The Watch - ‘Succession’ and ‘Barry’: A Tale of Two HBO Finales

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

Andy and Kaya give some instant reactions to the ‘Succession’ series finale (1:00) and talk about whether anyone can really “win” on the show (30:40). Then, Andy is joined by Sean Fennessey to talk about ‘Barry,’ the other major HBO series that recently concluded. They talk about how the show has evolved since its first season (1:00:07) and how Bill Hader never wanted you to feel sorry for the character of Barry (1:26:56). Host: Andy Greenwald Guests: Kaya McMullen and Sean Fennessey Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I don't usually do these. intros, but I'm thrilled to be doing it now. Joined by someone in the studio who's always in the studio staring at me with her own face eggs. It's Kaya McMullen. Just mushy orbs in my face. They just, I get it. They freak people out.

Kaya, thank you for joining me for this momentous day in American television history. We're recording Monday morning. Big night of finale's last night. Mm-hmm. You know who doesn't know about that? Chris Ryan? No. He is in Paris or I guess you could also say he's.

in Sweden angling for the waystar CEO position. I think what we can say is that President-elect Mencken has reservations about Chris's involvement in this podcast. So we needed to bring in a true blue American like UKI who has not left the contiguous United States in quite some time. Someone who will be a swappable cog. Yes, that's right. So here's how it's going to work.

You and I are going to talk about last night's succession series finale with open eyes. Later in the show, our buddy Sean Fentasy is going to come on, and he and I are going to talk about the Barry finale, which also aired last night. I think it's unfair, honestly, that they were both on in the same night. I agree. I feel like Barry. I mean, I don't really watch Barry,

but it really did get cannibalized pretty much completely. Totally unfair. And honestly, as someone who watched both, an emotionally overwhelming experience. Yeah, that sounds like a bad time. I personally, after my succession watch, I turned on some Banner Pump rules just to like kind of wind down. Did you need to take the edge off? Well, I mean, it's not like that succession ended in a way that was like happy.

No, because you didn't sit with it? You didn't stare out at a body of water near you? No, I didn't. I just stared at overfilled lips. Well, they were in Miami and Vayner Pump. So I guess that sort of counts. So you feel a little better. Yeah.

Let's get into it. Let's talk about this finale. I thought it was an absolutely impressive and tonally correct way to end this series. I have to admit that while watching it, I mean, I think, I don't know if you share this experience, but I feel like watching series fineries can often feel uncomfortable because every step that you're seeing on screen feels fraught. Everything feels a little bit heavier, a little bit weightier, you're looking for things, you're predicting jump scares or at least emotional jump scares around the corner.

I also think that this episode of Succession very intentionally was not a very fun hang episode of succession. In the first hand, it did not have a party. No, unfortunately. It had to do a lot of A to B to C to Jamaica back to D. Caroline's dinner, a dinner party? Yeah, that's true. That was lovely. And by the way, I do think that we were robbed of Jonathan's pitch. I want to hear him out personally

Do you think that was a backdoor pilot for season five? Well, maybe now that Kendall is out, he will go back to He'll come crawling back. Yeah. I think it was interesting that Well, look, let's go big picture here. Did you feel satisfied by this finale? I did because I think they ultimately all ended up back where they started.

And I think with succession, no one was ever going, none of the three siblings were ever going to win. And if one of them had come out on top, I would feel, I guess not like, betrayed is a strong word, but I would just feel that is not right for like the arc of the show. Yeah, I was really pleased that I think, look, Jesse Armstrong was writing from his heart and his artistic sensibilities and his muse. He was not writing to combat clickbait SEO internet headlines in the United States.

However, I did feel like this episode was a heat-seeking missile built to do. destroy the who's going to win betting odds narrative. Yeah. Because this was never, ever a show about winning. This was a show in which absolutely everyone lost, if you can accept the idea that everyone is still a billionaire. This has always been a show about how, despite having all of the advantages and the wealthiness in the world,

these people are not ever going to be satisfied. No, exactly. And I thought the most remarkable thing about the episode was just, it was like a scouring brush. It didn't add. It didn't make anyone seem bigger or it didn't burnish any characters. It's stripped away. And in a sense, the season, if not the show, did really end at the end of episode 402 when Logan said, I love you all, but you're not serious people. Yeah, that really did end up. And I mean, Roman brings that back in the final moment. He says, basically, we're all a joke. He says we're bullshit, which, you know,

It's an escalation because as we've learned over the last few weeks of Tom Schiv Dynamics, there's always another floor. There's always a subseller for any kind of conversation. But yeah, they are who they are. And the feeling that I had at the end of this, and I thought this was really striking and really dramatic, was we were watching the wrong show. For almost four seasons, I think there was a sense that this was a boardroom drama amongst legitimate players. When in fact this was a show about broken children. and the businessmen were doing the job in the other rooms. Right.

The cameras were not on them. And it made me think of something that I think it's a note I kept hitting last season, which is that it felt like Logan was on a different show for much of it, that he would sort of be off camera for long stretches of time, and we would be dealing with his wake reacting to what was coming down from up high. I mean, one aspect of that was even the carrier relationship, which was never explicitly put into the text. He was just behaving.

And when I brought that up again this season talking to Chris, it was like, oh, was that a dry run to see what the show would be like without Logan? In fact, I think that was just a hint at what the show actually was, which was they were never serious people. They were never involved in any of it. They were just flopping around cartoonishly in the margins. And that was brought home to really devastating effect. And I think probably the two most emotionally impactful scenes of the episode, one is when they're watching a video of a version of their father. they had never seen at a party they were not invited to. Surrounded by people that he respected more or less, maybe minus Connor.

No, but he allowed. I mean, that was really telling. And, you know, I think there might be some people coming out of this episode being like, oh, well, what about Connor didn't really get his little, you know, line through his tea or dot on his eye. But his father let him make fun of him. Yeah. I thought that was remarkable. Yeah.

His father let him see a softer side. And I mean, I guess if anybody really won, it was Connor. He gets the apartment. He gets the... Potentially he gets Slovenia. Potentially. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to come back from not getting Slovenia.

I think that's a large point of the show. But so there's that moment where they see what their father was like without them at a party they weren't invited to. And then there's the scene that we're going to talk about in depth. And I'm sure everybody's talking about today, which is the scene outside of the board media. And all I could think about during that entire sequence was this is the memory from the funeral. This is Shiv's memory from the funeral. They were making noise outside of the room where the business was happening. They were children.

They didn't belong in the real room where the grownups were. They were just fucking around. And that's who they always were. Yeah, and that's really driven home by Kendall saying, I'm the eldest boy. I'm the eldest boy repeatedly. Now, I'm feeling some of that energy today because I am elder than Chris. Right. So I do feel that this is my mantle to take. And I hope you're okay with it. I hope you won't finish it. Please, by all means. Walk out at the crucial moment. Okay, let's, before we get into any of the specific scenes, talk to me about how you, how we joined this episode. And did you have, because we haven't heard your thoughts about the season up to now, what were you expecting and what were you predicting? I just, I think I didn't really go in expecting or predicting anything because I don't really think that's how. They wanted people to perceive the show.

You know, I'm on Twitter a lot. I see a lot of, I saw a lot of tweets beforehand. That's brave. It's braver by the day, I'll tell you that. But people being like, oh, well, here's a whole theory about why it might be Greg, or here is like, oh, well, if you look at like this Easter egg and like this thing from the show, then, like, that's going to tell you, like, who's going to actually succeed. And I just don't think it was ever about, as you said before, it was ever really. about who was going to win. And so I think I almost kind of went into it.

And maybe this is being too, like, gracious to myself now that I've already seen it. But like, I didn't really ever think anybody was going to win. Yeah. Yeah. It was never set up to be that. I think the closest to a wrong prediction that came out of this podcast was that Kendall would, quote unquote, get it. But it would be a poison chalice and what's the point?

And he's burned all of his family relations, et cetera, et cetera. I think this is much, much more successful. I also was really struck by how, I mean, let's, it's such an unsentimental finale for an unsentimental show. So many finale's, good ones, bad ones, mediocre ones, do something that kind of steer towards the fiction of their show. What I mean is, like they'll give characters, even minor characters, like a beautiful moment, a send-off, like a framing. Sometimes there's a needle drop, you know, that makes you feel a certain way. Right. Going through this finale, it was quite long.

It was a 90-minute finale. Yeah. But it's not like I was thinking, oh, is that the last time we're going to see Jerry? Guess what it was. There wasn't anymore to seeing Jerry, you know? It was very much just like a moment in time with these people. But again, I think that was artfully done because the characters like Jerry and Frank and Carl. We never, I mean, we've seen Jerry's husband a few times and Roman made fun of him.

But otherwise, we didn't see their private lives because they had them. Because they were at their jobs. It was only these kids who were these just sloppy messes giving everything of themselves all the time in front of everyone else. And I think that was, again, that was important. Frank and Carl's having a nice chat about getting richer and what else they want to do with their lives. They have futures. I'm not sure if the same could be said for the other characters on the show. Yeah, because it's like these people, these ancillary characters,

this like C-suite, these are people who have actually earned their place at the company. And so you have to assume they have some sort of business acumen, whereas the kids have always just been like, this is my birthright to be here. And this is what I'm owed. Yeah, bloodline. It comes down to bloodline. That was gnarly. But yeah, I do think what you're hitting on here where it's like, they didn't feel this need to give everybody like a nice send off and like reaffirm that like people, these people are worth watching in some way was different than other past like seasons and finalis. I think it worked really well here because, you know, again, this show was never about like having likable people on the screen. Yeah. And also, I don't know if I've ever said

this about a major series finale before, but it did two things at the same time, kind of contradictory things. It really could have kept going. It could have kept going on and on and on. Yeah. But, But it very clearly was out of the type of gas that Jesse Armstrong likes to use, meaning that's the point. The point is that these main characters will never be happy. They will never have the holes inside of them, the psychological holes inside of them filled. And it's best to just pull the plug. Yeah, because it is interesting. I mean, there's definitely a lot of cases to be made about what could have been with another season.

and like honestly even with the way that they have left everybody set up in this finale at the end, it's like I'm sure they're more than easily could have mapped out of season five from there. And it would have been interesting and would have been like compelling TV to watch. But I guess it would have essentially been the same thing of the siblings going at it, trying to make alliances, having the alliances broken. For a second it looks like Kendall might win and he's finally done it. And then it's all taken away from him at the last second. There's a lot of art in how you choose to walk away and how you choose to leave us.

Which is also why I kind of reject any clickbaiting idea that Tom won. Is Tom going to keep this job? What is Tom's reason for having this job? What is his stability in this job? It's nonsense. There is none. And the way he pitches himself is, I am replaceable. I will do whatever you say.

