a really important part of the award. And I think for Giannis, how many, I think he's missed what, like 12 games, something like that. He's at 52.

And the team is at, yeah, he's missed 12. So he'd basically have to run the slate, play the rest of the way, get to like 69, 70 games. They had best record in the league.

And then it's a real argument. And the odds for him are still pretty good on Fando and places like that. But it just feels like this is the best of the three Jokic years. There's no question. It's the best team he's been on. They're going to win the West by seven games. They have an eight-game lead over the Grizzlies

just in the win column. And every advanced stat is just like seems like the stat's broken. When you look at all this stuff. So I don't know. We'll see. I think Embiid has fallen to third, though. Wouldn't you agree with that?

That's where I am. It's tough because I get it. I get the Embiid case. He's been as singularly dominant in terms of working over his matchup and controlling games. As basically anyone out there, it's just, as you mentioned, the NBA

is such an offense first league right now. And Nikola Jokic is the best offense in the league. Bar none. He himself as a system, as a functionality is the best offense in the league. I don't know how you compete with that when he's elevating every single player around him and putting up the efficiency numbers that he is.

He certainly seems like the one that has kind of broken the system in some ways where I haven't seen a defense yet that's like, we figured it out. Here's what you do against Jokic. It doesn't seem like anybody has figured out any version of a strategy like that. Just before we go, who do you have for coach of the year right now? Just out of curiosity. That's a great question. Honestly, I hadn't really gotten too deep. I think that's a weird have for Coach of the Year right now, just out of curiosity? That's a great question. Honestly, I hadn't really gotten too deep thinking about it yet.

I think that's a weird year for Coach of the Year, right? Is it Mike Brown? Mike Brown's a great one. Honestly, Jacques Vaughn deserves a place in that conversation. I think he's done a great job steadying some very uneven rotations. A lot of problems with that team in Brooklyn, like getting them to play competent professional basketball, both before and after the trades.

But Mike, I mean, Mike Brown, like that team being as good as it is offensively, I expected them to be good, but not like record-breaking good. And that's basically the category that they're in. And Mike Malone, if they win the West by 10 games, can't get considered? Absolutely should.

Could there be, what if Phoenix goes on a run? Yeah, I guess. I think Phoenix is going to get. I guess it's Mike Brown. Perkins threw that out two weeks ago and I thought it was crazy. Perkins finally hit one. Yeah, I guess it would be Mike Brown. Because it's certainly not Milwaukee, Boston,

Philly, like none of those teams. JB Bickerstaff in Cleveland. He could get into that conversation, I think. As long as you don't watch crunch times of a lot of their games. Hey, undefeated in overtime. 7-0 in overtime, you're Cleveland Cavaliers. How about Caveman Tibbs?

What if they finish 53-29? I have no argument at this point. I don't even know what to say. I don't even know what to say about the coaching job he's doing anymore. Up is down, left is right. It's out of 2008. That's the only thing to say.

Alright, Rob Mahoney, we'll hear you on the Ringer NBA show tomorrow and we'll read you on TheRinger.com. Good to see you. right, Rob Mahoney, we'll hear you on the Ringer NBA show tomorrow and we'll read you on theringer.com. Good to see you. Thanks, Bill. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you can still walk or run

60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. What does possible sound like for your business? It's the ability to reach further with access to over 1,400 lounges worldwide. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit mx.ca slash business platinum. All right. It's the Prestige TV Podcast. My name is Bill Simmons. I'm here with Joanna Robinson and Derek Thompson from the Plain English Podcast.

Joanna's on the Ringerverse. We're going to talk succession, Hall of Fame, last episode, season one, episode 10. This won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. This is maybe the most rewatchable succession episode we've had. This has the biggest twist.

This dips in a chapacritic. Basically everything you need to know about the show is in this episode. Derek, what do you love about this episode the most in the context of the series? I want to go back a little bit and say that my relationship with Succession really begins with a 2008 movie

co-written by Jesse Armstrong called In the Loop. And In the Loop is this dark, dark, dark, dark comedy about the British government's relationship with the run-up to the Iraq war. And there's this character called Malcolm Tucker, who's the head of communications for the British government, who is like the most eloquently vile and profane character I can recall in any film. Like every single line of Malcolm Tucker is this perfect, awe-inspiring invective. And when Succession started, I thought we were going to get the Murdochs

as laid as a bunch of Malcolm Tuckers, that it was going to be this powerful family hating on each other with just one perfectly scalding, hilarious put down after another. And I really felt like, and you touched this on the earlier pod that you guys did on season one, episode six, it took them a while to figure out what the show was. I remember in the first few episodes, you've got Kendall Roy, this Hamlet-y figure, who actually can't fucking talk. He's a bad talker. He's the most mealy-mouthed

character on TV. And if you have the closed captioning on, like every other word that he says is uh-huh or uh, or some kind of stammering. And I realized, I think the show took a while to figure out these characters aren't Malcolm Tucker. These characters are richy rich nepo babies who think they're Malcolm Tucker. And that dynamic of people who think they're so much

smarter than they actually are took a while to really, I think, figure out for the show, especially as compared with Logan Roy, who's like this awe-inspiring Hannibal Lecter-y figure who just cannot be defeated by anything that the world throws his way. And this episode, the finale of season one, it was just the perfect explication of the perfect coming together of all of these things. The fact that this family, these children are pathetic. They can't send up a satellite into space. They can't sort of operationalize a bear hug letter, a corporate takeover. And it was just so unbelievably thrilling to see everything come together in such a perfect way.

What do you got, Joanna? Yeah, well, I just want to, yes, answer things. I want to say that I love that their patheticness is also so destructive for all three. Connor's his own thing out in the desert, right? But like for our three core boy kids, you're right, you're right. I believe I see the vision, but I think, you know, they're just smashing things left and right. These, these kids, um, of Mad Men and only, and it's a great mood piece. And then one big thing happens. And the fact that there's just so many big thing after big thing after big thing that feels like it happens in this episode, like an entire, you know, like launch explodes and that's just your

appetizer for what's to come in this episode like that's that's incredible television so it's it's that and then it's the rewarding payoff of the entire season building up this world so all these marginal characters you know your franks your jerrys your jesses all feel real and so everything just feels lived in real paper every corner of this party feels like it's alive with some person or some dynamic that we're invested in. And that's rare for a show to pull off. What do you think, Bill? It's hard to separate this episode from episode nine, but it's also easy to separate it because it's so distinct. We'd like, we've had the wedding. We have these four things that happen that are pretty much a loaded episode. The bear hug letter and him delivering it, the wedding itself and the toasts and all of like the, you know, I'm just, I'm on the record.

