The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Succession’ Season 3 Finale

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

Joanna and Sean reconvene to discuss the Season 3 finale of 'Succession,' titled "All the Bells Say." They dive into the reveal of Kendall's fate at the beginning of the episode and dissect Jeremy Strong's performance. They try to uncover what led Logan to his ultimate decision as well as the big reveal and moment of betrayal. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Joanna Robinson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm the Tankman, Sean Fennessey, and this is the Prestige TV podcast. And, Mom, you just slit our throats. Today we are discussing Season 3, Episode 9 of Succession, All the Bells Say. It's the season finale. It's written by Jesse Armstrong and directed by Mark Milad. This is the goddamn season finale, and joining me to talk about it is Johanna Robinson. Hi, Joanna. It's our last deep dive Wednesday, except it's actually a Tuesday.

It's deep dive Tuesday, the final one. It's our last conversation about Succession. Will it be our last conversation about TV? We shall see. Let's let's go right into this. Let's talk about this episode. This has been a wildly acclaimed season finale of Succession, a show that we have lovingly and aggressively covered this year on the show.

I want to begin in a very obvious place, which is where the show picks up after episode eight, there was a lot of conversation. One could make the case too much conversation about whether or not Kendall Roy was alive. We had this massive New Yorker profile and Kendall Roy survived. What did you think about the choice and the way that they sort of opened this story here in the season finale? I mean, I like that they didn't make us wait to know. And it's interesting, you know, as reading, I think this was Jesse Armstrong's conversation with Variety, where I believe Kate Arthur asked him, like, did you anticipate?

that everyone would be whipped into a frenzy about this, you know, quote-a-quote cliffhanger. And he was like, not really. But, like, you know, it's clear that, you know, it wasn't nothing, right? Like, the episode opens with you tried to kill yourself. So it's not like Ken was just taking a snooze in the pool. Like, there's some question marks hanging over that. And I think if anyone is, I have no regrets. I'm just going to say that really quickly.

On the watch, Andy is rightfully taking his victory lap of, like, standing firm in his opinion, and that's fine. We all have our victory laps, and I will not take that from him. But I don't think there's anything wrong with speculation and interested in reading the tea leaves, because at least the way that we do it on this show, which I really liked, is we are constantly asking ourselves, what is the story we're watching, what kind of show is this, who are these characters, what moves are the writer's going to make? And it's all part of how we're trying to understand the show in this world, I think there probably is some kind of speculation that doesn't feel connected to that kind of deeper read. But that's not what we were doing. So I had a great time. My mind kept going by forth. We kept checking it on Slack and being like, where are you now? Where are you now? You know, we're like, it was moving. It's a moving ball. But yeah, Ken's alive. And I'll say this. And we'll get into all of this. But like, one of the main reasons why we were talking about, could he be done, is we didn't see a really interesting path forward for him.

And I will just say to spoil my reaction to the episode as a whole, I guess, they did it in a way that I think that I didn't see coming and I'm really excited for. And I loved this episode. I loved it. I thought it was fascinating that they chose to open the episode in a kind of state of reunion that Logan, who is sitting poolside with Iverson and reading to him and kind of comforting his grandson, who he has had a tumultuous relationship with as his father, I guess, is exiting the hospital. And the rest of the family is all gathered around the sort of veranda

area playing Monopoly. And it feels like we're almost kind of back where we started, where everyone is together, but there is a tension around Kendall. You know, that has been the story of this show. And this is, this, this, this, the way that they opened this episode was not at all was what I was expecting. It was not at all the idea that there would have to be some sort of, I don't know, I felt like Kendall had been banished in a way, you know, that he had officially been cut out. And that will color my reading of this episode in general, the fact that he does arrive in the middle of this monopoly game and is talking to his siblings and is like proximate

to his father at this moment before the wedding. What did you make of the way that they reintroduced him? Well, and I feel like that wouldn't have been the case if he hadn't done what he did at the end of the last episode. I think that cracked open a door that we thought was closed. Because, yeah, as they explore in like the sibling lunch scene,

you know what I mean? There's grudges, and then there's your brother possibly, you know, committing suicide, and that changes things, and that opens things up. So I thought it was really good, and I think I'm trying to,

I don't think there's a single, ounce of fat on this episode. I don't think there's anything wasted. And so watching Logan be so grandfatherly to Iverson, I think when you rewatch it, thinking about him thinking of starting a new family, you're thinking about Logan being a dad again. What kind of dad would he be now versus the dad he was, you know, to those kids as they were growing up? I think that's sort of leased in there, you know? I love that. I also love that Iverson, who, we clearly see is in a state of somewhat arrested development, not unlike his father is having a toddler's book being read to him. How old is Iverson? 10 years old, 12 years old? I mean,

that's, that was, there's something really heartbreaking about just those, these little details that they've, you know, wheedled in here. Also, another wonderful detail that I haven't seen pointed out too often is this is maybe a little on the nose, but I love that they were playing Monopoly and fighting over fake money at the beginning of this episode. I mean, could you find a better metaphor for the parlor game of being a Roy sibling? I go back and forth on that, like, of whether I think it's too on the nose or not. But I think the thing that makes it really work for me is the fact that like Carrie and Jerry are all like working. Yes, exactly.

And they're doing this, you know? And they're not noticing that like they're not paying close enough attention to Logan screaming at Jerry to like come help with something. Do you know what I mean? They're not on it in that moment. Yeah. And more specifically, the fact that Logan is working, that Logan is in. the action stations mode and getting on the phone and preparing to make a deal with Lucas Mattson. And that's essentially where we move from the conversation at the veranda side to,

you know, Logan kind of getting into action to figure out what he wants to do with this, with his company. So there's an intervention. We'll get back to the intervention, but I want to talk a little bit about Logan. The let's go see Hans Christian ander fuck moment where Roman is, is courted by his father to go visit Mattson, and they travel on their little go-boat, and they have this kind of difficult conversation about Romans' sexual frustrations, peccadillos. I'm not quite sure what the word is.

And by the same token, we see Logan kind of puffing his chest out about his masculinity, about his... Verility. Verility, yeah, exactly. The fact that he is still able to get it up for Kerry, and we learn later in the episode that he is, you know, getting a more adhesive batter going to essentially essentially try to impregnate her.

What did you think about that as a sort of, I don't know, a cheerleader prep speech ahead of this big conversation about the future of the company? Logan makes the decision in this episode that, all right, it's not of the kids, so I'm going to do this. I'm just going to finally give it up. It's not going to be the kids. So, and I think he had already made that decision about Shiv,

and he had definitely already made that decision about Kendall. And so with Roman, this was like the very last opportunity for Roman. And like it's completely, I don't know, Logan's reaction to Roman sexual hangups, you know, is regressive and antiquated and all that sort of stuff. And it's not, I don't think it necessarily discounts Roman from being excellent on his job. But Logan does. And so this is the last opportunity he's giving Roman to sort of change his mind about that. and Roman doesn't. So they go to this meeting

and then Roman gets sent away and that's it. You know what I mean? He's done. And it's, I don't know, it's fascinating to see how one by one and not even over the seasons, it's like within this season,

one by one, they're knocked out of the running. So I was amused by Romans note that sending dick pics and perhaps having a complicated sexual lifestyle is a good thing. You know, the fact that his like,

rationalization to his father was like, I'm a piece of shit. Isn't that what you want? Don't you want me to be a bad old man? You know, the old regressive version of sexual politics that you probably would appreciate. But Logan knows that that's not quite what does it play here, that there's something different with his son, that there's something perhaps more psychological or differently psychological going on with him. And it's an amazing conversation to be having ahead of what I thought was certainly one of my favorite scenes of the season. and I thought one of the more fascinating, you know, periscope views into how power actually works, which is this sit down with Logan and Mattson.

