The Watch - ‘Succession’ S3E6: “What It Takes”

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Chris and Andy break down this week’s episode of ‘Succession.’ They talk about the Roys picking a president and all of the horse-trading going on throughout (7:19), how the show is utilizing guest stars this season (36:22), and Kendall and Tom’s scene in the diner (46:15). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line, imploring you to read Plato. Read Plato.

It's Andy Greenwald. No, there were so many ones about like joining up, double acts, fuckety fucks. I was surprised you went with Plato, but that's good because you think of me as book it. It's the Spettinberger pod. What's up? What's up? Captain of the Tampa Bay Cuccaneers. We ready to go?

We ready to do this? Yes. The spread offense. It's the Succession podcast. It's episode six, what it takes where Logan Roy goes to market to pick a president. And Andy and I are going to break down the episode. We can start with some general feelings trending upward down. Andy, did you, where you want to start?

Well, I think that- We usually do the state of succession before we get into the nitty-gritty, right? Right. I think that, and I don't know, you know, we haven't, we didn't pre-game. So I don't know where you are with this. I certainly were recording this on Thursday. know where we don't know where the pulse of America is at. It's not like we work for ATN. But I feel strongly at this moment that when the history of the show is written, this episode is going to be

mentioned. I think this is an extremely important, consequential, and masterful episode of succession. I thought it was very, very, very important. And it reminded me of other times on this show. And we've discussed kind of at an arm's length over the years when we've been just discussing succession is the relationship between the audience and the characters. And, you know, the traditional television relationship, I think maybe, say, best exemplified by something like Friday Night Lights, where you start to almost project yourself into the world that you want to be in, have, you know, Eric Taylor, Tammy Taylor be your dad and mom, have these people be your brothers and sisters, have these people be your friends, have this town be the town you live

and stuff like that. That may not apply to everybody, but you get where I'm going. There's that version of TV. And then there's a version of TV that is succession where because of time spent, I think you kind of tend to start to sympathize with, empathize with, not identify with, but just like your sheer amount of time you spend with characters develops a familiarity and maybe even an affection. And then Edge Lord Roman comes out. You know what I mean? And every once in a while this show reminds you who you're watching, and I think that that's pretty important. So I was curious whether or not you saw things that way here. I know what you're speaking about, and I loved it, and I found it bracing.

And I think that my main, you know, I can't wait to talk about some of the just story mechanics at work here, what this episode does for the season, what it does for the trajectory of the show at large, and specifically the diving in feet first into the world of politics, the way the episode did. But I think because you brought up the Roman thing, and we've spent a couple weeks being like, well, Roman's humanity of all these Roy's is the most tangible. On the surface. It is the most on the surface. And then, yeah, he does a full, he does a full performance art red pill piece.

Pivots to H. Yeah. He pivots to the hard H. Yeah. That could be potentially off-putting, et cetera, et cetera. But I think rather than finding it off-putting, I found it even more. compelling because it is just the other side of his, you know, impossibly repressible sadness and pathos.

They are deeply connected in this character. And I think the show is doing a fantastic job portraying that. What I found to be the sort of compelling backbeat to that turn was Tom. And, you know, before we get into, maybe I'll just give you a teaser because I know we like to do a little bit of like, here's what happened in this episode. You know, just to run it down. But I think that, you know, last week I strapped on my waiters and I went under the bridge and I had a little conversation, not Red Hot Chili Pepper style, more like ASAP, had a chat

with a concern troll, right? And I think the thing that I want to say is about where succession is going and what it means, et cetera, et cetera. I'd like to say here officially on this podcast, something that everybody who listens already knows, which is Jesse Armstrong is smarter than us and is very much in control of the show. has an enchanted shield that reflects the concern trolls, powers back to him,

thus negating him. Is that a Zelda thing? I was thinking it might be. Yeah. I'm fishing for something like that. But the reason I say that is up to now, I think I, along with a lot of the audience,

was looking at the cast of characters, the pantheon of succession characters and thinking, this is interesting because we have all of these royes who are all aliens, essentially and buffoons in equal measure. And then we have Greg, who is more or less a buffoon. And a lot of us were watching Greg being like, well, when is he going to flip?

When is he going to turn? He's, you know, if you were going to absolutely just, you know, 200,000 foot it from the pilot, oh, he's our point of view character because he's new to this family. And so he's sort of on the outs. And that's actually been a misdirection. Does he speak up for the, you know, the moral heart of America, or at least of people in America who liked Hamilton, but really liked Hamilton, when he says that Connor Roy should not be anointed president. Yes. But during all this time, one thing that I definitely took my eye off of,

and I feel like the audience maybe did as well, is that not everyone in the inner circle was born to it. And the person who really wasn't born to it is Tom, who from everything we know is just kind of a nice guy from Minnesota. Yeah. Oh, I thought it was Wisconsin, but yeah, like just a Midwest farm boy, yeah, right. Fly over guys like us. What's the diff, right? apologies to everyone in the heartland of America for that. But Tom isn't born to this. Tom doesn't fit into this. And Tom all of a sudden becomes the linchpin to, I think,

unlocking not only the season, but to understanding the perspective that the audience has to maintain vis-a-vis the Royce. And I just thought that was so expertly and brilliantly done. And it helps that you have Matthew McFadden, who is one of the best actors of his generation, probably, in that role. So triumphant episode top to bottom. withering, brilliant, funny, insightful, incredibly uncomfortably, neck-itchingly zeitgeisty, but more than anything else, like a deeply human episode, I think, mostly because of Matthew McFadden