I just love every wedding scene and every TV or movie show. It's just a really hard thing to screw up. You can put all your characters in one place. Everyone's dressed up. Everyone's drinking. Anything that's sitting there under the surface is going to come out. So you have that. You have the siblings versus Kendall

where it gets really ugly. Ending with the face-off between Kendall and the dad where the dad just cuts his heart out. And Kendall says, you're a fucking beast. And then you have Shiv's... Curdle cream. Just fucking murders him. And then you have Shiv's- Curdle's cream. Curdle's cream. Just fucking murders him. And then you have Shiv's ridiculous marriage,

which has seemed ridiculous this whole season and nobody wants to admit it. And Tom's clearly marrying her because it's the right career move for him. But he also like deep down, like really loves her and nobody has any idea what she's doing with him. And then it all bubbles up to the surface

and then they end up fucking in her wedding dress. So you have those four things on top of Connor decides he wants to run for president. Roman has a rocket launch. So you have all these things. And then all of a sudden, at like the 45 minute mark, we have this shift

and it becomes this completely different episode with Kendall. He's in the car with the waiter. They're doing drugs. Hey, let's car with the waiter. They're doing drugs. Hey, let's go get some more. They're driving. They're like, oh, this isn't good. I don't like... They're filming it Last of Us video game style from the backseat. This isn't good.

Oh, no. Crash. This incredible eight-minute sequence when he walks back. He's wet. He gets dressed, has to break into his own place, goes back to the party with that kind of deer in the headlights look

trying to pretend I mean I've just never seen an episode quite like this and I think when you're talking about the great HBO episodes I don't know

Derek I think this is this is up there for me this to me is like Red Wedding and some of the other ones of just season finale

mixed with all these other elements that were just incredible. I would put Succession's run between season one, episode six, which is how you want it, to 10. And then really, honestly, I thought season two was spectacular.

I think it's the best full season of Succession. Those 15 consecutive hours of TV from season one, episode six to the season finale of season two, I put them up against the best 15 consecutive hours of any television show of the last 20 years. Maybe that's nuts to say, but it's right there. I'm not saying anyone's crazy to choose the wire over it or choose the best peak of the Sopranos over it, but it deserves entry into that final four or into that finale. It's just so spectacular how

beautifully Jesse Armstrong and his writing team combine things that shouldn't feel this easy to be combined. This is a spectacular satire of the Murdochs and of media royalty generally. It's unbelievably funny. It is laugh out loud funny. And it's also Shakespeareanly tragic. And the way that it borrows from Shakespeare, not only with the Hamlet, the Kindle, but also sometimes very dramatically. The patriarch is Logan Roy.

Roy, Logan King, King L, King Lear. It is as explicit as possible. And Brian Cox is one of his most famous roles is having played King Lear. So, you know, if you, you think about pitching a show like this, it like, it's going to be Shakespearean, it's going to be satirical, it's going to be a comedy, it's going to be a drama, but it's also basically going to be a spoof about a bunch of fucking nimwits. It executes everything at A-plus level, especially across these 15 episodes. The only thing I wanted to add to your great rundown of all the beats of this finale, the printer scene that kicks things off is a great glimpse of the kind of spinal cortisol injection that we're going to get throughout this show. They need to deliver the bear hug letter.

Printing a letter is the easiest frigging thing in the world to do. And guess what? It goes somewhere else in the Wi-Fi network. So maybe Logan's going to be walking by, you know, whatever, some business table, business room and pick it up off the printer. So many little moments in this episode, in this one-hour episode, that give you this white-knuckle urgency that then five seconds later is relieved because Roman will say something hilarious and incredibly offensive and inappropriate. Yeah, they've unlocked Roman probably midway through this season, maybe episode four, Ranch. And by episode 10, it's just every time he's in a senior, like, Oh,

here we go. Here's Roman again. Joanna, why do you think Kendall thought it was a good idea for him to run everything? Because over the course of this season, we see somebody who, as Derek said, could, could barely talk. Didn't seem like he had a plan was super entitled. They didn't really have the respect of anybody else in the room. And then when it comes down to that moment in the bathroom and he gives him the bear hug letter and Logan Roy says, son, why do you, why do you want this?

And he's like, I just, I think I, I just think we can do better. And he's just so... Do good things. Do good things. He's just so incompetent. Why does he even think he can do this? Do you think the show established that well enough in the first season? Well, I mean, in terms of any of the Roy kids, like their sense of entitlement or their puffed up sense of self, I think that's just baseline for who they are

and who they've been told they are, despite the ways in which Logan tears them down constantly. They're also the upper, upper echelon of entitled in this world. And so they believe they are the smartest, they believe they are, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then for Kendall, there is, despite everything he does in this episode,

despite everything he'll do in the future, there is this part of him that believes that Carrie's a guilt, even before he puts that kid in the water, right? There's this, there's this tremendous guilty feels over his privilege. And he's always kind of like trying to tell people that's not who I am.

Right. I'm not my, you know, when he's talking to the, the woman in the Prague episode, right. He's like, I'm not my dad,

Roy. That's not who I am. And that's not me. I can do good things, you know? And I love what Derek was saying about. Well, and then by the end of the episode, he's like, I am. That's not me. I can do good things, you know? And I love what Derek was saying about... Well, and then by the end of the episode, he's like,

plant some stories about her, say she's a co-core, and yeah, yeah. So he plays the same Logan Roy game. Exactly. And that's why they all slip into their dad sometimes. Or in this case, in Shiv's case in this episode,

I think her mom. Like, they all slip into their parents' model behavior from time to time. And the question is like, I think that's the question of the show is, can they break out of that cycle and not be their dad? Because I don't think... This is the question I'm constantly asking. I think it's your question. What is winning on this show? Is winning for these kids getting the company, is it becoming their dad or is it, you know, making their own pile,

which is what, you know, Logan told them to do at the end of last season finale, right? Like, is it winning without their dad's tactics? Because I don't think like, I think we've all been kind of brainwashed by the show that Logan's approval

is something that we want for them. But I don't think that's it. I don't know. What do you think, though? I mean, they're all, they're all traumatized and damaged in all these different ways. Shiv, I think, ironically, is the most like Logan of all of them. Roman was his whipping boy.

And they lay all these breadcrumbs throughout the series that he's definitely hit him. He actually does hit him in one of those episodes midway through season two. Connor, I don't know how to explain. He's just like, he's not totally a black sheep, but he's hilarious, but nobody takes him seriously. It doesn't seem to work. And then Kendall just by,

I guess being the oldest of the second marriage was always the chosen one. But from the moment we see him in episode one, the guy's a bozo. Like they established it immediately. This is not a cool guy. This is not a guy with charisma. This is not a guy who sees the chessboard, like nothing. Even the way that Stewie and Sandy are playing him, he just doesn't see it. He doesn't understand what's going on.

And then you have Logan who, I love Logan in season one. I think season two, if you're going to really nitpick, Brian Cox does, he kind of moves it. He becomes a pro wrestling character in season two. He's like, it's just a lot of yelling. And what are we doing? Like, he's just this aggro energy. That's a little, little dialed up.