I thought Scars Guard and Cox in a kind of one-on-one as Roman looks on was so interesting. And featured some of the best writing of the show. When it was happening, as you were watching it the first time, did you think like, oh, shit, this is actually happening? He's actually going to sell this company. Were you on to where they were going with this? When he sends Roman away. Yes. that's the moment. Like, you know, when he says this isn't happening and Madsen says, I see that, I was like, okay, it's not happening. And then he sends Roman away and I was like, oh no. And there's like, there's several moments like that in this episode. Something that Jesse Armstrong has said is that this isn't a show that does long lead red herrings. And we'll get to like the Tom stuff, but they're not trying to fool you for multiple episodes in a row.

the longest they'll hold something back is sort of within the span of the episode, I think. And so in this instance, knowing that, only adds to my suspense. Let me contextualize how I watched this episode, and you know this already, is that I was busy doing something else. You want to share what you were doing? I loved what you were doing. So watching all of the Lord of the Rings extended edition films. I do that every year. It takes 12 hours.

We start in the morning and we end late at night. No shame. That's fantastic. It's our annual holiday tradition. But I didn't realize that we had scheduled it on a succession finale day when I wasn't getting a screener. I didn't realize that until too late. And so I watched this. I had to put my phone in another room for like the last few hours of Sunday.

And then I watched this just like curled up in the couch and a ball of stress not knowing what had happened, knowing that like everyone else in the world already knew what happened. And I didn't know what happened. And I was just like, so I had so much pleasure in the way that this all unfolded, this extra long episode. And I think the way that they laced in suspense after suspense, we talked about this before, this idea of like shock versus suspense. And I think you could call the ending in this shocking, J. Smith Cameron in interviews, definitely called the ending in the shocking. For me, there were enough clues along the way of what was happening. that when we get to the end, and I'm sorry, I'm going out of order slightly, but when we get to the end,

I'm just waiting, I know the bomb is in the room and I'm waiting for it to explode, rather than the bomb exploding without me understanding that it's even in the room. And that, to me, is the most pleasurable kind of television. I just really, really loved it. So to answer your more specific question about this, like, once he's sent Roman away, I was like, oh, he's going to make the deal. And it went to something that you and I had wanted, which is maybe a bigger role for possibly, for Alexander Scarsgaard in season four. It certainly feels like they've opened that doorway in a big way. And I find it really interesting.

The writing here, you know, there's a kind of staccato patter, I think, to a lot of the conversations between the most powerful people on this show. There is this sort of like shorthand lingo where you get the sense that everyone here kind of knows what the deal is. Everything is boring except this, you know. I particularly loved Logan's, it felt like real-time realization that it was. that it wasn't the kids. It didn't feel like it was a strategy

that he had worked over. You can see him in this speech, and I loved this speech, where he says, America, I don't know. When I arrived there were these gentle giants smelling of golden milk. They could do anything.

Now look at them. Fat as fuck, Scrony on meth or yoga. They pissed it all away. I don't know. I don't know. And the idea of coming to this conclusion that this grand plan

that he executed, masterfully to build this company, to build this empire. And there were a lot of comparisons to Rome and the fall of Rome in this episode. But the idea of it all ending, not because of what he did, but because of how weak America is. And he is not a native-born American. It's so interesting. And it probably could only be written by a Brit.

You know, the fact, it's not self-incriminating. It's something else. It's passing the buck from one empire to another. I thought that was such a brilliant little piece of emotional, dancing going on. America. I don't know. When I arrived, there were these

gentle giants smelling of fucking gold and milk. They could do anything. Now look at them. Fat as fuck. Scrony on meth or yoga. It pissed it all away. Yeah, and it's so

interesting because, you know, as you point out, this is like a, you know, there are some Americans on the writing staff, but this is This is a story spearheaded by non-American sensibilities. And then you've got Logan and non-American and you've got Mattson and a non-American. And they're both also, I believe with Madsen, I think we found this out last week. You know, Mattson's a self-made man. Logan's a self-made man.

We're going to talk about the other self-made men in this episode. but this idea of lazy Americans born to wealth who haven't had to work for it, his kids, that's something that they could bond over being disdainful of. Do you know what you mean? And I think that's really interesting. It's sort of like the kids think they're inside track always, the presumption that they're always inside track

because it's their birthright. And that's not Logan's attitude. Logan's attitude is not you're born to this. So you deserve it. You know what you mean? It's, you've got to work for it. I think you're right, too, that Mattson identifies that self-made quality in Logan because he, you know, he seems like a real prick.

And I've been trying to turn over in my head what the analogs are. And we've avoided analogs for the most part this year. But it almost feels like this decision that he's made is if Rupert Murdoch had sold the Fox content library to Amazon if it were run by Elon Musk. You know, like that was as close as I could get to what they were, what position they were putting this whole story in. Because part of one of my frustrations with the episode, and I will say, I had some frustrations with this episode. And I think I'm not on the, I'm not in the majority about that. I think most people receive this ravishingly. One of my frustrations is Logan's decision to sell and trying to wrap my head around that.

And part of the issue is I did get myself stuck in the real world. I did get myself stuck in thinking, could this really have? happen or would this really happen for a person like this who literally says I fucking win. And whether or not this would be considered a win is an interesting question. Now, whether he wants his kids to lose being a more important aspect of this is, I think, an interesting thing for us to unpack. But specifically, Scars Guard locating that Logan represents, exists in a class that is populated by very few people.

And when he says, honestly, you're fucking bulletproof tank man, he is conferring this respect onto him that you imagine he would not provide for very many people and certainly not his son, even though it seems like he kind of likes Roman. And even in the way that they communicate very subtly in this conversation, I didn't pick up on this the first time I watched it, but the second time, it's actually Mattson who signals to Logan that Roman should leave. You know, he's the one who gives him a look as opposed to Logan realizing that Roman needs to get the hell out of there. And that bond between powerful people who are willing to be destructive is such an an intimate and unique theme of this show,

because obviously that is also what is clearly powering Tom and the decisions that Tom is making. And the fact that he, too, is presumably a kind of middle class, maybe upper middle class, but probably middle class Midwest guy who is just ruthless in his ambition and the more he is pushed it down by the world around him, the more he wants to fight against it. And I think that's an amazing execution of the bigger story at play here,

you know, that it actually isn't about the kids. It's about something else. Yeah, and it's like, let me, allow me to skip ahead slightly and say that my friend, a great critic, Caroline Framke, wrote this piece for Variety about boars on the floor and how, you know, Greg and Tom were the boars on the floor in season two. And the idea that Greg and Tom are, you know, Greg, Greg is from money, but like we meet him smoking weed in his shitty car. Do you know what you mean? that like Greg and Tom have had to work their way up. That's something that Logan has respect for. And that's something that the kids can't understand.

And maybe they will understand. I mean, I'm so jazz where this is going to all go potentially. We're not, we're not, we're getting out of the prediction business for the moment. But like, I think it's so interesting. And like something that Jesse Armstrong has said is that one of the comps for this merger is Warner Brothers to AT&T, which is so funny because this show airs on HBO, but that that's like, you know, that idea of old media and a tech company union. I don't know. They're happening all the time all over.

And it's, I guess I see your question, which is how is this still winning for Logan? And I wonder, you know, the goodbye Mogg book that he's reading to Iverson, the first words are like, Mogg was tired. Mogg was so tired and wanted to rest for a really long time. And I'm like, is Logan just tired of it, of like, tired of business? I don't know. Tired of trying to make his kids into something they're not. I don't know. You know, something like.