And so it's like, who's to say that. I'm a pain sponge. Yeah, that Tom is not going to get replaced just as fast as he, replace Shiv. Let's go through some sibling stuff. And then we can talk about the Tom and the Mattson and the sticker on Greg's forehead. Let's start with Roman, who as we learned the beginning of the episode, has fled his, well, he said he fought the Antifa protester to a draw. I don't, I don't think that's the case. I think that the referees had a different view of that fight. He has hold up with his mother and Peter in what I believe is Jamaica. Have you read any?

I thought they said it was Barbado. Barbados, thank you. Yeah, I only thought Jamaica because the Pink Floyd thing. And I was like, oh, did Pink Floyd? I just assume, like, English musicians love to record in Jamaica. Yeah. But I didn't get a heavy Jamaica vibe. Barbados makes more sense.

I don't even really get a heavy Barbados vibe. It seems a little bit rockier, but I mean. I've also never been to Barbados. I have not either, and I don't frequent a lot of islands that I'm sure. I think Chris is going there next, so maybe he can let us know. Live from Barbados. Also, I just, you know, there's going to be, there has been a lot of ink spilled and there will be a lot of ink spilled in the days and weeks to come from these actors being like, oh, I'm so grateful for this opportunity. It was a great, what a great thing for my career and for my life. Harriet Walter, who plays Caroline, imagine just being a successful, talented, working English actor, getting this gig. And then the last part of the gig is, hey, can you come to the tropics to hang out at a villa for a week to film some scenes? I mean, pretty sweet gig. And also, play this a major like power role and basically the final episode where Caroline is kind of the one

being like yes I guess you can come see Roman and yes and she's kind of like pulling the strings just a little bit and really is like a lynch pin in this episode and is given a different shade in this episode of sadness you know I think that when she sees the children being happy and we'll get to that scene she's not someone who betrays me much emotion, and clearly that has added to the damage of the children, but there is a palpable sense of, why can't it just be like this? There's always another board meeting to rush off to how important it must feel to be a master of the universe. And yet, to me, she kind of strikes me as someone who, they're the type of people who have always grown up with money. And so they like to

pretend or play the game that, like, actually money doesn't matter. And I could be happy with none. and like, oh, all you silly business things, I can't believe you're, like, out there trying to get money. Because they see that kind of as, like, goche. I think that's also very English traditionally, right? Like, not speaking about, you don't speak about where the money came from. You just, oh, it's embarrassing. Well, it's not embarrassing. It's just embarrassing to speak of it.

Having it is, I imagine, pretty great. And so the Roman we see here is a little bit different than the last Roman we saw, who was a little bit punchy and high on neo-fascism and getting his teeth kicked in on the streets of Manhattan. I guess the question I have about his presence here. Okay, so he's defeated. He's like a shell of himself. He's like a scared little boy. Yes. As, you know, the emotion that he was denying by pre-greaving is now just at the forefront. And he needs some help and he probably needs some more time in Barbados and not at a board meeting. There's a version of this, and I wonder if you agree with this. I might just be playing devil's advocate here, but is he, is Roman story done too soon? Like, his storyline was basically done in a lot of

ways, right? Like, he reached his end place. Maybe it's a sign, maybe it's interesting because every character reached their end place at a different moment in this episode. But he was done and nobody was listening or noticing. Yeah, I feel like I came away with the most questions about Roman's storyline. And I also, but I also do think two out of the three of them, I think Roman always, wanted it the least. Yeah. And wanted more so for them to just maybe get along and have that familial bond. I think the like scene that I left with the most questions with was like that end scene

between him and Kendall where he kind of like pops his stitches. Yeah. Okay. We should, we could talk about that scene. I agree. So he's, Roman is a walking open nerve. Right. I think.

And we should talk about the. delicious milkshake scene. Vitamix splendors having a role on Succession and Barry. Not sure if you saw that. Oh, okay. I don't know if they, maybe they're one of the sponsors of Max. Yeah, maybe that's a new Max spawn. Vitamax.

See? That one's free, Casey. But yeah, I think, and by the way, as I referenced last week or the other day, like Roman might not be the youngest sibling or so we're told, but. Right. He certainly behaves that way. He kind of is. And the way they treat him kind of is.

I mean, he's the most transparent, right? Like, he is happiest, truly happy when they are all getting along, when he has some semblance of a family, even if it's this, you know, its relationship to a family is the same as like a wire mesh monkey mother to an actual monkey in that famous horrible psychological torture experiment that they did to baby monkeys. People know about that, right?

We can talk more about that offline. I'm not super familiar. This is why you run a tight shift. I appreciate that. Yeah, Google Wiremesh Monkey. Anyway, what he wants and what he needs are pretty clear. And that moment in Kendall's office is really fraught and probably deserving of its own psychologically inclined podcast because of what changes in the dynamic with all of them when Kendall is in his father's office. Right, when they see him sitting in the chair.

That, and we'll talk about that and when we speak more directly about Shiv, but like Roman sees Jerry and. And again, there is no longer any, the walls aren't holding. The machinery, the circuitry that he built to protect himself from what he does and what he actually feels is gone. And so in that moment, he feels, I guess, overwhelming. What guilt, shame, vulnerability. Well, he's like, I don't want. Legal jeopardy. I don't.

Essentially, he's like, I don't want Jerry to see me like this, to see, or I don't want everybody to see me with, like, this gash in my head. Right. So what it becomes is that. then outward, right? Like he's worried that the wounds are mirrors and not mirrors, they're windows into the wounds that he's actually now feeling internally. Right. And he can't stop talking about that. But there's also the flip side of that, which is him saying, I don't look bad enough. Like, I need to be worse for them to understand why I can't be in charge, why I can't be you, why I can't be a man in this broken kingdom.

Right. Yeah. So that's where I got a little bit confused. And so the way I understood it was that he's like, I'm too healed now. People are going to wonder why it's not me, why it's you instead. And so then I guess Kendall reopens his wound. So I think it's just incredibly dense moment. Because what Kendall is good at, at least in terms of his baby brother, and we saw this in the previous episode, is he knows what his. brother needs. And what his brother needs at that moment is to be comforted on some level. And he does with a physical embrace, or as Roman calls it, that huggy thing. He doesn't call it in that moment. But also, it's been established that Roman has some connection with pain and being humiliated and being hurt as he was often in his childhood. And so it's all of it all at once. It's his brother comforting him and putting him in a familiar role, I believe. Would it almost be like Kendall taking on the Logan role, not just in CEO, but also in? Yeah. And I think we saw that at the end of the previous episode, right?

Where he's just like, look, you fucked it. Yeah. You know, about his speech or his eulogy or his aborted eulogy. It's a lot of things. And then it sort of ventures almost into the biblical. Like he just has a, he has a wound in that moment that can't stop bleak. leading. In a way, it may have been, the episode was, by and large, pretty straightforward. That was almost the most artistic indulgence or aesthetic indulgence that it leaned into. I wasn't entirely sure about that. But whatever the case, Roman was, it's weird to say he was pacified, but he was kind of at peace. You know, the things that he says in the ultimate scene, you know, well, horrific what he says when he's just parroting Logan's words about Kendall's children. Yeah. But he has that face, like, people, he has the face that people have at the end of movies where they're okay getting beaten to death.

Now, again, I don't know if you've seen those movies. You can Google them. Maybe don't. But he, he's in a very nihilistic place that they're all bullshit. And this stitches holding it together, where the last thing holding it together, right? for him. He did lick the cheese though. He did look the cheese though. Yeah, should we go back to just that?

I feel like both the water scene with Shiv and Roman mimicking Kendall and if they and what his response would be and then like swimming out to him and then that turning in to this like weird sibling bonding milkshake scene. you guys have called them like McBain moments in the past and that very much was that they were going to murder him in one way just not the way they're joking about it. Yeah, and also there are these beautiful opportunities for

again, this show is, it is what it is and they're all adults, but you have to wonder if, you don't have to wonder, I think you can assume that Jesse knew what he was doing when he gave Sarah Snook and Kieran Colkin a chance to make fun of Jeremy Strong. You know, that kind of dynamic where they love each other and they love

of being together, but they also hate being together, which has leaked out or not leaked out, especially, you know, for Brian Cox gushes out in the press. It has benefited the show enormously. It's just had benefited the show in terms of that's very strange and unique dynamic that the three of them have, so that the moment of their absolute celebration,

their happiest moment when they're making a meal fit for a king, there's joy and sadism, right? I mean, it's pretty messed up. But at the same time, that is also the happiest Kendall has ever been. Yeah. He is boyish. His, he looks dopey. And again, this is a testament, I think, to Jeremy Strong's performance because he is,

you wouldn't know this if you're reading the GQ stories, but when you see the way he performs, he is egoless when he is acting. He does not care what he looks like. And I don't think he's self-aware at all in those moments, you know? And he just has the dopiest, goofiest little kid face. Yeah. As he's drinking something that, you know, I think would definitely make him throw up, if not hospitalize him. And you have to wonder if, like, the dumping it on his head was scripted or not.

I assume so. Yeah, well, I guess right after they finished filming that scene, I think that was one of the final scenes they filmed. They, Sarah Snook and Karen Colkin shaped his head. Oh, that was it, maybe. Maybe they finished filming on the island. I think so because Curran's wearing that color block t-shirt also. So again, very little boyish. Right.

And they shaved Jeremy Strong's head and that I think Kieran like smashes an egg on it or something. Sure, I'm sure. Done with love. Yeah. No hostility whatsoever. Okay. So the Roman part of it, I mean, you know, I think Karen Culkin was incredible in this episode. Yeah.

I think that it was a really interesting opportunity for him because for as amazing as he's been, there are moments throughout the course of the series. There are moments where I'm like, he's amazing at doing the things that only Kieran Culkin can do. Again, great shows right to great actors. And it's using up every bit of that kind of snarky meta. I'm saying this, but I'm saying that. I'm hugging you, but I'm hitting you kind of energy. I'm just like fundamentally uncomfortable in my own body. Yeah, and I'm going to live in that for your entertainment.

When he comes out at his mom's, he is physically different. Yeah. And it was a really nice opportunity for him to remind us that he is a very talented performer making choices. even as the, you know, the ticks went away, right? Because the misery had taken root inside of him. I want to talk about the Shiv part. Because in my first viewing, I'm pretending I've seen it multiple times. I did check out one or two scenes again.