I gotta be honest, just a tiny bit. Season one, he does a great job of like, this guy almost died. He's slowly coming back. And then one of the great things about episode 10 is how he sees the chessboard with everything in that final scene with Kendall, where he becomes the dad again,

but he really knows what he's doing. He needs to end this bear hug. Now he's got Kendall back. And he's just like, that's the Derek. Is that the most vicious he's been in any scene in season one in that scene? Because he's not fatherly.

He, this is a chess move for him. He is fatherly, but as a chess move and it's so tender. Yeah. And you have two actors that are so different, not only in their presence on the scene, but also famously in their approach to acting. Jeremy Strong is famously a method actor. I acted before I was a journalist,

so I am intimately familiar with exactly how annoying method actors are to be in a play with. I've never done a video or TV or film, but they're just so fucking annoying. I mean, you're having snacks in between breaks and they're still pretending to be in character. It's awful. Ryan Cox, in the Shakespearean tradition, you don't have a lot of method actors, because how are you supposed to be method as someone in the 16th century? Ryan Cox comes from this opposite school of you turn it on, and sometimes you go maybe a little bit too aggro, you go a little bit too actory King Lear, but he's just so sensational. And one of the questions that I think this episode does a beautiful job of exploring is this question of, does Logan love

his children? And it's a profound question, I think, in this show, because on the one hand, he does seem to care for his kids. And yet there's all these moments where he has an opportunity to show his care. Like, for example, Jerry turns to him at the wedding and she says, should we tell the children about Kendall going public with his bear hug? And Logan says, what's the advantage? And Jerry goes, just to tell them. And he goes, oh, oh, oh. He doesn't even think about his relationship with his children outside of the context of the business implications. And then at the end, the last sentence of the episode is not, you're my boy. You're my number one boy. That's the famous line. The last sentence of the episode is Colin. That's how the script ends. Colin. And a security guy comes in and takes him away. So his last word in this season

instrumentalizes his children, right? I have played my tool. I have played my play. You may take him away. I'm done with this moment. And that is just so... With a wide shot of Colin the Grim Reaper pulling Kendall out, and then Logan's alone in the room and he's back in power. I mean, to your point, they have that therapy scene in one of the earlier episodes, was that like episode seven when they all go to Connor's ranch? Oh, sure, that's, yeah.

And he just, he goes into that, whatever therapy speak of, everything I do is for my children. He just like, he can't even explain why. And they're all kind of rolling their eyes and Shiv's like, dad, you said that already. And it's just, you know, he's full of shit.

He doesn't love his kids is the point of the show. In my opinion, there's an interview that he gave that, that I think Brian Cox and Jeremy strong gave with Vox at the end of season one, where he says that he talked to Jesse Armstrong. He asked Jesse Armstrong at some point in the middle of the season, one filming,

he said, does Logan love his children? And Jesse tells him, absolutely. He loves his children. Now, maybe that's what the writer, director, showrunner has to say to your sort of Hannibal Lecter. I keep calling him Hannibal Lecter because in a kind of Hannibal Lecter, Michael Myers kind of way, everything you throw at this guy, he sheds. And so you need some way to humanize him. And so maybe the right way for a director to humanize his protagonist is to say that underneath this exoskeleton

of just like a cold-blooded business acumen, there is some humanity. But I agree. I think you would actually read the show as evidence that he does not see his children as anything other than instruments toward raising the market cap of, of, of Royka. I think that he, I mean, I think that I would disagree in that. I think there are just different

definitions of love. And I don't think that the love that Logan has for his kids is a healthy one. I think it's more of that sort of ego, my, my legacy sort of love or extensions of himself. How can they shine glory back on me? That sort of narcissistic love. But I still think it's some definition of love. I don't think it's that he doesn't care about them. I think he genuinely does want them to succeed, but he doesn't want them to succeed more than he succeeds. And so it's this constant push and pull of barking not good enough at them, but then also when they do accomplish something, he pulls them down so that they need him.

And it's this constant sort of feedback loop. And something that I love about the show, to Bill's point about Logan Roy in season two, what I think is so fascinating is that Cox has said that they were going to kill off Logan Roy in this episode. That Logan Roy was just a die at the end of season one and much like Jesse Pinkman and a number of other too charismatic to die characters like he lives on um and so you know he might have

been a little high like I'm unkillable high on his own supply in season two I don't know but like I I love how responsive generally the show is to things like this like to your point when we meet Kendall in episode one and that first introduction where he is like rapping in his car and it's so pathetic, but the Kendall in that pilot is different than the Kendall we get going forward. And I think it's because I know it is the writers who said they saw what, um, what that actor could do, what Jeremy Strong could do. And they made Kendall so much more soulful, like that soulfulness was never supposed to be a part of him. So when that kid goes in the water,

like compared to Roman, Roy, like literally washing his hands in the bathroom after he's seen his launch explode and probably kill a bunch of people. Right. You know, you've just got Kendall sitting on the bank of that, you know,

lake or whatever it is. And just like the life drain out of his face at what has happened here. And he might go on to the wedding and dance like Will Smith at the Vanity Fair Oscar party last year or whatever, but it's over. His life is over in so many different ways in that moment. You know, one thing about Logan Roy, and this is probably after watching three seasons of this, is he loves the power more than the children.

The children to him are just a piece of the whole empire, like the different houses they have. There's that one scene when they have his birthday and Shiv's like, I made you this album of all the houses we have. That's the Malibu house. He doesn't even know what the Malibu house is. He's like, what? We have a Malibu house. He doesn't even know what the Malibu house is. He's like, well, we have a Malibu house. Like he's just, basically he's so obsessed with the power hunger piece that he's just lost

all of this other stuff. And his kids are a mess, right? Kendall's a mess. Shiv's, you know, going to marry this guy who she doesn't even love. Connor's a mess.

Roman's a freaking mess and a half. And you know, that this is what happens with the big, powerful families, which I think is what Armstrong was trying to talk about. I'm going to take a break. And then I really want to dive into Kendall and Jeremy Strong because I have some thoughts on this. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Elevate your morning coffee ritual.

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Because safety is learned. It's learned. Okay, give it up. Give what up? Really? Really, really. This message is brought to you by Metrolinx. So we mentioned Jesse Armstrong won for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series.

This show did not do well in the Emmys in Season 1, which sometimes happens with the Emmys, and the Emmys have their flaws. And then Season 2, everything rallies strong, wins in season two. Well, actually, I mean, his win in that year was actually kind of a surprise because that was still a Thrones dominating the Emmys year. Yeah.

And so the fact that he won over, I think it was like three different Thrones episodes were nominated in that writing category. That felt like this anointing of like, here's the new kid in town, the new HBO heavy town. The new HBO heavy hitter. Yeah. Well, he doesn't get nominated at all in season one.

And I've rewatched the show. I think this is my third or fourth rewatch now. I think he's up there with any HBO actor we've had on a show. I really do. If Gandolfini is the peak and I think he should be, and I think he is, he's, he's right there underneath them. And this, the stuff he does from episode one,

all the way through this episode, all the things he adds, and then it all pays off in season two, too. But, um, I just think this is a really hard part. We, there was a newness to him because we didn't have a history with him, which I think we talked about last week was one of the reasons the show works so well. We're discovering all of these actors at the same time we're discovering the characters, but there's so many things he does episode to episode, Derek.