Well, as I get hung up on the Murdoch point, with Murdoch when he sold the Fox assets, he didn't sell everything in his portfolio. He sold the things that created the most value in this big tech future of streaming. space. Those were the things that essentially moved network and particularly IP from the film and TV library. And he retained Fox News. He split that off. He retained a lot of the newspapers because those were the things, those are his roots and that kind of adjut prop version of tabloid storytelling is really his legacy. That's the thing that Rupert Murdoch will always be most associated with. And it's clearly the thing that he loves. He loves the newspaper business. And if you read about him, you know, I think

he's a person who's wrought incredible destruction on our world, but he's a fascinating person and he's very, very intelligent. And he does look a lot like Logan when we get to the end of this episode. But he held on to the stuff that he cared about. And I don't totally know what Logan cares about. You know, that's maybe one thing. I'm kind of curious to understand better as a, as a mogul, what matters to him? And if there will be a quote unquote side snack here, where if he does, if this deal does go through and they do sell the company and he has his, you know, he has his billions and billions and how many billions could it be 80 billion, 70 billion, who knows how much money he's getting for this deal. What is he doing with it and what is he holding on to that's

important to him? That is something I'm looking forward to learning more about. Podcasting, obviously. Would you sell out to Logan Roy? Would you take the check? No. Okay. I wouldn't either. I didn't see pop for three years, but your spoon wasn't shiny enough. Huh? It is not all about you. I thought you loved me asshole I do love you I love all three of you

pricks but what do I get from you chumps but chump change fucking chump change well fuck you I'm here for your mom's wedding and I proposed my fiance and no one has said congratulations

but I am the eldest son of our father I am let's go back to the kids I thought the intervention was really interesting uh... I think think this was the first moment for me in a extraordinarily bravora Jeremy Strong performance.

You and I, despite all of the acclaims slash concerns slash celebrity defense slash, I don't know, unnecessary debate happening in the space, we pretty much have been adamant defenders of Jeremy strong all season and pretty much since we first met and started talking about this show. I think it's not unreasonable to call him a genius. this felt like the icing on the cake of the genius story. Him sitting down and being faced with his siblings and having to rationalize his position in the face of being told you have a serious problem and we're genuinely concerned for you.

I thought was really fascinating. There's also a big Conner Roy aspect to this moment. What did you make of the intervention? The Connor thing is so brilliant. When I was rewatching this morning, I had already sort of understood how this, again, I don't think there's an ounce of fat on this episode. even to the point, let me just zoom back really quickly,

where they always show us how everyone gets somewhere. So we already saw how Roman got to Madsen's last week's episode, but we still had to see them in the helicopter and the boat, and then Roman back on the boat. Like all of that is part of us understanding this lifestyle. It's all, you know, the fabric of it. But with the Connor thing, by the end of the episode, I understood what the scene was doing,

which is a cautionary tale for these three kids of like, there before the grace go they, in terms of being treated as, you know, Conner Roy the first pancake, like, not a real child of Logan Roy, do you know? And so him insisting, like, I'm the eldest child, you know, and I'm going, yeah, but you know, that's my Sarah Snook impression, is, is, you know, is where they are by the end of this episode. There are new kids on the way, potentially, and they're going to be, you know, the. the second starter family. But then I thought about it as like a larger season long.

I think we've had these discussions about the Connor scenes this season. And we were kind of like, we don't know if we really agree with how they're using Connor this season. We're like, he kind of shows up and you're like, you know, is it too much, Connor? But what they were constantly doing is just reminding us of him being this sort of like useless. We're like, he's not really in the narrative. He keeps showing up insisting. He wants in on the company. He wants to run for president.

The way that people react to that as if he's a joke, it's just this long, slow, boiled cautionary tale of what the kids are now facing at the end of the season. And I think that's brilliant. And I will also say it's really interesting. When I was trying to read the tea leaves in the various promos and stuff like that, and I was latching onto this Connor read of like your Silver Spoon, et cetera, they used a completely different take in the episode than they put in the trailer.

The one they put in the trailer was way more just aggressive. Oh, interesting. And so I just thought that was interesting. Yeah, I love this scene. Great moment for Alan Ruck and really, and works with a larger story. What do you think? I've spent probably too many minutes of our podcast on this show identifying with Kendall Roy. And this is weirdly a moment where I identified with Connor.

Here's the thing. I am the eldest son. And I also have siblings on my father's side. who have different mothers. And so I have a little sister. And I know what it's like to be a little bit older and on your own and a little bit forgotten, you know, for lack of a better term, or at least like not cared for the way a younger kids need to be cared for.

And when a father starts a new family, the psychology there is complex and really interesting. And you're right that Connor has been used as kind of comic relief this season. And I would say that Alan Ruck's performance was kind of genius as a comic relief. but that there was also psychology loaded into that comic relief. And we could sense his frustration and his agitation, I think specifically around the episode where they picked the president. You know, that was one where we could see that kind of bubbling to the surface where he keeps saying like, hey, what about me, your eldest son?

I'm right here. I could be the president. And this was, it felt like the culmination of that experience. And then it also is shortly followed by his fiance, I guess, grudgingly, fuck-eating yes, except his proposal, which was also interesting in that you could sense that there was a

feeling of, you could read the doom on Justine Lupe's face, but there was something else going on there. Like, why did she agree to it? What is going on with Connor and Willa at that point? Just an interesting way, I think, to tie up the story of a character who on most shows, I think,

would not be handled with much care and would be a joke. And he's not a joke. There's something more going on with Connor. Yeah, let's just, Shout out the tremendous use of B-roll around Willa in this episode because, like, the camera catches her a couple times. She's got some face. She's got some face.

Yeah. But I think also the Willa-Connor storyline ties into this larger question of, like, love and commerce that is running through this episode because we get love, this question of love a couple times like, what is Greg saying? The verdicts is love, Your Honor when he just like dumps Comfree for like the first attractive landed gentry he finds or whatever, you know, and Tom and Shiv, obviously. And then the word love is invoked when they're talking to Logan at the end here. You know what I mean? He's like, love. All of all of that, that idea. And, and, you know, with the kids connecting with Ken, with Shiv and Roman connecting with Ken, there is love there for where he is at the

bottom all the way down at the bottom here. But also, I don't think that they would have the patience to sit with him in the dirt and talk to him if they didn't also need him for this deal. You know what I mean? And so it's just like love and commerce are inevitably intertwined for these characters. And there's no better example of that than Willa for whom this is extremely transactional. I think that's very smart. I think it was also very smart of the creators of this show to return us to a wedding for a big showdown sequence like this. And there was, there was a wedding. Caroline and Peter Munion, they got hitched. And I thought the, the wedding itself, someone pointed this out on Twitter that they invited what seemed to be 1,000 people to Italy for a

wedding and then held it in a church that held about 19 people. That was something exclusive to the exclusive happening here. Is that COVID, we can fit this many people inside for COVID and we'll have the reception outside with more people. It's a great point. Very well could have been. During the wedding, we see Shiv continuing to needle Roman about wanting to fuck his mother and his edible hang-ups. And then later on at the wedding, we see Shiv's acid-burned toast to her mother,

you know, laced with a kind of poison and, you know, one or two soft touches and obviously is this majorly self-reflexive moment about what is to come in her own marriage and the way that you treat people and the way that you treat your partner, most especially, being the most critical relationships. What did you think of the wedding itself? Well, I think it's so telling that Peter is like lingering outside the church waiting for Logan. Like we're, you know, obviously we're going to talk about Tom in a bit.