and what Jesse Armstrong and his writers are doing with Tom. Yeah, so the zeitgeist thing was my only crumbs for the troll that I had this week. And it really isn't a concern troll thing as much as it is an observation, which is essentially, did you find the horse trading almost literally that going on in the hotel suite to be, not unlike Kendall's engagement with Twitter earlier in the season, where that was kind of liberal Twitter's, like sleep paralysis demon coming to life and be like this is, you know,

this idea of all these Maggie Haberman articles that you've been reading about people meeting in a room and making these awful decisions about the fate of the country, did that sort of feel almost so on the nose that it felt untrue in a in a in a in a in a season five wait you guys thought this is how newspapers worked got away totally totally appreciate that wire season five though was very accurate about how serial killers work sure right in the investigation of them so let's never forget that um i'm glad you asked that question happy to once again lift my kind of made-up zeld and say

no yeah i thought i just thought i would i would throw it out there for the sake of conversation No, I think it's worth asking. And I think no for two reasons. Reason number one was that, you know, this has been something the show has been criticized for and lauded for, which is portraying the ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra rich as completely siloed from reality. This goes all the way back to the New Yorker profile, which Jesse Armstrong was like, we're not going to do COVID because it didn't matter to them anyway, to the ultra rich, it didn't affect them. And the show has done a very good job of that. And it was interesting looking back in hindsight after this episode to sort of interrogate my own interactions with those scenes. And really, they've been pretty benign and

passive. Like, well, of course there are yachts where you can't wear shoes or else you'll mess up the teak. Like, and that's where they're spending all their time. Sure. Like, I understand that objectively, that that's, that there is a tier beyond the tier that people are spending every day. And then that's just, you know, that's just part of what you buy the ticket for when you enter the capitalism rodeo, sure. What was different about this in the way it was portrayed was that it was this, honestly for me, chill-inducing reminder that these people, these characters and their analogs in the real world, are fiddling away on their yachts and in their mega-sciscriesprapers. Well, literally, we're sort of inert to it in the fictional sense, but, oh, no, this is

actually our lives and our futures and our children's futures being, you know, thrown against the wall like dice in some back alley. Like that, that is actually what this is. And I found that really brilliantly done. The flip side of it is, and I want to get your thoughts on this too, of course, because you're the one that has been saying this, or as Lisa has suggested this, which are the many similarities between succession and V. Not just that they're both on HBO. And there's definitely some shared DNA from British comedy writer Hive, right? And also just the sort of savagery with which British writers of a certain age and class. Yeah, the Armstrong I Anucci's school. Yeah, right. What they have to say about America, et cetera, et cetera. What I thought was just incredible

about this was, yeah, the jokes in this episode, the burns, the observations. I mean, as good as any and as certainly as funny as anything on a comedy written by Ianucci or anyone else from that school. But the thing about VEEP is that it was essentially an absurdist comedy being like all of this is worth nothing. This is all just, it's nothing. You know, it's all just curses and sweat and backstabbing for a poison chalice. And that's kind of funny. The difference between the comedy and the drama is that the stakes in this just felt really, really, really deeply felt and uncomfortable. And it was played off of Shiv's face.

And I thought that Sarah Snook did a great job in the episode where you feel. feel how slippery the slope is from helping your family to hobnobbing and bullshitting at a cocktail party to having to smile in a photograph next to an actual fascist. Yeah. And it was powerful. Her hubris getting, her hubris getting deflated at the end where she, even in the final moments, is like, well, my vote counts for more because I understand this scenario. And she just gets outplayed by Roman essentially in that moment. And how about the ultimate? I mean, she makes a big deal this episode about how, you know,

daddy humiliated me in the previous episode. I'm not sure there's any humiliation deeper than agreeing to be photographed next to a fascist, but one person removed from the fascist and her father just saying, you win Pinky. Yeah, right. What did you win? I'm sorry?

Right. What did she win? It was weirdly devastating this episode to me in a way that I think emotionally succession doesn't always reach. I can, I felt in previous episodes empathy for the characters, which is a testament to the writing

and certainly the performances, but this is the one that kind of reached in and kind of jiggled me up a little bit. Yeah, and it's interesting that you should say that because this is an episode largely absent of Kendall in so much as he did not participate in the central family drama of the week.

You know, he is on the periphery. You know, he has his Department of Justice meeting. He fires his lawyer, gives a couple of buzzword speeches, and then has that incredible scene with Tom, but for the most part... Hall of Fame scene.

...is like FaceTiming into this episode for a lot of it. It's really, I think, I wonder whether or not the reason why it shook you was because it got dumped on the different kids this time. You know, the sort of reversal of fortune hit Shiv harder because Kendall wasn't there to take a couple of the bullets. I think it was partly that,

I think Kendall, I mean, look, that that note is something that show hits really well. And I want to spend some time talking about that Tom and Kendall scene so we can circle back to it because I think it's, you know, that goes on the highlight reel for the series. Yeah. But I have some notes. The blow that Tom lands on Kendall, you know, it's incredible how many variations on the you have detonated my heart face, Jeremy Strong has. Like, you'd think that maybe he would have used them all in the first two seasons. Yeah. Nope. No, that's still going. I don't think it was so much that. I do think that there was, it's one thing to watch the gods mess around on Mount Olympus, right? Like if you're reading mythology or something, they're always like, oh, they're playing tricks on each other, and they're

always stealing each other's best cattle for sacrifice. Whatever, I read a lot of Greek myths with my children. Sorry. The, it's, it hits different when the capricious gods come down from the mountain. fuck everything up and then climb back up the mountain, you know, and that feeling. There was something very intense for me about the contempt as it got closer to the surface of the earth where we live, even though obviously it's a fictional show, you know, but it was a really fascinating, maybe this is, maybe this is the first time I've correctly used the term heat check, but for someone like Roman where we're like, oh, we like Roman, how great.