And then in this episode, he's unsure whether he should double cross his dad. He does. Then he has to face his siblings. Now you have to act a little differently in that one, like the little false swagger. His dad cuts him down. Now he's mad. Then he's out with Greg and Greg's like, hey, I got these documents.

And now he's like, hey, Greg, I see you, you Machiavellian fuck. Like he's got a little charisma again. Now he's going to go out with the waiter and then it just all gets taken away. And by the end of it, he's broken. He does so many things in this. How is he not nominated for anything? Derek, what happened? Here's a theory.

And it's just a theory. And I'm interested if you guys disagree with it. I think that the way that we as audiences and especially as award institutions honor great acting is to honor representations of that which we consider to be greatness so we honor great performances of strength or great performances of overcoming difficulty right rocky style narratives or people that play kings very well, or people that play the oppressed to overcome their oppression. We don't often honor performances that are mere performances of weakness. And Jeremy Strong is an absolute genius at playing weakness.

This guy can't actually do anything well. Like if you, if you, if someone came to you and said, you know, Kendall, Kendall Roy is a real person. Um, and you know him and,

and you know, a friend, Bill wants to hire him. And he's like, what are Kendall's strengths? What are Kendall's strengths as a person? He's connected. He's got a lot of connections.

He's got a lot of connections. He's got a lot of money. Um, and he's got, you know, great, you know, sneakers that he'll give you for free. Uh, if, if, if give you for free if he decides that they don't look particularly good on him.

He has almost like he's a profoundly weak character. He struggles with drug addiction. He's not good at his job. He hasn't been a good husband. He sometimes screams at his children when they walk into the room at inopportune times. It is so hard, I think, to portray weakness in a way that we recognize as something that is great. And he somehow finds a way of pulling this off. He is absolutely pathetic, especially in the context of his relationship with his father. And there's just

something uncanny and sort of almost without parallel in the quality with which Jeremy Strong performs sentences that are basically a bunch of us strung together. There's so much going on behind the eyes and behind the stuttering that really makes you realize

that you are in the presence of a truly awesome performance. Yeah, and that's why I get protective. Like he's taking some hits on some magazine profiles and it's clear the cast doesn't love him I just think he's one of the great actors we have right now and you're going

back to the weakness thing Joanna like are you a godfather person Joanna yes yes you don't have to kick me off the podcast I haven't seen The Sopranos but I do love The Godfather four decades with The Godfather at this point and John Cazale just grows every time.

And I think he got nominated, but the Fredo character, as that show evolves, the two things that really, really, really stand out are how great Pacino was in Godfather 2 and how great John Cazale was as Fredo, which was just a black sheep character. He's not in a ton of scenes, but all the stuff he does, especially in Godfather 2,

it's like, this is one of the great performances. And that's what the Kendall piece reminds me a little. Joanna, will you tell me if he was better than Billy Porter in Pose? He wasn't. Who won the category that year? He wasn't, no. Jason Bateman, Ozark, Sterling K. Brown, This Is Us,

Kit Harington, Game of Thrones, Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul, and Mila Ventimiglia, This Is Us. Those were our nominees. So he couldn't even beat two This Is Us guys. We were still in a very much This Is Us phase of the Emmy times. And you know, he won the following year, right? He did.

And what's interesting to Derek's great point is that the episode that he was like not, you know, they get nominated with an episode ostensibly was a season two finale

when Kendall makes his big power move. So I don't know if that, you know, completely affirms Derek's theory there. Oh, that's a good point. Your Fredo comp is so good.

Like we're, it's easy for us to think about Roman as the Fredo of, of this whole thing. And he is like sort of the more obvious Fredo, is so good like we're it's easy for us to think about Roman as the Fredo of of this whole thing and he is like sort of the more obvious Fredo but I think they're just all a bunch of Fredos right there's no Michael in this family right and there's no Michael anywhere there's no like Tom's not a Michael Greg's not a Michael like like that character doesn't exist so it's like Don Corleone and a bunch of Fredos and And it's like, you know, and maybe a Sonny if you want.

And like, what are you going to do with that? And that's why this is such a fun disaster because we're constantly asking ourselves a question. We asked all through last season, all through season two, who is the right kid to put in there, right? Like sometimes we're like, oh, well, Roman has some good ideas or like, oh, maybe Shiv. Oh no, not Shiv.

You know, like, you know, who is the right kid? And I just don't think there is a right kid. I don't think any of these kids are ever going to be their dad. And that's both bad for business, but maybe good for their ultimate moral, you know, balance sheet possibly. But like, it's like when you think about Trump, I hate to invoke Trump, but like, when you think about Trump, like none of his kids are ever going to be Trump. And I don't think that's a, that's not an aspirational thing. I don't think anyone should aspire to be Donald Trump.

But like, what is very clear is that his kids might have very, you know, various things they can do, but none of them have the full package of batshit charisma. I can convince a room that a Logan Roy or a Donald Trump has. And so, you know,

when you're looking at that, or I was thinking a lot in terms of this idea of succession or real life comps, Derek, I was actually thinking of your episode of plain English about the Bob Iger succession and how like Iger is this like beloved leader and like revered and cannot for the life of him pick or groom a successor, you know? And part of that is, I think he just doesn't want anyone to come after him and be as good as or overshadow him in any kind of way. And I think that's a lot of what's going on

with Logan here is not like- He learned that from Eisner. I mean, Eisner was the original. I don't want anybody to come in and be better than I was. We see this in sports too, Derek. The owners just pass the team off to their kids. And in that case, it's not as big of an industry as whatever Logan's in charge of, but it's still pretty big. But over and over again, it's the sons and daughters of the famous guy who worked his way up from the ground and built this thing and self-made man, buys this franchise as one of his crowning achievements, runs it pretty well, and then passes it off to his kids, but then completely fuck it up.

And this happens in every sport. It continues to happen. And it will always happen because that's the rule of professional sports. And that's kind of like this Logan Roy thing, right? It's absolutely a Logan Roy thing. He himself seems clearly to be torn between the fact that he wants the family, he wants the business to remain within the family, but he doesn't want to pass it off to anyone in the family. And as a result, that means that he simply has to stay on and on and on. I will say this as a matter of drama.

