The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Succession’ S3, E5 Precap

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

Chris and Wos are back to preview Episode 5 of 'Succession' Season 3. They discuss some key moments in the most recent episode, including Josh's clothes and the psychological games he's playing, along with the future of the Roy children. Hosts: Chris Ryan and Wosny Lambre Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Head into the Ringerverse to stay up to date with all things superheroes and nerd culture entertainment. Hosted by a rotating lineup of superfans at The Ringer, including Mallory Rubin and Van Lathen, shows will provide instant reactions to blockbuster releases, insightful backstories on canon, and mind-bending theories, as well as fresh takes on the latest news and rumors. Check out The Ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Sweetgreen. The day doesn't ask for permission. Lunch window?

Gone before you saw it. 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 sweet green wraps hit different. Order now at order. Sweetgreen.com. You said this place was steps from the water.

We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises.

It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Hello and welcome to the Ringer Prestige TV podcast. It's the Succession Precap on Chris Ryan. I'm joined as always by my love. Long walk on the winter beach partner, Big Was, what's up, man? AKA Wokohantis. I'm in the building. You are Wokohantas.

I'm chilling, man. We're doing the entrance survey for this next episode of Succession. We do that by asking each other some questions. We talk a little bit about the previous episode gets cited for the next episode. My was my first question is the one, me and Andy touched on this a little bit on the watch. But I wanted to get your take on this. How do you think that Josh Aronson, the 4% stakeholder in Waystar Royco, who we meet, Adrian Brody plays him, who wears many layers.

How do you think he made his billions? I think it's like three. Oh, how did he make the billions? Yeah, like what's his background, you think? Do you think he's like crypto? You think he's, I've posited that he might be a gambler a la Haralabob. You know, like, I'm trying to figure him out. I think he's definitely like comes from the hedge fund.

fund type of world, right? One of those joints, leverage, buyouts, all of those type of things. He comes from that world, which is why he wants to do this meeting and take a temperature check. What is his current job? I think is interesting, right? Like, I'm like, is he like a Mark Cuban type of VC, angel investor, whatever type of dude who spreads around his own personal wealth.

Is he managing a big hedge fund where, like, he has to answer to other people's money who he's using? Or is he just straight up just like, I'm so independently rich. I invest in shit that I feel like doing now. I feel like it's the latter just because he's like, maybe I'll just get out. It's not like I ever have to check in with anybody else or I'm going to like run this by like my investors. It's just like, I might just pull out.

And that's when Kendall's like trying to sell him on Gojo, which I'm. I was trying to figure out what that's supposed to be. Like some kind of like, yeah, I couldn't even figure it out, even with my like knowledge of like, like, uh, overinflated social media apps. The question I really wanted to get to with this Josh stuff though is because, and there's been a lot of controversy around this. Kendall and Logan take a helicopter and then a PJ to get to Josh.

I thought I was dreaming big. I was like maybe Josh lives, you know, in Portugal. Maybe Josh lives off the outer banks. or something, it's, it's just far out on the Long Island sound. For you, I don't know how comfortable you are on planes. What's the shortest distance you would take a PJ for? All right. And before the, you know, climate people get on my back.

It's okay, man. We're a green new deal spot pod, man. Listen, listen, I will say, I will say this. I had tickets to Jay Cole's show at the forum the other day, and I straight up didn't go because I live in the Valley and it would have had to been at like around six something

that I would have to leave my house to get there. And I was like, not going. But however, you know, if I could have left out of van Nyes to go down there? What, and fly to L.A.X? I might have did it.

I might have did it. You know what I'm saying? That would have been a five-minute flight. I might have considered it. So, listen, man, I understand the implications of burning all that jet fuel for just one person to get, you know, to this really short distance.

But, man, I understand the temptation and the urge. Like, not going to take a cab to the, you know what I mean, to the PJ. I'm taking the helicopter to the PJ. Right. And then PJ all the way down, out east, as we say in New York in Long Island. That guy definitely has, like,

I mean, like to have a private airfield, you're getting into Narcos territory. Yeah. See, narco's being back. My goodness. Yeah, no, I understand the need to do it. I think, you know, in light of the Kobe stuff, like using helicopters now, I feel like rich people should definitely be like, man, like,

should I really be doing this all the freaking time? But trust me, like midday traffic from Manhattan to eastern Long Island. We're talking about something like 100 miles probably. And they are like, they do say they're like, Josh wants to see you in four hours. So even like, you know, even if you're going out to like the Hamptons or Fire Island or something like that, you're lucky if you get there in three or four hours. Yeah, that's, that's, it's just unacceptable. In the middle of the day, it's just not, that's not something you want to do. And if you want to be urgent, because this guy is such a major shareholder, you need to haul ass.