I only saw it once. I will watch it again. But her flip-flopping and then ultimate decision that she makes, I was struggling with a little bit with tracking it. Yeah. I'll be honest. I think that was the second major. question I left is why, why did she do that? So let's talk about where we, where we join her,

and she is flying high. You want to talk about McBain moments. Anytime someone on the show announces that they're a winner or that they're a good person, you could probably, yeah, pretty sure they're not going to win. You can pretty reliably assume that they're not. Yeah, so she shows up, again, it's unclear whether she is, what is she happiest about? Is she happiest about becoming the CEO of, Waystar Gojo or is she happiest about being able to look Kendall in the face and be like, you fucking suck, I want? Probably the latter, honestly. I think it would be giving her too much credit to say that she is singularly happy because

she feels like she accomplished something like professionally versus she is happy because she fucked over her brother. So the B side of what's going on with Shiv is, you know, again, this is not really nitpick, but it's just a question to ask, like, is Luke? is Mattson good at business? Because I do think there was probably, this wouldn't have worked for the dramatic finale of the series succession. So I'm okay with it. I want to be very clear. But I just feel like he probably could have made it 24 hours without naming a CEO or without actively interviewing 10 other people for the position that was inevitably going to leak unless it

was intentional. And that, the one moment that I had of remove in this episode was him saying one thing to Shiv, then immediately going behind her back, and then the whole scene with Tom, which we'll speak about, I was like, is this, is this performance art? Is this, is he intentionally doing this to destabilize something? Because otherwise, it imperiled his entire deal. And then we get that one scene of Scars Guard being like, battle stations, go, go. Like he's the captain of fucking Starship Enterprise. Right. Yeah. Um, seemed odd. Yeah, I think that's a fair point. And, you know, I'm, I personally don't have a lot of business. Oh, now you tell me, that is why you're sitting in that chair right now. But yeah, I would agree with you. I think that is probably not the smartest move on

his part. I thought it was an incredible troll job that it did seem for a moment that Lawrence from Walter was going to come roaring back. And I mean, this has no disrespect to the actor or the character, but, you know, great, truly great shows just roll over mistakes is too strong a word, but non-fruitful commitments and storylines. And Lawrence was the actor-play Lawrence was credited cast member in the first season, and there was a sense that he was going to be a major part of the story before they even knew totally what the story was. He was not. The callback was nice for like the real success heads, but I was like, are they doing this? That would kind of be incredible. I respect the flex to not even bother showing him, just to name him.

He may have just not been avail. He might have been like, you know what, fool me once. Shame on me. But that said, this brings up to the, you know, we should follow this gojo thread. isn't Lawrence a better choice than Tom? Isn't literally anyone else a better choice than Tom? Talk to me about this. I don't know. I mean, if you want someone who will just do your bidding, and I think Mattson says,

who knows if this is actually true, but it seems like he starts to want to oust Shiv after it's betrayed in that magazine profile or that cartoon that Shiv is pulling the strings. He doesn't, he's like, ha-ha, we all like the jokes, but none of these people like jokes. And it also seems pretty clear that Mattson, is like a raging sexist.

Yes. And potential sex offender as well. Yeah, yeah, that too. That too. It's also, you know, I think this would need multiple viewings to parse, but like for as new media as Madsen is and as European and as non-conventional, Logan made the deal with him. Logan said you are the one who should get this. And that means on some level, I mean, yes, the big takeaway is that he never wanted his children to get it and he wanted to rid this whole thing from them.

keep it away from them. And that was, he got his wish, despite the underlying crossout saga. But he also may have recognized something in Mattson that he found similar or that he connected to. And I don't think there was enough real estate in this season or certainly in this episode to explore that. But willing to laugh at a joke until he murders the person making the joke, the ultimately just wants to go off of his own gut. And so keeps a very strange inner circle that doesn't really make a lot. lot of sense from the outside, but exists purely to service this raging ego. Right? And that's something that Shiv absolutely whiffed on and didn't understand. They never thought of him as a formidable opponent, even though their father clearly thought he was a worthwhile, not a worthwhile

business. Yeah, that's a good point. So, Greg. Greg, I really do, I really do respect that Greg, I guess Greg would be like a Gen Zier. And so he is the one who's like, hey, you know, they have this nifty new technology now where you can just record people's conversations. They'll translate it live for you. I thought that was pretty, I mean, that was the smartest thing Greg has done in four seasons. Yeah, well, then he almost immediately turns around and almost fucks himself. I think I'm misquoting it, but he says something like, if you give me something amazing, If I give you something amazing, can I have something incredible?

Yeah. Or something like that. It's, I mean, all of this just leaks like a sieve. But it does. So, Shiv's journey. I mean, again, this is maybe, this is, we should praise the script, not worry about the details. But like, to get Shiv to do not one, but two complete 180s in a 90-minute episode is remarkable. Mm-hmm.

To the fact that we are basically accepting it is also remarkable. Yeah. The first one, I think, makes sense because every time these children go out into the world and attempt to do anything, the world spanks them, slaps them, humiliates them, and then they go back to their natural order where they can be in an incredibly expensive, beautiful place and say incredibly hurtful and saying things to each other, and life goes on. And pretend to have some sort of actual power and knowledge. Yes, and because they all have sway over each other in their...

kind of fucked up little circuit. They all, to some extent, take each other seriously as business people because if they're not taking each other seriously as business people, then they are definitely themselves not serious business people. There's a super

cut to be made, and probably, you know, we're recording this Monday, it's almost, it's lunchtime, someone probably has already made it, but if you just took the faces that other business characters make when the kids enter or leave the room, it's telling you the story of the show. whether it's Stewie, whether it's Frank, I mean, Carl, Jerry, Mattson, any of them,

they're not serious people. They're not serious people, but we have been embedded with them. You know what I mean? It's really kind of an interesting roper dope. It was never hidden. Yeah. But I think in that way, it's really a credit to Jesse's perspective on this, right? Because he knows how the machine of television works.

and he knows that it is an empathy creating device. And so even, I'm sure people like us who are sitting in this room, we've been podcast, we've been talking about it, we've been analyzing it, we've been psycho analyzing it. You kind of feel for them in a way. You know, you kind of do. I think what's really interesting about where we are in the finale, and then we can get back into the specifics,

is none of these people who I'm going to talk about. These are not straw people, but they also are not listening to this podcast. But I know that there's a segment of the audience that has been like, I'm not going to watch Succession because I don't want to watch a show that humanizes bad people

or that illustrates bad people. And I think that the genius of the show is that it has always understood that when we talk about humanizing figures or types of people, it doesn't mean making them good. It doesn't mean making them likable or worthwhile. It means making them relatable.

Yeah. To humanize something is to create empathy and understanding, and that's what made the inevitable loss in this episode just resonate. Because you understand why they are so broken. You understand why they cannot change or get out of their own way. And you just have to watch it happen. So does Shiv, does she decide to, I've seen a couple of different theories about why she ultimately decides to backstaff, or I guess, you know, go against Kendall. I think the one that I've seen that gives her the most credit,

which I don't think is true, is that she's trying to protect Kendall from himself and she doesn't want Kendall to end up like their father. And so that's why she does it. I don't think that's true. I think that would be painting her as too, like, compassionate of her person. Then another one I've seen is that she was on the fence. She still hadn't made up her mind.

They're in the board room and she says, or they're in the conference room and she says, well, Kendall, you killed someone. And so I can't ultimately trust you. And then when he's like, no, no, I didn't. I lied. That sort of confirms to her that like, oh, you're not. You can't do this. I think that ultimately she just chose which person to side with where she thought she could actually maintain the most power. And she still thinks she has the most power and control over Tom.

And so if she sides with Tom as CEO, she can like pull the strings. I think this is a good thing, not a bad thing, that there's truth in every one of those points of view. I was having a hard time keeping up with it because if you watch from when they return from Barbados to the crucial moment in the boardroom. Also, how funny is it that they all three take separate cars to go to the second? Exactly. I thought about that too.

They all get in their own cars. I was like, do is it just like an ego thing? Do they got to make some phone calls? They're so good at play acting. You know, this part. It also maybe was foreshadowing in a way how things were going to break up and go. There are two pivot points that could be seen as cause and effect to what happens at the end. One is the scene with Tom when they're going through Logan's townhouse and some things are going to Slovenia.

Some things are being taken away. And there's the cow print. I mean, one last one last. I want Willa to have her cow print couch. and for Connor to be miles and miles away. It's going to work for them. It's going to work for them. I think those kids have got it made.

So there's the Tom thing where he's like it's going to be me. Again, I should rewatch it because at that moment, I was like, oh, everyone is being set up for disappointment because of course it's not going to be him. It was weirdly. So that creates a bunch of possibilities. To me, I never see the through line to now I'm going to go against. Kendall because that will empower Tom and I'm still married to Tom.

I think that the wound that's still resonating with her, and it gets supplanted by the, Lucas isn't going to actually make good on his offer to make me CEO wound. But when she has that very tender phone call, you know, early in the episode, tender for them, where it's just like maybe once we've said everything, there's nothing, you know, maybe honesty is a place that you can build a real relationship from, from the ashes of everything before. And she's like, would you like to give that a try? and he's like, I don't know. Yeah.

I think that that doesn't create a deep firmament between them in that moment. Yeah. I think the secondary part, which again, I didn't, I don't feel like I was tracking where Mark Milaud was putting his camera or at least in the edit what they decided on. Kendall's behavior in Logan's office seems particularly triggering as well. Yeah. Putting his feet up, joking around, offering chairmanship to his prep school buddy, Stewie. Right. That whole vibe, right?

And in that moment, you could think that... They're like, we've created a monster. We've created a monster and we've perpetuated a system of monstrosity. You know, there's... The mind goes back to a scene. Caroline Shiv's scenes also underrated classics throughout the series. And... Really like you people were raised by wolves.

Yeah, right? But there's the scene, I think it was in the wedding, or when they're there for the wedding, not actually during the wedding, at the end of Caroline's wedding at the end of season three when they're sort of talking about what the Caroline Logan relationship was about

and you sort of made to understand that Logan was a brute. Logan came from nothing shivering silent in a boat waiting to be killed by Nazis and then he married into the aristocracy. It gave him class. It gave him something.

And this realization that Tom, all the things that she was criticizing Tom for, she was a Caroline. She was Tom's Caroline. You know what I mean? All the stuff like you're, you're ambitious, you're a hick, you're provincial, that she somehow just, she thought she was raging against the machine, but she also has just only ever been part of the machine. Yeah.

I think it's also an incredible misread of, you know, maybe she and her brothers are too English ultimately, not just because they say, yeah, in the middle of sentences, but because they somehow think of, they tie success to primogeniture, like the, fucking royal family, when the story of America is Logan Roy, the story of America is Tom Wamsgans, being like, you know what, I like nice things, and I'm going to debase myself 24-7 in pursuit of it. Like, yeah. The reason he, I mean, nobody deserves anything on this fucking nightmare world of a show, but he's doing the job, right? Like, he is doing the job, which is to worry about everything and try to execute his enemies all the time. Yeah, I kind of feel like we've almost only seen Tom actually working this entire season and actually, like, stress out about work, whereas the kids are just, like, making some phone calls.

I think also it goes back to what we were saying a moment ago about, like, how the dynamic within the family actually operates, which is it's the only place they feel safe is when they are all splashing around in the water trying to drown each other. Yeah. And there's that. And I think you can make other side arguments that like Maybe Chavana has like a moment of clarity that this is what her father wanted And she did not he did not want Kendall to do it he knew Kendall couldn't do it And that's let's we're all bullshit it's like it's a yeah it's like that the Roman disease suddenly creeps through all of them you know slowly

But I think more than anything else it's just like it's the story of the You know the story of the the scorpion and the frog When the scorpion wants to cross the water and the frog's like I won't do that because you're going to kill me because you're a scorpion. And the scorpion's like, but if I stab you in the water, we'll both die. And the frog's like, great point. And they make it halfway across the water. And the scorpion stings the frog.

