The Watch - Unpacking the Big Reveal in ‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 3

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Chris and Andy talk about the major reveal in this week’s episode of ‘Succession.’ They discuss how writer Jesse Armstrong and director Mark Mylod handled Logan Roy’s death (1:00), the performances give by Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, and Sarah Snook (22:29), and where the show will go from here now that it has lost one of its central characters (36:03). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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How are you? I'm doing okay, man. I think it's really important that people know that we ordinarily have our succession podcasts up as soon as the episode is over. But we needed about 12 to 20 hours to process that post-credit scene. And seeing Logan in the quantum verse, I think, was the realization. for me of a lot of things that I've been dreaming about since I was a child. The thing is

you said Logan's singular. Logan's plural. That's right, because now he's the new conqueror, I guess. Barrow Logan was especially disturbing. Greenwald, we're here to talk about succession episode three. Probably the most low-key funniest thing about this thing. Maybe the only funny thing is they just called this episode

Connor's wedding. It was such a flex. So, Connor's wedding written by Jesse Armstrong directed by Mark Milod. So the big batting three and four in the succession lineup creatively. And an episode that everybody I think who watches this show expected to eventually happen, but didn't necessarily know it was going to happen three episodes into the final season. Ordinarily, we have like all these little, you know, we have plot recaps and we have questions and we have, you know, what happens next and ramifications and favorite lines.

And we'll probably get to some version of all of that. but when you see such an iconic character pass away so suddenly and in some ways completely off-screen, it's just such a brave creative step for this show, and what I think it really needed to take? What did you think of the episode and the decision? If you had told me on Friday that I would spend the weekend being traumatized at the sight of siblings in distress, I would have said, yes, I am taking my children to the Super Mario Brothers movie. Were the Mario Brothers in distress or was it your kids? Well, yeah.

I mean, there's Coupas. I mean, there's the whole Kong army, yeah. Thank you for contributing to Nintendo's weekend. I think that's really good of you. I'm a big believer in the Illumination Animation Studios, and they deserve my dollars. I think that you're right to say we knew that this type of episode and this type of plot twist was coming.

I think that it does Jesse Armstrong and the entire creative team an enormous disservice to say anything other than the fact that, yes, all caveats aside, they are not coal miners, but this was wildly brave. It is consistent with a creative team that announced going into the fourth season of a show that could easily have run seven to ten that they would be finishing. You and I have been saying for weeks, if not a little bit, until last season, that it seemed diminishing returns to continue playing the same sort of cat and mouse and mouse and cat games between the kids and the father. But most importantly, the show told us, right, the title of Succession. Someone is going to have to succeed Logan Roy. The show began with Logan in medical distress. The show continued to run with that theme throughout in big. in small ways. And this season began with an incredibly McBain-like speech in a diner.

So this was coming. But I don't know if there is precedent for a show saying, we're going to do this thing that everyone inevitably knows is coming, that will in some ways rob the audience and the creative team of something hugely important, which is to say Brian Cox as an actor. The foil for the whole show. you rarely look at a solar system and say, you know what, this could use less of the sun. But I think that the shows and the creative teams just intense appetite for drama

and for possibility and for conflict demanded that they do this. And it's breathtaking. I mean, we will talk about the specifics of the episode, how it played out, I think what it means for the series. And I look forward to doing that. But just purely from a, let's look at the game board it is absolutely thrilling

that they completely scrambled everything with seven episodes to go. It is a completely different show now. In some ways, the show it has always been, but everyone's relationships have now changed. Yeah, most of, I mean, for as much as these characters have become almost like creepily, like, you know, fan favorites, not creepily fan favorites,

but like the way that they have been sort of just assimilated into social media and into like our kind of common every day like oh like that's something that Roman would say or something like that now that they have like you said there's no son but there's also dramatically like nothing for them to be in opposition of except for one another yeah you know this isn't going to be a show about kendall and shiv and Roman opposing frank and Jerry and Carl you know this is going to be a show about the giant hole at the center of this family and what happens next. And you mentioned the first episode,

and you mentioned the beginning of the show. This episode, Conner's Wedding, had a lot of echoes of the first episode, sometimes down to just little dramatic beats. Like, in the first episode of this series, Logan is firing a different person, pretty much in the same role of what Jerry was doing. He's firing Frank.

There is a kind of distance between him and the kids, the same way there is now. They're not necessarily, fully estranged, but there's all that sort of horse trading about Tom stepping up into Jerry's role and, you know, Shiv is going to go do something else. And then at the very end, he's like, so I need you guys to just sign off on this. And the kids say no. And that's what brings on his brain hemorrhage. In this episode, he's firing Jerry. There is an event that they're supposed to be all attending, although Logan doesn't seem like he's maybe going to really turn that plane

around and hop by Connor's wedding. And Roman says, leaves this voicemail message, which I don't think had anything to do with... I don't even think Logan heard it, but he's going to have... Does anyone listen to voicemails? Seriously. But I thought that was really interesting. And, you know, Scott Tobias had this line in his vulture recap

