The Watch - The ‘Succession’ Finale and a Farewell to the ‘Breaking Bad’ Universe | The Watch

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

Andy calls in to talk about the finale of ‘Succession’ as well as the second season as a whole (0:40). Then they dive into ‘El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie’ and the continuation of the Jesse P...inkman story line (21:30). Finally, your number one boys dissect the 'Succession' finale (39:00). Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:03 Hello, friends. Welcome to the trailer for The Road Taken with CT and Bayo. I'm Bayo, and I'm C.T. We've embarked on a massive world tour and are excited to experience all the thrills and boredom that entails. To help us process our own experiences along the way, we'll be having conversations with peers, idols, and maybe a rando or two. The Road Taken with CT and Bayo, part of the Ringer podcast network on all podcast platforms. I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.
Starting point is 00:00:39 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. He always thanks me for the chicken. It's Andy Greenwald. Only if the chicken is, you know, dry or at a normal, kind of a normal fluidity.
Starting point is 00:00:56 That chicken last night on the succession finale looked like pheasant to me. Do you think it was a pheasant? Or a partridge? We're going to talk a little succession, right, buddy? Because I think if we had Jesse Armstrong, by the way. Until Jack Ryan's season two comes on, yes. That's correct.
Starting point is 00:01:19 Well, yeah, it's just holding it for Jack. If we had Jesse Armstrong back on the show, and by the way, I think we should try to have Jesse Armstrong back on the show, I would ask him specifically about this because I feel like he or some of the other geniuses in his room probably researched into what old media barons like to eat, you know, to keep their themselves in fighting shape. Because when he sat down next to him at first, my assumption was that it was going to be some sort of local seafood, right? Because there's some cephalopod humor with suing.
Starting point is 00:01:55 Yes. At a different point in the episode. Very much. So I thought maybe he was having some fresh Greek spot prawns or something. But no, it was like the diet-plate at Hugo's on Santa Monica. It's like a steamed chicken on lettuce. Yeah. Yeah, well, he's watching his cholesterol, probably. He's probably watching his cholesterol. I mean, it's also possible that the very rich have terrible taste, and maybe it was just a low-key comment on that.
Starting point is 00:02:18 I don't know. I don't know, but I guess what I'm saying is I feel like the chefs on the Wastar-Royko yacht have been listening to this podcast, and they like their chicken to get wet. That's entirely possible that the pollo is dripping. But let's talk a little bit about, we're going to talk about Succession. I also want to hear your thoughts about El Camino.
Starting point is 00:02:38 Me and Sean did a pod on Friday, where we went very in-depth into our feelings about that movie. But Succession is the more urgent thing. And then obviously at the second half of the podcast will be the audio for me and Jason's after show number one boys, which we recorded this morning. So we have lots of Succession to get through. But I want to hear how you felt about the episode, obviously,
Starting point is 00:03:01 and then the season in general. Again, I just take such enormous pleasure in a show that really understands its own strength and takes the time to consider those strengths and then articulate them in the most entertaining way possible. And what I mean specifically is, I think I talked about this before when I was talking about the way they craft a season of succession and, you know, of course, through the filter of my own recent experiences. And I think that there is an urge immediately, right? That was a very dramatic episode in D.C. with testifying and what's going to happen and what does it mean. And we felt this proxy battle looming. So it did feel as if it was the penultimate episode in a temporal sense, right?
Starting point is 00:03:44 That we were maybe going to pick up right afterwards and things are going to sneak out of the case. What's going to happen? I love that that's not the case. I love that immediately we're just at the harbor getting on this yacht that Marcia, RIP, or wherever she may be, refitted and you have to take your shoes off. of. Yes. And that it allowed the show to once again set the stage, and it is so theatrical, to shout out to Connor Roy's finances, the way that it presents the information, but that it gave us another delightful, elaborate set for the final act of this season-long play. You know, it was such a confident move to do that.
Starting point is 00:04:26 And it was delicious. I saw someone talking about how it was like an Agatha Christie novel in the sense that everyone was stabbing each other, except they all stabbing each other. It was where the murder is taking place right in front of you, rather than in the secret passageway or something, yeah. It's amazing to see this happened so quickly with a show to be this confident and to see that the things that, like, if the season had ended,
Starting point is 00:04:51 I think that we would have probably spent some time today or I guess it would have been last week talking about just the brilliant deployment of Roman Royal over the course of the season, and how remarkably his performance is, considering he could just take all the best lines and just goodness and humanity and fallibility that it's just being brought to the fore
Starting point is 00:05:18 over the course of the season, it would have been enough. But the fact that they knew, and again, I assume they wrote the scripts in advance, so they had confidence that they could pull this off, that they knew that they could have built it through his nearly getting shot last week to this moment of him saying,
Starting point is 00:05:34 could we maybe talk to each other like people? And feel the pathos of it, believe when he's clearly put in line to maybe be the next one, which people have been predicting all season just by playing the numbers game, that we could all sort of laugh but also nod, that that's starting to make sense. It's just so artful, you know, and I just really admire succession and terrible job with planning.
Starting point is 00:06:03 Yeah, I mean, the ultimate tension in the sort of presentation of the show is time allotted for that kind of incredibly relentless veep-ish banter, burn, insult, dialogue, joke, layered on joke, layered on joke, setting up scenes for abject humiliation of its characters, and then pulling off also this incredibly elegant and heartfelt in places family drama. And Veep really only did that, I thought, intermittently over the course of its run, where Succession tries to do that almost every episode, where there's some sort of,
Starting point is 00:06:44 the last 15 minutes usually are saved for something really significant to happen to the characters. And often, Kendall has been the load-bearing part of that. Kendall has often had to handle a lot of the, or the Jeremy Strong's performance has had to handle a lot of
Starting point is 00:07:00 what this all will do to a person's psyche over the course of time. I found myself at certain points this season feeling like the starting point for people people's personalities in the episodes were a little arbitrary, not necessarily unearned or wrong or incoherent or anything like that, but, you know, a little bit sometimes hard to track say where Shiv was, you know what I mean? Or where Shiv and Tom's relationship was,
Starting point is 00:07:30 or frankly, whether or not Kendall is using and who he's dating and why he's not dating one person or is dating another person and how he's behaving. So if I had any, it's not even a critique. It's just really an observation that that is something that I thought as they expanded their purview, because last season was essentially Kendall versus the rest of the family and following Kendall on this journey all the way through the wedding. This obviously, this season was a little bit more focused on Roman and Shiv. And because of that, I think sometimes I lost like kind of like where North was in certain episodes. That's like my only kind of note that I would sound about it.