And then you realize that, you know, he would harvest us all for our livers if his father needed a liver. Like, it's not a thing for him. So really, I mean, we've pretty much synopsized this episode without even trying, but it basically revolves around the picking of the next president after the reason has announced that he's not going to run again. And by the end of the episode, Edge Lord Roman Roy kind of emerges and convinces his father to back a character named Jared Mankin, who's played.

by Justin Kirk, and I have a lot to say about this performance. And he plays him as this kind of Peter Thiel, Jared Kushner, Trump hybrid. Matt Gates, kind of. Yeah, like populism with a 4chan sense of humor, creeping racism, nationalism. And he gets picked for his box office potential more than anything else over like a Pensian VP and a centrist Republican played by Yul Vasquez, who's a actor I like a lot. And, you know, he's telegenic and he's willing to say, the quiet racist part loud, and it doesn't hurt that Roman wants to fuck him.

I think that's part of it. Yeah. Like, I mean, whether or not that is explicit in the script, it's definitely explicit in the way that Kirk and Kieran Culkin decided to play the scenes that they had together. And they had more sexual chemistry than almost any other pairing. It was incredible. Also, I want to know who gave Kieran Kulkin the direction, or was it just actor-generated Reese?

Like, when I begin this conversation, I'm just going to be moisturizing my hands. furiously. While Justin Kirk's like, I push boundaries. It's pretty sexy stuff. I mean, I think, again, if you take a step back, one of the best things about the show is a slightly outsider sensibility and perspective on the American political culture. And I don't say that because there aren't Americans who see the game for what it is. but I think it's worth remembering that the Murdoch family, who are obviously in deep inspiration, I mean to us personally with our podcast for the showing empire,

but certainly for the show are Australian and came here and saw the vulnerabilities of this country and ripped them to shreds and took full advantage of them. There's a certain caniness that is at the root of the satire that makes it land. And particularly, or not just the satire, just the depiction. And what I mean here is, is the understanding that the Logan Roy Rupert Murdox of the world don't exist in an arena where morality matters or politics matter. They are

newspaper men, they're media men, they are spectacle, they're PT Barnum's. And the reason Logan stays alive is because he's not hiding behind hashtag trending topics like Kendall is to try to to try to build a tiny, tiny, sputtering campfire of relevance, he understands that the show will go on, regardless of whether he's the star of it or not. And the way you keep the show going is you get fucking bigger elephants, or elephants that literally kill people or rallies around them into camps, you know. There is no hesitation on his part to make what is obviously the better play

for the future of his television channel. And that's all that it matters. That's all that it comes down to. And I love how relatively uncomplicated that decision was for Logan Roy. It was so well played by Brian Cox, who has pendulum has swung all the way back, back in the saddle. Yeah, he's doing great. The UTI is all cleared up. Yeah.

All that ocean spray he downed between the episodes, just cleaned it all out, cleaned out the scepter. Yeah, I mean, that's what makes sense. And Roman's relentless hounding of Shiv for her, you know, her failures as a political operative. it's all static and chatter like it always is between them, but he does draw blood because essentially I think what he is identifying is that she did that because she thought it mattered. He uses that mocking voice, but that is true. I think she kind of on some level was like,

I'm not going to be important. Absolutely 100% think that Shiv thinks she's walking into that meeting being like, I am the expert in the room. I'm the smartest person in the room and they're going to defer to my knowledge here. And if I can get away with it, I might just push us blue here. And there would be a moment where, and there, she says, she's like, I think we should go Dems. And it winds up slingshotting all the way back around. So it's not blue.

It's the reddest of reds. You know, it's, she thinks that she can go Salgado or getting him to back up Democrat. And it winds up being, oh, no, we're going to go for this, this maniac. It's incredible. into this room with her father being like, you should listen to me because I once had a consulting gig for a clown. He's like, clowns don't own the fucking circus. You know what I mean? Clowns work for the circus. And you can always find more clowns. That is baked into the episode. It's baked into the show's understanding of American politics at this moment, which I find, you know,

disturbingly, disturbingly accurate. And I just, it's the little touches in the episode, you know, like calling the vice president Dave. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the characterizations are so perfect. Sometimes when you're watching in the moment, the show can feel like this batting practice of jokes coming at you. And it's just like this perfect pitch after perfect pitch, ever perch pitch.

Then you kind of think back and it's like they essentially, you can tell by the stunt casting sort of, you can tell that like it's Justin Kirk is the important person to keep your eye on at the beginning of the episode. But even the way that they described the vice president, is having wet lips or going vegetarian and waiting there for 10 minutes. All of those things accumulate, you're like, this guy's going to lose, this guy's going to lose.

And then when they do that scene in the dinner, this sort of dining area, and like, that's where the Play-Doh, Plato, re-Plateo part happens with, with Mencken. I keep calling him Mankin, like H.L. Mankin. I don't know why. Is it Mankin? I think it's Mankin. Yeah. But there has to be some intentionality there.