And the frog's like, why did you do this? We're going to die. The scorpion's like, I am who I am. World's worst telling of a folktale on a minute 45 of the podcast. But that's who they are. It's who they are. And it's the only way they feel safe. They don't feel safe with their parents.

They don't feel safe with their loved ones. They don't have loved ones. They just have each other. And when you create, if you are comfortable with chaos, the only way to feel comfortable is to create more chaos. So we see that last turn. And then there's the Kendall. Kendall of it. Kendall of it all.

The Kendall of it all. Brewera, Jeremy Strong performance throughout. Really remarkable. Yeah. I know it's like ultimately Emmys don't matter and whatnot, but it's very tough. This field that they are creating for themselves at the Emmys. I know. I think Kieran's got an inside shot, actually.

I kind of think so. I can see that. I can make an argument. But as we've said many times throughout the coverage of the show, like Jeremy Strong's performance is completely unique in the history of television performances. It is so deep. It is so layered that I still feel like we can't. I don't feel like I fully appreciated it because you almost take it for granted.

He is as natural in these dynamics and in these scenes as the Hudson River is. Like, you just, well, he's there. Lots of water moments with her Kendall. Let's, I mean, we could talk about his quote unquote arc, but he didn't really have one. It was just, he was pretty much at the top, and then he just fell. Yeah. And he just fell all the way down, like he's in the fucking Mad Men opening credits. What did you make of his, so he, he screams at Shiv.

He tries to rip out his brother's eyeballs. And then he disheveled, goes back into the boardroom to say, like, maybe we can stall and Frank's like, no, it's done. Things are done. Yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, him little man grasping at straws, you know, and he just is not ready to admit that once again, he got played. And I don't, if we are like pretending there was going to be a final season, I don't think that.

Kendall, I think, has such an ego that he doesn't strike me as someone who was just going to accept his fate. I mean, he says it in this final closing thing. He's like, I am a cog that would only fit this position. Yeah. And I'm uniquely designed to do this. This is the only thing that's going to work for me. And so...

He's surprisingly self-aware. I mean, he says that my father took me to the candy kitchen in Long Island or in the Hamptons and was like, I want it to be you. And he understands that's a terrible thing to do to a child. Yeah. But his more than anyone else, we understand the brokenness and the flaws, but you can't excuse them or forgive them. No. And I mean, he says truly horrendous things in like the basically last five minutes.

And I think that's kind of too like, they probably did that to reaffirm. Like, don't feel bad for this guy. No, also when you say to other people, if you don't give me what I want, I'm going to end myself. I'm going to end everything. That is not a healthy communication or behavior. I think that we mentioned it last week in the funeral episode, but remember who this guy is when he's not on top. Remember who he is when he doesn't get what he wants.

And he's screaming at his ex-wife with the children in the car. And as we found out, the actors were in the car. he's calling Jess's replacement new Jess. Yeah. Oh my God, right. Yeah, it's bad. It's bad.

And everyone in that boardroom understands that it's bad and that it's time to move on. His... I thought it was interesting. Again, I think that... And hopefully we'll get a chance to talk to him about this. But, like, Jesse knows what he's doing.

And he knows that to film those scenes in those glass... cubes with all those windows from such a great height that when it's taken that way from Kendall, when it's ripped away from him, our kind of basic-ass American TV brains are like, who's going to kill himself? Yeah, I know. For a second, when he's walking so close to the window, it did like pass my mind. It's like, oh, he could just jump. I started just reaching in the history banks of TV when he was like pressing the button for the elevator. I'm like, is this going to be an LA law? And I feel like

most of our viewers probably viewers. We don't have any viewers. Most of our listeners don't even remember that famously a character once stepped into an empty elevator shaft. What I thought was really incredible about the final moments was that he had, like many of us, he was the architect of his own suffering. He wanted to be his father so badly, he put himself back in the prison that his father put himself in. Colin, his father's quote-unquote best friend,

who was introduced in the show basically as the security fixer, who kind of made the problem of the dead kid go away and then reminded Kendall of that in a very threatening manner on express orders from his father. Kendall brought him back. Kendall intentionally went up to him and said, come back and be this person for me,

thinking that he would be his father when he's only ever going to be his father's son. So there's that intense surveillance at the end. When he's leaving and you're like, was he going to throw himself in the river? Is he going to jump in front of traffic? There's a security guard is going to stop him. He's not free to make choices about his own bodily health or autonomy in that

moment. And then more than anything else, that final shot, I really, really respected and loved because if we had seen the water, it would have suggested hope, right, or transformation or movement, right? I mean, there's a lot of Google water metaphors. I'm really putting people to work on their laptop. But we didn't get that. We were instead on the side angle shot, right, where he is absolutely trapped in between. He's not a part of the city, the towers of glass and where the great titans of industry kept in their ships. And he's not free in the water. He's just trapped with himself. And I thought that was a really beautiful and artistic way to end a show that, as we've been alluding to, the business of the show could keep spinning on for

multiple seasons. This could be a showtime show in different hands. And so how were they going to leave us with a sense of deep existential rot while knowing that the story of this company and these people isn't over? And I thought that they found it. At first it sort of took my breath away that that was it. And then it made sense to me. It was correct. Yeah. Yeah. I would agree. I think that's a good point. Were there any, in your mind, this is, I don't know, always, this seems a little like ungrateful to go down this row, but were there any loose ends? Were there any questions that you had? This isn't, this wasn't lost, but I mean, yeah. But were there things that you wished had gotten more screen time or more resolution? I don't think so, no. I think that, I think if you're just

taking it as like, this was supposed to be sort of an ambiguous ending and we weren't supposed to leave feeling satisfied with. like little motifs of each character being like, and this is how they're going to end up. And like now they're going to be happy and satisfied. And so yeah, I feel like no. Maybe I'll have as I think about it more in the next few days, I'll change my mind. But I agree.

I would have, I mean, I love, I love Jerry and Tom and Carl. Those are all characters that I wish we could spend more time with. But I really admire the show's. commitment to just being a bulwark against the desire to give us resolution on everything. Yeah. To chase certainty. I mean, I think that the show ultimately was pretty aligned with human behavior, you know,

and that it's people don't really change. And there's always another level down you can go. It can always get worse and people stay in those situations. You know, they stay trapped. We stay trapped within ourselves. I think it may have come slightly as a surprise or tonally jarring that, this wasn't a satire. It was quite satirical about many things related to America or capitalism or business or what have you. But it was a tragedy in the end. You know, it was a very heavy ending. And I think the heaviness was really the impact with, I mean, it's not reality, it's a fictional show. But once the illusion broke, not just for the characters, because that happened in stages, but almost for the audience, right? Like they, they made. They made. a king on television.

They made a president through television. It is the most performative malarkey ever, and it made them feel like gods. And from that moment on, they were cast out, and they were just... Yeah. Just keep trapped in a prison of their own making. Trapped in a prison of their own making.

And, you know, we haven't even talked about the last Shiv and Tom beat. You don't think they're destined for a happy marriage? The world's chilliest. handhold. I would love to see, like, in the script, how that was written. You know, she lays her hand on top of his, but they do not clasp. Like, it is so rough. Yeah, it's a lot of, like, emotion and just, like, feeling portrayed in, like, one simple hand movement. What do you make of that? Like, because I still haven't thought my way through this at all, but you've heard me

for the last few weeks being like, what's going on with Shiv being some sort of moral arbiter or at least having more sense than her brothers and is it connected to this pregnancy? None of that really came to pass, which I was glad about. I don't think that made a lot of sense. Ultimately, is she acquiescing into the prison that we keep alluding to?

Because clearly one thing she is comfortable with is being in proximity to power. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, maybe that's just a comfortable place for her is being sort of next to power. And I mean, I guess when she started this season, she was working as like a Democratic operative. And I think in the series, right, in like the very beginning. Sorry, yeah, the series. And I think maybe in her head she's like, I can still make like change to ATN if I'm like working alongside Tom.

I think it's, but I also think on a human level it's just so lonely, right? Yeah. She's totally alone. I think she's destined to end up sort of like Caroline is what we're supposed to be left with. Yeah. Although Caroline's doing all right. I mean, she's maybe not mom of the year, but she seems to enjoy, she thinks Peter's silly. She has enough delusion to think that she seems, she has a lot of nice real estate.

Yeah. I really, I keep coming back to that. When they're wandering through the house and they're going to put stickers on things and whatever, and it's a great, you know, it's also doubling. This is also just. The great reallocation. It's hard to, yes, it's hard to talk about economy again when it's a 90-minute finale, but to do a lot of things in each of the opportunities that you have. So that scene was doing, you know, it was a funny conceit. It was addressing something that had been open-ended.

It's Connor and Willis last moment on the show. and then they wander into a video playing. I'm like, this seems a little convenient. Yeah. And, you know, it was like a sort of shaky cell phone video. You're watching it at a weird angle. But it really was remarkable because all of that functioned as distancing on purpose. They were so far from that dinner.

Yeah. Both because they weren't invited, both because it's in the past, both because the main person in his dead and those days are over, but also just the way it was shot, you know, like that they were somehow spying on it. One thing that really stuck out to me in that scene was, So when Roman is sitting on the floor and he's having this emotional reaction, and then Shiv kind of touches Roman and then Kendall kind of touches Shiv, that reminded me a lot of, I think it was last... Was the season finale in the Italian dust. Right, when Kendall is admitting that he killed that man.

And Roman kind of touches Kendall and then Shiv, and it's like this is how they, this is the closest they can come to displaying like any sort of physical effect. And they're a completed circuit. Yeah. They just pour their bullshit into each other and they make sense. That's the sad tragedy of it. That if we were shipping anyone, it was that throuple. Well, if we're shipping anyone or we're shipping Tom and Greg. You know, which almost took a turn.

I know. They had a slap fight. Yeah. I thought it was done. But no, he still owns him. And Mattson did his little jig of victory. And another great show is in the book. So do you, these.

sort of post-mortems are not super useful the day after. I think we need to understand these things in the fullness of time. But what is your broad strokes feeling here about the show and also about where this ranks in terms of endings? I mean, for me, like, pretty high. I was not, like, I'm not a Game of Thrones Watcher. These last few years must have been brutal for you on this podcast. I've never seen like bad men. I've never seen like bad men. are Breaking Bad. You've never seen them? Well, I've seen Mad Men. I haven't watched through to completion. And I've seen like a couple episodes of Breaking Bad. But again, so I guess I feel like maybe I'm the wrong person to ask that. But you're here. I'm asking you. I'm like, pretty good. Pretty good. I think what I'm pretty into was again, like, it's such an unsendimental exercise.