I love this show, as I hope I've made very clear. But I do think succession is at its worst when it has to fall back into the incredibly familiar territory of you have Kendall, who's incompetent, trying to get one over on his dad, who cannot be bested by anything except mortality. That's

the crux of the end of season one. It's the all of season two. It's the end of season two. It's the spine of season three, and it looks like it's going to be season four again. Can Kendall overtake his dad? And that is my one big criticism of the show overall and why I'm happy that it's going to probably,

that it is going to end after this final season. That fundamental dynamic is not a 70-hour dynamic. You can't do 70 hours of will he, won't he with Kendall versus his dad. We already now are back to where we were at the end of season one and i'm i'm glad that they're finding that they i hope they're going to find some new way to settle this tension between kendall versus his dad i mean they know more than we know about building a show but it would almost seem like the move and maybe they'll

do this in season four was the family has to band together to protect itself from an outside force who's trying to take over. To have a little bit, there's that great episode. What's that? Pretty early maybe episode four, season three when they're trying to

or it's the fifth episode when they're doing the investor, the whole meeting with all and Sandy and Stewie are officially trying to get the deal done. But Sandy seems like he might be a vegetable and it's unclear if, if he can even talk and they're like, there's a lot of chicanery going on. But yeah, in general, they never had the family band together against an outsider for like a

sustained season. The constant conversation that Sean and I were having last season when we were covering this was like my... And this is before I knew that season four was going to be the last one, but I'm like, the kids need to work together. One of them can't take down or take on their father. They have to Voltron together. Their powers combined could possibly take him down.

And so, but anytime those kids get in a room, anytime they almost get to a point where they can band together, almost happens at the beginning of season three, right? When Kendall goes to Shiv's apartment, et cetera. Like the, Logan just tosses in like the apple of discord, the so's the seeds of discontent,

pours poison in their ear and gets them turned against each other. And so what they need is this like, this moment of betrayal, that godfather moment at the end of season three, when the door, you know, like, and Shiv sees Tom, like this idea of like, it has to be us

and we have to get past whatever program we have that teaches us to your point about, you know, Roman and his abuse and being in a cage is like that that like weakest dog gets sent away mentality that logan is programmed into them they have to figure out that they like only together can they take him down which feels almost mythological you know but logan feels like a mythological beast in this episode when he comes in and interrupts the four kids when they're in the room and Kendall's sort of talking and he wanders in and he's like, how's the torture going? And he starts, it's almost mythological where you're like, don't let him talk to you.

Don't let him talk to you. You're like, I'm like screaming at Kendall to get out of the room. Kendall's like, I'm not engaging with this, but he stays. I'm like, get out, man, because his whole spiral at the end of this episode is because of that curdled cream moment. Right. Where his dad just gets fully in his head and tells him he's nothing. He's nothing. What does he do? He goes immediately to go find some drugs. Yeah. Well, she probably had the best chance. But I don't know, Derek, why? Why couldn't it have been Shiv?

What was she missing? Shiv thinks she's smarter than she is. You know, all of, all the characters are so beautifully rendered in, all the children are so beautifully rendered in, they all think there's something that they're not. In a weird way, Romulus gets it. You know, he says,

he says over and over in the show, I'm dumb, but I'm smart. He understands that fundamental tension within himself. Kendall thinks he's an executive, but he's a drug addict who actually can't make decisions and doesn't know why he's in this business in the first place. And Shiv wants to be a killer, but has no experience in this business

and repeatedly overestimates her talents. I mean, she falls for the trap that's laid by Holly Hunter in season two so, so easily. It takes 15 minutes for her to be wiped out as a possible contender. So she doesn't know what she's doing here. Even if we buy the idea that she's talented as a political consultant, she has years of practice as a political consultant and what weeks, days, hours of practice as a media executive. So she doesn't really know what she's

doing. And there's no reason really to believe that we should take her that seriously. I mean, they don't when she, you know, submits the memo in season two and they say, you know, I love the quote to the top from like whatever it was, like, you know, Gandhi and Amelia Earhart. Like she sent a memo to her father that began with like, you know, Roger's thesaurus and like, you know, random quotes from luminaries. Like it's ridiculous. And so I don't think she's as impressive as she thinks she is.

And that makes her weirdly more like Kendall than immediately is obvious because she is such a smooth operator and is so much more eloquent than her brother. But sometimes she gets it. Holly Hunter gets it over on her,

but then she eventually gets it over on Holly Hunter as like Shiv Roy's official defense attorney. I just have to say that. And I think they all have gets it over on her, but then she eventually gets it over on Holly Hunter as like Shiv Roy's official defense attorney. I just have to say that. And I think they all have these massive weaknesses and Shiv definitely has hers. Roman definitely has his, obviously he gets in his own way at the end of season three and they're all constantly getting in their own way. And again, I kind of feel like there's some blend of like Roman selfawareness and Shiv's spine of steel and then Kendall's something.

I don't know what Kendall brings to the party, but I'll figure it out. Kendall's veteran experience. Yeah, makes the cocktail that we need to persevere. Can I give you a theory? Yeah. I'm glad you're both sitting down. I do wonder if this all leads to Greg being the one who wins. If you watch the first

episode, he's a little more central to the first episode than I realized on the sixth rewatch. And then you think of all the people who are actually playing the chessboard, as goofy and incompetent as he is, he does kind of make the right moves over and over again.

He knows when to switch sides. He knows when to keep the documents. He always sees what's going on and reads it. And he's kind of moving up, up, up. And I do think that maybe that's the whole point of this show is they're going to replace Logan with idiot cousin Greg. And it'd be like, oh my God, that's the guy who's in charge of they're going to replace Logan with idiot cousin Greg. And I'm like, Oh my God, that's the guy who's in charge of ATN. No wonder this all makes sense.

So your theory ends with cousin Greg as the CEO of Rick. Cousin Greg wins. He wins in some way. Yeah. I honestly don't, I don't know how it ends because I feel like there's, there is this way in which I don't know if you guys feel the same way. There's a part of me that hates Logan, but can't help but root for him in the way that like I root for him. It actually isn't even the right phraseology. Like rooting for the Yankees. Right. I expect the show to reward his cunning. Like that is what I come to each episode expecting. And so, to have

the children beat him overturns what I've expected from the show for the first three seasons. I wonder if the ending isn't going to be something that's sort of orthogonal to the actual succession of Royco Waystar. Maybe they all lose.

Maybe they all lose and they're sort of dispersed and it kind of ends in this awkward purgatory the same way that Veep ended and Jesse Armstrong is somewhat connected to sort of the Veepiverse. And so there isn't a winner-loser dynamic that makes this a clean end. It's going to be a messy end that leaves us all thinking about like the these these broken people and their and their broken lives something about that seems more in keeping with the message of the show which is that the kids can't win there's something about the villainous superheroism of their father that they will not overcome like it will take death to bring him down well and i i mean i agree

that it will take death to bring logan roy down, and I, I mean, I agree that it will take death to bring Logan Roy down, but I also like, again, it goes back to my question of like, what is winning? There's this whole, that whole interaction in this episode when Kendall is explaining to them, maybe it's a good thing that we're not in charge,

like that the company's not a family company anymore. Maybe that's a good thing. And all the kids are talking about like, who are we if we don't have this? Connor's like, we're just, you know, we just have millions of dollars. We don't have the power.

Shiv doesn't have the power like that she needs for her political machinations. Like Roman doesn't like, can't get hired, all this other stuff. Who are we without our dad? Or who are we without this company? And I think that's the question that the show is interested in answering.