That is not exactly a, that doesn't trip lightly off the tongue. Sure. In any case, I just found that the way, the economy with which the show kind of characterizes bit players and then moves on very quickly, this felt like it had a lot more momentum. I was, I realized how ready I was for the shareholder meeting and the corporate takeover part of the show to be like, great, in the rearview mirror. Let's, since you mentioned Justin Kirk, let's just briefly talk about the embarrassment of riches here at the table because the thing that Succession has conquered is that it exists in the

perfect Venn diagram center of something that you know the first piece I wrote for Grandland the HBO Recycling Project where like all their great actors appear in all of their shows so they've got that going for them and then on top of that so that's why you get you know Stephen Root is just on this show now and hope Davis for four scenes you know and this other thing that we were talking about. And maybe we were overly crediting Frank Rich for this. Maybe it's not just him, but I couldn't help but wonder. It's like this this direct pipeline to the New York theater royalty. Yeah. And so stepping in as Vice President Dave is Reed Bernie, recent Tony winner, who's just a genius in everything he does and knows exactly how to be an entirely fully realized person, even if he's never on

the show again. You know, that is something that you cannot teach. And it is something you definitely can't just walk out to Hollywood and buy. And then you go down the line. Of those people in that room, Stephen Rood is there sort of conducting. You have Reed Bernie. You have Yule Vasquez, Silver Fox, Yule Vaskins, by the way,

not with a dyed job he had in Russian Dahl. Another great New York theater actor who's having a moment. He was in Russian Dahl. He's going to be in the upcoming Apple Show Severance. Phenomenal actor and brings a gravity to just those few scenes. You get it.

You understand why Ships fighting for him. You would love to see more of him, or maybe we'll never see him again. And then Justin Kirk, who I want to clear out and let you talk about this, I really like him as a performer. But I also find him fascinating because he's so versatile. He can do comedy. He can do drama. But I feel like very often people don't know what to do with him. Like he works constantly.

And when I was casting Breyer Patch, for example, casting director, talk about him reverentially. like reverentially, they worship him for his, you know, apparently a good guy, but also just so talented. But they're always like, well, what, how can we fit him into this box? Because he doesn't always fit. Yeah, he's got leading man looks. Right. He's got leading man looks and he's got maybe a lizard's heart. You know, when you, when you actually like, watch the way he has such a facility with, I mean, honestly, chillingly, a facility with moving through that, the language and the vocabulary of sort of this neo-fascist, it's, it's irony, but it's not. and I'm borrowing from Franco, but also from Thomas Aquinas.

And he's just like turret gunning through this stuff. Yet he has a kind of, I don't know, sweetness to him. Like if you've, I mean, it was it was kind of, speaking of the HBO, you know, being in the HBO Pro League, it's kind of wild to watch the guy from Angels in America do this, you know? And it speaks to his range, even though there is a character's actor. Like if you cast Justin Kirk, you're going to. get this specific kind of like wise acre but you know he is the new york wise ass you know that

logan was referring to a little while ago it was like he has that kind of new york theater uh intellectual heft to the way he he he does no matter what the genre he's working in you know one thing that is that is a constant with the great british actors is that they are just and it always never ceases to dazzle they just seem so competent with both comedy and drama and stephen root a great example of that. Someone who people couldn't quite figure out why he was so great or what to do with him for a bunch of years because, well, he was the funniest thing on news radio. But he's also brilliant actor. And then you see him on Boardwalk Empire and you see him being able to do both on Barry.

So of course he fits in here. Of course he can. It's not a thing for him. It's what he does. Justin Kirk, Angels in America, but also animal practice, the short-lived NBC sitcom where he had to share screen with a with a monkey. This is the kind of facility. that you want when you're giving voice to a show that also move so deftly between those worlds.

And also, the other thing about him, he's capturing that kind of like, that dark TikTok parlor energy, but with a sort of puckish glint in his eye, but he's 52. So he has the heft. You know what I mean? It's a great casting.

It's great character. He plays the DA on Perry Mason, on the HBO, the reboot with Perry Mason with Matthew Reese. In that show, on this show, it's interesting because you can visualize him as Kendall. You could see him as Kendall. You could see him as the Perry Mason character on Perry Mason. Like, you could see him doing these lead roles. And there's almost like an energy to his supporting work

that has lead actor charisma, but is reduced playing time. And I would love to see him carry his own show. I mean, I know he's done it before. But what do you think about while we're talking about the contenders in this, in this gross room where this gross room of men who lift Greg on their shoulders like he's the Stanley Cup. The other would-be elephant in the room full of GOP elephants is Connor. Yeah. And I mean, God, what must it be like to write and make a show where like your last line of defense is always Alan Ruck?

You know what I mean? Whereas just like, not that they're ever in doubt of what to do with the scene, but they could always just be like, let's just toss it to Connor for a line. Sure. or for that Stephen Root scene with him and Justine Loop, so good. The moment when it's plausible, just briefly in the hotel suite, where they're entertaining it. Plausible.

Yeah. How great was that moment because I as a, you know, maybe the most skeptical audience member, in the, in the, in the, that's my tier of audience, from the most skeptical of almost anything any show does, even things that I love, even the ones that I love. I was like, yeah, I could see them doing this. I could see them just making this turn and pulling it off. Did you believe that there was any, for a moment they were going to do this? There was a second, because I do find that while I adore Alan Ruck as a performer and I adore

Connor as a character, he is the third leg a little bit here. You know what I mean? Like everybody has a purpose on this show right now and Conner's purpose is to come in and say, oh, we had to fly. What was it scheduled? Is that one was going to say? Instead of a PJ. Yeah.

Yeah. And he and Willa just kind of being the last two people on the guest list for every party that they're going to with the Roy's. Willa playwriting in the notes app. Yeah. What does he call her? My Mary Todd. What does he say? There was a moment where I was like, are they really going to do this?