Yeah. We've talked a lot about how this was. a deeply outsidery British show Trojan horsing its way into the American mainstream by being about something that Americans as viewers are drawn to. But I think the rest of the world has a slightly different, more skeptical feeling about in terms of just capitalism and ambition and money and the displays of money and power. And it, I think, is really going to benefit from its relative brevity. I think that there's no real fat on the show. I think that even the small struggle that I was trying to express about with Shiv's flip-flopping in this really brought it home to me that the show needed to end last night because they could keep flip-flopping forever.

And I think a lesser show wouldn't understand that that inability to be any one thing isn't good for drama or isn't good for like relevance over the long term. Then you're just becoming cartoon characters that are in season nine of, you know, a lesser program. Yeah, and so understanding that the show was about that void inside of them that they kept desperately trying to fill. And I think in that light, like, are we going to miss all the scenes between these characters telling jokes that we won't get? Sure, but we have a ton of them, you know, that I don't know if there's a more economical, like, you know, batting average like maybe 30 Rock is the only other show

that has like this kind of like just laugh per minute memorable line per episode kind of hit rate and it was kind of a tough mean little thing in the end in a way and I kind of love that

maybe that leads to me feeling less sentimental about it ending so I'm like God these people were all pretty terrible to each other at the very end and so I don't it's hard for me to be like

I'll miss this Yeah, it had to end because the fullness of the creative act here was that it gave us people who were plausible to us, who behaved, even though they said, you know, they spoke insanely. But their motivations and their messiness and their inability to get out of their own way is deeply compelling, deeply relatable. But also, we have enough of that in our own lives, right? I think there might be a whole new category for finallies, which are appropriate. You know, I don't mean to be damning it with faint praise, but this was the right ending. It was. And I, you know, again, I haven't, once we're done recording, I'm sure I'll dive into the discourse.

And for people who are still listening, we're not done talking about this show. Chris will be back later this week and hopefully all the very special conversation where we can really get into some of the nitty gritty of it. I'm not going to, once things are confirmed, we'll let you guys know. But yeah, what a pleasure to talk about this show for this many years. And thank you, Kai, for talking to me about it. How are you feeling? How are your face eggs? They're good. They're ready to watch some more Vanderpump and just, you know, have things told to me.

Okay. Maybe we all deserve a break. So we are going to take a quick break. And then when we're back, Sean Fantasy from the website The Ringer. I've heard of it. Yeah, it's not bad. It's going to join to talk about the Barry finale. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for, that's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back, getting you exactly what you need,

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someone who I believe works at the ringer.com. I do. Sean Fennacy. Hi, hi, Andy. Sean, it's great to have you in the studio. Often you visit us in the studio, but it's only to see if the room is free so you can make a phone call.

Yes, unfortunately, I'm here recording and not actually able to make a phone call. No, I'm blessed. I always say when I'm invited onto this show, this is my favorite podcast. That's so nice. So happy to be here. Thank you.

You're only here with half of it, or two-thirds of it anyway. So we'll try to make. It's worth a while. The good two-thirds. It's like Henry Hill, you know, the good half. I agree. Also, the like, you know, the patriotic ones who really stick things out in America.

Yeah. I mean, let's just come right out and say, fuck Chris. You know, he abandoned you for Paris. Thank you. It's brutal. It's brutal. I know. But you know what?

I'm here for you. Thanks, buddy. Just like ATN. We're here for you. You hear for me. So you're here specifically to talk about the Barry finale, which I feel like is the unappreciated stepchild of last night. Yeah.

Unfairly so. But broadly, those were two huge, huge, dramatic and creative statements back to back on the Home Max service, or whatever we're going to call it. I don't think either we're fairly served by that. I feel like I wish they had been staggered. But that said, it also made for a kind of interesting combo platter, I think, in terms of what we are as a people at this moment. Well, two questions for you about this.

One, was this just an Emmy window thing? Is that ultimately why these two shows were paired this way? It's a great question. I think it's definitely why they aired in this part of the year. I also think, and I have no inside knowledge of this, although maybe if I speak it into existence, like The Secret, I'll get a text from Casey explaining it. But I do believe that even within the new Max Empire,

Casey Boys believes that HBO is a programmer and that they curate content. And so to have two crown jewels of this current era be on together he made a night of programming that is pretty unparalleled and with 100 foot wave

is really like pretty remarkable for this moment of fractured viewing. Yeah, I haven't even had a chance to watch 100 foot wave yet. I think that

it felt old fashioned in a way that would have been appealing when we were not as, I don't know, IV chained to the discourse but the succession discourse just got so loud

so quickly. And I think rightfully so. I thought it was like a fascinating hour of television you've already talked about it. I've already talked about it. I think it's going to be

in the bloodstream for a while. Barry has become a different kind of show, especially in the last two seasons and a little bit less reliant on, did you see what happened to character X? Yes. And has become much more of a formal experiment, I think a much more daring kind of show.

And one that's not really well suited to OMG, here's my tweet. And so they're interesting paired together. That being said, both shows are tremendously cynical about the human spirit and the structures that we rely upon to be entertained. And the American experiment, I think to a really profound degree, that they are both deeply soaked in the idea

that the ends justify the means, always, that we are a country of narratives, or narrative builders, and all it takes is the correct spin to become the hero of your own story, even though every other aspect of the world is screaming that you're the villain. So the thing that jumped out to me about Barry, and I think part of what makes it such a neat pairing with Successions finale as well, is that it's a tale of two coasts, you know,

that ultimately Succession is an East Coast power show. It's a show about New York and D.C. And Barry is a show about characters coming to or returning to Los Angeles and having their souls ripped out of their bodies. I mean, the whole idea in this finale was like, everyone is back. in this place, and this is where they take things from you. This is where you lose yourself. And I thought that was really well told and really smart as a conception because the show's been

kind of scattershot this season in terms of where it's been taking place. Yeah, I think it was also cumulative, right? Because I think the remarkable story of Barry is that everybody wants to be told what they already believe about themselves. And they want to be forgiven or okayed or celebrated for that unique kernel inside of them that they feel has been under appreciated up to this point. And it never let its foot off the gas in terms of there being consequences. You know, I think when Chris and I've talked about the show, we've touched on this, that there is a role that violence plays on this show. And it's interesting that the show also can be broadly comic about violence as well. But violence is corrosive. And violence, you cannot scrub it out.

I can't believe I'm referencing Macbeth when talking about Barry. And we didn't say Shakespeare once, Kyah. We talked about succession, but I'm sure Chris would have remedied that. He's a big Richard the third guy. And more than anything else, in this finale, I just thought it brought home something so deeply, it's not just American, it's deeply Californian, right? That this idea that the trauma that makes us or defines us is, can be or should be used as fuel, as opposed to therapy, as opposed to engaging with it, right? That it was, somehow it's you can use it and that came up again and that was sort of because we went back to an acting class i'm just i'm all over the place because i'm still just suffused in the in the finale of it but

like when older john is watching the netflix movie of his parents life which is entirely wrong we are back in an acting class for the first time since sally took it over but really since that first season and i'm reminded i don't know if it's a one-for-one dialogue thing but the fake kuzano is just like use it, use the thing, right? And that that was probably the single worst advice you could ever give to someone as broken as Barry Berkman and here's where we are. Yeah, I like the too that the evocation of violence on this show,

especially over time, has gotten less and less cool. You know, it is brutal and fast and unforgiving and unromantic. And it's cinematic but not sexy. And, you know, there were a couple of extremely violent moments in this episode. there's the shootout between the two gangs, which is over in 30 seconds, even though it is kind of bravura filmmaking.

Talk about that a little bit if you want. And then the conclusive moment for Barry, which is when he's shot and just says, oh, wow. And then dies. That's it. And the kind of flatness and the kind of you live and then you die feeling that I think a lot of people don't recognize his life until it comes to an end.

And there's not, you know, the moment that we see at the end, And that final three minutes where John is watching his dad's story, his dad's fake story, is never how things are. And the whole show was about kind of unearthing the lies that we tell ourselves to feel better. And the way, like, you know, think back to Barry romanticizing the way that he saved his friend who was in Afghanistan. Or think about the way that he thought about his friend Chris and their friendship and how they could reconnect and how that was all a lie. That's a little triggering for me today when my friend Chris is so very far away.

But, yeah, I remember the reference. When I said fuck Chris, I didn't mean it in the... I meant more like, let's make love to Chris. Yeah. You know, like that's really what I was thinking. Yes. Did you murder Chris in a car and make it look like a suicide? Is that why you're solo potting today?

It's not murder. It was more like Shiv and Roman joking about it. I see. That's why you have that big gash over your head right now. Could you give me a hug? I thought it was... I wanted to ask you what you thought of basically the final third or quarter of the season because it's been such a radical shift from what it was.

I love it so totally and completely, and I think that I underrated how incredible this show was over the course of its run. I think that it has been, the first season was a little bit noisier. It got more press. It was a different moment in TV, even though it wasn't that long ago chronologically. It won a bunch of Emmys.

And it, I think, was an easier pill to swallow because it was funny. I mean, it's always been funny. And in fact, some of its funniest moments have been in these last few weeks. But it was more, you know, you could, it was more of a satire of Hollywood in acting and in the Henry Winkler, Henry Winkler's performance. Like, I think people were on board.

And the next two seasons, I think, culturally were quieter, but no less good. And then now when I see the extent of it, I'm sort of floored by it on two levels. One, a complete television story that marched entirely to the beat of one kind of idiosyncratic drummer. We rarely see that kind of TV making anymore, even though we've spent a decade being like, this is what TV is going to be. Well, not really, and rarely this successfully.

I also think in terms of just giving someone like Bill Hader the opportunity to learn and grow and develop and to watch that happen. But also, I don't remember a show that has executed a tonal shift like this, so that this final season, to me, feels absolutely like the bill coming due on the first season. They feel of a piece.

I've not rewatched it, but it seems that way to me. But yeah, to your point, I mean, it's shocking. It's shocking what a different show it is in so many ways. But I just think it's, I'm kind of an awe of it. I almost am, I'm now talking around the fact that I haven't really found the words to describe my estimation of the show at this moment. It's been fascinating getting to talk to Bill Hader on a week-to-week basis over the last couple of seasons particularly.

Because if we had done those conversations in the first season, and I think I might have interviewed Bill after the first season, I can't remember. I know that you guys spoke to him at one point. Bill and Henry came on the watch before they were flirting with us. It was just like internet dating, and then they found love with you. Well, we all love each other.

In fact, he asked how you guys were doing when I last spoke with him. But nevertheless, I think if a lot of whatever I would want to know from him from the first season would have been kind of a misread of his intentions about writing comedy, you know, that that would have been where my mind would have gone. And it was pretty clear from the first couple of episodes of the third season

that he had kind of abandoned the expectations of the audience and that he was telling the story he wanted to tell. I would ask all these leading questions about, is this what you were trying to say while we were doing the podcast? And he would, almost every time

would say like, no, that wasn't what I was thinking. Here's what I was thinking. And it's all about being true to the character, being true to the writing and being honest about the character's intentions. And he was almost like a broken record when he would talk about it. And I think he and I will eventually, you know, talk about the final three episodes on the show again.

