The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Succession’ S3, E3 Precap

Episode Date: October 29, 2021

Chris and Wos recap Episode 2 of 'Succession' Season 3. They discuss Kendall’s plan, Greg’s nervousness, donuts, Shiv’s role, and what to expect going into Episode 3 of Season 3 of 'Succession.'  Hosts: Chris Ryan and Wosny Lambre Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Watch is the latest and the greatest in pop culture from best friends Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald. Join them as they discuss TV, movies, music, and much more. Check out The Watch on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Sweet Green. The day doesn't ask for permission. Lunch window? Gone before you saw it coming. You deserve a break that actually satisfies. Sweet Green's new wraps have got you.

Real ingredients? Zero shortcuts. Everything you love in one hand. Think green goddess chicken, garlic aoli, crumbled bacon, corn salsa, 40 grams of protein, made to keep up with whatever comes next. New sweetgreen wraps hit different. Order now at order.com. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three-burner gas grill. Or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor, to your backyard, then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together.

Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th, Exclusion supplies to homebop.com slash price match for details. Hello, and welcome to the Ringer Prestige TV show. It's your succession pre-cap. I'm Chris Ryan. I'm joined by Waz. As always, what's up, man? I love that pregnant pause right there.

That's another level. You got to be Stephen A level to master. the pause of just letting the dead air sit. Sarah Canig, Stephen A, coward, the greats. Waz and I are here. We're a prep school for succession. We talk about what we think might happen. We'll talk a little bit about what happened on the last episode, episode two.

We do it entrance survey style. So I ask Waz's a series of questions, and then we just bounce off of that. Was, how are you doing this week? I'm doing great. I'm actually, I mean, I'm feeling great spiritually, but although I'm a little bit under the weather, I seem to have caught a bug out here in Los Angeles. Don't worry, guys. I don't have COVID.

I'm Vaxed. So even if I did, it wouldn't be the end of the world. But, yeah, just a little bit under the weather. But I'm excited to talk about succession as always. Well, let me ask you this. You know, you're a little bit under the weather. Like, first question, would you eat the donuts? I'm a donut head.

So, yeah. Yeah. I'm not only in my donut head, I'm just a fat boy. So eating is generally what I'm constantly either doing or thinking about or preparing for. It's just a huge part of my daily life. So I would have snacked on at least two of them things. They didn't look the freshest.

I'm not going to lie. They were boxed. You know what I mean? They had a little bit more crispy cream to them than they did. That artisanal like donut friend kind of like, oh, it's got a little bit of basil in it. I would, I mean, imagine Logan Spares. no expense when it comes to his kids. But the reason why I bring the donuts up first is that was the most ambiguous kind of like chess move, I think, at the second episode where it was like,

he's obviously telling them, I know where you are, I know what you're doing, you are, or you're still my kids. What did you think of that gesture? It's, it's Roman being Roman. It's not Rome, excuse me, it's Logan being Logan. It's a power play, right? Although, by the way, as we see throughout the episode, we've never really seen Logan panicking to this degree. ever at any point in the history of the show. So we know he's actually panicked. But he sends that as a gesture of just like, look, I'm in a really vulnerable spot.

And you guys could actually kill me. But I know that I'm this looming, towering presence to you guys. So this show of force is going to have an effect on you. He knows the effect that he has on his kids, right? Yeah. When he's calling Roman Romulus and shit like that. He knows what he's doing every single time, but we know as the audience that it's from a position of pure panic.

Yeah, you know, it was such an interesting moment because I was trying to, when I was watching the episode, I was trying to decide, like, what I was seeing was theater and what I was seeing was, like, sincere kind of interest in Kendall's, Kendall's pitch, because Kendall's appealing to everybody, both for their personal interest in terms of, like, accruing power, but also maybe on some level, like, their desire. to create a more morally just company,

if that's even impossible, with, like, what the bones of what they have? If you could do me a favor for our second question here, can you kind of rank in order of most to least intrigued in Kendall's plan? Could you rank the other kids, Shiv, Roman, and Connor?