Starting point is 00:08:07 I think that's a very legitimate note that I don't disagree with. But I would say the thing that counteracted that for me, it's not necessarily in that negative, is that the actors, and again, when I say the actors know, it's because the producers and writers know. But the actors know where their characters are. And, again, it's this really remarkable to me kind of poker game. And I say this is someone who doesn't really understand poker,
Starting point is 00:08:33 so bear with me. But I believe sometimes you know, you have to know when to hold them, and I believe the converse is that it sometimes you know when to fold them, Is that right? Yeah, that's at least what I learned from Rounders, yes. Or at least show your cards. And so the tension always in serial life television, right, is what story that you're building
Starting point is 00:08:50 which is a story that you're going to give and show and play, right? Because who knows how much time you have? And think about the character like Tom and his face on the wedding night in the season finale last year and the emotional wallop of that scene and how much is being carried by his performance. And then you build it over the course of a season for this scene between the two of them, which is just a master class in performance.
Starting point is 00:09:17 And when he says, you know, he doesn't, he's not a hippie, he doesn't want this. And she said it to him on his wedding night. And her response is, oh, you've been spewing on it for, I mean, in our world, a year. And he says, yes, I have. And you realize, yes, he had. Matthew McFadden has absolutely been thinking of that moment emotionally in every performance, every part of the performance he's given this year. And it's so beautifully deployed in that moment.
Starting point is 00:09:42 And similarly with someone like Chabon, who, you know, gets a lot of the more humanist notes because in some ways, in some ways I think people thought that the cousin Greg was us in terms of like the voice of the audience of the point of view character coming into the family. But increasingly, it felt more like, sure, because at least she has liberal politics and media savvy are aligned with succession's biggest and most ardent fans and podcasters. But she's never just entirely that. And I think about her performance, which is so brilliant when she was comment about being a little bit less bad. Her face, equally brilliant, equally subtle. When Tom says maybe you could just watch her and the other woman. Yeah. That would be his role.
Starting point is 00:10:24 Or maybe we could be together and you could go in the bathroom. But her face, and she was like, well, fuck, yeah, that sounds great. Because I don't know if that means she's a killer, but it does mean her appetites are ravenous. And there's nothing wrong with that. But that is something that is part of her family and, you know, something that makes her part of that larger class. as opposed to someone like Tom or maybe like cousin Greg. And so their compasses are so attuned to all the different adeline to watch. And it keeps me, for me anyways, an audience member, it keeps me centered in it.
Starting point is 00:10:56 Even though, like, I'm still thinking about five episodes ago where Tom says, how was London? But I think that was the episode before they met their mother. Yeah. You know, they're always coming from somewhere. Yes. It's a little bit confusing at time. And then we find out, obviously, at least in the Logan definition of the term,
Starting point is 00:11:13 that Shiv is not a killer, because she, at the last second, asks for a reprieve on Tom. And in the end, sort of, I think Roman cutting out Laird and Kendall cutting out his father, actually sort of accrue more points in some ways in Logan's ledger than Shiv does. You could make that argument, I bet. I guess the question that I've been asking different coworkers today, and we talked about it a lot on number one boys, is do you think, Shiv has an awareness of what Kendall was going to do? I don't know. I mean, I think the thing that I find so compelling about this show and about the characters
Starting point is 00:11:52 is, of course, you know, what makes the show... This sounds a little bit reductive when I say it, but it's the family aspect of it, right? They are awful to each other. They hate and resent each other, but they also know each other, which is what makes it so intolerable, they're always squeezed into the sitting rooms of yachts together. none of all of them were keenly aware of what uh roman was asking for when he asked for some kindness and they reacted the only way they know how they also all completely knew to an almost excruciating degree what logan you know blood sacrifice meant to kendall right when he reentered the room logan had obviously said that to shiv at some point at the end of last episode or in and around
Starting point is 00:12:35 that where she he had clearly made it clear that he made a clear that kendall was going to be the blood face. But it was so awful for them to even with, I don't know. I mean, the thing that's fascinating to see is what do they really think of Kendall? Do they think of him as like pathetic, like a, like a wounded animal or something that they want to put out of his misery? Or were they always, on some level, impressed or intimidated by him and almost self-sabotized? I don't know. So much of it is in Brian Cox's face and his performance at the end. I think there's something going on between Shiv and Kendall, whether it's just like you said, that human
Starting point is 00:13:27 understanding that they have of one another, but there's something that was sort of seated in Safe Room that is alluded to a little bit when they're coming back from London in the return. And I get the feeling like the camera is so jittery on this show.
Starting point is 00:13:43 There's so much, you know, Mizant's like, you know, stuff happening where like a handheld will just catch a moment. In fact, the only really knowingly staged shot of the season, if I remember correctly, I would have to go back and rewatch a season, but I'm pretty sure
Starting point is 00:13:59 the tracking shot that goes across the deck of the boat to Kendall listening to his headphones, that is Shiv's perspective as she walks up to him, is the only totally steady shot. I don't know whether it was on a dolly or whether it was on steady camp, but for the most part, succession is shot handheld. It's supposed to be sort of capturing this stuff as it's happening, there's a lot of improv, obviously.
Starting point is 00:14:23 But that moment where we don't actually get to hear anything that Shiv says to Kendall and he just sort of acknowledges, he seems to know what is being asked of him the entire day. I felt like that was a sign or a signal that something was transpiring between Shiv and Kendall. I'm not trying to turn Succession into my crazy theory that explains all of Succession. I'm just saying like there's something,
Starting point is 00:14:46 there's a layer there that I don't think that they acknowledged over the course. and they didn't do it because I think they were setting up some conversations for season three. Before the equation, but the scene where... And I remember which episode that was. That's one of the more significant moments of the season.
Starting point is 00:15:11 Oh, fuck yeah. It is the moment of the season. If what I think is happening is happening that Shiv essentially was going along with this idea that Kendall needed to be sacrificed with the idea that when that happened, Kendall would pull the rug out from Logan,
Starting point is 00:15:28 then that moment and Safe Room is the genesis of that. Right. Just to be clear, this is me asking as someone who watched it right before bed last night, the evidence he has is the stuff Greg didn't burn, right? Yes. Now, I mean...
Starting point is 00:15:41 Greg is in on this? Greg, and then that would necessarily, like, you can tie that to Kendall being particularly kind to Greg over the course of the season. Tom sort of telling Shiv a little bit about his connection to cruises. I mean, if you want to get deep into the plot,
Starting point is 00:15:57 like you can kind of put put all the pieces together there. The thing that's great about this show is you don't have to. It all will be revealed in time. And there is enough pleasure in just watching these people interact that you don't need to be like a fucking Yellow King super nerd person on Reddit trying to figure out what's going to happen next. And let me just say also, if I'm suggesting interviews,
Starting point is 00:16:23 I would really love to interview the production designer of the show and the business affairs person at HBO who green likes all of this because I, yeah, what you hear my voice is just abject jealousy but also incredulity. I look at this show how it shoots and who it shoots with the same way that Ron Burgundy looked at his,
Starting point is 00:16:47 it's just like I just can't believe that you did that. You know, and the numbers work for them somehow or that people moving around, but like, usually I'm watching things now looking for cheats and they must have many cheats that I'm not picking up. on, right? But I'm like, well, they must have filmed this in, you know, New York Harbor or something.