And my Tom, as you pointed out last week, my Tom Peter Kopp is not like one to one. But this idea that like when we first meet Tom in the pilot, he's largely preoccupied with buying a watch for Logan. Like that's carrying favor with Logan is like such a preoccupying notion for Tom from the jump. And so Peter's, you know, Peter chasing that. And Caroline, knowing that this is also kind of transactional and that Peter Munion wants a piece of property in London. And so she's like, you know, can you bear it? And like, let's just go in and do this. But I know that this isn't like a love match. I know what this is. I thought it was really good. And then, of course, you know,

as you point out here in the nose, like, Shiv puts her hand on Tom's shoulder. And I, you know, which is reflected at the end of the episode with Logan and Tom, I think brilliantly. And then also, like, you know, what happens directly after this is Connor. I think it's brilliant that Connor gets to be the one to deliver the macaroute news. Fantastic. A little win for him. I guess he really doesn't rate you guys, huh?

It was wonderful. And also, this has been an amazing episode of Echoes. You know, you mentioned the echo of the hand on Tom's shoulder and then the hand on Tom's shoulder at the end of the episode. We see, of course, that famous what has been now compared to a Renaissance painting moment in which Roman has his hands on Kendall's shoulders. And then later we see Kendall with his hands on Roman shoulders at the end of the episode. Then, of course, you know, we have, I guess he really doesn't rate you guys. That's a phrase that we hear later on in the episode.

He rates you. He rates you is something that Logan says over and over again to his kids about Mattson. There is this sense of returning to origin, returning to like truest selves. you know, to like most natural state going on here that I find so fascinating. Yeah, that's like, that's the, what I was talking about last week in terms of British literature sent in Italy. That's what happens every time they get like back to their elemental roots. And I think to the, to the macaroot smoothie and a few other things, something that, though this show is not doing major red herrings over multiple epos and stuff like that,

there are interesting layering. So we see the smoothie again. couple times. I thought the smoothie, I was supposed to be paying attention to the movie because I was supposed to be thinking about Logan as being sick, do you know? And Logan's ailing and stuff like that. And it did not occur to me that this was a virility smoothie. And then Caroline's pre-up, which comes up, again, here, and Robin was really preoccupied with last week's in last week's episode, all that chatter, which is anchored in Roman's, like,

anxiety around his mom, which I think makes. sense character-wise, is to get us be, have us constantly thinking about Caroline and this property and all this stuff. It's, it's sort of like banging that drum in a way that we're paying attention to, but for a different reason, if that makes sense. Yeah, they're so good at planting seeds, maca root seeds, as it were. Shiven and Roman at the wedding do become aware of the fact that something is going on and they're not a part of it. And we see Kerry go and speak to Jerry and we see get the sense that who was alerted first i can't recall who was it that is sort of alerted by phone or by text that there's something a foot jerry jerry lets them know right

before jerry's pulled inside by carry jerry lets them know that something's going on uh and we see that um frank and karl are there so jerry comes up and then she's like something's happening let's all spread out and figure out what's happening you go you go you go and then jerry gets pulled inside and is like, fuck those kids and like does not pull them back in with her. Do you know what you mean? I do. Oh, yeah. So the thing that's fascinating about that moment is when Jerry gets pulled inside, that is

when Roman has to come clean to Shiv that perhaps Logan is actually going to sell the company to Madsen. And this is, I think, where Sarah Snook's performance goes to another level of clenched-jawedness. You know, there's like there's something. so so so tense and tight and angry and almost like rageful begging to get out of her body that goes here for the final 20 minutes of this episode because she can feel it. She's smart enough to know that it's slipping through her fingers in real time. Yeah.

That this thing that you wanted so badly, perhaps too badly, is getting away from her. Roman doesn't seem to totally understand it. He's he actually is kind of reverting to a form that we saw earlier this season. That's sort of like the weakness and the, the, the, the, lack of, I don't know, the lack of killer instinct that maybe we saw more in episode six and seven and a little bit in eight where he was kind of starting to feel himself a little bit. He's lost it. You know, he's been diminished in a way.

And then this leads to this kind of battle stations moment on their part where they realize as you pointed out, they have to go get Ken. They have to get Ken to create this triumvirate and strategize about the future of their family's legacy, frankly. On the way in this, all of this, as like Kendall sitting in the, shade having a nice cigarette. Roman gets like one last day in on Greg, where he calls him an irrelevant popper. And again, it's just highlighting that sort of class difference.

And something, you know, we need to talk about more broadly. I think it was something we dialed in on early in the season was Ken's mistake in screwing Greg over with the watch, right? I forgot about this. That was a big mistake that Ken was. made. And they have been making, these siblings have been making mistakes over and over again with these people. Shiv and Tom, obviously a huge example, and we will talk about all of that sort stuff. Roman and Jerry, though, like the way that he kind of hangs around to dry in last week's

episode, like, their alliances are in shambles because they have not been cultivating any allies. Such a great point. And it comes to bite them. And everyone who's in that room who's on the inside track after all of this is someone that each of these kids have screwed over or diminished in some way. I don't think I fully realized that that's what this show was about until this episode, but that in fact, this idea of kind of rooting for someone to win or to take over and not necessarily fully realizing that the indictment is not on the most powerful people who have built something by themselves. It's on the people who profit, benefit, and hope to retain that power in sad and duplicitous ways.

That might be the central critique, actually. I think it's going to come back to my enduring question for the season, which is what is winning. We'll talk about that at the end. But what does winning mean? I was high, and I was looking for to score, and

I was drunk. I was fucked up, but I drove, and he saw something, and he snatched at the wheel, and we went into the water. and then I left him in there and ran. Okay. Let's, we've got to get you.

Come on. It's fucking lonely. I'm all apart. So let's talk about the big centerpiece of this episode, which is they get Kendall to stub that cigarette out and they go outside to have this conversation. And Kendall is essentially disengaged as Roman and Shiv are trying to figure out how this could have happened

and figure out what they can. can do to stop Logan from making a sale. And it's at this point where Jeremy Strong goes into this incredibly remote and almost dissolute state. And you can see him almost kind of like spinning his wheels getting ready to have a moment. And I don't mean that in a way that it was like transparent or or inelegant. He's really, really great in the scene. But you can see there is like the way that the camera is framing him, the way that he is

very separate and distinct from his siblings, the way that you can feel him kind of powering down in a way. and there's the camera turns and you see Kendall looking at the one of the workers at the wedding, throw the garbage out. And it's this incredibly disorienting piece of filmmaking before this sequence happens. It's almost just like forget about whatever it is Roman and Chivrissing. Like that's not actually important. What's important is that Kendall is hurting and this is about to go sideways.

Let's get ready for it. And then that leads to there's something really wrong with me, Shiv. And it's so amazing. that there was this collision of great TV storytelling in the previous episode in which, you know, Logan and Kendall get this, they have this proper sit down and it goes as badly as it can go. And then we get this tease with whether or not Kendall is going to die. Then we have this big media moment with the New Yorker profile. And in many ways, it is leading to this. I don't think, I don't know how maybe this is credit to HBO. Maybe this is a credit to the media system at large,

but like, it's very rare that the pieces fit together to prepare us for a moment like this. And they really did. And my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, was taken away just like I think most other people's were with the, with the scene. What did you, what did you think of it? Yeah, I mean, and as, uh, I think you and I talked about this a little bit, or I was talking to someone about this, but like, uh, and I know Chris and Andy talked about this, but like the meta, the metatextual fabric of the scene where Romans playing, Kieran Culkin's playing a comedy and Jeremy Strong's playing a tragedy, um, echoing that profile. Um, um, and the way that they view the show was incredible stuff.

And I think Michael Schulman, who wrote that profile, also had an interesting thread talking about the scene where he pointed out that Jeremy Strong told him that it was Jeremy's idea for Kendall to go into the dirt, to sit down into the dirt. That originally they had him sitting on this, like, on my rewatch, I spotted what he must have been talking about. He said a pillar, but it's like this low sort of, anyway, I know what he's talking about. but like he could have been sitting on like a ledge, but instead he goes into the dirt and it forces, it's so brilliant. Like, you know, Mark Mila is an incredible director.