Yeah, this is actually pretty easy. Most intrigued is definitely Connor. Anytime somebody wants to make Connor feel important or have him be a part of... Just happy to get the invite. Yes, exactly. Connor is 100% like, whoa, like, you want me to be a bit of...

part of the cool? Okay, cool. Shiv, second most intrigued because she just got spurned by her dad, right? And she understands that she understands that Kendall has something, there's something to what he's trying to do here, but she's, you know, they've all been traumatized by

Logan so much and the sort of Stockholm syndrome of loving their torturers, it takes hold in all of them. So I think Shiv is definitely interested, specifically because she already just got spurned for Jerry. But, you know, she still wants to ride with Daddy. And then Roman, of course, because he sees himself as ultimately ascending to the tops. He's like, I can't hitch my wagon to this power hungry-ass dude when I want the whole,

when I want to seat myself, right? So I think definitely Connor most intrigued, Shiv, second most intrigued, and Roman third most intrigued. Yeah, Roman seems the most. hostile towards it. And even though he brings him this duty-free gift or whatever from the airport, he's basically like, I'm here to spy on you, just so you know, just so everybody's aware. Shiv is more like, I think, intrigued, kind of gets where Kendall is coming from in terms of his pitch about the Great Whites rolling off stage in the American Century coming to an end.

But I think ultimately there's something about the fact that Connor, who is the most, most sort of probably on board for most of the episode and saying amen brother to Kendall. He's the first one to be like, take my name off the list here. And the fact that Connor does that is like if Connor's not signing up for this, I can't sign up for it. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah.

It's obvious. And, you know, the coolest thing about that sequence of events at the house is the siblings being brutally honest about how they feel about each. other. Just, you know, sometimes they're talking and double speak, but us as the audience, we could tell, like, everybody's like, Kendall, you are so full of yourself. You're, you've been a career and life F up your whole life. However, this thing you got going is semi-impressive. Yes. Right? Everybody's acknowledging that, but they can't shake the feelings. It's like, we know you, dude. Like you can ruin anything.

No matter how pristine it is, you have the capability of completely ruining it. So that was the coolest thing about this sequence of events. It's all of them being honest about how they feel and view each other. Roman's almost so depraved and emotionless that he's the person who sees the situation for what it is. Because he's the one who's like, we just wait. We just wait for him to self-destruct because he, he's, he's addicted to self-destruction. Yes, yes.

And that was the coolest thing ultimately that you see in the episode. It's like, yeah, Kendall, you might have the upper hand right now, but there's absolutely no reason for us throwing our lot with you right now. We could just wait until you actually prove something. There's no reason for us to do it right now. And another thing that I thought was cool too was that what it felt like to me watching is that Kendall has this great hand to play. It reminded me of the 2016 offseason

offseason for the Warriors. It's like, we just went 73 and 9. Right. Sure, we lost the finals by one freaking game. Probably win it, but for Draymond, putting his nuttack on LeBron's head. We're probably good going into 16-17. But let's get KD, right?

Like, that's what it felt like Kendall was And it's like, if I line up the siblings, not just what the corporation has done that's been, you know, borderline criminally negligent, if not outright criminally. Yeah, we'll get into that. Right. Not just what they've done organizationally. But if I could get the family, like the family is now turned against this dude. This guy's kids are now like, this is done. So forget about what he's done like that we can just say is just messed up and probably against the law.

law. His own kids think he's too disgusting and awful to run his own company anymore. It's over. Game set match, right? So that's what I thought was interesting about that too. Yeah, Kendall's white knighting here is interesting just because I, you know, the most, but the most sort of like, I guess like admirable thing he could do or the more most sort of just thing he could do would be like, look, I have these papers. It incriminates my father. It incriminates the entire executive class of this company. It's time for this company to be dismantled for the good of society.