But I was thrilled and terrified to see where they took it. And I think that one of the highlights of the season so far for me, was definitely that bathroom scene that we referred to between Roman and Jared, where, yeah, like you mentioned, the choice that Culkin makes to be moisturizing his hands, while the two of them dressed identically with identical haircuts, just kind of make fuck eyes at one another while talking about fascism. I mean, isn't it interesting that the show is nudging this idea forward,

which is Kendall and Schen? Chavon, who are obviously like the clubhouse leaders for people who are handicapping the show sure, like at some sort of sporting event. Not that we would ever do that. Yeah. Never. Not us. Are being exposed week after week, not just as ill-informed or ill-suited to the time, but

really fighting the wrong wars, like fighting yesterday's wars. And there's something that is emerging, I mean, it's always been there, but at least it's emerging into my consciousness. and I think to the main stage of the show, that Roman really is this, is made for this particular moment. There's such a dark and toxic stew of just absolute naked, emotional,

hurt, longing, and neediness that is subsumed into this collection of like, smarter than thou, clever, nothing fucking matters, nihilistic hand tics. You know, it's, he is Twitter, right? He is social media made flesh. in a way. So of course he can navigate

this moment. He's doing the same thing Kendall's doing. He's just using the complete opposite terms. Kendall's doing, you know, resistance, Twitter, Me Too. You know, like as Stewie says, standing on a rainbow box and screaming times up. And fucking Roman's like

moving the Overton window and mocking everything Shiv says in a like, oh, you actually care. All you're doing is doing Route 1. But in that bathroom, Roman actually pitches a plausible version. of a way forward for that company in a way that Kendall can't because Kendall's just like buying Walter and you know rolling rolling up like different verticals Roman knows what he's got

and he knows where it should go. Exactly. I mean we are we are David Simon making season five of the wire able to talk about the mistakes made in media v. New Media over the last decade, right? And fundamentally where a lot of shit went wrong was old media was always going to be old media. And new media was like, we could try some new stuff, but maybe we still want to do fact checking and we'll kind of be like the old ways of doing it. And then old media bought new media and was like, well, just be more like us and it all collapsed. And then there were a couple people who were like, no, it's just going to be teens dancing for 10 seconds and also a little sprinkling of fascism. Like that's actually what this is. So stop fucking pretending that you're

going to win a Pulitzer. You know what I mean? And Roman is that. Roman does not have the he shouldn't necessarily be lauded for his complete lack of sensitivity or morals, but he certainly is meeting the moment in a way that suits both the company and more directly his father, who is the oldest person. Well, I see the oldest person on the show. He's certainly the oldest person. He's the eminence grease of the Roy family, but because he is just, as, you know, we said before, he's an apex predator and that type of predation doesn't go out of style.

What did you think of the carry development of him having a rumored affair with his assistant? It was very interesting. It was very, it was very succession where subplots can sometimes just emerge fully formed from the back room. Like, there wasn't a lot of handholding with this because this was not, this wasn't Jess or what's her name? Dagmarra Domenich's character. Carolina. I'm blanking it. Carolina.

Like, it's not someone who's been there the whole time. This is someone who, as far as I know, and I may not be the most careful watcher of the show, but I don't remember seeing her prior to the season. I believe she is a recent edition. I think she is a this season edition, but I can't guarantee that. But yeah. So I kind of like it when things hide in plain sight. And it plays into something we talked about a couple weeks ago,

which is that the rhythm the show seems to work best in is one in which Logan is generally opaque. And what happens when he closes the doors we don't know about, because it's better when we're all, like, with the kids themselves, scrambling for crumbs to drop from the throne. What it means for the show, I couldn't tell you. I mean, it's always a weird, like, it was a weird swing when she had something to say to the sitting vice president. Yeah, I think everybody in the room felt that way.

You know, when he points at her, or when she gives him the eyes, when Roman's making his pitch for Jared, I imagine we'll see more of Jared as this season goes on. And I'm very interested in seeing ATN, and the Roy family in action. You know, now that they are kind of back doing what they did to build this empire,

which is sort of maneuvering and manipulating the American political system and the temperature of the country to sell fucking bedpans. I mean, the show, the ATN of it has kind of been a, on the slow boil. Yeah, with the exception of Ravenwood, we have not done a lot of like,

what are the mechanics of ATN. And also, how important is it to the empire? thought this episode did a pretty not just brilliant, but efficient job of communicating it. I mean, Roman said that the audience, much like its real world analog Fox News, the audience is primarily the coveted demographic known as Almost Dead's, but it remains like the most powerful or most immediate lever to exact institutional power in this country. And so the fact that everyone has now returned to that as the centerpiece as the government is, you know, unclear where the case stands.

While the government is gunning for them, they can gun right back and potentially blow the government out of the water. It's an interesting place to go. It's also the kind of place that I don't think the show, I think the show was smart not to begin here. You know, there's no version of this show with Adam McKay involved in from the beginning that wasn't going to do this. Sure.