Okay, that's my prediction. That's my prediction that I'm willing to timestamp. My prediction is at the end of season four, episode 10, Logan Roy is dead, and no Roys are in charge of this company. It goes over to someone else, and it ends with that awkward existential anxiety of all these children realizing they actually have to face their own identities once the company no longer belongs to them. And so maybe there's this idea that like, you know, Kendall's going to try to start his some some VC firm that you know is going to fail, but he seems happy maybe with like some spouse that someone he's dating and Romulus like is going to join some like political campaign because you know, he's like hooked up with the new Republican presidential nominee. And then and they're all going in their own direction. And none of those directions are the path blazed by their father. Because I think their self-actualization needs them to get out of those grooves carved by Logan. have to leave this because it's so poisoned and it's so toxic that no good finale ends with them merely getting

this thing they only got by virtue of the fact that their father's mortal. I think a key moment in this episode is when Kendall comes back having taken one of the worst baths of his life and anyone who has interacted with a European bath or shower knows

if you're trying to erase crime scene from your body, you don't want a European tap to do so. But then he goes back to the wedding and he dances with his family. And like, on the one hand, he's trying to like that, that anguish that my life is over is still simmering under the surface for him.

But you're also getting a glimpse of like what Kendall's life could have been with Rava and with his kids and just like happily dancing at a wedding. If he hadn't tried to be his father, if he hadn't tried to take on his father, if he had just like rejected his father's path for him and done something else, like there are times in which Kendall is a good dad and there are times in which he and Rava actually connect. And so it's like this other life, this like ghost of another life of what could have been, or this is what really matters.

Like this moment of dancing with my family at this wedding and not like all the other shit that I've been doing and all the other shit, the like imaginary throne that I've been going after. You know? It does remind me of the Buss family because Jerry Buss was like one of the great sports owners of all time. He owned the Lakers and got old, like Logan Roy did,

and then wanted to give the team to his kids. And none of his sons could run the team. They just weren't competent enough. And very similar to Kendall and Connor and Roman. And then the shib in the family was Jeannie Buss, who kind of begrudgingly took the team over and really hasn't done a good job. Like LeBron wanted to play there, but for the most part has no idea what she's doing.

They're not very well run. And, um, but it was just like, there was no other choice. So I wonder like, could succession go that route too, where it's like, no, no, it has to be. And then it's like begrudgingly shiv, from what we've seen it doesn't seem like she'd be a good choice either. Who knows? I want to go over some stuff in the episode quickly. So we have the wedding and we have the wedding photos and the opening credits which are great

and Connor demanding that Willis in the photos or he's going to punch Tom in the face and take a shit on stage. There's a brief shot, Joanne, of Shiv and her bridesmaids. Yeah. Did you want to know more about the bridesmaids? Who were they?

Where'd they come from? College? The most implausible thing about this episode is that Shiv has friends that she talks to because we've never seen her do it. Shiv has female friends? Yeah. Who knew? I thought that was ridiculous.

I agree. And then also on the wedding, the, they do all the toasts and the toasts are kind of secretly great where you have Shiv where she's like, uh, you're a good guy. I like hanging out with you. It's like, Ooh, heartfelt. Um, then you have the mom who goes up and just can't wait to make one last remarriage joke. So she, she, the mom was fantastic at nine up 10. And then Tom's more heartfelt, but just that's when you're like, Oh, even he knows this marriage is, is destined not to happen. So the wedding stuff's great. Wait, wait, you forgot Romans. I don't feel like I'm losing a sister. I don't feel like I'm gaining a brother either. I don't feel anything. It's a

mental disorder called borderline personality disorder. It's just amazing. And it's hosted to a girlfriend who I thought was a great ad halfway through the season. Tom's ex-flame from Prague, but she's laughing hysterically. I always enjoyed her scenes. We have the bear hug

letter, which you mentioned. We had the satellite launch in Japan, which, as Derek pointed out, he has no remorse whatsoever over and then when he finds out nobody died and he does a guess who, guess who didn't count it but maybe who lost a couple thumbs? This guy!

We have Connor just decided during the episode he wants to be the President of the United States. He spars with Gil, which is a great 45 second scene where he's just going at this guy. This guy's like, all right, I'll see you later. It's a good sparring with you. He buckled under intellectual scrutiny.

Yeah. We have Logan just freaking out on a waiter and getting fired. We haven't seen Logan do enough evil rich guy stuff in season one because he was compromised. But a good example of like, oh, you're just a fucking absolute worst person asshole and the waiter.

Yeah, like a nice circle back to the first episode with the kid with the watch and the baseball game, right? Like the way in which there, no real person involving these guys. We have very little Greg except for the Machiavellian fuck scene, but I think it's important because Greg's always kind of moving ahead

no matter what happens. He's always gaining. We have the Shiv Tom open marriage thing. I'm just not sure I'm a good fit for a monogamous marriage, which I'm positive is a sentence you'd want to hear on your wedding night. Well, it also sets up Tom in the finale of... Going to go see Nate. Put it back. Yeah, when he has the glass of wine, put my wine back. You begin to see his vicious

and somewhat sadist nature that he continues with human footstools in season two. But this conversation with Shiv also sets up one of the most remarkable one-liners in the finale of season two where they're sitting on the beach, Tom and Shiv, and Tom goes,

I feel like I was Shanghai into an open borders, free fuck trade deal. Who puts those words together? Yeah. Yeah. I, I, that, that later conversation is wonderful. And you can see in season four, the dissolution of their relationship is almost certainly going to play a really good. Oh yeah. Joanna, were you glad to say,

were you glad to see Nate just get his legs cut out like that? One of my favorite things about succession is how much Bill hates Nate. Like Nate, Nate is your mortal enemy. You hate that guy. My question, my question for you, for you,

Bill is, uh, Tom gets to do this to the tune of Uptown Girl by Billy Joel what song would you like to have playing when you kick someone out of your own wedding I thought Uptown Girl was perfect it was so happy and then they kept the camera on him

and he does like the little head nod and gets back out of the dance floor I thought all that was great Kendall does Special K with the waiter, not great and I'm old and I'm not a drug guy. So I had to Google special K, which is ketamine. Does that mean my ketamine text did not play for you

when I first sent it? Did you literally think I was talking about ketamine? I didn't really know what ketamine was, so I had to research it. And for partly because of your text. But apparently it doesn't. Coke is just like ramps you up, makes you a little more aggro, gives you energy.

This, I think, can send you into a fucking fog, which is where the waiter goes. Is he waiter or caterer? What was he? Cater waiter? I'm calling him waiter, whatever he was. But the accident was the waiter's fault. He grabs the wheel and turns it over the bridge.

So I do feel like if Kendall hadn't been on drugs, I think he could have, I don't know if anyone would have believed him. Well, that's Kendall's whole life if Kendall hadn't been on drugs. No, but I was thinking that when he's crawling out of the water, I'm like, you don't make the logical decisions in those moments, right?