There's so many people, but like it's, it's that kind of decision, which just changes the physical arrangement of the scene where like, if one of the kids wants to talk, one of the other kids wants to talk to him, if Roman wants to talk to him, they have to like get down on his level

and sit down in the dirt with him or awkwardly loom over him. It's all just sort of, and it highlights their awkwardness. They don't know how to do this. They're awkwardly patting him on the head. It's all terrible. And then when they're down in the dirt with him, it just highlights that we're here with you as well as we can be

for how damaged we are. We're here with you, you know? Yeah, I thought it was incredible as well. I think the way that Shiv and Roman interact with him was incredibly representative of the way that they have engaged with him in the past, which is that they're keeping him emotionally placated, but in the way that only they know how. Roman only knows how to make light of everything.

Roman only knows how to kind of like soft pedal the feeling with humor. And Shiv presents empathy, but doesn't know how to properly deliver it. She wants to put her hand on his back. She wants him to feel better. There was that famous sequence, I think it was in episode one in which they are kind of, they engage in a one-on-one conversation in Kendall's office.

office and you sense that there is something, there is a bond between them, but that they don't know how to break through to like a genuine emotion. And so I thought that this scene was the highlight of the show, but this is also where the episode kind of got a little out of control for me, where I think I found myself, I don't know if it was frustrated, but for the first time, really in a long time with this show, I felt the producers and the writers hands on the wheel, and I never feel their hands on the wheel of the storytelling. Of course, I know that the writers are creating situations that we are meant to get emotionally invested in

and then they pull the rug out from under us to keep this an interesting TV show. But it is also an artistic endeavor. And I think that this show has a lot of, it's very ethical, you know, and it is very, like, true to its point of view. And this was one of the first times where, and if I'm alone in this, I understand.

But it was one of the first times where I was like, oh, they're really just like conspiring to have a moment here. And that moment was the three of them very quickly getting over this deep wound that Kendall is coping with and getting in the car and getting off to have a big showdown with dad. And I thought it moved really quickly. And we didn't really get a chance to sit in what the long-term mending of their relationship could be. I mean, if you think back to Kendall's 40th birthday party and the way that Roman interacted with him and where Kendall went after that, that's as cruel as you can be to someone that you ostensibly love. And he really hurt him. And the fact that they were able to

just kind of get over it. Now, I know these are hollow people and they're vinglorious and they want one thing, which is power and success and to run the company. And that this motivates them. And many people have said, of course, this is what inspires Kendall. This is the only thing Kendall has ever cared about is taking over this company. But this actually just moved a little too quickly for me. Them getting in the car and then landing on a plan and then getting to the villa where Logan is making the deal. I kind of got pulled out of the episode a little bit. And, you know, I, I kind of like nudgingly joked like I'm going to zag on the episode on Twitter, just to kind of provoke a little bit because I think it's, whenever something is so universally

praised, I think it's helpful to interrogate it a little bit. Yeah, yeah. And this was just the one thing that I bumped on a little bit where I was like, you know, we had this amazing showcase for Kendall to talk through this huge plot point of the show, basically the the underlying unspoken thing that has driven the psychology between Logan and Kendall for the last two. full seasons, which is, I know what you did and you're a bad person. And no matter what you do to tell me otherwise, you are as bad as I am. And then it was kind of like washed out very quickly. So that's my big speech about that.

I'm curious to know how you feel about it. And if any of it, if it totally worked for you as well. Well, I mean, if Kennell goes into next season without ever processing this again, I will agree with you. Um, but I think we, I think we can probably agree that that's not the show we're watching. And as for your concern within the steps, I mean, like, so you're correct. Raman does this thing to Ken on his birthday. Shiv wrote that horrible letter for Ken. Ken, Ken put those speakers during Shiv's town hall, like the things that they've done to each other this season. And how all of that could have been avoided if they had just been able to do what they're what they're able to do here at the

beginning of the season, right? When Ken is like, let's work together. If that had happened, um, I think they could have won. Like all the bell say too late for an alliance, but like this is, and this is the, I'm, I think, I am addressing your point. This is the alliance that I have been wanting. I got a lot of tweets from people being like, hey, Joanna's your Voltron moment that you asked for it. I'm like, yeah, it is. Thank you. Um, and I almost, think of these siblings, I almost think the story that I'm watching personally is this will they won't they of the siblings. Like will they figure out how to connect with each other? Or will this toxic garbage that Logan has poured into their heads their entire lives forever

drive them apart? I find their, I find their union here, however mercenary it might be, I find their union here so satisfying to me. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. I'm not, saying it's happily ever after for these three. Roman even says in the car, like, it'll be kind of fun to constantly fight over this. But if indeed next season is the three siblings against the world, that's a story I'm really invested in. And I think we will continue to explore. I think those things that you want could be something that they continue to explore in season four. Am I going to argue with you that it isn't just sort of like push through to get the momentum running for the rest of the episode? No.

I think you're right about that. I do. It didn't bother me, but I can see. I can see what you're saying here. Absolutely. Let me ask you one more thing about this. Well, actually, let me one site, Kendall putting his hand also on the shoulder of the valet as a signal of, I don't know, service industry penance. That's been pointed out many a time already.

I thought that was a good moment. Then they get in the car and they start devising their plan and they're trying to figure out how they can grab control back or stop this deal or what have you. And Kendall notes that. In the divorce agreement, Caroline got a provision that clarified a change of control requires a super majority and given them their roles, I guess on the board. I don't know if Chavon is on the board, but I know that Kendall and Roman are. She got her seat at the shareholder meeting. That's right. So she's got her seat as well.

So they have three seats on the board. Is this a thing? Like, I don't work in this world of business, but is this like an actual thing that you can get in a divorce agreement? my wife who never, ever questions the logic of storytelling like this. But when we were watching it, she was literally like, can you pause? Like, what is it? Can you get that in a divorce agreement? I don't know.

You're asking absolutely the wrong person. But I will say that Caroline has said a couple different times. Like, you know, I did this to protect you. You know, even in season two, I think in that in the episode Dundee, like I think that she's talking about the divorce agreement and the things that she did to protect. them and to protect their interests. I think it's real, so I don't have an answer for you or for your, your lovely wife, and I apologize for my feelings there.

If anyone wants to let us know about the, the business side of this, I would be so interested. But I think it's interesting that this idea of Caroline's divorce agreement is something that they've talked about before on the show. And also, in that Dundee episode, which is one of my favorite episodes, she does this whole thing where she makes Logan decide between a piece of property or having the kids for Christmas. And she does that to show them like how little their dad cares about them. She gets them for Christmas so that he can have a piece of property or whatever. And so that there is that breadcrumb trail of like thinking of the kids as pieces of property and divorce settlement.

that Caroline talked about last week and stuff like that. So for the business logistics, I don't know. But for the way in which the show has laid the track for this, that is narratively satisfying to me. This is a false binary. But who's worse, Caroline or Logan? It's so complicated because I'm going to make like a weird argument that there is actually love for the kids wrapped up in this. Wow. You want to wait until we get through this final showdown?

I'll come back to it. Okay. Do we not want to talk about Shiv calling Tom and Tom talking to Greg? Oh, of course. Of course. No, go ahead. So what happens there? Well, that's the moment I knew.

And like, even before Tom talked to Greg, it was the way that Matthew McFadion played Tom being like, we've heard this conversation between Tom and Shiv before a couple of times where she's like, yeah, something high. Something high up. Sure, sure. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting that Jesse Armstrong said in an interview. He said, I don't.