I think this is what motivated him to want to make a show like this, but even probably even before Jesse Armstrong got involved and created it and shaped it. it feels appropriate to end up here now that we trust them and we know what they're doing. And we've established the other things that the family does or has its pause in. Yeah, I mean, I am happiest when I feel like the show is deviating furthest from its original proposition. You know, this idea of which one of these kids is going to succeed, Logan, we will eventually answer that question. There's so much fun shit we could get into on the way there. having a kind of repeating cycle of Kendall trying and failing to usurp his father. I don't know what Jeremy

Strong does if he's not doing that. I'm very curious to find out. He is obviously, I think, one of the two or three best actors on television right now, if not the best. So I want him to be busy on this show. But it was interesting to see him marginalized. I often, you know, often this show is compared to billions or billions as compared to succession. Billions, despite the billion subplots it had, you know, for the most part over the six seasons it's been on or seven seasons it's been on, it's been pretty much obsessed with this axe versus Chuck, like, who will get who thing, you know? And ultimately, Damien Lewis left the show, as people know from reading the news, even if you're not reading the show, watching the show,

Damien Lewis is leaving the show, and I think that that solved its problem for it. I don't know that Succession will ever experience an absence like that, but I really would love to see them knee-deep in a presidential election. That seems really fucking entertaining. We should talk a little bit about the Kendall stuff, though. Did you have one more point you wanted to make? No, I wanted to pivot to the Kendall stuff. It's like you're reading my mind.

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Pretty big actress, just we're going to get two scenes? It seems like it. One thing that I think that we've learned, Well, let me say this. During the long national nightmare when Succession was not in our lives, we filled the vacuum as best we could. And one of the only ways that we could was by grabbing anything that fell from the royal plate and spending days or weeks obsessing over it. I think one thing we've learned is that Succession has a very, very stack. pre-existing cast. It has a stacked cast of actors who are no longer in the main cast who could be called upon.

Sure. When you need a Marsha or you need a Stewie, as you said already, Pope Davis is just, she's probably just hanging out on set. She's got COVID compliance. She's a veil. When we read Sinalaithin,

Adrian Brody, the still as yet unseen Scarsguard, I think some of us were like either thinking they are joining the show as equals to the others, or we were like, oh, this is like Margo Martindale in the season of Justified.

Like, here come the big bads. The big bads for the season, for sure. Not the case. No. These were guest arcs. Yeah, right. Like, very traditional. And they are just people

who get more headlines and probably get paid more than your Reed Bernies, your Stephen Roots, or your Mark Lynn Baker, by the way, speaking of New York theater guys, but we'll always be

perfect strangers to people of a certain generation. I think that's where we're at. So maybe we just need to recalibrate our own thinking. Yeah, I mean, I think I had the same thing where I was like, where is the Peter Regert episode? I don't think we're going to get it. People just want to be on this show. Yeah.

You know, if it wasn't such an excellent show and wonderfully written and also a lot of actors, I don't know the particulars of these actors, but a lot of actors live in New York and are thrilled to be a part of a show where they don't have to travel, this is another place where, you know, the COVID question can come into it where it's just like, yeah, I'd love to work for four days. I haven't worked in four months, you know what I mean? So I'm available for this part. I think the other thing to think of is that if it's a good experience for everyone, they're in play now.

They're in play, you know, so. Lisa could come back as the lawyer for somebody else or whatever. Yeah. And Adrian Brody will be on the show again. But I think it seems pretty clear that he is not a major plot driver of the season. It certainly doesn't seem like it unless he's going to come roaring back with a takeover bit of his own. The Kendall stuff, it was interesting because, Maybe this speaks to your point about being eager to get the shareholder stuff off.

Like, I'm, once they're done with the banter, I'm not as interested. And to its credit, I don't think the show is that interested in this either. I'm not particularly interested in the nitty-gritty of the government's case. And so tracking where it stands isn't the best place for the show to hang out in. So. Can I just do a little bit of like, be vulnerable here with you for a second? Oh, always. You just had a big birthday.

Very close watcher of this show. So are the documents in question in this episode, the ones Greg gave him? Does he have them? I'm a little unclear about some of that stuff. My takeaway from this was, is that there are, and I'm sorry to complicate,

muddy the waters further, when they say documents, there's two different document collections. One is the Greg Kendall documents. Which were like the cruise ship murder docks, yeah. Which, as at least suggested by this episode, are not as damning as the press conference would have had you believe. The second piece, and maybe this is a comment on the first, is that when they agreed to cooperate, Waste Arroyko unleashed the floodgates of documents and is basically drowning the government in paper.

And some of it is maybe damning. Some of it is maybe exculpatory and some of it is just confusing. And that's what those lawyers are going through every minute to find something that suits their case, suits their interests. And it seems like, and this is sort of what I got from some of what Kendall was saying, they're just flooding the zone and confusing everything. With discovery, yeah. And slowing everything down. Right. Okay.

That's good to know. I think the other takeaway, and I loved the scene where she's like, do you think you're smarter than me? Like, this show is, these moments when they are, these untouchable characters are touched, when they are smacked in the snout, like a, like a badly behaving dog in an 80s movie before people understood how to treat dogs or would allow dogs to be treated like that way on the screen. Those are the powerful moments, right? Where it's just like, oh, I'm going to have to start thinking of the toilet as my friend.

Like, there is another way of being here. Yeah, you know, other than that, I mean, the one thing I wanted to discuss regarding Kendall, and this gets back to Tom, is the diner scene, which I thought was... Wait, before we do diner, I'd have to ask you one thing. Yeah. This is going to be underreported, because I thought it was going a different direction when Kendall, when he's like, we're going to fire Lisa and he's just like, he's drinking bourbon or whatever it is, like it's power raid.

So I'm like, okay, so that's intentional. He's slipping a little bit in that way. But am I wrong? He was multitasking. He's also planning a 40th birthday party? Yes. I believe that that is the subject of the next episode. Can't wait.