But he had a much more kind of like monastic philosophical approach to the show that feels very in line with, like, if you know, some of his heroes, like the Cohn brothers. It felt very Cohn brothers to me where there was this convergence of tonal mastery and a kind of daring in the kind of physical execution of the production that is very rare, very hard to pull off. As you say in TV, like more or less doesn't exist. exist because it's such a collaborative medium? Yes, I think there are shows that are idiosyncratic in this way, in this sort of cinematic autourist way. But even they are just, it's hard to say they're a tourist because there are a lot of people at the party.

You mentioned Coen Brothers. And like, it is a fair comparison. It's not to say that seasons three and four of Barry are as good as a Coen Brothers film or of a David Lynch film. But there's a confidence in the work of those filmmakers where they give you something that is absolutely hilarious to them or that is absolutely horrifying, scary to them, or something that makes sense to them, that you would never, you and I would never think of, let alone chat GPT, and they just present it to you and you feel the truth in it, if that makes sense.

You understand that there is an intellectual and creative and emotional consistency to this, even if it doesn't make sense to you. And I feel like that's what Bill Hader was giving us over these last two seasons, particularly this season, more than any other, where the decisions that he made were not predictable by any normal storytelling metric, and not just the decisions in terms of the characters, but in terms of, as you were alluding to with a shootout, the framing, the shots that he would set up, the way he approached getting in and out of scenes. But you were being told a story by someone who absolutely knew what he wanted to say. And that is that rare feeling that's hard to describe. The last episode that we talked about was episode five, which was the one

that essentially takes place entirely in the home after Barry and Sally have moved in the time jump. And he said that that was the episode that he was most proud of, that that was the episode he thought was the funniest, which I think most people thought was the most off-putting and kind of bracing and disorienting. And I kept asking him David Lynchian questions about disorientation of the audience. And he was like, this is fucking hilarious to me that this, that Barry, you know, watched YouTube videos about Abe Lincoln and these are his takeaways. And I think it's exactly, I think you nailed it. It is that this is an honest representation of what Bill thinks is funny, of what he thinks. is right for these characters.

And I think, you know, I think it's fair to say, this is my read on it, but I think it's fair to say that he has used the last two seasons as a kind of like live pinboard for his ideas to kind of work out some things he wanted. You know, that episode to me, episode five was like a Bergerman movie.

You know, it was like close quarters, a kind of weird like psychosexual mania happening between the characters, all very unspoken, a little bit absurdist funny, but also kind of horrifying. I don't, he probably wouldn't put words to it like that,

but he was like, I'm going to try a style. You know, the same way that Ronnie Lilly was a style, the same way that the great car chase in season three was a style of filmmaking. So even this final episode I felt like was him exercising modes of style or commenting. Like, you know, there's this moment in the final episode where Barry, after he's escaped, goes back to the department store and buys a lot of guns. And finally by C.C. Penison is blasting.

And on his way out, I think it's more than words by extreme. And he's marching through the department store and he's got the gun strapped to his back. And it's James Cameron. It's just a Terminator shot. It's just pure 80s action cinema. And then... And no one notices. And no one cares.

And the greeter actually turns and looks at the camera smiling as he exits wearing these AK-47s. And, you know, then there's that great, like, cutaway classic, absurd Cohen Brothers moment where he gets into the car while it's wearing the guns, which was just hilarious. But everything that transpires after that is not like a funny payoff on that setup. In fact, Barry never fires any of those guns. And that is, I think, the point of the storytelling, which is that there's no hero narratives here. There's not a rescue. In fact, it's Fuchs who releases the child to Barry in the episode as he recognizes that he has aired in the way that he raised Barry as a father figure.

So it's just, I think, a very insightful show about human relationships, a very audacious show and it's filmmaking. And still funny. But I do think it's a little more divisive than it was, say, after season two, and people were just like, well, this is just one of the best shows on television. Oh, it's definitely divisive because it did completely commit to the brain of one person. I mean, he directed this entire season. I think that's a great thing. And historically, I've not always thought that, especially in TV. Before we get into the specifics of the finale, I did want to ask you about your insight into Bill Hader just as a filmmaker here because there's no question.

He said this from the beginning. He said this in interviews. He's a film nerd. Like, this is what moves him is the great movies and like sitting in rooms and watching them and thinking about them, something you can relate to. Yes. We have lots to talk about Bill and I. He has used this opportunity so beautifully and not in a selfish way because he gave us this show, but what he has become as a filmmaker is significant, I think.

And should he choose to make movies, as he said that he would like to do, I'll be first in line. I won't be first in line for everything. I'm too old now. But you know what I mean? I can't wait to see them. I wonder, though, because I think a lot of people have been saying in recent weeks, where is Bill Hader's horror movie? Yeah. And like will Andy Greenwald line up for the horror movie? Well, there's horror movies and then there's horror movies.

Okay. Like, I will see a Jordan Pue movie. I will not see Skinnamarink. I've never said that out loud. Does that cause the Skinnamarink to come to the studio if I say it a third time? I will pay you a crisp $100 American bill. Right. If you see currency and pod with Chris about it.

Just $100 cash because I want to hear your thoughts. I would like to bring in Bill the Sports Guy Simmons and Jeff Chow, and if they would like to formalize this agreement for quite a bit more money for the podcast. How much are we talking? Andy watches horror movies. 10x, 100x? I'm on strike.

You're on strike from watching Skinnamarink? No, apparently that's the one thing that I'm going to be doing. But so this idea that he's going to make a movie, I'm sure he will, and I can't wait to see it. But I hope that this series wasn't just his minor league taken reps. because I think that what he's done in terms of TV storytelling is significant within the realm of TV storytelling. And I think that there are aspects of this framework that he's really suited to. And when you think about, you were saying that he's, you know, character first, etc., etc., his love and respect for these actors and for their characters and for taking a show that there's no world in which he saw this specific ending when he was writing the characters in season one. I mean, famously, Noho Hank was killed in the pilot

before he changed his mind. That kind of, what can I make with these broken toys that I've either inherited or created without much thought and then servicing them? That's the best of TV to me. Yeah, it's a testimony to the pretty incredible cast that he, I'm sure in some ways,

devised and strategized for and in other ways stumbled upon. But if you look at Sarah Goldberg, Henry Winkler, you know, if you look at Stephen Root, if you look at Anthony Kerrigan, that being kind of the core of the show. All basically doing the best work that they've ever done. We've effectively discovered Sarah Goldberg

and Anthony Carrigan and his viewers on this show. Noho Hank became kind of the emotional heartbeat of the show throughout the last couple of seasons. I thought he was fantastic in this final episode. And I think you're right. I think he fell in love with these actors. I think he felt very close to them and he wanted to kind of write to them

and to their strengths. I think he is a very good TV writer and director. I selfishly want to see it on the biggest canvas. You know, I want to see it in a movie format, and I've told him that. And I think he knows that, and I think he will do it.

But you're right that this is a unique execution. There is a little bit of, like, end of the century feeling that I have, though, with this show and with Succession, where I know there's been a lot of talking, like, is Succession the last prestigious, great prestige show? Some of it came from this room.

I know. You and Chris have discussed it, and in many ways I kind of agree, at least, with some of the sentiments that you have shared about that. But Barry, too, is kind of from a bygone era. and allowing not just the show getting greenly, because I think that that premise would be greenlit

on this day, an ex-SNL writer-director who's a very ambitious filmmaker, but letting him go where he took it feels different now. It feels like we're in an age of austerity. And because of that, I think, how do we kind of recognize the boldness

that both of these shows really pulled off their fineries with? It's exciting and a little sad. Yeah, and specifically, if you look at HBO, which is still the hallmark, it's still the crown jewel of this sort of thing, but both of these shows

are very much products of the way they used to do business. It doesn't mean that they won't do business this way again, but famously, Succession came out of a very long, very old world HBO model, which is they were interested in the money space. They wanted to make a show about wealth and about New York City.

RIP, David Milch's. legendary idea. That was the first one that they went down the rabbit hole with. There was a show called Money that David Milch created with Ian McShane, I think, was the star of it. I'm sure there were countless other takes and scripts and pilots because they just used to do that. They would just spend as much

time as it took in development until they found the right thing. It ended up being that Adam McKay relationship who reached out to this British comedy writer and suddenly we end up with this show that also had no stars. It had really good actors. And

many of whom now have become stars and that is also the old HBO model the other part of the HBO development model used to be yeah we're going to land this highbrow but kind of splashy flashy thing we're going to get a famous comedy guy and he's going to do this thing and we're going to let him do it we're going

to give him the space to be creative and free I would like to think that both of those things are still possible in this new world and you're right to say austerity because we don't even know how the strike is going to resolve but one thing everybody agrees on on both sides is there's going to be less TV now.

Yeah. There's, and there almost has to be. That's not, for both creative and financial reasons, but there's going to be

less, but the marketplace is going to look different too. That's part of what's so interesting to me about these final two episodes is that I think they distinguish themselves despite the fact that

they arrive at a time when there's never been more, and now we know there may never be this much again or at least until, you know, as long as you're, I don't know,

podcasting about television, presumably, like the boom that we saw in the last five to ten years was unsustainable. You know, that I don't know. Am I switching to the horror movie beat?

I have bad news, Andy. You have to retire in 2039. That was written into your contract on the last page. That's fine. Also, it's so cute. You think I have a contract. I do. I do.

I think that... I mean, tell me about what you thought about this episode particularly, because it was kind of, again, formally different. Yeah, it was formally different, but it also was... Again, I feel like I'm damn. around talking about the specifics of it because, as I said at the beginning of the show, when Kai and I were talking about succession, like, watching finalities feels weird in my body. And I imagine it's true for a lot of people, not just because I know I have to podcast about them,

but because, you know, everything feels more formal and important because this is the last one and to the last statement. And I think that's also connected to that psychological feeling of struggle, which is we feel ownership over these shows, and we want them to do certain things or be certain things or just be around. And the finale, and I've said this before, is that's the moment the creator rests it back and says, no, no, it was this. That said, I thought that what Bill did this season was so remarkable because it never let us settle. It was three shows this season. And the show that ended last night was the show that kind of began in episode six of this season.

If you think of the first four is one and five is kind of its own thing. So I felt ready, if that makes sense, because I, all of the pieces were set up to all the dominoes were set up. And so this was going, I kind of knew that it was going to be a domino's fall episode, which it was. I was still surprised and caught off guard throughout, but I was, I don't even know if this was your question,

but I feel very cared for by the thought of it, which was, was I okay with this? And I felt good. I felt, I felt prepared for it. Yeah, I, I did too. I thought that it was,

there was an inevitability around Barry's demise. Yes. From maybe season one, maybe even episode one. that this was a character who couldn't sustain and that everything that he did through those four seasons essentially wrecked the lives of every single person around him.