On one hand, you could try and set up Shiv to be the new face of the company, but on the other hand, his sort of desire to accrue power for himself is ultimately going to be the thing that's his downfall. You have to imagine. I mean, it doesn't seem like he's got

all his ducks in a row here. I wanted to ask you, though, do you particularly believe Shiv in that bedroom scene when they're all kind of gathered in Kendall's daughter's bedroom? does shev is protesting ignorance while everybody else is kind of like we knew we knew and you know uh Connor especially seems to have some some insight into it Roman is like yeah I was kind of aware like not necessarily throwing people off boats but I was kind of aware right I mean I did not know they were docking

in Los Angeles and all of that right like so he kind of gets an idea of it but here's where Shives, I didn't know argument falls apart. You got the news from Tom, your husband, and you did nothing with it. So even if you didn't know in real time while it was happening,

you didn't have the goods in real time. You got it afterwards. You could have easily came public and was just like, this is awful. So no matter how you try to spin this, the reality is that your hands are just as dirty because once you got the information,

you didn't you didn't do anything with it and you know I do want to go back to some of the stuff with Kendall because I find that like a lot of real life creeps into the show right like when you talk about Kendall's

white night nature I think about the Facebook whistleblower lady the other day yeah for sure she's like yeah this was horrible and I feel bad and blah blah blah blah blah and all these senators are like what should we do lady who

who's retirement is wound up in owning Facebook stock. Should we break it up? Also wound up in owning crypto and she lives in Puerto Rico where she doesn't have to pay a lot of taxes. There you go. Of course. And they're like, should we break Facebook up?

Should we just kill this company? She's like, no, of course not. We don't do that. No. You know, I own a shit ton of Facebook stock. I'm going to freaking, this is my nest egg. Don't break up the company. We want the stock price to stay as high as

possible. So much of real life reminds me of what's happening on the show yesterday because I was feeling so, like I was just literally on my couch watching TV. I binged dopesick.

The Michael Keaton show. The Michael Keaton show about the opioid crisis and the Sackler family. And there's a kind of Roy family dynamic with the Sacklers too. Yeah. But, you know, it's just showing you how the sausage gets made and how like none of these people are unique within this system

that we've created for ourselves this is how it works right no matter who or what you put in the position this is how it's going to work yeah succession is actually like in that dangerous zone right now where it's like is succession imitating real life or is real life imitating succession like the same thing happened with the rogers family did you read about that with the the canadian media like family that that owns the rap that And like it was only for the series of checks and balances. That's why Maasai stole the GM of the Raptors. I saw that.

There was some guy that was just like, oh, this Maasai guy, who does he think he is? I kind of saw that because I'm kind of deep into Raptors' Twitter a little bit. So I saw glimpses of it. I didn't dive head first since the story, though. I can't imagine two tougher scenes from myself. If I was sick and spent the day on the couch, then watching dope sick and looking at Raptors' Twitter.

Look, you know, I'm watching it the whole time. And I'm like, this is not even the type of show you want to recommend to somebody because it's like it's only going to get you mad. It's barely entertaining. It's just going to make you, it's just going to piss you off. Right. So you don't even want to be like, yo, you should check out this new show. It's actually dope.

It's like, bro, this is just depressing stuff. We preach a culture of accountability on this podcast. So I just want to come out and say that if I was the sion of a very powerful, like, media family, of like a huge, wealthy, oligarch-type family. And we had an interest in an NBA team. I definitely would install myself as to them. It's facts. Come on.

I mean, who amongst us would not do that? You know what I mean? I would at least try the job, you know? Yeah, interim. Interim president of basketball ops. At least let me do it. Let me fail at it three trillion times like James Dolan and then finally put some people in charge.

one of the um the next question i have is about kendals speaking of science so one of the more interesting developments over the course of this season has been like this is kind of a new kendall like we've we've had uh icarus kendall in the first season we've had shell shock kendall in the second season this kendall is the guy we saw walk into the vaulter meeting we've seen glimpses have been before but the combination of like you know headspace psychobabble of C-suite buzzwords and just constant churning of sick burns. Like, what do you make of this new Frankenstein's monster of Kendall?