This in some ways, what does he call it? He says, who does he say, ask is these people going to come to his antibiotic party? Yeah, it's like AI meets like Bacchanol, like Roman Bacchanol. Carthage? Yeah, I guess if it's next week's episode, I'll save it because I did want to ask what similarities you felt between yourself who recently celebrated a birthday and Kendall in this episode. But we can circle back. let's get to the diner.

Yeah. Two characters and two actors who can certainly do font size 26, you know, announcements with their, with their performances. Like, they can be big and they can fill up a screen. And then they're both playing it so, so quiet. Appropriately for a clandestine meeting and a diner. But the moment where Tom does his ordering and Jeremy Strong's way of, like, like, taking that information in, and then not even making eye contact with the waitress and saying,

I'm just going to watch him. It's so amazing. And then that scene just rolls from there. It's also, I got to say, when I was talking before about how the show kind of blindsided me with a reminder that Tom is immortal, not immortal,

he is a mortal person. Only Tom and Greg eat the diner food. Right. Kendall would fucking never, you know, in the same way that like, you know, again, from my daughter's Greek myth's book, you know, when Persephone is stolen by Hades, Lord of the Undead and the Underworld. Yeah. And, and her mother, Demeter, comes to rescue her,

and Haiti's like, n'uh, she can't leave because she ate six pomegranate seeds. So she has to stay here for six months of the year. And that's why we have winter. Uh-huh. That was doused in Bisquick and maple syrup. Those were pomegranate seeds, man. Did you like when Tom tells Greg, you have to eat that omelet like it's Afghanistan? You just take some territory and then move out? I just feel like we are not worthy to have a show that has space for that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Speaking of which, we're going to, I'm going to clear out for you about the wine in a minute.

But yeah, the Tom Gregg scene was just incredible. And the moment where Greg, sorry, the Tom and Kendall scene was just incredible. Both diner scenes were great. But yes, the Kendall scene was. And the moment where Kendall thinks he's got another gotcha moment where he's taking pictures of Tom, meeting him so that he could blackmail him with it. And he's just like, who are you blackmailing? You know, do you think you played your card. These guys skated and now they're picking the next president. So you think you're intimidating me by having a gotcha moment on your iPhone. Like,

you have nothing. And, you know, we've seen Kendall over the course of the season lose allies left and right increasingly, you know, no Lisa now, sort of had his family members on side for half of an episode now gone, Rava gone, haven't seen Naomi in a while. When he's in that Virginia parking lot, he's by himself, you know, and I don't know what happens with Kendall when he's on his own. Usually nothing good. Usually nothing good at all. He usually goes and checks out some wolf art. Exactly. I think I can't get over the power of the performances in that scene because there was something, I really like the way you framed it. You're talking about how they can, they don't need a megaphone to project these characters. They understand them on such

like a molecular level. But what was so awesome about the two of them together in that close, tight, very un-succession-like space was that the dial got turned all the way down, you know, and they still under, look, I think good acting in general is a magic trick, but I have to feel like if you were on set that day, it was a little bit like a seance or something, like these two people just channeling other human beings that they can also be sometimes. Right. And everything that they do, I mean, the way the camera knew, because they've worked with McFadden for a while, to like have a camera going on his hands, you know, in the silverware.

Yeah. And he is good enough at this to not crack. The character is good enough to not crack and show weakness because he's a veteran of business negotiations or whatever. But the actor is so skilled to let us see the, as Kendall put it, hairline fractures running through every fiber of his being. What does he say? I've read the prison blogs, Greg.

All the details. That's the other enjoyment level for me on the show is you just have to feel like the writers must have had so much fun Googling this stuff and just pouring it into this wonderful vessel that is the show they make with all these details that are actually additive. They're not just funniest sides.

They're additive to our understanding of the psychological state. They also just do like a little like the point right after Tom orders. is his food and Kendall's like, yeah, I'm just going to watch him. There's this brief moment, which is actually very true to the like immediate post-ordering moment in a lunch or dinner where you're like, so what do I do with my hands now? Because for the last five minutes, all we've been talking about is like what we're going to eat and what we're going to order

and do you want to split something. And then you put the menu down and you're just kind of like, okay, so like what are we doing here? Small aside, this is the least bad thing that has happened because of the global pandemic that has taken untold number of lives and upended our existence. But the QR code menu thing is such an abomination. Yeah. Are you getting a signal here? Yeah. It has also broken the social contract.

Right. We put our phones away. Yeah. All of the things that we do in public are absurd, including like wearing clothes or whatever. Like all this is made up. But you can't just take them away and expect us to function. And one of them is, yes, you use. sit down at the table and you have sort of awkward, oh, ha ha, well, good to see whatever, but you

have no phones. And then the nice thing that eases you in to your time together is there something to do. This is something to hold in your hands, look away, collect yourself, whatever, look at the menu, immediate conversation starter. But now, what the fuck? Yeah. What are we doing? And generally, Chris, I forget. So you're talking and you're doing that small talk, but you're not doing the big talk you want to have yet because it's not time. It's not time. The food. The food's not here. And then the waitress comes and she's like, hey, guys. And you're like, hey, how are you?

What are you doing here? Could I have some, oh, right. Yeah. Right. Got it. I have found in my dining experiences recently, I'm just desperately trying to slow the process down. Because there's something about the QR code. Because there used to be like this theater where it's like, okay, I can signal publicly that I have now completed my reading of the menu and I'm ready to order.

Yes. but with the phone, I actually, just like everything else I do in my phone, just get distracted, where I'm like halfway through starters and then like, I think I'll check Twitter. I'm such a fucking idiot that I can't even get through a menu. And then I'm like, do I say, hey, we're ready? Like, you can't signal that you put the menu down. You can't put it down because then if you put your phone down and then the waitress comes over and it's like, oh, okay, let me pick my phone up again.