I mean, I thought that the decision to make Kusanow the ultimate fall guy was this really fascinating representation of the way that Hollywood distorts the truth of everything. You know, Hader has talked quite a bit in the conversations that we've had about really watching a lot of true crime documentaries

and that that's something that he has family have in common and it's like easy for him to watch and he doesn't watch a lot of series television but he watches stuff like that. And so it was kind of satisfying to watch the dumb shit docudrama version of this story to conclude this and for Cousinau to just sort of like

in a misshapen way be blamed and for Barry to be valorized because we're so desperate to think of certain people as misunderstood and other people as kind of craven and evil and people who seem nice or devious and people who seem troubled are actually sweet souls. just kind of the flip on that storytelling I thought was so smart.

Also, the power dynamic, right? Because Barry, there's a version of it where Barry is a soldier. He's loyal and he's easily manipulated because he's just a screwed up kid who bad things happen to. When that may not be the correct read of the situation. No, he's a full-blown sociopath. He's a sociopath. He's disturbed. I also think one of the unique things about the show, and I think it's connected to the fact that it is autourous,

that the person playing the part is also the writer and creator of the part and the director of it, but I don't know of a single other example of a show where the creator, writer had less sympathy for the lead character than this. This came out a lot in your conversations with Bill. It's come out in other interviews he's done. I mean, he doesn't valorize Barry. He thinks he's fucking psychopath.

He hates, in some ways he hates him or he thinks he's evil. He thinks he's bad. He has a judgment on him. Usually when you hear actors talk, whether it's Brian Cox, who talks a lot, or certainly Jeremy Strong or any of these other actors from Succession

who are on our mind, they will always say the work of an actor is to find the humanity and to play the humanity, to play the hero of the story, even if that's not how it appears to the viewer when it's all cut together. Hater plays the humanity of Barry, but he fucking disparages and loathes him, right? You know, it's hard to say if he loathes him. I think it's probably a combination of things. I think he's unwell.

This is like a psychopathic killer. Yeah, I should separate that because he passes judgment about his morality. about his mental health. He should pay for what he's done, which is he's destroyed lives. He's murdered people in cold blood. And he's very frank about that. I do think that there is a little bit of relationship between Succession and Barry too here, and that there is like a little bit of a product of your environment, product of your circumstances, aspect going into the storytelling. I think what's interesting about that, though, is that, and this is purely my read on it.

It's not anything that Bill has said. I just think he got a little bored with Barry. Yeah, I think that's probably true, too. Barry wasn't really in this season as much as in previous seasons. In fact, I think it was maybe episode three or four after he broke out of prison. He's not in the episode. And so even in this final episode, I mean, he really is not in this episode. He has very few lines of dialogue. He buys guns.

He retrieves his son. He goes to sleep with his wife. And then he gets shot the next morning. I mean, he doesn't really do anything in this episode. He's also diluted. And how much further can that go? You know, I mean, obviously we're going to be prone to. to twin it with succession at this point,

but it reminds you something that Kai and I were talking about, which is Roman dramatically was done before this finale. You know, there was no more road. It would just be another reversal and a reversal and a reversal, but he was done.

He'd reached the end of it in terms of his use of this story. And I feel like Hater probably felt something similar here. I mean, he thought that he was going to, you know, die for Christ saving his son, but as you pointed out a moment ago, that's not how any of this goes.

It's also interesting that Hayter, you know, became famous for playing characters very briefly in sketch comedy, you know, and then moving on, returning to characters sometimes, but never settling in too long. And there's also probably just the labor

of like directing everything. And wasn't seemingly an actor who was interested in leading man type parts because he was like a tall, handsome guy. He could have done much more conventional kind of rom-coms and things like that. And he didn't really pursue that.

He doesn't have that vanity, I think either. Yeah, I just don't think he thinks that that would be fun for him or intellectually interesting for him. But I think also to your point earlier, he got really interested in writing Sally. He got really interested in writing Noho Hank.

He got really interested in writing more about Fuchs. And so because of that, you're just seeing those actors more. You're just seeing those stories more. I think Sally in particular is kind of like the achievement of the show in many ways. And, you know, there was actually a note in Alan Seppin-Wall's review that I thought was interesting, which is that he struggled a little bit with ending the show with John, that John is a new character who we just met three episodes ago, and that Sally seemed like a better place in Alan's view to kind of,

end the show because we have so much invested in her. We understand her so deeply. I didn't really have an issue with it because I actually like the idea of kind of like what we passed down to our kids. That's a big theme of a lot of shows. And as you know, I'm a little bit racked by that these days. But I was curious, like what you thought about how they handled Sally at the end of the show. Well, first of all, I think you're right. I think the Sally character and Sarah Goldberg's performance are incredible. I think it's probably worth highlighting. If people haven't seen there's a great piece in the LA Times, it's like a cast roundtable and what came out of that, I'm sure it's been covered elsewhere. It was just Bill's care for these performers and his interactions with them where basically,

according to Sarah Goldberg, he asked her where she wanted to go after season one. And she was like, I want to be, I want to do a woman under the influence. And that's how she ends up in that bathroom scene. Amazing. Similarly with Stephen Root, he was like, I want you to be a sexy killer. And he's like, I don't do that. And here it is. I think that the way it ended was, again, it was that same thing where I'm like,

I'm in someone else's head now. They're not writing to me. I'm going on a trip with them and I trust them. And that's what the great filmmakers do. And that's why Bill Hader may end up being a great filmmaker. Honestly, for that reason alone, that you're willing to trust the driver on that journey. I think that what he did hear of this end was tell us what he wanted the show to mean. Right?

The scene where Sally basically accepts being a mother for the first time, after horrifically drugging her son with alcohol, but in the previous episode, and then treating him like an unwanted appendage, when she turns to him. And again, this is another example of the really interesting directorial framing where we're watching that scene from John's POV, and Sally's turning to us.

It's not a very standard. Actors don't even want to do that sometimes. Like, this isn't a comfortable place to have my body. So I think there was intentionality behind that where she's like, here's the truth, I am bad, your father's bad, you're not bad. She abdicated her primacy in a way.

You know, the story really was about the corrosive effects of violence and how it just permeates everything. And so they end up in this kind of like Bedford Falls, right? Like everything's, the snow is almost fake looking and she just gets asked out by handsome new AP. teacher and she's doing what she loves most and she's getting flowers and, by the way, credit to her too because there's just no vanity in it. Like even when she's, she's playing Sally with her

happy ending and there's a cravenness in her eyes, you know, because the clapping is for her. I think it was fitting to end with the legacy and the lies, you know? I thought that was appropriate, but I'm trying to formulate my answer in real time because I think as a TV fan, I think Alan's right. Or I think in a traditional writer's room mentality, that's correct. You want to end with who you've spent the time with. You understand their journey in a different way. And so it feels more comfortable and fitting. But I also think that he, I think that Bill Hader is a vengeful God. You know, I think it's almost religious in that they've abdicated their right to have their story. Well, okay, a couple of things about the final five minutes. One, Jim Cummings plays Barry Berkman in that

final, the Netflix movie, as you said, of the story. I love Jim Cummings. I profiled Jim Cummings like five or six years ago. He made a very small independent movie called Thunder Road, which I thought was fantastic. The way that it was financed was very interesting. It was like, to me, the perfect kind of artistic and business story, which is like, that's ultimately my interest in this space, is like how these two things fit together. And I love Jim. He's such an energetic person. I've interviewed him a bunch of times. And he is majestically cast as the good Barry Berkman. Like I thought that that was so. such a clever move on on haters part.

I did think though that the ultimate lesson, and this is such a fascinating thing and come from a person who has been as successful as Bill Hader has been, is that this business destroys you. Yes. You're an aspiration to get involved in this and you yourself are in this business. I'm on strike, but it is, well, in the grand scheme of things, you've been in it. and it is a life of rejection, it is a life of block,

it is a life of failure, it is a life of confusion, and that even the most successful people in the world are deeply insecure and unhappy. And that is, you know, maybe it's a little bit of a small worldview if you live in Minnesota and just want to laugh about the hitman TV show.

But I think it's a very human understanding of how anything that you want in life is not all it's cracked up to be. That's basically what the ending of the show was. is just like, you know, this is all why everybody who's pretending to be successful or triumphant or the hero is not. And let's just get on with our day. Like that ultimately felt like what he was trying to say. Yeah.

And that who does the truth matter to? It matters to the people who are in the rooms. But beyond that, what are the limits of our humanity and empathy about it? Right. Like this was a better story and people seem to enjoy it and it's doing well. And also just the sort of the low-key dynamics of that scene. which is that he's sneaking out to do this. And his friend is like, you have to,

no, you need to see this, man. This is cool. And what's interesting about that last shot and the last images of John's face is like, what is the legacy that he's going to get from his father? Is it, hopefully it's not murdering, but is it that there's magic

in telling your true story and coming out to Hollywood? and like, you know, he's beaming in that light and that reflected light. And that doesn't seem that healthy. It's very possible that it all gets passed down. I mean, that also is the lesson of succession that a lot of these things are just passed down. Maybe not the skills, but the feelings, the pain, the frustration, the anxiety, the trauma. Like all that stuff gets passed down.

Yeah. And I think that one of the things that was challenging for me as a parent, probably you as a parent as well, in the season was like, most shows don't. put children in those rooms for scenes like the ones that these last few episodes contained. Most shows will find a way to keep John out of the bloodbath and the horrific aftermath of the bloodbath, just so, or it's only about that. Because an eight-year-old child just saw and experience that level of fear and violence. Very intentionally did the opposite, almost gleefully so. Like having Sally give him a screwdriver in the middle of the day

while her house almost gets lifted off the fucking foundations by the dude in a gimp costume. It's an all-timer. Special show. It is a real one. I mean, that is a lot. It is a lot to unpack. It's a lot to consider.

And it was intentional. Yeah. That he was like, this is the world that this child is living in. And he's real. He's not a figment of Barry's imagination. This wasn't like some sort of dream secret. time jump, like, he did this. I like to what you said, too, about the fact that it's not just about the kid's trauma.