It's obvious that Kendall doesn't know what it takes to be a CEO of a company this large and this expansive and this powerful. And the proof of that is how you know Kendall doesn't get the job is that he doesn't get his own father. Right?

Like, you, the fact that you can't please your father shows that you don't know what it takes to do what he does or else you know how to make him happy, right? Like, the fact that you constantly fail at satisfying this man who only cares about this one thing shows that you don't know what that job is. You don't know what makes him tick. You don't know what makes those kinds of people tick

and therefore make them effective at what they do. Because, again, the man who raised you, who you spent the most time with, You know nothing about. You don't, you know, you don't understand him. You're constantly just like flailing whenever it's time for you to be like, all right, dad, this is why it should be me. This is how I know Kendall doesn't know what he's doing.

Right. He would have already proven it to his freaking dad by now. And so all of this other stuff that he's doing, like when it comes to the buzzwords, we got to get the PR firm and we got to do this, we got to do that. It's what he thinks. Yeah. a CEO is, but it's not grounded in any reality as far as how CEOs function in our world or in succession.

Like, just look at how Stuy plays him. Look at how, you know, Logan's main rival is playing. Look at how all of the people who are actually good at this just run laps around this dude all the time. It's obvious he doesn't know what the hell he's doing. Yeah, I mean, like the more and more I watched this show, the more and more Roman seems like the more natural successor. Just because Roman is actually interested in the business to some extent.

And it's kind of like the kind of guy who will blow up a satellite and then actually make it to see tomorrow. You know, like he doesn't get, Kendall just seems like he's reading three self-help books at once. And he's confusing all the messaging and confusing all the vocabulary. Kendall would absolutely hand out white fragility books to his employees. He'd be that boss. He's got the alchemist. He's got it all. This is what I was very much looking forward to this question.

So Kendall gives this big speech in his daughter's bedroom where he talks about being at the end of the long American century, the Great Whites rolling off stage. Roman makes that joke about, oh, we have this, because we're such a great collection of multi-ethnic, transgendered, you know, millennials or whatever. But do you think Kendall actually buys this jazz that he's playing about like this stuff? Or is this just like what he read in the Atlantic?

And now he's like regurgitating it and is trying to use it to his own advantage. or do you think he actually is like a character or like is his character somebody who has like a real sense of like systemic change possibly being afoot? No, I think he has to buy it, right? To do what he's doing to the extremes that he is, he has to have some level of buying. We can call a self-delusion if we want.

But like he believes his own BS, right? But what I think is so interesting about that speech about the end of the long American century I'm just like, all right, yeah, we are replacing Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and the Sacklers with who? Right. With freaking Elon Musk? These guys are better? They're not.

Like, it's so obvious. Mark Zuckerberg's not better than the robber barons that came before. Like, it's not better. Like, okay, like, we shuffle Logan off and we bring you in. It's not better. It's just not better. Like, no matter how you want to. spin it like sure you can talk yourself into thinking you would be a better oligarch than your father but it's

BS and again that's what I love about real life like it's not better like you're just going to be the next martin sclorelli or whoever like you named the uber capitalist there are no good ones they do not exist okay that's just not how this game works so that that leads me to my next question which is Greg really the best way to expose the structural contradictions of capitalism as reified by the architecture of corporate America. Peter Rieger comes through as like William Cuncelor. Dude. And it's just like now you're my toy here.