Oh, no, I guess I'm wearing a mask. It's not recognizing my face. Yeah. I got to put in a... I mean, this is a disaster. We have to do better people. Let me get to this final segment here really quick. Wait, before you do, last thing on this...

I think it's worth noting with the Tom and Kendall stuff is that Tom has no options. It is... There's genuine pathos here. This really is awful. Yeah. And that walk back into the hotel where he's looking over his shoulder and he sees Greg, I mean, if this were a lesser show, if this was... No offense. This was like a lesser AMC drama from 2014.

I'd be like, wow, Tom's going to go kill himself. Like, this is being shot like that. This isn't that show. This is McBaney. Which makes him more interesting. But there's something else going on here. His only defense to Kendall in those moments. And Kendall, regardless of his stature, is still the alpha because he is still an untouchable billionaire, basically.

And Tom still sees him as such. Is that Tom keeps saying, well, I fell in love with your sister. I fell in love with your sister. And every time he says a variation of that, Kendall's like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, right, sure. But it is such, it is such a brutal indictment of human emotion. I love when they're just like- But it also isn't wrong because of their scenes together, the shiv and Tom scenes. Yeah.

Let's talk about the shiv and Tom scene. Now, you know, typically now in modern NBA, it's generally agreed upon that the ball finds energy, you know, that getting everybody involved, making sure everybody gets a shot, make everybody gets a touch is the way to go. And I think that that applies to podcasts as well. well. But right now we're going to go back to the late 90s. And we're clearing out for number three at the top of the key. Everybody's spreading. Yeah. Talk to me about some biodynamic German wine. Well, I want to begin here. Thank you, first of all. Thank you. This was the most important scene in the

episode. Season, maybe. Yeah. Without question. Certainly in this vintage. Matthew McFadden's hands deserve an award because I don't know how he can make his hands an extension of the performance he's giving but the way they kind of just worry over the bottles and the little throat waste like, oh, screw cap, you know, the way that every detail of this wine that he has somehow put money into

is just disappointing him. It is just not good enough from the packaging to where it's from to the grape to the style of farming to ultimately it's, I can only assume hideous aroma. Yeah. And even worse. A funk to it.

Oat Barnyard, as the great New York magazine critic Adam Platt used to say. When he says you have to meet it halfway. Oh my God, I almost died. I had to shut off the episode. Like, it's kind of, it was kind of amazing. I mean, look, people know, I've put this information out there publicly. But I think that good wine can. come from almost any place and can be made in almost anyway.

Kaya McMullen agrees. But the idea that wine should somehow be aggressively challenging to the palate, that somehow this idea that we in the 21st century with our fucked economies and totally broken ravaged soil have figured out a way to do wine better than people in France 200 years ago, like we've cracked the code, he's such bull. It's the height of arrogance and bullshit. And I love it. I just,

I love that he was just like a week after being, after saying the, you know, look, it's, it's the greenwald ethos. There's nothing better than a bracingly chilled glass of white wine at 5 p.m. That he's then going to pour himself a big jug of juice. Yeah. Of just like toilet wine, yeah. Biodynamic natural garbage? I loved it.

It's quite bad, isn't it? Yeah. The fact that he checks another bottle is the bad when he's just like, maybe that was a bad bottle, I'll check another one. He's so disappointed and it's so, you know, I don't know. There is no, there is no rhyme or reason to make me of good TV. And we've talked about this in other contexts recently on the podcast that like if you ask the people responsible for a success, more often And often than not, they will be just as flummoxed and surprised as the people who are responsible for a disaster. Because when you're in it, you're not really aware of it. But I can't help. But even though I know that, when Succession is humming as it was in this episode, I have, I go to this impossible place where I'm like, they must have a writer's room on top of their writer's room where every page passes through and it only goes to air, it goes to production. If it checks every imaginable box, like, is this funny? Yes. Is this insightful? Yes. Is this giving us perspective on the characters?

Yes. Is this exactly the right moment to begin the scene and get out of the scene? And does it showcase the massive acting talent that we have appropriately? I mean, yes, yes, yes, yes. And that's not how it works. And I'm sure that when we get to talk to Jesse Armstrong again, he will laugh at the suggestion that there's time for that type of... Those kinds of checks and balances.

But of that kind of rigor. But when it's working, man, as it was for me in this episode, And you said, I mean, you structured, because you are a master of structure yourself, this podcast, you get to the scene with the wine. And I was in such ecstasies over its trenchant visceration of the American political landscape that I forgot about the time Tom drank the barnyard wine. Like, I just forgot that that was also this episode. That's how rich it was.

Well, it contains multitudes. So does this podcast, we can wrap it up there unless you have any other notes you wanted to share on this episode? I just, I'm curious how Kai felt about the wine. or about you calling her out for her love of the noble grape. I myself am perfectly happy with a $10 bottle of wine. So you would not go for the Roy family vineyard of biodynamics? That depends on the price range. Kaya.

Gotta get you a wine in the month club for Christmas. Consumer is king. That voice you just heard was Kaya McMullen. She produced our episode as she does all of the watch episodes. We will be taking Thursday off. We hope everybody listening has a lovely thing. with their friends, family, or whoever they choose to spend it with? I hope it's a friends or family, not your enemies. Andy, great seeing you. Great seeing you too, Chris. Have a great holiday with the

toilet, your best friend, and a bottle of something better than that. We'll see you next Sunday night for the next episode of Succession. Everybody take care.