Starting point is 00:17:07 Or, like, somewhere on the Hudson River and the dummy plate shots for Knoxos in the background. But I don't think they did. So our man, Suey, who we love as a, you know, an unfortunately more reduced role this season, but I feel like he'll be back.
Starting point is 00:17:30 Did he just get on a flight for the one scene? Like, tell me all about this. You know? Tell me the details of how. they filmed this. Did they actually film back and forth between America and Europe? Are you in three scenes this season?
Starting point is 00:17:44 He's in the first episode where he's like, fuck you, Kendall. He's in Argestis wearing that incredible turtleneck. And then he shows up sniffing lavender after cheese plate in Paxos. And I don't know, you know way more now about blocking
Starting point is 00:18:01 and scheduling the shooting of a television show in one town in New Mexico. imagine doing this globe-tron thing. I have to imagine that a lot of it comes down to the nimbleness of... I mean, I have to imagine that a lot of the shooting is, like, yeah, we've got a couple of camera people, and we're doing a lot of available light or whatever,
Starting point is 00:18:23 and they can kind of run and gun a little bit. Well, they get, I mean, they get at least twice as many days per episode as we got. You know, probably perhaps we get eight days an episode. I think that HBO gets anywhere from 14 to 20 days in episodes. But, you know, they can't just have a splinter unit in Scotland. They have to have a production. You know, they have to have a full committed block there.
Starting point is 00:18:49 So I guess they get their scripts done and they figured out Europe versus America or whatever. The thing that I'm really interested in, just from an industry standpoint, and I'll ask around to figure this out, is also who gets to be in the regular cast? Because Aryan is in the cast. Rob Yang plays, you know, the former head of Walter is in the regular cast. not huge parts of the season by any stretch. Not that they weren't fantastic when they were on set. But generally, being in the regular cast means you get a regular fee
Starting point is 00:19:16 episodically. And then you're locked out and you can't do other things. So one of the reasons why someone becomes regular cast is because that means that they're spoken for it. They're in first position to your show, right? But are they really paying people who are only in three episodes for every episode? I mean, it is waste our Royco level. It all makes it worse. But it's fascinating. for me to think about now just the, you know,
Starting point is 00:19:43 the investment on all levels that they're making a show like this. And frankly, for me, it pays off. Yeah, well, it's incredible. The level of details is so rich. I think it's going to pay off for them next year during awards season. I think obviously you can kind of,
Starting point is 00:19:55 I don't know numbers-wise whether the show has increased its viewership significantly. But I feel like this is going to be the next show that is just like an awards, like, I think so too, because obviously I love it. I think it deserves it.
Starting point is 00:20:13 But I also think if we're going to get a little bit into that award game, prognosticating, this feels like a show that the TV Academy will want to reward. It is on HBO, which is a safe place for them to keep laurels upon. It's not on a streaming service that can be considered by some members to be an existential threat. It is a big, shoddy macho, and I mean that in all senses. you know, and so the actors can look at it and be like, great ensemble work, writers can look at it and be like, this is so clever, so funny, I wish I could contribute to this,
Starting point is 00:20:52 values are high, it's definitely poised, especially because, as we've been saying for the last few years, there's kind of a drama vacuum. People, because of the nature of the TV field, it's hard to say, like, what is worthy of being the one, and Game of Thrones was in the biggest. Yes. I mean, that feels like a cynical take
Starting point is 00:21:16 when really what I want to say is this is the best run on TV. and I'm really going to miss it next week. It's pretty wild that the best drama on TV is also the funniest show on TV. It happened before. Mad Men was that way as well. I still happen that it's happening again. Okay, talk to me a little bit about El Camino
Starting point is 00:21:32 because I don't want to keep you for too long. Okay, I don't want to, I don't even know if this is going to be spoilery. I feel like people who care a lot about it. Yeah, let's just do from now, if you haven't watched El Camino yet and you want to hear more about succession, you should just skip to the second half.
Starting point is 00:21:47 so I want Greenwald to be able to to cook with fire here. Well, I don't want to, I don't want to, I'm setting my, my, I mean, cook with fire and like you're allowed to say what happened in the movie. Yeah. Okay. But even so, I found the whole thing kind of confounding and yet also strangely logical. And what I mean is, these guys know what they're good at. And by these guys, I mean, Ben Thieligan, Michael Slovis, the actor. the production, Melissa Burns being the great producer of all of these Breaking Bad shows,
Starting point is 00:22:22 the crew that they have, and they know what they're good at. And so I think some of her, I think that I thought that when they announced they were doing this project six years later, and that it was a movie, and I heard they were filming in different locations, I thought that this was maybe going to be a chance to stretch their wings, right, and tell a different kind of story, particularly because I felt like they would have to almost, because Jesse Pinkman is such a reactive character. He was never the lead of the show. And all of the people that he was reacting to
Starting point is 00:22:55 that we enjoyed his reaction because he was picking up after he left. So I kind of thought, especially when I was hearing that it was a Western, that this would pick up sometime after the escape, and maybe he's living in a town, and it's like a positive or a Western in a different sense, right? Like you would have a family to protect or something.
Starting point is 00:23:19 The truth is, but these guys do best is logic. They do the next thing, right? Everything that they do is granular. We used to joke about the Doc Review on Better Call Saul and everything. So of course, I. El Camino would pick up literally the next second from the last time we saw him and deal with how does he avoid cops rushing to the compound. Of course, it would have methodical, meticulous, considered flashbacks to fill in holes of story like puzzle pieces we didn't know we were missing, right? It's what they do best. And so if you consider it that way, but I can't help to think that it wasn't essential. It doesn't mean it shouldn't have been made. It doesn't mean people can't take pressure from it. But I'll just say in
Starting point is 00:24:04 terms of my own fandom of things, one of the things that I love most about Jesse's end in the Breaking Bad end was that it was so unlike Breaking Bad. It was messy and it was open. And it felt worried over, down to the smallest detail, could leave something like that sloppy and crazy. He was escaping the doomsday clock machinery of the show itself. And it was such a great, that was such a great personality test when that happened because I feel like 50% of my friends were like, oh, it's so amazing that Jesse got away. And then 50% were like, he gets caught five seconds after the show ends.