Dude, Greg the egg continues to just be the funniest. The funniest part about this show. Like every single scene he's knocking it out the park with his nervous-ass energy. and just like he is so out of his depth at every single turn. He's just like, this is too much. I can't handle this. You know, but the funny thing about, you know,

exposing the structural contradictions of capitalism, it's, again, it's this one company. It's like the idea that Logan could make all of this dirty money. Logan could enrich himself in a crew power through these dirty ass, horrible-ass, anti-democratic ways, right? And our reward for having him kicked out are his dumb-ass kids.

Like, that's the structure. That's the structure of our system. That's the structure of our system. We're rewarded by maybe getting Conner in that seat instead. That's the freaking system. Like, nobody can argue that these kids pulled themselves up by the bootstraps or were so hypercompetent that they dug through the mud and they self-made and they're this and they're that.

They're a bunch of bumbling idiots. And they're right in line to take over this massive apparatus that wields sway over presidents. Yeah. Okay. That's the system that we have. The show is blissfully apolitical in some ways. Like it is pretty much just a depiction of the behavior. I enjoy that part of you.

But there's, you know, aside from the Eric Bogosian character who was sort of the Bernie stand-in that Shiv worked for, you know, you get a sense of like what the political spectrum is in the world of the show. But for the most part, it's been interesting to watch the language of the contemporary moment, like, seep into the show itself and see how these characters, you know, like, it's a blissfully COVID-free show,

but it's interesting to watch them also like take things that are very much a product of the last 18 months in terms of how they've been manifesting themselves in like corporate America, right? Yeah, it's, man, it's crazy. Like, you asked me that on one of the previous episodes about, like, how grounded

in real life is this show? And they do it. They're not whacking you over the head with it. They're kind of showing and not telling, which is what I enjoy, again, the most. Like, this idea that we would come in here and do, like, as a show,

just do some, like, extremely political stuff about, like, you know, and I'm not even talking about shit, like, critical race theory, which is whatever, which is ridiculous, like, that we would debate the merits of, like, what percentage of the capital gains tax would be. Like, they're not going to do that, right? Like, they're not going to do that on the show. As far as the politics of today, I think,

what the show does is explains who has a voice, who has a seat at the table, and who does it. That's all the show is here to do. And it's like, not only do, not only do you not have a seat at the table,

average, whatever HBO viewer American stand in, the people who do are the worst people on the planet. That's the show. That's to me if the show had any politics. that's all that they're espousing, right? You can think that's cool or you can say, well, man,

billionaires deserve to run our lives, right? Like, politicians should be taking marching orders from captains of industry like Logan. Or you can disagree, but the show is just explaining to you, like, this is it. Yeah. And you can have whatever political view that you want, but this is the truth of the matter.

Yeah, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about kind of like a little bit more, forward facing or forward looking. Do you think that she has a new job that she picks up at the end of the episode with after the photo op that she declines to participate in? Is that a game changing move or

another like Jerry style political placement on Logan's part? That felt like total bullshit. Yeah. I mean like I feel like we've been down this road before. Yeah, that felt like total bullshit. And I think it's... He dangles the carrot. He calls her pinky. Of course. Yeah. And also it's

again, Logan being the most cynical person ever. We're going to put two women out front and use them as meat shields. Duh. That's the obvious play. Like obviously we're going to install

two women to take all the shrapnel. Like, of course that's a no-brainer to Logan, right? It's like, yeah, we're about to get slammed for sexual harassment and horrible treatment of women and all of this awful stuff. Sexual assaults.

dudes making women give them blow jobs for a job, you know, for fucking promotions at work and all of that. Like, yeah, let's just put two women in front. One of them being my daughter, who I know, like, is so thirsty for the freaking to be close to the seat of power. Like, she can't even see how ridiculous it is to be the face of this. It just seemed like, it's bullshit. It's bullshit.

Speaking of the women on the show, Marcia comes back. So we're clubed Carolina, we've spoken about it But like how did you feel about Marsha coming back? She is the Savvious political operator on the show Yeah Like by far

Like she has An acute understanding Of the pressure points And like where her leverage is She understands where her leverage is And she doesn't overplay it or underplayed She's just like, all right, I know why I'm needed here. And I'm willing to do it for you guys, but we need some quick pro quo here.