So again, global warming, climate change being what it is, I get it. What did you think of Josh's house? You know, like Kendall seems to be impressed by it, although not overly impressed. He's like, nice place. But what do you are you? I saw recently that the hedge fund guy, Bill Ackman wants to put a big glass box on the top of a 1920s

apartment building on the Upper West Side. And he's like, but he like did like a whole like did a neighborhood zoning board meeting on Zoom where he was just like, I just want to raise my family here. We love the Upper West Side. But he wants to put like, a fucking spaceship on the top of like a 1920s building like Josh seems to have the same

aesthetic. It's, you know, here's the thing. The reason why these dudes have these estates all the way out east is that you can get a certain amount of land. And that gives you the freedom to, you know, get a little bit more creative architecturally. Like if you move to Upper West or to one of those monstrosities in Hell's Kitchen that they have the ghost apartments with the Saudis and the Chinese oligarchs. Like, there's only so much you could do with those cribs.

Now, when you go all the way out east and you're getting fucking acreage. That's where you get that's Zandadu territory. Exactly. You get to get funky with it. And I think that's why Kendall was like, could have did a little bit more with all of this space if we're being real about it. The whole situation with Josh and Kendall and Logan, you know, there's been some speculation about to what extent was that that was just like a car wash where Josh wanted to see

the two sides of this shareholder's disagreement. He wanted to see Kendall and Logan and then later he goes to see Stewie or Stewie comes to him. But it's such a curious and interesting scene towards the end of the episode is he's like walking them through the dunes through these like winding paths and is putting an enormous amount of like psychological and actually physical stress on on these two Roy's. How much intention did you read into that character's behavior's behavior. Like, was Josh trying to stress test them? Or was he simply just like, I can send a cart, but I got to get back. I don't care. Like, I felt like that they, where they played that scene definitely had some, like, layers of meaning to it. I think it was so obviously a vibe check as,

you know, the kids like to say these days, Chris, clearly a vibe check. And then what we see how it plays out was his like, God, this is a lot worse than I anticipated. Like, that's, uh, that's just obvious, right? Like this, the entire situation is a fucking mess. Logan is old as hell, doesn't want to relinquish any power. And, you know, he gets a whiff of Kendall, Josh does. And he's like, I understand why. Like, I understand why he doesn't want to pass it over to any of these damn kids. Like, his face, when he watches Logan delivered that ridiculous soliloquy about how he loves Kendall, he's a good boy, and he's probably the best of him for the job.

Josh just like, that's cat. I think it's also, I mean, it's even earlier than that. I feel like it's where Kendall's like, I like you, man. Outside of all this, I like you.

He's like, I like you too, buddy. Yeah, it's so obviously BS and it's contradictory to everything. Like, if you really thought this about Kendall, about his competence

and how great he was and how he was clearly obviously the first in line of succession, Kendall wouldn't have felt the need to freaking go suicide bomber kamikaze on the company so it's contradictory to the facts

Logan like anybody with half a brain can read that but Logan is so like he is so good at spinning a yarn and just bullshit just all right bullshit here

who do I need to feel you bullshit all right line him up bullshit bullshit bullshit and Josh just like this is absurd this notion is absurd He has the carrot or the stick. Logan can do either one.

At the very end of the episode, we see Kendall's point of view from his jet, and he sees Stewie getting off a helicopter or whatever and going up to Josh, and they seem to have a lot of chemistry. I honestly, like, if there was a Patreon, like a subscriber, gold star member subscription, I could get to succession where I could get the Adrian Brody, Ariumoya, Stewie Josh, hour long additional episode, I hesitate to say how much I would have paid for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's going past whatever I'm giving a Chapo trap house. It's going beyond that, my boy. It's going up because, again, like, Adrian Brody's, like, rich guy who wants you to feel like he doesn't give a fuck, but also wants you to know that he's tapped in. he's doing that beautiful, delicate dance. It's like his clothes are shaggy as fuck, but he's obviously very savvy about taking temperature checks

and understanding what matters and why, right? Like, he's doing that beautiful balance. And of course, we've mentioned Stewie already. He's just the best, smartiest, duchiest, while also being kind of charming type of character that you could, you know, come up with. I'm trying to gauge whether Brody's gear, which I meant a lot to me, whether that was like economical, like it was like, how much do he spend

on all those layers? Because you can get up into a thousand dollars for a vest if you want to. If you want to really get into that rugged elite Patagonia zone, like you can start spending Patagonia RRL. There's ways to get into the monies. There's a spot on Mulberry now that does like, that does like regular like Michael J. Fox back to the future vests, but they're like a grant. They're like $7.50? Yeah, it's, you know, these kinds of things are always out there if available. But I don't get the sense that he's doing that.