Starting point is 00:24:48 Like he, that, he's out, he's free, but he'll never be free, you know? That character, you know, was kind of the free radical. or, you know, when compared to the, you know, the chemically exacting Mr. White. So I loved that the show allowed for that. And then to go back to it and sort of place it under the same strictures and rules, and now we understand about the low jack and we understand about the money and the TikTok of it was surprising, you know. And particularly surprising when you see the kind of filmmaker Binfield has become and the beautiful lighting and the things that he was able to do at the time he had, taking full advantage of locations that,
Starting point is 00:25:31 I recently fled. That you know very well, yeah. I kind of, yeah, there's one actor who was in Elkino and his in Briar Batch, which was a nice surprise to see. Yeah. That actor is Brian Cranston.
Starting point is 00:25:51 That, you know, I kind of, I found myself wishing for widescreen storytelling to match the widescreen cinema top post to just that, that excrucied tweeting TikTok. You know, I was... Yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:08 It's funny to talk about it because you can be so admiring of something. And yet, ultimately, yeah, I think it left me a little bit cold. Not unappreciative, but a little bit cold. And Sean and I talked a little bit about this on Friday, and I think I was curious to know, because even though you're making TV,
Starting point is 00:26:25 I don't think you are as watching television industry stuff and looking at TV Twitter like all day long the way you probably were three years ago or something. But did you feel like the secrecy around the show or around the movie led you to believe that something game-changing was going to happen in the movie? And if you were told, you know, we never really got to properly say goodbye to Jesse.
Starting point is 00:26:52 He drove off into the night, and he never got to say goodbye to some of the people in his life. He had to, he was just hit, we hit eject. So what we want to do is properly end the Jesse's story. and that involves what happens, how does he get out of Albuquerque? Do you think that if they had given you more, you would have had a feeling like,
Starting point is 00:27:12 the question about whether it would have been necessary or not would have been taken off the table? I think that's probably, I think that's probably right. I mean, everything about TV in general is breaking every rule that we thought to be clearly the way and time and again. And that's fine.
Starting point is 00:27:36 You know, I think we were concerned trolling before better calls, and better call it all turned out just fine, you know? I think I definitely came into it with the expectation of if you manage to do the most rare thing in the world, which is beautifully stick the landing, as they say, like, you've a universally beloved finale, why would you go back to it unless you had something wild to do or say about it? But that's not how they operate.
Starting point is 00:28:03 Nothing, you know, they're so methodical in the most beautiful and creative way. really what clearly what Vince Gilling wanted to do is what you just said. He wanted to make two more episodes of Breaking Bad. Like episode, you know, episode 6A and 6B from the last season because that's what this was. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just absolutely, you're right, it flies in the face of what we thought would be, would inspire.
Starting point is 00:28:31 Yeah, and I think that different people have different relationships to the show. We talked a little bit about this on Friday about, I always loved Breaking Bad deeply, and I cared about the characters quite a bit, but I didn't have the relationship to the show that maybe I had
Starting point is 00:28:48 even to something like Friday Night Lights where I was almost like, you know, uncomfortably invested in certain characters from Friday Lights to have their lives work out okay? Whereas with Breaking Bad, I think I almost looked at it much more from a perspective of it being a,
Starting point is 00:29:06 act of suspense and about grinding down the nerves of the viewers and the characters at the same time. So the heartfelt kind of goodbye, the romanticism about Jesse, which I super appreciate and understand people's attachment to him. I was kind of like, this takes it out of the sort of continuum of what Breaking Bad was for me. I feel the same way. I think that it, and I think this is also one of the reasons why it's so universally acclaimed its beloved is that it moved in one direction. You know, with a remarkable intensity and pace, it moved in, you know, it was a straight line, an elevator straight down, uh, toward, you know, we didn't know exactly how it would end, but we knew what was inevitable about the criminal enterprise and also Walter White's own health and morality, right? This is not a show. And I would take the same thing about breaking, about Better Call Salt. Better Call Saul is also a show that has an ending. And the story is being filled in in between and really wonderful and creative and surprising ways.
Starting point is 00:30:12 It's not one of those shows that I particularly feel could go sideways. By sideways, I mean, tell a story that gets wider as opposed to just going up or down. Succession, by contrast, I'm not saying it's a better show, but Succession could do an entire episode about the crew on the yacht or Tom's interaction with them. Who's got Julia who needs to go fly another cove?
Starting point is 00:30:33 Oh, yeah. I mean, it is a story machine in a different way. Similarly, Madden could go sideways in all sorts of interesting ways and find something emotional or strange or digressive or surprising for an ad light as well. Breaking Bad stands out from those shows. It's one of the reasons why it stuck the landing and why it has such fierce fandom, particularly now that it exists just in the streaming universe where you can just binge and binge and binge to be done. It was never a story where I was particularly interested in the day-to-day life of skinny Pete. So to make a project that essentially is a sideway, you know, indulgence sounds like a judgmental word, it's not.
Starting point is 00:31:12 I mean, how great, you know, what a great moment in culture that they get funded to do it and we get to watch it. Yeah, absolutely. But I do think that we were probably, we probably hung the wrong frame on it before it came out. Yeah, and through no fault of our own. I think that, I think Better Call Saul taught us to expect the unexpected and taught us that you know, these things temporarily, like from the past and to the future, all have this sort of
Starting point is 00:31:41 thematic unification that I think I thought that El Camino was going to go in that same direction, or, like you were saying, was going to be an absolute, like, nail-biting thrill ride car chase movie for two hours. But instead, it was at once that and also a meditative kind of farewell letter. Totally, but think about Better Call Saul.
Starting point is 00:32:05 For all the things we like about it, all the things we enjoy about it, for all the things we admire about it, what is the one thing we, and I say we in this case, not just general audiences because people are free to disagree with me. That's a new feeling I have, by the way, now that I'm not a critic. You and I, as we, I think, agree on this, which is what's the one thing we care about? The thing we care about is Kim. Yeah, yeah. Kim is the only person whose future is unwritten and feels dangerously dependent on Jimmy slash Saul. everyone else. I mean, it's so absurd in a way that the two leads have their end dates, right? We know
Starting point is 00:32:43 what's going to happen to them except for all. I mean, there's the genes and a bunch of stuff, but you know what I mean? Kim's not in Breaking Bad. That can't be good. Right. But in a two-hour movie, there simply isn't time like there isn't a TV show to introduce those new characters
Starting point is 00:32:59 that you might care about. That's sort of contradicting this idea I had that Jesse would be living in Yuma waiting on a train or whatever. So, which just wasn't time to do it. So instead we had these sort of, I don't want to say narratively inert, but really more just sort of vaccines that didn't teach us too much. It was just nice to see pals again.