I have my idea of the moment that Tom decided to make this move. Matthew McFadion might have a different idea of when that moment was. And he was like, by the way, both of those are important. It's not. And Jesse Armstrong, and he said this before about other things. He's like, I'm never going to say what the moment is for Tom. But I think it's within, I don't think this is something that Tom has been like long cooking the whole season. Maybe not this specifically, but he has been.

been building a war chest of moves, I would say. It's true. And like, you know, people watching the show and people covering the show have noticed and asked questions about what is Tom going to do? Is, you know, there was the whole like, is he wearing a wire theory, all that sort of stuff? Someone actually floated the idea to me that, I remember in episode two when I was like, who told Logan that the kids were at Ken's?

And you were like, who did tell Logan that the kids? kids were at Kendall's so you could send those donuts and like Tom knew that Shiv you know Tom was on the inside track again this isn't a show that really like hides things that way so I'm not willing to say for certain that that's what happened but it could have been that Tom told Logan that that ship was over there as soon as the episode ended someone tweeted at me the the donut scene and said there's there's answer to your question it was definitively Tom who did that I want to talk about Tom and Greg. And I think we should close our conversation with Tom because he has elevated himself into a critical role in the show.

We think, perhaps not. Maybe he's just the pawn, but we think. Yeah. And what if I decide I can't listen to you? We can stop you. And we will stop you. Blow this up. You need our vote for a change of control.

Yeah. You need all of us. You need a super majority and we can kill it. And we will. You're playing toy fucking. soldiers. Let's go to this palace walls moment. They show up at this villa. They walk

into this Michael Clayton scene full of lawyers cutting a deal together. They're very confused. They have to race across the hallway. They discover Logan sitting in a room with Jerry, Carl, Frank, Carrie. Deals going down. I don't know what they thought they were going to do.

But whatever they thought they were going to do, they could not have lost any harder. And I want to kind of like walk through this confrontation and the decisions that they made here because I wonder if even with a slightly different countenance they would have gotten a different reaction or a different experience, but they let their rage overtake them. Their sense of, their sense of like selfishness and privilege and expectation around what they deserve, they fuck themselves. You know, obviously

bringing Kendall into the mix already would have Logan on his, on his, on his, on his, tippy toes. But I don't, they could not have handled this conversation any worse in every direction. You know, Shiv already was trending in the wrong direction with her father. Kendall is out, and Roman choosing this moment to seek love. Everyone's screwed up here. What do you think of it? I swear I'm not going to go back to Tom in a major way, but like, I think they win if Shiv doesn't tell Tom, you know, or if Shiv brought Tom in a more medieval way. I really do think that Tom is a lynchman here, and not just plot-wise, but just sort of like underscoring the flaws in their nature like building alliances and stuff like that.

But I think, I don't know if they went in here just like asking their dad not to do this. They're already out in the cold. I think Roman. I think Roman had a shot of being in and being on the board. And Mattson genuinely does seem to like Roman. So I think there is a moment there. But I was actually really proud of them because like Roman's waffling. And I'm, I was nervous that he was not going to stand firm.

Well, we saw that once before when Kendall attempted the coup and was stuck in traffic. Yes. And we saw Roman half raise his hand and lower his hand. And this felt like him reckoning with that decision and feeling like that wasn't the right move. And yet, I mean, they got outmaneuvered here. You say they couldn't have handled this worse. And from if you define winning as getting the company, I completely agree with you. But if you define winning as these stunted children,

growing in some way and getting out from underneath their dad's thumb. The moment when Shiv says, and I think she's in slight soft focus when she says it behind Rom, she goes, you can't trust him. And saying that out loud in front of him and them all standing together, something that Ken has been trying to get them to do for a while, I was really proud of them. They lost, but I was really proud of them. I was not. As somebody who likes to win, I was embarrassed for them, honestly.

Because one of the things that, one of the really strong, I thought, screenwriting aspects of this sequence was the sense that Logan very much wanted, had a plan for how to convince his kids that this was going to go well and that he tries at first. He writes you, you have my word. This is an opportunity son, particularly Roman. Why should they believe him? Because they have believed him in the past, or at any given time, at least one of them would have believed him. him, that this was going to be okay for at least one of them as he plays them against each other over the course of these three seasons. And Shiv does that you can't trust him. And it's at that point when Roman is out, Kendall of course is out, and Shiv is out. They all are dismayed and

disbelieving that their father would betray them in this way, that Logan loses his shit, that he gets so, so, so, so mad because his kids are stupid, because they actually don't know how to win. They don't know how to play. And that's the, that more than empathy, love, building a family, anything, all that stuff. What he wants them to do is to be killers. And they don't know how to be. And this moment, when they think that they have arrived at their killer strategy where they can block the super majority, he's like, you fucking fools. Don't you see how I have once again won up to you? And I am so much better at this than you. And weirdly, it's a, it's a recrimination on himself that he has failed to give them the tools that they need

to survive and thrive in this cutthroat world. So I thought it was just a fascinating and that's what a fascinating bit of screenwriting and that's what you're playing toy fucking soldiers is. It's his realization that these kids are kids. I completely agree with you. And I think the line, Toy Soldiers isn't the line for me in here.

Build your own fucking pile is the line for me here. And I think this is the big, I think, you know that, it's a British phrase, I think. This will be the making of him. I think this moment will be. be the making of them. That's what I'm hopeful for. As I sit here, hopeful for these kids, and again, is it stupid for anyone on succession? Yes. Is it stupid for me to call them kids when

they're full blown adults? Yes. All of that stuff is true. But as I'm rooting for these adult humans to get away from their father, to build their own thing, which I think they, I think they do have the skills together to do that. That's what I want for them. So this is a loss, an embarrassing loss, as you point out. Of course it is. But it's also a win because they were never going to be able to do this on their own and he had to do this. And so in a way, in a toxic fucked up way, I think this is...

And Caroline says this too. She's like, I think this will be good for you. Caroline is a selfish, awful person. But I do think pushing these kids out, doing something for them that they could never do themselves. This is what Mark Myelod said last week in the end. interview where I was like, when I asked him what was winning, he's like, well, winning's really getting away, taking the two billion, go to the Russian River.

Like, that's what he said. He's like, I don't ever see Ken doing that. And it's like, yeah, he's not going to do it on his own. They're pushed out of the nest here. And ultimately, that's a win for them. And what I want for them is to build their own pile. Here's the two things I want for them. I want them to build their own file and have their father acknowledge, he may never

but have their father acknowledge that they are worthy because they've done the thing that he did now, right? They're not just not being killers, though they can be killers, but they are like, they've built their own pile. And then what I really want is for his approval to not matter to them at all. That's the ultimate therapeutic graduation, right, is like for it not to matter to them at all because they can take pride in their own accomplishments. You might be wishing and hoping and praying for a long time if you think that's, coming anytime soon because these kids are damaged. And that psychology is something that Logan built inside of them. But won't it be interesting to root for that and watch them try to hang together and then fail

to hang together? I mean, that might not be what happens at all. Like someone pointed out to me, they're like, well, maybe the deal gets blocked anyway and next season we're back in the mirror. And I'm like, oh, I don't want that. Like, I want this waste our go-jo deal to go through. I want the kids to be pushed out in the cold. And then I want them to try to make their own fucking.

thing. I think that if there's a reset like that and it doesn't happen, I think the show will again fall under some of the criticism that I caught this year of a little too much, you know, peddling fast but going nowhere, a little bit of the stationary bike problem that the show is sometimes accused of. And, you know, we've talked a lot this season about how, to me, that's not really a problem. I think actually one of the reasons why I bucked against the episode just a little bit in the final 20 minutes is because I felt like it was a rejection of the kind of people never change.

And in the post show interview, actually, Jesse Armstrong spoke about that. And it was amazing to hear him say almost exactly what I feel like I've been saying on the show, which is this belief. Because I think in the first conversation we had, I said, do you believe people can change? And he literally says, I don't think people change. And I agree with him. And that's part of what makes this show so charming to me, even though it is full of evil people doing terrible things.