Like, that wasn't the purpose of the show was how this violence does this to this boy and that we need to focus on his psychology. It is in the aftermath of it, of course, and the film, you know, the show, the film, see what I did there? Yeah. The show ending on his face is intentional. But we don't even know where he is during the shootout because Fuchs is sitting on top of him and covering him. of them. And you're looking, I'm scanning as that shootout takes place. And I'm looking at the screen and I'm like, where is John? Where's John? Where's Sally? Where's John? And you can't see him in a way because of what you're describing that intentionality. So I thought it was, you know,

really uncompromising, even by the standards of one of the most uncompromising shows of the last 10 years. And I do think that some people will say that was weird, but that was kind of the point, you know, that there was a purposeful displacement of your expectations. I feel like, again, there's no point in these sorts of predictions, especially like less than 24 hours after the show concluded. But I just have this feeling that this show is significant, not just because it was artistically significant to me. But is this, and again, it's both can exist. Both succession and barrier, all-time great shows worthy of discussion. But I'm almost more curious about the influence tree, the coaching.

tree, if you will, a berry than I am of succession. Because I think that the lessons of succession might not be repeatable, both creatively but also economically, of, you know, these are world-class writers being given world-class actors within galaxy-sized budget. And so my lesson from that is writing matters that, like, we should steer into non-superhero stuff and let weirdos come in from other countries or other perspectives and play in these more, you know, mainstream sandboxes. Sure. Yeah, I want that. But is Barry the like giving your little brother a Velvet Underground album, you know, and then seeing what happens in 20 years?

There's something that is just so aesthetically uncompromising about it. And it's so odd. And it's, I think it's oddness makes it even more relevant to our contemporary moment and condition because it never once tried to take the mantle. There was no presidential election going on in the background of season four of Barry. Right. It spoke to themes, not contemporary events. And there's a difference to.

a difference between those two things. I like having both. I'm trying to sort through what you just said. I've liked how you've talked about the show throughout this season, which is landing on the idea that this was sort of like a lot of people work on the show and Bill is very generous

about identifying the work that they do, but this is really his vision. And then he's doing a lot of the pure work. He's doing a lot of the writing and directing every episode, as you said. And so that to me is the thing where I wonder if that actually will be a legacy. And I don't know if TV can support that.

You might understand that better than I can. but someone coming in with such a sheer force of will and knowing what we know about the state of Hollywood where the $15 million movie is just so hard to get off the ground, maybe it's better to take a really sharp, saleable pitch and then bend your ideas around it so that you can make something powerful that you want to, as long as you are as like, you know, bold confident

as someone like hater is to execute on your vision. I don't know if that's possible, though. I don't know if it's possible either. I think I'm, I think I struggle with articulating it because generally the sort of collaborative, let's, we can't be perfect, so let's just do the best we can. Ethos, that was true in both magazines as we remember it, but also in television, that's what I like about it. And what I admire and revere about movies is it's not that, honestly. Like, you have a shot to make something that is definitive and you do your best

and sometimes that you can levitate, you know. I think that, yeah, I think it is not really repeatable. I think one of the things that's unique about Barry, and there are many things, is that the shows that I want to compare it to in terms of just like singularly idiosyncratic autorist visions, especially recently, haven't also been narratively propulsive and finite. And what I mean by that is, what do I want to compare it to? Atlanta, reservation dogs. Can I tell you what I've been thinking of? Yeah.

The Office UK? Sure. Yeah. Savage and Brief. Yeah. That is the show that it reminded me of the most, where as I was watching, Watching that show in real time, even with a little bit of the hype of like, you got to see this. I couldn't believe how bold the storytelling was and how willing Jervais was to be unlikable.

Yes. And also willing to move the camera away from him at times to move it to other characters who he felt mattered. And then also to end when it was time to end. I always admired that. It's obviously like that show is insanely influential on our culture now. Yeah. And you look at what comedy is. But that was a tough show that was unafraid to be kind of mean.

And it wasn't as violent as Barry. but it had a kind of like emotional violence. And that's the one that's been kind of clicking in my mind, which is a little bit of a pre-prestige era show. No, I think that's a great comparison. I think the reason why I struggle trying to compare it to something like Atlanta is because I do think similarly there was a completely wholly realized aesthetic vision and purity that existed in that show.

But I think that for me, the crucial difference is the lesson of Atlanta is that it could be anything and it could go anywhere. ultimately, and I don't even mean this pejoratively, it didn't really go anywhere. Right, right. Whereas Barry went from A to Z. It ended. You know, it ended a story.

It didn't just tell a lot of stories and then, you know, piece out in kind of a cool way. Yeah, Barry was like a pickeresque and Atlanta was like a collection of short stories, ultimately in a lot of ways, but they shared Hero Marai. Never forgot the Hero Marai, you know, like conceptualized a lot of the look of both of those shows

and that Hero was a huge collaborator of Haders in the early days of that show. And I know Hater has a lot of respect for him and obviously he's essential to making Atlanta as well. So I think they're smartly paired. That's a very good observation. So what do you think from your insights and from your conversations with Bill Hader?

What do you think? Well, I guess it's a two-part question. What do you think he'll do next? And what would you want him to do next as a fan? Of course I want him to make a movie. I mean, I'm desperate. I would much prefer to speak to him about the movie that he made in great detail.

I mean, it is my dream to do the podcast version of the making of a movie in the way that we did about this. But, you know, I wasn't with Bill Hater when he was making the show. Creative people, you know, they retreat because it's so hard to do the work, as you know, having made a show that, like, you need a lot of focus. I would love to see, like, the TikTok of the making of a film. And by TikTok, you mean in the traditional journalistic sense, not the Chinese malware video app. No, although credit to TikTok for correctly predicting the conclusion. of succession and the Tom Wams Gans triple play, they did. Yeah, you missed that?

Yeah. There was a young woman. This had been floating around on the internet, but there was a young woman. I can't, Kyah, do you have any idea what her focus is? Is it like baby names for her account? Did you see this? Oh, yeah. I think it's like predicting celebrity or like influencer baby names.

And then I don't know if this is related. I saw like a straight tweet that like a baseball player named Wamsgams had done like a triple play. What? in the 1920s, and that this account essentially, like, collated all of these, this theory together and pitched it on TikTok,

and it went massively viral a day before the premiere of the finale. And the suggestion is that Tom did a triple play by knocking out the three kids. Whoa. Man, maybe I should get back online. You're making it sound pretty cool. I think you should leave podcasting, but go full in on TikTok. Like, just fully develop your brand there.

Speaking of Sean Wamskins here, you've got Chris out. You've just knocked me out. Kyya, be careful. I want Bill Hader to make a movie. I think he will. I mean, who knows? Like, movies are very fucked up right now.

I know television is very complicated, but the movie business is a mess. Is that because Thunderbolts has delayed filming? Is that one? You know, everything is obviously on pause. I saw The Little Mermaid last night immediately after watching Succession and recording with Bill. That's unhinged.

It was the only time I had to do it, you know? So I used that time wisely. That film was two and a half hours. Had to do it is also an interesting. He's doing a lot of work there, but go on. You know, it's so funny is I was like, well, we're going to do a little mermaid episode, so I got to go see this movie.

And then I saw the movie, and I was like, I don't really want to talk about this movie. Let's figure something else out. So, you know, that is doing the work in a way. What do you think Bill's going to do? What do you want him to do? Oh, I think he'll make a movie. And I think that he's going to have a long and exciting career.

I mean, I don't, and I think that makes sense. I think that's what he's always, you know, better than I do. but I think that seems like what he's always wanted to do. And I think that, you know, generally people like him when they have the opportunity to recede from being in front of the camera to focus on these other things, that's what they do. Yeah. Which is also a shame because I think he's an incredible performer.

Maybe some Todd Field shades there where he's like, I'm done with performing, but I want to be telling stories. Todd Field gave up not only acting, but also playing jazz music. That is a fact. And he had already invented Big League Chew. So at that point, it was good. What a graceful podcaster, Sean, is because he just managed to steer it into the one movie that I saw in the last 10 years. I did know that you loved tar.

I love tar. I love tar so much. I have a whole big theory about tar and movies, but I'm actually going to talk about that on the big picture, which is the show that I host. Oh, interesting. Is that that that's Barstool? Who makes that show? It's on Barstool. We've been at Barstool for about 10 years, so we're celebrating our 10-year anniversary. It's very exciting.

Congratulations. No, I just feel like Amanda's a good cultural fit over there, too, the two of you. So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I don't know We have many many miles of podcasting still to do in front of us But not today It sounds so daunting Sometimes it is

But it's just more I do feel a little bit It might be recency bias But this idea that these Both of these shows ended at the same time And what they represent At a moment when both for professional reasons But then also for just being a fan of the medium reasons I feel like TV is very much in flux

It's hitting me in a half a lot heavy way in a heavy way today. You know, when you think about what has been greenlit, like, it's just these small things that can add up to a larger story. But you'll be back in this seat one week from today. Speaking about the idol. Boy, I think I'm going to go to Paris. I think I need a vacation. I'm very, very, I think I feel about the idol the way you feel about the Little Mermaid. The idol already went to Paris. The idol premiered it can and now it has returned to the state. So you'll be you'll be reversing the idol. That's because it's a ideas were just too goddamn dangerous

to be in this country. Well, we'll actually be back. That's like, thank you for saying. See, you're so good at this. You said it was Barstool? I should subscribe. Yeah, check it out. We will be back this week. Talking Succession, Chris will be back. I think we have a very special show planned that I won't step on,

but I'm excited. I think you guys will be excited too. So the great work goes on. Some soldiers fall along the way, like Lieutenant Colonel Birkman or whatever is... I believe you PFC. PFC. I'm a big. big military guy. I'm the one that got Logan's medals because that's just I'm passionate about. Sean, thank you for joining me. It was an honor. This is a big episode. A lot of people are going to be

listening and unfortunately they have to hear me. I just want to say that I love Chris. I think Chris is, you know, I just, the CR heads, they're dangerous. You got to be careful. For what it's worth, Chris, while Sean and I were talking, Chris was sending me joke texts about Nan Pierce. And the whole Pierce deal. What happens to PGN? Who owns it? Did Nan? She's stuck with the bag now?

She just has to deal with... Did she get the bag? I assume not, because Shiv's not going to chip in her fortune, right? Also, that was all, like, what, five days ago? So she probably doesn't even know, like, that Logan died. Like, I feel like a PGN would have reported. Is Nan dead? What are we supposed to think?

I think maybe we think about her like we think about all of them. They're all rich. It's just gradations of rich. Literally who cares. That's my final response. And I do think that is part of the meta story of it. Like I think, we can go on about succession forever. But I've always thought that the fact that the show was written by a cynical British, probably socialist, hardly socialist by American political standards, was underreported. You know, I just feel like the audience that thought they were watching more billions,

just maybe they weren't getting that message until last night's finale. We were aligned on that fact, and I'm glad it played out that way. And I just want to say to everybody who's trying to tell me on the internet that Tom won the show needs to go climb into a cave

because that's an insane take. That's what we started. Kaya and I, like, if the last night's finale had a lot of work to do, but if it only did one thing and it was to just explicitly neutron bomb the,

who's going to, a win. You think did you watch the do you think you won? Jesus. It's tough.

It's tough. Life is about more than wins and losses, which we know as fans of teams in the NL East. All I can say is

that on this podcast, Kaya won. Kaya, thank you so much for all you did today, producing,

filling in, sharing your thoughts, putting up with us, we appreciate it. I'm transferring all of the watches IP to my name.

I think it should have always been there. Now, I underlined your name, but Chris crossed it out. See you guys later in the week.