You're so traumatized and your adrenaline's going and stuff like that. So he's like, hide it. That's his instinct, right? But I do think there's a way in which he could have gone to the authorities and said, what happened? Yeah, this drug that way to grab the wheel and drove me off a bridge. And his privilege would protect him. I don't think... I

see where you're coming from, that what happened happened. It literally wasn't his fault that the car drove off the bridge. But if you're a celebrity behind the wheel of a car, you can't say, I was driving, but I wasn't actually driving. You are still... No, you blame him for the driving.

I think. Okay, then you lie about the, about the underlying details. The problem for him is his wallet was there. Right. His wallet was there. So he has to admit that he was there cause they're going to find out anyway. Then it looks like he's hiding that he was there. I just think ultimately if he had gone to the authority, you know, Tom has a line in this episode. If I go to jail, which I won't, right. Which I won't, which is an ultimate thing that happens for tom right but like their privilege insulates

them from actual consequences right and so all he did was give his dad leverage over him for an entire season by hiding this if he had gone to the authority you know like he's not thinking clearly i'm not blaming him for that but like but if he goes to the authorities right then, and he's on drugs, I think his life is better than letting his dad just grind him for the rest of his life. I'll say that if we were doing this for rewatchables

in the what's aged the best, what's aged the worst category, the what's aged the best versus watching this for the first time, when this happened for the first time versus When this happened for the first time versus like I've watched it six times now. First time, you're like, oh, they're doing Chappaquiddick.

Like you're just, your head goes to Chappaquiddick. Now I don't think about the Chappaquiddick piece, but you know, the Chappaquiddick thing was such a huge part of this and Armstrong even admitted like he went over the Chappaquiddick, like what happened,

how Ted Kennedy talked to his dad. And that was why he was trying to recreate with the last scene a little bit. I don't know. I mean, you know, and Ted Kennedy was, it followed him forever, but he was also like insulated

from real consequences from that. And I don't know if that plays differently in today's media landscape. It plays differently in today's media landscape. It plays differently in today's media landscape, Joanna. In 1970, you could kind of bury the old car accident where the girl died and the guy swam away. I don't... Social media, 2023, probably a little

harder. Yeah, you're right. The footage of the car driving toward the bridge is going to be on TMZ in like 36 hours. It's actually amazing in 1970 that Ted Kennedy got away with it.

It really is actually... Should I run for president? It was 1976. No, still too early. In 1980, it's like, ah, it's been enough time. It's like, killed a girl and swam away. In this case, you know, Kendall's obviously

to blame, but the guy did steer the car off the bridge. Yeah, I don't know legally how responsibility cashes out, but you're a drunk and drug-using driver of a car

on a bridge with another... That part's not great. A dark bridge. You're on the wrong side of the car on a bridge with another... That part's not great. A dark bridge. With a dark bridge with... You're on the wrong side of the car. A stick shift. And you end up in a river with him dead. I don't know if that's a particular manslaughter. I don't know what it is.

But for the purposes of this show, it's not innocent enough to keep him as a part of the bear hug team as long as his father understands the relationship or the connection to the death. So at that moment, he realizes my life is over as I thought it existed. And I have to make a decision. Do I stay against my dad and still pull out of the bear hug? Or do I align with my father? And in that moment, I think all things considered,

this is a defensible choice in an absurd situation. And I think, I mean, the waiter grabs a wheel, but Kendall's the one who's in the car when he knows that he's drunk and high and doesn't, you know, is driving on the wrong side of the road, first of all. And secondly, does not know how to drive stick. And so all of that.

And this is like a first take episode. We're like, whose fault was the car accident? Kendall or the waiter in the graphic? Both. Everyone's making bad decisions, right? But like, as you point out, like it's so stressful because the way it's shot, Last of Us in the backseat style, you can see that Kendall's eyes are hardly ever on the road.

You know what I mean? And you can see where the headlights are cutting through. And every time they cut to the wide, the car feels like it's going too fast. And you're just like, and it's longer, it's longer than I remembered how long they're in the car before it crashes. And like,

it's a really memorable scene, like a minute or a stretch. Well, and the danger there's, it's so cleverly done because there's other elements of danger like when the kid's like should i kidnap you and i'll keep you you know like this kid can barely stand so probably he's not going to do that but it's still like it's it's not they're not singing uptown girl in the car before the car crashes right there's like a weird dark twisty thing going on in the car and then there's all this when you rewatch it also there's a tiny bit of sexual tension in the car let's be honest like there's just a whiff of flirting or something i think something's floating in there i think the first

shot the first shot you get of him where he's smoking in in like in the parking lot right and kendall sees him there's something so ominous about that. Like there's just like the dread starts. And there's all these little moments throughout the episode, like Shiv joking about killing the stripper at her bachelorette party, or Roman and Jerry talking about corporate manslaughter. Like all these little like things

that are leading up to this really, really, you know, out of control, dangerous feeling. But again, it comes down to that, you know, when at breakfast the next morning but kettle's trying to figure out if anyone is talking about this or anyone knows and greg is talking about how like oh they're sad the hobbity people right the hobbity people the staff um it's it's that yeah it's that no real person involved thing that becomes a recurring comment in season two, but it's you feel it here, right?

No real person involved at the launch as far as Roman's concerned, right? That happened far away. It's not here, right? No real person involved. Maybe that's how Shiv thinks about Tom. In the fact that she smashes him here, no real person involved. No real person involved.

This cater waiter, Andrew, goes into the water. Well, we also get to see my favorite character of the episode, Colin the Grim Reaper. One of the best cast actors. It's like your face has to look both non-threatening and the most threatening face anyone could possibly have. You can have no expression. And when you come in, it has to feel like you're a pro wrestling sidekick that just,

oh, I don't want to fuck with that guy. They use him in season two in a much bigger way when Kendall's trying to fuck with Shiv's speech. But in this episode, he comes in and the moment you see him in the brunch, you're like, oh, oh no. The way it's shot, you know, Mark Milad, Jesse Armstrong wrote this episode, Mark Milad directed. These are like the succession all-stars, right? And the way the cameras are slightly up from Jeremy Strong in that scene,

he looks like a kid. He looks so small as Colin's walking in. They often like comb Jeremy Strong's hair that makes him look like, I don't know, Michael Banks or Mary Poppins. He looks like a little kid, often with his little sticky-out ears. And so he just looks 12 as Colin's coming to get him.

You can see everything begin to fall to earth. His shoulders shrink and his hands are down and his eyes start to fall and his mouth is pulling down. It's a beautiful moment of acting. If you just freeze frame on what Kendall looks like when Colin walks in the room. Displaying without a single sentence,

I know my life is over, is very, very hard to do, especially when you've just been at a breakfast buffet line, something that's totally anodyne. He plays it perfectly. He plays it perfectly. And the last five minutes of that, so, I mean, again, we've circled over it,

but it really, it's just a masterclass, especially into unbelievably different styles of acting. This really broad, brusque, sort of old-style, kind of Shakespearean, just big-guy way that Brian Cox does so beautifully in all of his movies. And then Kendall acting his way through a scene in which he barely gets a single sentence out.