Starting point is 00:33:19 Well, you know, I am obviously obsessed with Better Call Saul now. And as a few eagle-eared listeners pointed out from the Friday pod, I have probably not been championing that show for as long as I kind of thought I had. And a lot of that is when... Saul moved one step closer to Breaking Bad, it kind of clicked in for me in a big time way. Whereas before, where it was like, and I think the show had its adherence in the earlier seasons
Starting point is 00:33:50 in a way that I hadn't really appreciated. But it was interesting talking to Sean, because Sean was like, I didn't really care for Breaking Bad for the first few seasons, or I was sort of indifferent towards it. And then it clicked in. It's interesting that both of those shows have had, at a certain point, like the throttle gets,
Starting point is 00:34:06 gets pulled down. Well, that's because Sean doesn't care about human frailty. That's true. Sean, Sean, just likes, Sean just likes action set pieces, right? That's right. He only cares. He only cares about the,
Starting point is 00:34:19 the execution of a huge, huge... When it was about Walter White, troubled family man, you could take it all it. That's right. I mean, I mean, that's the beauty of the long-running series,
Starting point is 00:34:31 though, versus a two-hour movie, is that someone has an idea of where you are in the story, but you don't quite know yet, and so you don't have your bearing, which can be, excruciating when you don't trust the driver, but when you've, you know, you accepted that you've bought a ticket on the ride and you're on your imaginable. And just to bring it back quickly to succession, our old Granlin colleague, Mark Harris, tweeted something. I just thought he, like all of us,
Starting point is 00:34:57 have no idea how much stories Jesse Armstrong or CEO feel are in succession. I imagine everybody feels like we're in it for the long haul now. But he was saying that after last night, that felt so much like the end of the second act of a three-de-act play. I agree with, yes, that is incredibly astute. I don't know. And it's such a cool thought. I mean, you could have Succession season six where Shiv has been running Waystar Royko for several years, but I don't know that the version of this show
Starting point is 00:35:26 where everybody is trying to kick Logan off the top of the mountain is going to be much longer than another season. It's a cool idea. I mean, you know, I just said that, you know, that Succession might be an Emmy favorite it because it's somewhat old-fashioned in its presentation or at least familiar, nothing could be more exciting than if he was secretly kind of radical all along and was telling us a three-act Logan Roy's story and then did a time jump.
Starting point is 00:35:53 Well, for the sake of AT&T's bottom line, I hope they don't keep doing this show because it's costing them a billion dollars a year. Seriously, my hospital just went up while I was talking to you on it, but it was worth it. Andy, I'm going to let you go. We're going to go into the audio from me and Jason's after show was number one boys. Andy and I will be back on Thursday. Does that sound right to you? Boy, it sounds great to me. I would love to be in a room with you not pacing in a parking lot, which is my other office right now before I go back. Very El Camino of you. All right. Peek at episode six through the cracks in my finger. All right. I'll talk to you soon, man.
Starting point is 00:36:30 Great job, Branski's. Bye. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by LaCroix Sparkling Water. LaCroix Sparkling Water was developed to give health content. as consumers refreshment, flavor, and sparkle with an innocent twist of zero calories, zero sweeteners, and zero sodium. Enjoy LaCroy's sparkling water, a calorie, sweetener, and sodium innocent beverage with nothing artificial. LaCroix's flavors are derived from natural sources with natural fruit essences.
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Starting point is 00:38:59 Hello and welcome to number one boys, a Succession after show from the Ringer. This is Jason Concepcion. I am Chris Ryan. We are here to talk about the season two finale of Succession. Thank you for waiting for us. Let's get into our thoughts about the finale. Oh, my gosh. Because you had basically a kind of slapstick screwball hour on a boat. I'm on a boat. That ended with like Shakespeare power moves.
Starting point is 00:39:27 So, yeah, circular firing squad involving every member of the Roy family, plus the C-suite execs, all trying to insert knives into each other's, Yeah, they were sitting right there as they were going in. Hey, no big deal, but like I think this person is bad and probably should take, you know, like, totally emotions out of it, but like, what if we just threw this person? I love Kendall's caveats about like, you know, laboratory thinking, no emotions, you're dead. Yeah, right. I want to present like a working theory of what I think just happened. You're talking about the turn at the end when Kendall...
Starting point is 00:40:06 Yeah, but also just sort of like an umbrella theory, not even like a theory like what it means, but just, So much of this season has taken place in between episodes. We didn't get to see a lot of the plotting and scheming that we did in season one, for better or for worse. And I think that basically this is where we're at. And we'll see whether season three, which I think is a near certainty lock guarantee to come next year. But the theory basically is that Kendall and Shiv hatched some form of this plan in some way
Starting point is 00:40:34 at the end of Safe Room. If you guys remember in Safe Room at the end, that's where Shiv kind of confronts Kendall and it's like, why are you dad's basically blood boy right now? And Ken is like, I cannot tell you. And Shiv kind of presses him and is like, is it going to be you or are you going to be the next CEO? And remember he says that great line. It's not going to be me. It ain't going to be me.
Starting point is 00:40:56 It's alluded to this. And at the end of that, he's like, if you become the CEO, if you take over this business, please look out for me. Because I don't know what I am if I'm not this. We don't really touch on it. that much until the end of the return when they're flying back from London and Shiv calls Kendall while he's on the plane and Rea's on the plane with Logan and she says that we may have a problem and we may have to change our timing or something like that but there is an illusion to the idea that Kendall and Shiv have been
Starting point is 00:41:28 working together now all through this time to the family Kendall and Shiv still look like the same pair of vipers that they've always been kind of snipping each other's heels, insulting one another, blocking one another's progress. But I guess that the idea here is that they are going to spin Logan around like a top for a while and then right as it gets up against the shareholders meeting, set him up to push one of them out, probably Kendall. And Kendall will take the heat, but bring Logan down with him. Now, Kendall comes out, does the press conference says, my father was fully aware of the cover-ups and cruises. We have a lot. We have a lot of the cover-ups and cruises. have signed documents that Greg gave me. We have no idea when Greg and Kendall started
Starting point is 00:42:11 officially working together, whether it's on the plane or whether it's way before when Kendall's buying Greg apartments. But essentially, the next shooter drop is, does Shiv know about Kendall's, what Kendall did during her wedding night? When or if Logan will reveal that? And whether the grand design is Logan thinks that he's just taking down Kendall, but what he's doing is setting up Shiv. So when he brings down Kendall, Shiv steps in. I like it a lot. I have a few qualms just because I'm not sure how good an actor is, how good an actor is Ken. That's a great question. This is the only problem with not showing it to us, right?
Starting point is 00:42:53 Is all these like beaten dog acts moping around eyes welling up with tears, you know, Roman saying, are you okay, bro? Yeah. You know, like that, just looking traumatized all the time. Is that all put on? How much of that is a put on? I, just to devil's advocate. No, do it, yeah. There's all these kind of interstitial scenes throughout the series where, you know, post-safe room and in and around there, where you see Ken on a plane or wherever,
Starting point is 00:43:26 and he's just looking at documents. He's crushing documents all the time. Always in the film room. Greg saved like two printouts. Max. Absolutely. Absolutely. Of the, who knows, maybe 50?