That's my question. I think he's definitely more like old Navy and shit, like straight up. Like, I just don't, because he wants people to understand, like, I'm, don't give a fuck rich. Like, for real, for real. You know, like, I can literally walk out buck naked. I'm that rich that it doesn't matter. So the clothes, it's always important to watch the clothes in succession. And Kendall's clothes are just fucking killing me.

Can we talk about Kendall's hat for a second? It's ridiculous. So you're, I feel like you go outside more than I do. Like, I go outside, but like, I feel like you're out, you know, you might, might find yourself at the forum. Let's say you're standing next to a guy, maybe even in like a box at the J. Cole thing. You know what I mean? like you're up in the ring at the forum.

And a guy is wearing a logoless black hat like that. Does that say to you like this is a guy who's got so much money, he's got like this like elite branded like no logo hat? Or is that just somebody who can't make a decision about what teams they cheer for? The latter. It's a guy who clearly can't make a decision because if you want to wear a regular plain hat, there's so many better hats to go with, right? And Kendall's

Kindle's whole aesthetic is like, to me it's like if Bobby Axelrod was bluffing. Yeah. Right? It's the idea of like, I don't need to wear a power suit. I'm so, like, I don't need to project

power and competence. I'm so cool that it doesn't, like, you know that I got it, right? That I don't need to do the Tom Ford suit every single day. day to work because I got it. Kendall is trying to project that while failing miserably at it. Like nobody takes this whole blazee.

I got it. It's under control facade or veneer. You can't take it seriously because also his face is always telling, giving everything away. Like his face is always like, yeah, everything's falling apart, crumbling. The bluff is everything. Saying bluffing is important. because I feel like this entire season for Kendall is a bluff.

Like all of the keywords, all of the buzzwords, all of the tech talk, everything he's saying, good UI, bad, bad UI, whatever he's saying.

Like, I feel like he just barely has like a grasp of what he's actually talking about at any given moment. And his pivot to being more of a like, you know, a social justice crusader kind of is just really amusing coming from him. He just is definitely something. somebody who was like three years ago

was like still wearing streetwear. He was still like probably like get wearing like like you know like like stuff off of like like grails. I don't know. He was just like getting like expensive Jordans. To what extent do you understand what's at play with like this? Because the shareholders meeting has been kind of propped up as the midseason

Super Bowl. And if you see the trailers for this upcoming episode, it looks like it's going to be tackled in this new episode. To what extent are you grasping like the state of play with Ken? Kendall, Logan, Sandy and Stewie, the shareholders, losing the company, not losing the company. Because they've definitely made that sort of the central tension of the first half of the season. Logan and the family are clearly not Mark Zuckerberg in the sense that Zuckerberg owns 51% of meta. Is that what we're calling it now?

Yeah, I think so. That's the, that's the metaverse. Yeah. Yeah. So he owns 51%. So essentially he is the be all and end all. It doesn't matter what level of hand-wringing anybody does. He gets a lion's share of the profits,

and he can always vote himself as CEO. That's not the case for the Roy's, right? They do... I think what the show is explaining to you is that Logan, while not having 51, a controlling share of the company's stock, was always seen as the obviously the only person who could run this company optimally.

he was always viewed that way by all of the shareholders. And it wasn't even a question because it was so obvious that like this is the guy who had to run this specific thing. What's happening now is that that question is no longer so obvious at all. In fact, it's looking like the opposite of like he obviously needs to go. And that's what I think gets interesting. That's what makes this season so interesting is the demonstration of the interconnected, everybody's dependent on each other. Like, Logan needs these damn kids.

He needs to get cousin Greg in line. He needs to have Kendall not stab him in the back. Like, he needs these people in a way that he never did before. And then on the other hand, there's like this sort of surrogate secondary family of Carl and Frank and Jerry, who he is somewhat more so relies on because they actually have less claim to his crowd. you know what I mean? Like, they're not, none of those people, even if they're, their name CEO like Jerry, are ever going to have the kind of power that a Roy family member would have.