It's like it is a realization of a philosophy that I have too. And if they did come and form this uneasy alliance, I think that would be fun for the show. And I think that the sale would be fun for the show. And these sales do happen. But I don't think we're going to get this reckoning where people realize, you know what, $2 billion and a house in wine country is a way to live your life. One of the things that's funny about this show is, you know, it has garnered more and more acclaim and more and more appreciation in an audience over its three seasons.

This really feels like the show of its era now. And I love that for it because it's so well done. That's not always the case. It's not always the best show that emerges as the show. But the thing that's interesting about it is it has taken on some of the same tropes that a lot of other shows like this have, which is it becomes more like sports. It becomes like rooting for laundry than it does necessarily appreciating what the show is after. And this idea of like, can the kids win or can there be a change in power or can Logan get

what is coming to him. You know, that's not really a big part of my interest, but I think it does keep a kind of casual fan very invested. And this- Like sports. It's very much like sports. And this episode, I think, challenges that premise a little bit because it could bring together the three siblings. It's going to question the union of Tom and Shiv pretty interestingly. And here's our entree into Tom, because I think Tom should be the final chapter of this conversation. We'll talk about Tom and Greg in one second. At the very first. very end when Tom arrives after Logan puts his hand on him and then he goes to comfort Shiv. Does Shiv know what Tom has done at that moment? Yes, 100%. Shouldn't she be rejecting him?

Shouldn't she be sending him out? No? No. Sarah Slick, so, you know, before the season started, Hunter Harris wrote this big piece for Vulture about, like, you know, she was in watching them film these episodes and stuff like that. And so she has interviews with all the cast members that she did at the time when she was on set about the finale. And Sarah Snook said something about. about like, isn't it an interesting dynamic for Shiv to know what Tom did and Tom to not know that Shiv knows what he did. And I think her playing her, like, I think we talk about Schim making dumb moves and she made a really dumb move in this episode by telling Tom and not bring him all the way in. She didn't bring him in enough, you know. That was a stupid move on her part. But I think

not letting him know that she knows, I think that is kind of powerful. Yes, this is from Hunter's piece, she says, when I watched them film the episode's final seed, they tried the last moment a few different ways. One where Shiv doesn't catch that Tom Logan moment and another where only Kendall clocks it in the one that aired, Shiv sees it. When we talked in the summer, Snook wasn't sure what the ultimate selection would be, but she had hopes for a cliffhanger. Part of me as an actor is always wondering what is more interesting to the audience to see, not just what we're going through in the character. At the end of the episode, having something that narratively projects into the next season sets it up quite nicely. If Shiv knows but her brother,

And Tom doesn't know that Shiv knows there's a lot of potential there. And I agree. I think that's kind of delicious. So that makes me excited for what, you know, like the conversations that they might have next season with us knowing that she knows and knowing what he did. And again, okay, I want to go back to you saying that Jesse Armstrong holds the same view of humanity that you do. I really loved doing this show with you because you are so smart and so cynical. And I am so soft and emotional about these kids. And I think it's a perfect, like, double read on the show.

But I think that for Tom, I also see this weirdly as a love move. And maybe I just have a really toxic idea of love. That's entirely possible. But, like, I see this is not him doing what's good for Shiv at all. But I see him as still being in love with her despite everything. And in last week's episode, she says, you're not good enough for me. And this idea of maybe if I do this, I can put her in a position where she needs me. And I am good enough for her.

And I can make moves. And I am that guy. Do you know what I mean? I don't think it's, I don't think it was, I don't think it's just spite against Shiv. And I don't think it's just ambition. I think there's a lot of stuff in the brew. Do you know what I mean? I think you have a very good heart, Joanna.

and I admire your optimism and I think it it is eliding a truth, which is that Tom does have love. He has a lot of love to give, but that love is not for Shiv and that love is for Greg. Greg is not just spores in this case. Greg is something different. And their moment together before the big showdown with Logan is is beyond the psychosexual stuff that we talked about this season. It is, it was a true love. It was a, I'm with you and you're with me. And their partnership, their union, the fact that I think you were so on the money the whole season about Kendall blowing it with Greg here and the watch.

And this, that was a confirmation that he needs to align himself with the savvy bootstraps Tom and not the fail son, Kendall. And the, you know, who has ever looked after you in this fucking family, huh? I mean, that's that's the critical juncture. That is that is the story of this show is it is not about Roy's looking after Roy's. It's about someone else stepping up to help lift Greg. That scene was brilliant. I think it does meaningfully, it could meaningfully predict what the show is. There was a series of posters at the beginning of this season that showed various characters on dueling sides of a hallway.

And some of them featured, you know, Shiv standing behind her father. And some of them featured, you know, Roman standing behind her father. behind his father. There was one, and I only saw it in a foreign language. I couldn't tell which language it was, in which on one side, we saw Shiv, Roman, and Kendall standing, and on the other side, we saw Logan, Tom, and Greg. And that was predictive of where it feels like we land. We talked about those posters at the beginning of the season, and we were like, this is funny.

But no, the two posters, and I actually think there are only two, and it's how the season starts and how it ends. And HBO put it right in front of our faces. And, you know, we didn't fully absorb it. Brilliant. Love that. And that's what the whole season has been. It's been right in front of our faces.

And that's why, to me, this is so satisfying. It's the perfect kind of ending where it's like, did we predict it when we were talking about what might happen this episode? No. But could we say it was out of the blue? No. It's been just one foot in front of the other all the way here. All the Shiv conversations with Tom, all of that stuff led us here.

And this is the payoff of, you know, we talked about season two ending with Tom being like, yeah, but I'm wondering if, you know, the unhappy I am with you is better than the unhappy I would be alone or whatever, right? And we were like, well, that's weird that they didn't really do anything with that at the top of the season. And that's just because they were just slowly rolling the boulder up the hill to get us here. But I do think that it's so interesting that from the very beginning of the season, Tom is on the inside track. He's with Logan. The kids are sent back to America. And it's Tom and it's Frank and it's Carl in the room. There's another piece from that Vulture article is that they had different takes of.

the confrontation where there were some takes where you had shots of Jerry, Frank, and Carl looking wickedly satisfied. And I really like that the camera didn't really linger on. And in fact, there was sympathy for them. Like when Logan demands that Carrie get Caroline back on the phone, both Jerry and Carrie in that moment look a little like, do we need, do we have to do this? You won. It's okay. You already won. Do we need to go this far?

Logan's like, yeah, I'm going to show them something. He's a real grave dancer, that Logan. I don't know. I'm not saying that I'm, by the way, for Tom and Chiv, I'm not saying I'm rooting for it happily ever after. In fact. I don't think it's possible. I think they need to freeze those eggs and defrost them 20 years, 40 years from now.

It's going to be a long time before they should be done. frosted because there's that's that's the true toxicity on the show right now is whatever the hell is going on between them and also i mean the the reason that i like i kind of don't buy the very eloquent uh theory that you're presenting about how they still love each other is like what's to love with shiv seriously what's to i mean she has debased herself this season and and like failed to win in the in the sort of like roy family fight sphere and also has not been a very good person. And I think there's obviously there's been a lot of complexity about how that character is criticized because she's a woman in this very masculine world. I'm not really, I'm trying to

think outside of that. Roman is a piece of shit. We know Roman is a piece of shit. Kendall is a damaged guy. Shiv is someone who has always presented us smarter than the rest, but has failed to make moves professionally that she needed to make in smart ways, with one exception, which is the shareholders meeting. And I wonder whether that will come back around when we find out what we, we don't don't know what Sandy and Stew, you think about this deal, by the way. That's the other thing. But more specifically, she's been a very, very, very bad partner. She's cheated. She has lied. She has degraded him to his face. And I don't know how you rebuild that. Yeah, it's so interesting. No, I'm not rooting for their relationship in any way. But like, the Shiv discourse that has happened through the season and especially in the last couple weeks has been really.

interesting to me. I agree with you that there are valid critiques and then there's like shitty invalid critiques and I would never accuse you of having a shitty invalid critique. But I think that if you play a game of comparison, like, first of all, Tom is a consenting adult in the head of Fox News essentially. Like I'm not, I don't. Not saying he's a good guy either. Yeah, Matthew McFadion plays him as like, you know, this hanged-on-down.