Starting point is 00:43:41 That he randomly grabbed Wal-Tal was running for a lighter. Out of like 20 legal boxes of documents, he grabbed maybe 20, and of those 20 that then got burned, he saved maybe two. Is that all, so I feel like Ken must have more than that to go this route. And then my other thing is,
Starting point is 00:44:03 it really feels like Shiv is Shiv is taken aback at this because Ken kind of has hurt. You think that's a sincere reaction that she's having. I can be totally right. I don't know. I do like your theory. My devil's advocate working theory would be. Ken this whole time is thinking, my dad's going to kill me.
Starting point is 00:44:24 I don't want that to be the case, but I think he might. I think he will. But I love him, but I want to please him. But in case he does, I have to be ready to go in the new. And maybe even sincerely to balance the scales for what I did on Shiv's wedding night, I deserve. Right. On some level I deserve it, but just in case it happens, I'm going to gather all this material. And then when that's proved true, he is truly devastated by that because he didn't, while he expected it, he also is shocked that it actually happens. And when he goes nuclear, he knows that
Starting point is 00:44:55 he's likely costing his siblings, potentially costing his siblings their fortunes. And also, I mean, he has Shiv, he has Shiv dead to rights too in the sense that he could say, well, Shiv Roy claims to be, you know, this kind of like progressive forward-thinking person, pressure to witness into changing her, into not testifying before Congress. How does that look for her? I do think the shoot-a-drop is... What does Shiv know? What does Shiv know about what Kendall did?
Starting point is 00:45:25 Yeah, and I think that that is like the major question. And the fact that we're asking this question at all, the fact that we're in the dark about this stuff is different than where we were last season. For sure. Last season, everything was very much on the all above board. It was Kendall is making these moves against his father. We saw all his machinations. Then we saw his, you know, and he would, you know, pretty much against his will get dragged into certain things like bachelor parties or weddings,
Starting point is 00:45:52 even though he was ostracized from the family. And then he kind of slowly comes back. And then after killing a guy or being involved in a guy's death, he comes back soaking wet. Logan brings him in and knows that he has this. unbelievable blackmail over his son and can make him ultimately pay the ultimate price for it. But I do think that we are led to believe that lots of stuff is happening off screen. And we're going to talk about this throughout this episode of the Warm Boys, where you see characters make pretty significant changes in their behavior from episode to episode
Starting point is 00:46:27 without a ton of exposition about why that's happening. So we can kind of get into that stuff by getting into buy or sell. And Jason, what's your first buy this week? Taking the initiative. We talked about this a little last episode where, you know, the Roy's and people involved with them, Gregory, Carl, Frank, are in this situation, Jerry, where it's kind of like the first one who flips has the initiative. Yes. And you saw Ken do that. Ken realized he's about to be thrown overboard.
Starting point is 00:46:59 So he's going to be the one, he's going to be like Han Solo in the canteen. He's going to shoot first. And I think that that is, that's where you are right now. If you're not, if you were not, everybody on that yacht should have been thinking, okay, how do I go first and kill everybody in this room so it's not me that ends up being thrown? Yeah, there's a really interesting moment because obviously Logan does something very funny where he's like, well, it should be me and everybody says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Dad, no.
Starting point is 00:47:27 And then immediately, after they've gotten that kind of act of selflessness out of their systems, just just like cut, cut. cut, cut, cut. Now, in the taking the initiative part, what did you think of Shiv selling out Tom? I mean, it was absolutely... But was it theater? I think it was a kind of theater that revealed more than it attended to, honestly. You know, of course it was theater and she will say that to Tom. Oh, you know, like I had to say that to dad. You can't give him the thing. You can't tell him what you...
Starting point is 00:48:03 Characters have said this throughout this season. You can't tell him what you think. You have to tell him something else first. And then try and backdoor what you think in there. Yeah, that's what does Jerry say? It's a show trial. We're trying to get the entire Pollock Bureau on board for one person. So yeah, I think that she, I think that it was for show,
Starting point is 00:48:22 but it was also clearly for real. Now, my first buy is Super Yachts. This show never ceases to amaze. Teak on the deck. In coming up with different. contained isolating spaces for people to be stuck with one another. And there was also a little element of survivor going on with like Jamie Laird getting voted off the island there. That was an incredible moment where Roman just kind of like cuts Jamie's throat there.
Starting point is 00:48:50 Because Jamie's due to make a huge commission if that sale to the private wealth royal family of unknown country. Of Turkey, kind of. Yeah, like a little too on the nose there. Yeah. So I really love the setting on the yacht this week, not only because it was gorgeous and hilarious for rich people shit, but also like very like you can't get off. And if you have to get off,
Starting point is 00:49:12 it's like you want to go riding around finding the cove without the sea urch. What an amazing scam succession is running on everyone, on HBO, on the, like, let's go to Scotland for an unknown amount of time. If I'm like, let's go to a yacht in Greece and shoot. Any actor should be like, get me on a, every week I'm on. succession bit because that way I just get to go to the nicest places in the world and do like five scenes of improv. So that I'm buying yachts. Jason's buying taking the initiative. What are you selling? I'm selling circular firing squads. It's it was just a terrible it was a terrible look in that
Starting point is 00:49:50 lunch meeting with Logan where he's just like okay you know like let's just talk about it which one of you dies. That's the thing clearly though, This is what Logan likes. Think of bore on the floor. Think of, like, putting Roman in a dog cage. Think of the way he puts Tom up for a job that somebody already has, that's already held by a person. And Peach says he does this every four years.
Starting point is 00:50:15 He does it every four years. He likes to put people in a cage and have them fight to the death. Yes. And it's just a bad system. That's all. It's a bad system, but it might be the only road to his heart. Yeah. Because at the very end, the last shot of Logan,
Starting point is 00:50:31 is him smiling for finally making his actual success. Yeah, he, my son's a killer, finally. He might put Kendall in jail, Schiff might become the CEO, Roman could come from outside of nowhere, there might be a new character in a third season that we don't even know about who comes through. Stewie and Sandy could be back.
Starting point is 00:50:48 I don't even know, but he knows that in that moment, he made Kendall into the thing that Kendall could never live up to being. My selling, I'm selling certainty. Because that's something that this show kind of, I think that the thing that makes this show so dramatic is that there's nothing certain about any of these relationships, whether you're married, whether that's a father's son, a brother's sister, lifelong friends, whatever it is. You also don't even know who people are all the time.