It is fascinating, though. I think so much of this season has been about characters trying to control the perception of themselves. So, you know, Kendall's obsession with how he's being talked about on social media, Logan kind of, when he spins out and he's like, I'm getting it from all angles, I'm fucked. Like, I need to get like a bunch of stuff going. I need to get some distractions going.

Like all of that is about how the family is being viewed, how Logan's being viewed. And he understands that probably for exactly the reasons you're saying. It's like if he had 51% of this company, what could anyone really do to him? It's exactly what's happening with Zuckerberg. He can just go in front of Congress and be like, my bad. You know, and then that's it. I thought that was interesting. That's obviously going to come to a head in this next episode.

Some more just observations from this past episode, though. I wanted to ask you because like Kendall's son being named Iverson, is one of my favorite details in this entire show. If Iverson's off the table, what late 90s early aughts NBA player are you naming your son after? So, the obvious answer for me personally is the real Steph, Marbury.

But Marbury, you know, might be a little too Anglo, no offense, Chris. Might be a little too English and British. Marbury, while I love the name... To Outnabby, for sure. You know what I mean? Like, it just has too much of that air. Lord Marbury has come his footman,

has announced his arrival, yeah. You know, I'm, you know, my angle file meter goes pretty up, but Marbury might be a step too far. Okay. You know, again, shout out to the real stuff. I might, my second choice might be Dana Barrows, probably go with the Barros. Yeah, I like Barrows.

That's good. Dana Barrows, perhaps a Camby. Mm-hmm. Camby could, you know, because that could go male or female. A great name. Could go either way. I could see Camby at like, you know, at Amherst doing like a comparative literature major, you know? Exactly.

So those are the, is heavy 1990s draft vibes, of course, but also NBA jams vibes, right? NBA jam, excuse me, vibes where we got to, you know, augman, you know what I'm saying? Like, who knows? Any of the running rebels alumnus? Exactly. You never know which way you could go with those. Yeah. I'm going to go Bob Surah.

Bob Surah, Ryan. And you can go Bob or you can go Surrah. It's up to him. Speaking of Kendall and being a parent, how long do you give the rabbit? Because I feel like that's Chekhov's rabbit. I just don't feel like that rabbit's long for the world. That was definitely an ominous sign, right?

like Kendall is caring for first of all he bought the rabbits for his kids but only so they could watch it on FaceTime yeah well they must be with Rava or something like that yeah it's just but do the kids come like that was just a weird like you're on

rabid duty yeah I mean it might just be but at but also I think what's important too because obviously Greg De Egg said peace I'm out because of course he did I think that rabbit's going to be the last one left he's going to be the last of the Mohicans. The rabbit is going to be the actual.

It's going to be Kendall's actual right-hand man. Exactly. After all the PR flags leave, after Sanaiathan is like, all right, let me get my retainer, please. After all of these people are gone, is this going to be him and that rabbit? I just, there's something about,

like, that rabbit did not get introduced for nothing. So it's like, if it's just a throwaway joke, that's fine. But it was pretty, I was like, what's up with this,

this, the giant. rabbit and buying it the giant carrot. Let's talk a little bit about the Tom stuff because this is something that's been bubbling up as people tweet about the show. Concepcion was talking about this on Twitter. I was seeing like there's a bunch of stuff

about like whether Tom's behavior this season is necessarily explained by him being like wearing a wire. Like whether his like weird conversations that he's been having specifically with Greg and Shiv can be written off to like he's cooperating with the government or the Department of Justice in some way. I buy that. I also buy Tom's just going through it

because he's reading prison blogs and he's bought a book about Romans and he's thinking about making prison wine. What do you think? It would explain it, but it would be a bit disappointed as a trick because it's the trick that Kendall did last year. So it's like,

are we going to do the whole fake sort of roper dope thing again with just a different character to ultimately put the nail in the coffin of this, family and their reign over this company. Like, I mean, I'm with, again, I can never be mad at this show, but it would be just a different version of exactly what Kendall did last year, right? Of basically pretending to be like, yeah, yeah, I'm going along with it. I'm going to jail for you.

I'm doing X, Y, and Z. And then ultimately, being the person that puts the nail in the coffin. So I'm, I buy, I definitely buy that. But I could also buy just Tom just being a worry ward. Like, that seems obvious to me that, like, somebody who's nuts just get, like, at a certain point, like, Unic is such a beautiful, like, metaphor for Tom, even though he used it to deploy it against Greg. But it's like, that's what he's been. Yeah. You know, basically from the start of this damn show.