But he's not like, he's not an innocent, obviously, as we see in this episode. Like, he's not an innocent in all of this. I think someone was pointing, I was trying to nail down the Shiv thing. And someone was like, well, I think the reason people react more negatively to Shiv than they do to Kendall, who was involved in vehicular manslaughter, an accident, but then went along with covering it up. Or the shitty way that Kendall treats Rava, etc. or what Roman does to Jerry, which is like send her an unsolicited dick pick, like all this sort of stuff. There are terrible things that the other siblings do. I do think that Shiv might be held occasionally to a different standard because she is a female character on a show that happens all the time.

But I'm not going to disagree with you that like, you know, she's fatal flaw and we've heard it from a lot of people on the show at this point is like she thinks she's the smartest person in the room. And she doesn't stop to consider that she might not be. and maybe there's something for her to learn for this episode or maybe as Jesse Armstrong and you both say, no one ever changes and no one ever will. But I actually was wondering if by the end of this episode with what happens to this very personal betrayal to Shiv here, if it might prompt some people to root for her next season, you know,

if this would put her in a space that people feel more. I feel sympathetic to shift. You know, you've talked about relating to Connor, relating to Kendall. I really relate to Chavon. in her relationship with her mom. That's something that I really relate to personally. So I feel a lot of empathy for her. But I can understand why she's a tough self for some people.

You know, I also relate to her because my fatal flaw is thinking I'm the smartest person in the room all the time when, in fact, I'm not most specifically on this podcast when talking with you. So we can all relate to all of the foibles of all these characters. I guess I am, as usual at the end of a season of succession, I am fascinated to see where they take it. I think that this is one of the great concluding. season shows that we've had in a while

and the way I was so keyed up and we had to wait so long for this season after the conclusion of season two. This one too, I mean, they can go in so many different directions. We don't need to do too much prognosticating here, but is there one thing in particular that you are hoping they focus on or that you, like, a direction you see them rowing in as we go to season four? I think we were overall, like, pretty high on this season.

And I don't think we ever quite got into the space, the, like, hypercritical space that some people did. But even things that we were like, was this wasted? Stuff like the DOJ investigation, I think it does pay off on the end here. The DOJ fine is what puts them in a place where they need to take this Gojo deal. And the DOJ plot line and Tom's anxiety around prison was a way for us to spend a lot of time with Tom and his stressors and anxiety and his consideration of his marriage and all that sort of stuff like that. So I think that, though we never truly doubted the writers, I think doubt the succession writers at your peril is a lesson from this episode and from this season.

So what do I want to see next season? Obviously, it's the three kids trying together to make their own pile and failing sometimes, but like trying to come back together. Honestly, this really is, and perhaps it's a terrible reading of the show, but it really really is for me a will they won't they of like will these kids be able to work together. Do you want to see Justin Kirk, Adrian Brody, Alexander Scars Guard back on the show next year? Alex, yes, I think in a major way. And we talked about this last week. Adrian Brody, I'd be okay if we never see Adrian Brody again, not because I didn't like his performance,

but just because I feel like that was an excellent one and done. And Justin Kirk, I would like to see him come back in a small capacity. next season, but I don't really want next season to be like the politic season or anything like that. I feel like it could be. That's interesting that you say that because one of the things about Tom is if Tom ascends on the corporate ladder here as the head of ATN politics is coin to the realm. And I could see a world in which they are fusing those two storylines a bit. That's true. Can I do can I quickly do you listen to the watch this week, right? Of course. I listen to the watch. As I have said, many things. times in public, and I'll say it right here for Chris and Andy's benefit. Chris, who I know is listening and Andy, who I know is not listening. Not because he doesn't like us or anything because he doesn't

listen to our podcast. He doesn't listen to any of my podcast. The Watch is my favorite podcast of all time and is an inspirational podcast to those of us who podcasts about TV and culture. But whatever they said on their pod, it's probably wrong. So what they say? No, no, not anything that they said. And I also love Chris and Andy and The Watch. And I think it's an incredible show and I've loved listening to the cover Successional Season. I'm just going to do a quick Andy Greenwald impression. because I know he and I have both been texting the same Emmy Award-winning showrunner about succession. So I will say, I was speaking to an Emmy Award-winning showrunner who will go unnamed. And he's something that he wanted to see that I got really excited about.

You know, there's a lot of Godfather conversation in this episode because we're in Italy. There's family, there's betrayal. There's all the sort of stuff like that. Someone pointed out to me that the light suits, the light matching suits that Greg and Tom are wearing in this episode reminded them of a suit that, that Michael Coriani wears, and I think like the Miami or the Cuba sequence in Godfather 2. Anyway, point being, this unnamed Emmy Award winning showrunner said that he wanted some Logan Prequel action with James McAvoy as a young Logan Roy, and I was like, put it in my veins. I would love to see it.

I'd love that. But then we couldn't cast James Cromwell. We couldn't think of a really tall Scotsman for the job. Oh, wow. Okay, that's a challenge for the listeners and myself. That's my favorite game to play is who's a tall Scotsman? I'll have to brainstorm on that a little bit and see if I can land on someone. Don't you think Matt Smith could do a Scottish accent? I mean, I feel like that's right there on the table. You're right. If Matt Smith can bring the bird to the table, but he's busy, he's busy flying on dragons elsewhere in HBO. So I don't know if he has time. Joanna, yeah. Like anything else that you want to note or observe about this episode of this, season? Or this joyful experience of doing this podcast with you? The Tom stuff is one of the most interesting things that a show has done, because I really do

feel like it's a story we've been following since day one. We've talked again and again about how Tom is such an interesting character get our arms around because he holds all these conflicting aspects of his personality. We've talked about Matthew McFadion as like this incredible performer playing all those notes. we've talked about the various scenes. We will stop. We will halt and talk about almost any Tom scene in any given episode, the double diner scenes where Ken points out, Ken is needling him about being a country mouse and not really loving a sister. And we were like, what is this?

What are we watching? Like, what are we building towards here? And again, though we couldn't see what this would be, it is so satisfying. So I guess I just, you know, Bravo, great, it's a great show. Sean, I don't know if you knew that, but this is a good show. How about you? Anything else you want to say? I'm just grateful that Bill said, you and Joanna should do a succession pod, honestly.

That was really nice of him. And, you know, he knew that I loved this show and that I think, honestly, like, there may have been times when I have talked to Bill about this show and he's been like, you're being a little too pointy-headed for me about this, try to have a little more fun. But in this case, it worked out. I'm so glad you're here at The Ringer. I'm so glad we did this together. I'm so grateful for Steve Allman, our incredible producer who's been with us on every episode here. Shout out to Steve. Great work.

Hopefully we'll do something again in the future. You'll definitely be on the big picture a bunch. Maybe we'll talk about some TV in the future, too. Stay tuned to the prestige TV podcast where we are always covering TV for you on a regular basis. Is that how we're heading on a regular basis? Do you want to make a joke there, something to fill me in? Yeah, and stay tuned to see if Sean Fantasy himself gets cast as a young James Cromwell in a season. Season 4 of Succession.