Starting point is 00:51:13 Yeah, that's true. Because I think one of the things as Succession has expanded its purview and also followed different characters deeper, whereas last season it was mostly Kendall, I think. Yeah. Is we see this great kind of transformation of Roman into this incredibly shrewd, competent Yeah, operator. We see Kendall, is he using? Is he really, really using?
Starting point is 00:51:37 Or is he just socially using? Is Naomi good for him? Right. Is she bad for him? Seems like she's bad for him. It seems like at sometimes, but what was that whole thing with Logan being like, get her out of here?
Starting point is 00:51:49 Because I don't want you fucked up on drugs. But then when she leaves. Yeah, he's like, why does she? Yeah. Are we good? Yeah. That was like a strange moment. So there's a lot of like uncertainty
Starting point is 00:52:00 you with that kind of stuff. And I think that that really came out a lot in Tom and Schiff's marriage, which is, I understand Schiff being like, I've got this very politically expedient relationship, this, this like bread and butter, middle America, guy who's going to run the news division and I'm going to be this person. He's clearly inferior to me in every way. And also like almost achingly ambitious and needing to please people. And so I can control this relationship completely. So what did you think of the beach scene? The scene where Shiv and Tom are on the beach and she's reading conversations with
Starting point is 00:52:36 friends by Sally Rooney, which I get is very, very funny that she's doing that, but is like, is that very Shiv? It does, you know, I feel like it is very Shiv. A lot of this end of the season is kind of like Shiv being exposed as a kind of like B-level strategist and mastermind, you know, like a lot of her, ploys kind of being peeled back for what they are. And I think, you know, that really very uncomfortable conversation with Tom in their state room where he's like, you know, like, I kind of don't want to do a three-way. Such a funny scene.
Starting point is 00:53:14 He's like, maybe we could have sex and she could just lock herself in the back. I think it is really kind of like indicative of, of, of Shiv being exposed for kind of like, like being not really a great person. Counterpoint. Yeah. Not to disagree with you. I'm not disagree with you, but is she just exactly like Logan? Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:53:39 They all are. Is she just basically trying to torture Tom into doing what she wants? 100%. The one that I'm consistently surprised by in this episode is Roman, who now all of a sudden is like, not, I'm going to tell my dad the truth. I have an opinion. I'm confident in it. And I'm going to say it in front of this, in this room.
Starting point is 00:53:59 of total heavyweights. I'm going to stand up for Jerry. He's in love with her, but I'm going to stand up for Jerry and not let her get fired. I'm all of a sudden like, hey, can we all go to family therapy so we can talk like normal people? The growth of Roman is really, it's almost like, wait, where did this guy come from?
Starting point is 00:54:22 Yeah. I mean, I think that you were supposed to intuit that the experiences that he's had over the course of the season culminating in him being taken. in hostage. Sure, I almost thinking you're going to die is a life changer for sure. Hardened him and made him, he's grown a lot from the guy who blew up a satellite. Yeah, yeah. So that's a great look for him. So those are our buys and cells. For our number
Starting point is 00:54:42 one boy of the episode, I thought it was a Shiv season. I thought it, Shiv was going to be the defining character the season. I thought that they were doing the, each season's going to be about one of the kids. It seemed perfectly set up for Roman to be the kid next year. Yeah. But it goes back to Kendall. Kendall is the differentiator of this show. Literal mic drop. Unreal. Actual mic drop at the end of this episode. And totally thrilling.
Starting point is 00:55:04 You could kind of feel it coming, but when he says but and then lets it sit there. And then there's that like shot of Carolina getting worried and everybody getting worried. It's just like, oh, yeah. And we have a little bit of evidence that he can do that because of how good he is at the hearings. Yes.
Starting point is 00:55:23 Just when he just, you know, much like Carl says about Roman, you should put a gun to his head more. I think, you know, put a gun to Kendall's head and he's just ready to, he'll show you something that you didn't think he had in him. I thought that the, I thought that the actual setting in a press conference. Man, that's such a great, great setting for like
Starting point is 00:55:47 mic drop scenes like that. Like, you remember like American president where he walks in and he's just like, I'm here to apologize for nothing. You know, like, you should apologize. And it's a great bookend for this season, because it starts out, season, episode one starts out with like a very forced, with Kendall coming out of like his Norwegian or Icelandic rehab to kind of like do a news hit
Starting point is 00:56:09 to steady the shareholders that he is completely unready for, but manages to find the steel to like get it done. And it's also a great mirror scene of the season one charity ball scene where Logan, still shaky after whatever it is he's been going through, preempts Ken's speech in which he's going to announce, like, really take the reins of Waystar, and Logan instead makes a speech where he's like, I'm stronger than ever and I'm in control. So really interesting, like, mirror moments.
Starting point is 00:56:52 Let me ask you. So we get to, because we're going to get into biggest burden line in a week just a second. But so we get to the end of this and we're saying Kendall's the number one boy of the episode and I mean with that mic drop moment you could argue the season Yeah Does it track with you with the guy who does Elder the OG two weeks before or week before whatever? Does it track with you for the guy who almost takes off in a helicopter that he doesn't know how to fly with Naomi in in?
Starting point is 00:57:19 What is it Turnhaven? Yeah, you know Do you understand where he's been to where he's going this season? I think I do. And does it matter if you don't? I think I do, even though I'm sure that I precisely don't. I just think that, you know, like family dynamics like this are extremely complex. And it tracks to me that within that family dynamic that is like extremely unhealthy and toxic, you would act one way seeking to get some kind of like praise from a father figure while also working.
Starting point is 00:57:55 in a very dedicated fashion to his downfall. Like, it makes sense to me. You know, it's like, you know, Oedipus is a story that is like 5,000 years old. Like people, this is something that people write about and explore is these complex relationships. And ultimately, Logan got what he wanted. I mean, he turned actually two of his sons in the killers
Starting point is 00:58:12 because you see Roman just cut, layered out. You see Kendall go after Logan. And then when it's on the table for Shiv, she won't give up Tom. Yep. She says, don't do this to Tom for me. And Logan is like, okay, then that's that's that. Even if he was always planning on doing Kendall.
Starting point is 00:58:31 All right, let's get into the biggest burn of the week. I'm going to go with Stewie. Stewie, who only had like five at-dats, went five for five. It's amazing. Slugging percentage is incalculable. Here's his line as they're sitting over a gorgeous Greek lunch in packs. It looks beautiful. Dude, it doesn't matter.
Starting point is 00:58:49 It doesn't mean anything. You can threaten to stuff a million severed dicks into my ball bag, but the actual fact is we're persuading more and more shareholders every day that we offer them just a slightly better chance for them to make a little bit more money on their fucking dollar and that's all that is
Starting point is 00:59:07 and that is both a great summary of succession and capitalism. So nice job Stewie, great burn. Mine is Logan to Khan when Khan comes around asking for just a little bit of cash. Because he's just not liquid. He's just not liquid right now. He's got Osterlitz. He's got the campaign. The campaign is going great. The conheads are fired up.