But, yeah, of course, I could buy him wearing a wire, especially when he's, you know, when he's talking about influencing. I guess that's supposed to be the Sean Hannity. of it all. Ravenwood, yeah. By the way, Tom, he's no Roger Ailes. I don't think so. I don't think he's no Roger Ails. Yeah, it would explain a lot of what he's doing, right?

Where he's, Shiv is asking him to do the bidding. She's literally laying out exactly what she needs from him and why. And then him ultimately not doing it, right? So that would explain a lot of things, but just, I just think the show would be doing the same cheap trick twice in a row, which I would be personally surprised by. There's like a theory out there that each season of succession focuses on one of the kids or basically makes the case for one of the kids being the successor. And that Kendall is in the first season and then the second season's more about Shiv

and that this season is more about Roman, or at least that's like in terms of the standings, that's what it looks like. I have to say that this whole episode really felt like Shiv was taking a lot of else, that they have really started to position Shiv as somebody who, for a variety of reasons, doesn't seem able to, like, kind of handle some of the parts of the job that are happening. And obviously, is very concerned about getting carved out, getting cut out

from conversations, gets the, gets the sort of attitude from Carl and Frank when they're just eaten BLTs in the office. Tom is sort of disputing some of her directives. What do you think of the portrait of shift this season? She's too thirsty. It's just there's no other way to put it. And I could even, you know, do a relationship.

If I could give the people out there some love advice, right? There might be somebody who you want to pursue romantically, right? And you really want this person. But a lot of times you need to ask yourself two questions or one question is like, how badly do you want them or do you want to have this person on your own fucking terms? Right, right? Because there's a way you can have it and you'll just be chasing this person around all the time

and you'll just be this little lap dog and you'll just be this yes man or woman and you'll have the person but it will not be on your terms. You need to figure out, is it more important to have this person or is it more important to do it on my terms? Because if Shib would have been like, all right, look,

this is what I want. This is what I need in writing. X, Y, and Z, obviously Logan would have said, go fuck yourself. And she would have been, and if she was not thirsty, she'd be like, all right, cool. Then I'm not playing this game.

But instead, because she's so thirsty to be at this, to have a seat at the table, you know, Logan essentially tells it like, you have no job. Your job is fake. Your job title is a mirage. Well, your job is as much as I let it be.

If I want you to be my eyes and ears or whatever, that's fine. But if you think that your job is to start getting involved in these deliberations or like dictating policy, I am going to go, people are going to go over your head to me and I'm going to give them my direction

and that you can be as superficial or as meaningful as you want, but you've got to do what I say. Yeah, and again, if she wasn't so damn thirsty, because, like, remember, back in season one, when, you know, she had this other job from a guy who could actually make her dad's life way harder in a powerful position in his own, right and she was in the, you know, basically had a seat at the table there.

She had leverage and therefore her dad had to court her, et cetera, et cetera, a lot of her, whatever the case may be. But she negotiated nothing for herself. She was just so, you know, she was just so thirsty to be back at the, near the seat of power that she just, look, the fact that she's floating in the wind, it makes all the sense to be like, you're thirsty. And even Greg Deegg had the common sense to be like, like, all right, so what do I get? Greg Deyag had this sense to negotiate on his own behalf.

Schiff didn't do that. Greg is more like Jerry, Frank, and Carl. He wants something that he can actually get. He wants to be like ops and beyond parks and the experience economy and all that. Shiv wants to be Logan. She wants to be the CEO of the company. She wants to run that company. It's never going to happen. It's never, it's increasingly difficult to imagine it happening. We can wrap it up there. Waz, thank you so much for joining me. As always, you can catch was on group chat and on full court fits which is on the ringers youtube channel yes sir and this week we got uh mcale bridges this friday so check that out obviously mckel briggs how's he doing villanova how's mcalfe villanova chester county product yeah should have been a sixer

yeah uh he's doing great obviously he signed his new deal very recently so he was in great spirits hey man desire smithing could still work out for the sixers it's a long life you know we never know um wise thanks so much for joining me we'll be back with you guys next week. Stay tuned to the Ringer Prestige TV. We've got a bunch of stuff coming up next week, including I'm likely morning show, Succession with Sean and Joanna,

maybe some Yellowstone. Was, you watching Yellowstone? I'm not. Isn't that like a Red State Netflix show? What is? It's on Paramount. Okay. It's been called Red State Succession.

It's just got a lot more shootouts. Okay. I mean, it's very complicated. I think this is the last of the holdouts for me. It airs on Paramount, but you can catch up. on it on peacock. It's a long story. Okay, I got peacock, so I can watch that.

Tap in. Let's get, let's get going. All right, boss, thank you. We're out.