Every single thing is, uh, uh, stammering. Maybe I would, it's, but he can't even talk and he plays the inability to talk just so, so well in that. This could be the defining moment of your life. It'd be everything. A rich kid kills a boy. You'd never be anything else.

Or you know, it could be what it should be. Nothing at all. A sad little detail at a lovely wedding where father and son are reconciled. Fucking brutal. You have this man to get me. Yeah, there it is. Forget about that kid in the bottom of the Emmy. Yeah, there it is. Forget about that kid

at the bottom of the river. We're good. To go back to what you said earlier, Bill, in terms of like Logan's manipulation here, he's so cruel to offer your son the thing that he craves,

which is like tenderness and affection and attention in this moment when you are so blatantly manipulating him, right? Like he couldn't give it to Kendall. Any other time Kendall looks to his dad to be like, tell me I'm a good boy and Logan has nothing for him.

He's like, you don't have it in you. Yeah. And then he gives this to him here. Even though we all know it's like fake and manipulative, it's still like the cruelest move that he could make is to offer tenderness here. Well, it leads to, you're my boy. You're my number one boy. Come on! What time is my 10 o'clock?

Get this broken kid out of here. I got a fax to send. Incredible episode. Great cliffhanger episode. Really nice journey of 10 episodes start to finish. Perfectly constructed. I still don't feel like they totally... I agree with you, Derek.

We've said this before on this pod that they didn't really know what they had those first couple episodes. So, Joanne, are you positive that they thought Logan was going to die at the end of season one? Like, Jesse has said that in this beauty way that that was his said that. Cox has said it. Indisputably that that was his plan.

Brian Cox has said it, you know, unless Brian Cox is speaking out of pocket. He's definitely said that. I mean, he is an old crazy actor. I don't know. It's true.

It's true. That's, that's, that's fair. Cause we know that happened with Homeland, right? Where they said, Oh Jesus,

we can't kill Brody. Right. The show. He's too important. We got to bring him back. I don't. Well, Walton Goggins on Justify, Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad. Like this happens a lot where they're like, Ooh,'t kill Brody. Right. This show, he's too important. We got to bring him back. I don't... Walton Goggins on Justify, Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad.

Like this happens a lot where they're like, ooh, look what we have here. And again, I think... Run our test on the Lakers in 2009. I think... What I would want to know is like, because you don't necessarily

always present to HBO all 10 episodes of the season when the show is being lit, it's possible that Jesse Armstrong just didn't really know where the show went. Just did the pilot. Maybe he just did the pilot. Maybe it sort of sketched out the plot through the boardroom scene. He knew you were going to get up to which side are you on?

And that Kendall was not going to become CEO of this company by episode six of the show. But then after that, maybe the show goes this way. Maybe it goes another way. All these things were in the ether. Something like that might be realistic. If he had actually sketched out and started to plan for and hand out scripts for and started to rehearse scenes in which, like, Logan Roy is on his deathbed, that would really surprise me. No. So this is what Jesse Armstrong said to Radio Times in 2020.

He said, at one point, I did think Logan might expire at the end of the first season or even the first episode. Though all this changed before we committed, before we committed ideas to paper. And once I saw Brian, I realized how big a weight he is at the center of our solar system. He's great to write for. So like, it was a nebulous plan of like,

let's kill, let's kill the king and watch the kids sort of scrabble scraps. And then they decided that they, that Brian Cox is like, you know, the counterweight. king and watch the kids sort of scrabble scraps and then they decided that they that brian cox is like you know the counterweight and i think that this explains the thing that you like to say and i agree with about season one bill which is that it doesn't the show doesn't really figure out exactly what it is until like five or six and i think it's because these writers are responsive writers to the talent and they talent and they're shaping the characters

to the talents that they have, they know that Kieran Culkin can improvise like no one else. So they just let Kieran improvise all the time. And that's kind of who Roman becomes. And they know that Jeremy Strong can go fathoms deep with whatever they throw at him. So that's who Kendall becomes. And so they're shaping the show. And ultimately, it's what makes the show so strong is that it's so reactive to the bits of chemistry. You know, Tom and Greg, etc. Or Jerry and

Roman, like the things you can't plan for. It's reactive to that, but it means they hadn't really firmed all that up for the first few episodes. Yeah, we know that about Jerry. Alright, last question because we got to go. Derek, it comes out a week from now. Jesse Armstrong has thought about it

and he wants to do a prequel set in the 1980s about Logan Roy. What's your response? I'm generally against prequels. Me too. But I'm also generally for whatever the fuck Jesse Armstrong wants to do in perpetuity. So when I put those two things together, I would much prefer to have Jesse Armstrong

writing television for me almost immediately after Succession ends, rather than him like sort of wander in the wilderness of idea generation for 10 years and me have no Jesse Armstrong in my life. So it's an acceptable outcome, but I'd much prefer the alternative reality where for the last year and a half, Armstrong has been sort of cooking up this other idea that he really wants to turn into the next succession, the next elite Sunday night, HBO, big prestige television show. That would be my, my a, and this is my A1. Joanna?

My only question is, is James McAvoy ready to go back and do another HBO show? Because if he is, I would put McAvoy in as young Cox and let him cook. Before we go, can I just shout out

a stealth MVP of this episode for me? Yeah. Arianne Moyad as Stewie. Stewie, I am always happy when Stewie. Like, Stewie, I am always happy when Stewie shows up. Always. But the way in which

he manipulates Kendall in this episode and down to that scene where he's like sitting with his like legs crossed, ankles showing, sipping some brandy,

I think it is. Like, it's just like the body language and everything that Stewie does. I can never get enough. So maybe a Stewie spinoff for me is what I want. You talk to the old grandfather clock?

To talk to your fuckchester? Stewie rules. I'm so glad you said that. Yeah. What an underrated performance. Yeah, I think because his name's Stewie, you don't take him seriously, but he is one of the few masterminds on this show. All right. That's it. Succession Hall of Fame, Episode 10,

Season 1, producer Steve Allman. Thanks for doing this Succession Hall of Fame, episode 10, season one producer, Steve Allman. Thanks for doing this. Thanks for doing this, Joanne and Derek. Now I hope you guys get to be friends and make Prestige TV podcast episodes together. I would love that. I'm a Prestige TV matchmaker. I like to ease Joanne in with

different people and see how it goes. And then maybe they spin off and do their own thing. All right. This is great. We will be doing spin off and do their own thing. All right. This is great. We will be doing another Hall of Fame episode next week. So until then. All right. That's it for the podcast.

Thanks to Rob Mahoney. Thanks to Joanne and Derek, who didn't even know they were going to be on this podcast, but Hey, this is how it works at the ringer. Thanks to Kyle Creighton for producing. Thanks to Steve Cerruti as well. And I'll see you on this feed on Thursday. On the wayside On the first side of the road I don't have to ever