It's very simple. She is the savviest of all the people on the show as far as maneuvering and operating within this world's and within this world's rules. Right. Like how this world is governed, Marsha understands the rules of this world far better than ever. everybody else, which is just so obvious. One thing that Logan's done over the course of the last couple of seasons from when the show started and the premise

kicked in of who will succeed this guy is he has very savvily cut the pie up into more and more slices so that the people who want the pie have to fight with more contending. So whether it's bringing in the pierces, whether it's entertaining

the Carls and the Franks and the Jerrys of the world, whether it's Stewie and Sandy, all these different elements that he kind of keeps on a on a string it makes it probably harder for anyone Kendall or Shiv to see light at the end of the tunnel I don't know the Marsha thing I'd have to go back and kind of really study the first two seasons which I neglected to do before this pod but I've always felt like the implication is that Marsha like there's something to Marsha like there is something to Marsha and Logan's relationship there's something there where there's either a secret being

kept an agreement being abideed by something has happened there and in terms of the relationship that I don't know that the show is necessarily fully unpacked or it may never may never actually get to I guess this is the last question so the entire second episode before yeah from Marsha I want the listeners who want to dork out and sort of read the original text of some of the shit that's going on on the show I feel I'm pretty sure Marsha's character is based on this Asian lady who like yeah Wendy who Wendy who who like dating. She dated

Murdoch. She popped up with Vladimir Putin. She's just like all over the place. And Wendy's the one when Murdoch was testifying in like a I think a congressional hearing in Australia or England or something. And a dude tried to hit him with a pie.

She like, she threw down. Remember? Do you remember that video? Yes. Yes. So that's who this character is loosely based on. So yeah. And like the implication when you read anything because she's got this mysterious background. People don't really know what she came from.

X, Y, Z. Like, when you read about her, it's like this idea, like, she's clearly tapped in. Yes. Yes. She is tapped in and in. Because you got like Rupert Murdoch and Vladimir Putin. The last thing I wanted to ask you, so

for the entire episode, Kendall, is like, here's my pitch. I'd love for you guys to join me on this journey. If not, that's fine because I could do it on my own. I can go it alone. Do you think he can? I think the word can is doing a lot of work. It's doing a lot of work there.

I guess hypothetically, yeah. If he was smart and ruthless about it and he knew the pressure points, he could, he could with just the facts on the ground, right? Like just what happened, who was in charge, who helped cover it up, etc, et cetera, et cetera. Like, he has the goods, right? So he could do this on his own theoretically. But you and I know, because we're fans of the show,

that it's fucking impossible. It's just impossible that Kendall could pull this off. But it's good drama. It's good drama to see him alone because that's when he's at his worst and at his best. But like there's part of me that would have liked to have seen him have to, like, entertain Connor being like, I'll fly with you, Captain or whatever.

It's going to be interesting to see him negotiate it. My last question for you, Boz, is what age is too young to appear in front of Congress this many times? Such a great. Like, do you want to be like Merrick Garland's age? Yeah. Yeah. If you, if you, you should not have been in front of Congress more than one time for any reason before age 40. You should, you should be past 45 if you've been up there multiple times, bro.

So Greg is right. Like he is too young to have been to Congress again? Yeah. All right, man. We got the third episode coming on Sunday night. We'll be back next week to talk about the fourth episode and give our thoughts on the third episode. As always, thank you so much for joining me.

Of course, super excited. Can't wait. Feel better, man. Thanks to Stefan Anderson for producing us this week. We'll be back next week. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items, then review your list and carefully choose each one. Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes, so you can feel confident it's what you ordered.

Fresh groceries, your way, with Ralph's delivery and pickup. Get free delivery during online deal days, plus $30 off your first online order. Ralph's, fresh for everyone.