Starting point is 00:59:30 He's spending half a million a week on this play. A week! On his girlfriend's play and Logan says, I heard you just 500K on a fake Napoleon dick. Great work. I mean, just hold on, the dick is fake? Yeah. Wait! You want to talk about like something that happened off screen? When did that reveal come down? Did we DNA test the dick? I would pay, like, just on like a subscription basis, like pay as you go, let me get this scene where Connor finds out it's fake.
Starting point is 01:00:06 The dick is fake! I would also do like a birdman of Willa's opening night. Just FYI. Let's go to Lion of the Week. That was Bird of the Week. Let's go to the Line of the Week. You go for it. Oh, I just, you know, Greg is very hesitant to take off his shoes because he's got a nail fungus problem.
Starting point is 01:00:23 and Ken and Naomi are teasing him and Ken says, Sails out, nails out, bro. Just an amazing, my second favorite line from Ken all season, my first being, are you like a poetess? You said awesome too much.
Starting point is 01:00:42 I really just, we got to acknowledge the Tom trying to sack up to Logan scene where Tom comes in and eats Logan's pheasant or whatever that, like small bird. was and Logan's just like what the fuck and then he says to ship he says he ate my fucking chicken what's next he sticks his dick in my potato salad i feel like potato salad would be beneath
Starting point is 01:01:04 Loganroy absolutely not eating potato salad okay no mayo from Logan roy let's get into finance 101 where Jason and I all year we've been giving you winners all year we've been dialing up blue chip stocks only only the highest a level cap stocks what did you see this week that you feel like our audience needs explained in terms of the world of finance. Well, when Roman and Laird and Carl laying out the sovereign wealth deal for Logan, Carl says, exit horizon about six years. So what an exit horizon is... It's a Sam Neal film.
Starting point is 01:01:37 Sam Neal film about heading towards a black hole in which Satan lives. Yeah. Is that correct? Yeah, and Sam Neal takes his eyes out, and Lawrence Fishburn's like, oh! So essentially, what are we talking? We're talking about then. We're talking about another plane of existence that's just filled with demons and the darkest kind of like satanic stuff that you want.
Starting point is 01:02:02 And you want to kind of hold that off for as long as possible. So you don't want to go there like if you two years too soon, six years maybe. What can happen in the Keynesian sense? Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. Let's get into Let them eat cake the crazy rich moment of the week. Stewie again.
Starting point is 01:02:19 Again and again, Stuie. The sniffing lavender as the palate cleanser after a beautiful Greek cheese plate. That's a god move. I had not seen that before. I didn't even... I've been to a lot of cheese shops in my life. It's a longer story that I want to get into right now. I've never done the lavender thing.
Starting point is 01:02:40 And now I'm wondering, have I been going to the wrong cheese places? Yeah. Have I been missing out on the Paxos, like, Taverna lunch experience that I have to be a billionaire corporate raider to experience. Also like the sort of striped shirt. Amazing shit. What an amazing thing. It's kind of like, you know the first time you eat at like a really nice restaurant or have like a go to a really like a wealthy person's home and eat dinner or whatever and there's like there's like 50 different utensils and you don't know what they are. Yeah. I feel like that lavender move I didn't even know that was possible. That was like a that was like Bob Beeman doing the long jump. I didn't
Starting point is 01:03:18 That was like the two-hour marathon. I didn't know that you could do that. I didn't know that that was like, you know, Eddie Van Halen finger-tapping or something. Or, you know, like, man walking on the moon. You can sniff the lavender? That's a move. I didn't even, like, that's what it's for. Is there lavender on every, like, restaurant table?
Starting point is 01:03:38 And I don't even notice and only, like, incredibly rich people know. You're supposed to cleanse your palate by doing that? Have I been doing my garnish wrong? Oh, what's your, what's your lette-mee cake moment? Asking your dad for just, yeah, I'm not liquid right now, but if I can just get like a little $100 million to just hide me over while, because my escort girlfriend's Broadway play is tanking. Also, the sand is giving people parasites.
Starting point is 01:04:07 And also I bought a fake, holy dick from 500. How much money at any given point does Logan have to just CTC? It's, 100 million is, can you just give a person? He's also talking 50 million to Caroline, to Lady Caroline for the, for the expense of her shareholder vote. Presumably he's spending a ton of money covering things up at any given moment. And also, and also is like every single, like, is he underwriting the travel for everybody who's like going all over the world? So every single person gets pretty much a new yacht appropriate wardrobe. Yes.
Starting point is 01:04:51 Transportation in Mercedes Benz's private plane, private cars to a private yacht with a private staff who are also down to be part of threesomes. Right. Constant food and drink all the time. I mean, we're talking about how many millions of dollars did just that weekend cost? To say nothing of Turnhaven or a jesties. Well, I wish the rosé would have been better. The rosé was okay. It's just a preference.
Starting point is 01:05:14 It's just a preference. Right. Yeah, it's just a preference. You can't help but notice. Let's talk a little bit about predictions for season three. Obviously there's going to be a season three. I don't think they've announced it yet, but it's a given. This is a very successful show for HBO, partially, because it makes people talk.
Starting point is 01:05:30 And so what are we going to be talking about next season? I think that the battle lines are being drawn if Shiv reveals that she is in cahoots with Kendall, that the Shiv Kendall versus Logan and Roman thing is there. What do you think? I have two thoughts. I think there's going to be a battle on two fronts, as you noted. I think it's Ken not only fighting with his dad for control of company, but fighting the court case that will come out after it is revealed
Starting point is 01:06:00 that he was involved in the death of the waiter from Shiv's wedding. And then I think, broadly speaking, I think that I think that, I think Succession is going to win a lot of. of Emmys next season. It feels like, I feel like this was like, first season was like, oh, what a surprise. Second season is like, oh, they can really do this. And then third season is like, okay, reap the rewards. We're now in the Mad Men, where soprano is kind of like crown this show place. I guess like, I wonder whether or not, if you have to just guess, would you say that the show would be more effective if season three starts the day after the
Starting point is 01:06:36 press conference or like six months after the press conference? I think six months after. I think it's going to be, it's going to be the war is on when you come back to it. It's like, oh, okay. And like we've kind of like a lot has transpired in between. All right. We're going to wrap it up there. Thank you so much for watching number one boys this week. Thanks to our crew, Moes, Ronick, Sean, and everybody for watching.
Starting point is 01:06:56 For Jason, I am Chris. We'll be back next season. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by LaCroix. LaCroi's sparkling water was developed to give health-conscious consumers refreshment, flavor, and sparkle with zero calories, zero sweeteners. and zero sodium. Flavors include hibiscus,
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