that grabbed me where he was talking about the way the kids talked in this episode and how it kind of called back to the early part of the series where it seemed like they were still sort of feeling around for how the dialogue was going to work in this show and everybody was sort of, fuckety fuck, fucking fuck, fuck, you know? And like, it didn't really seem like it had the like,

this is like your takeout line from this show. It was more like, I don't know how to actually communicate, so I'm going to use the word fuck as punctuation marks throughout my, and ellipsies and hyphens. Did you notice that too? Yes, I think that's an interesting observation. I observed something with the language too. I didn't read the recap,

so I can't speak to what Scott Tobias wrote. But my feeling about the beginning of this episode was that it was absolutely manic and unhinged. Part of that may have been the increased adrenaline because there was a sense. And I think for the inside baseball fans here, we should talk about behind the scenes of what we were expecting,

what happened with screeners and all of that and how that affected may or did. It's definitely why people are tuned in there. That's the end of the podcast. Did affect or didn't affect our watch. So maybe I was a little tuned up as well. But I thought that the first thing, 10 minutes seemed completely unhinged from, it's on an emotional level, on a tempo level.

And in retrospect, what I feel like was Jesse Armstrong and his creative team making what we were perceiving as a bug into a feature, which is they've run out of language. They had reached the end of this road. That's really interesting. They were not clever anymore. They were not poetic in their swearing. Right. Roman is so disturbed, and we will say this again throughout this podcast,

Kieran Culkin, this is his Hall of Fame tape, as far as I'm concerned, this episode. He is absolutely himself in a manic state, in a dangerous state with his emotions, which he has no communication with and no regulation of. And so he just is blathering fuck. He's just using the word as if he's had some sort of aphasia and can't communicate in any other way. there was nothing quotable in the first 10 minutes, you know? And even if, and I was not expecting what happened to happen that early, I thought that there would be a comedy of errors at Conner's wedding.

And then, you know, then something shows up in the punch bowl. That's not the way it played out. It's not the way it plays out. So, yeah. So I think that what I mean by the turning the bug into a feature is that they were done. They had run out of road with this relationship. and what's at the end of it. You said before that there was a,

when you take Logan out, there's a giant hole in the series. What was so striking and discomforting for me about this episode was what his absence revealed was the giant hole that these characters carry inside of them. Yeah. That for three seasons and change, they were still hoping that some aspect of their father,

whether it is his pride, his love, or his anger, which is the flip side of his love, would fill it. and all of a sudden in different ways, very different ways, and I assume that will continue, the realization and processing of that unfillable void is going to consume them. You know, the way that the actual, so I mean, I'll just,

there's not really much of a recap to do here, but I'll do it just to say that shortly after taking off from New York City, Logan, who's accompanied by Carl Frank, Tom, and Carolina, and Kerry, is, and he's on his way to sweet, to see Mattson has what seems like a heart attack that we do not see. It happens off camera. Tom, who's acting as messenger. And I noticed when I rewatch the episode last night, he tries calling Shiv multiple times. She declines his call three times. And he finally gets through to Kendall

and Roman and tells them that his father's heart has stopped while they are disembarking from the pier in the city for Conner's wedding at Ellis Island. And he's, you know, he says he's not breathing. They're doing chest compressions. There seems to be this confusion as to whether or not he can he's there or he's breathing at all or he's not breathing and now his heart is stopped and they're doing but they have to do these chest compressions probably as a kind of while you're up in the air they have to try to keep him alive for as long as possible no matter what's happening and they get this incredible scene where Roman and Kendall kind of playing hot potato with the phone get to say their goodbyes to their father and you know we talk about the like unwritten quality of

this episode, the way it doesn't feel like here's the speech, here's the great line. That whole scene, you're waiting for somebody to become like Hamlet and talk to the ghost. And they're just like, fuck. Also, I don't forgive you, but you were a good dad, I guess. Roman didn't say I love you. And, you know, they finally get Shiv. She goes through the same experience that they did. She's talking to them.

This whole time, they're trying to get information from the variety of things. people on the plane who all are dancing around just saying your father has died. I think, I mean, I don't want to derail. My incredible recap. Your recap. Yeah. Which included just the flex that you watched twice. I mean, by the way.

Well, I went back and watched a couple of things because a couple of things I was confused by the first run through. Yeah. But what were we going to say? I mean, some of us are like Jay-Z, you know what I mean? We just go in the booth. One take-home. Yeah.

But that's cool. We all have different styles. I really... So my recap is done. No, no. We'll come back. And Tom felt sad, I think. And then also, luckily, I think there's not that much more in terms of like the...

Yeah, it doesn't... I was just going to mention that when Roman was refusing to accept reality for that brief moment, I was like, are we going to get a fucking Undertaker moment? Like, is this guy coming off the plane? Oh. When he was like, we don't know that he's dead. I was like, dog. If Logan comes off this plane

in anything other than a body-back. So this is what I wanted to talk about. There were a couple pieces that I saw this week being like, well, here's the thing about succession that people, I mean, there's going to be more of this. We sometimes even frame conversations this way. You think it's this, but it's that. And there was a piece being like, you know,

it is lauded as an American drama, but really it's a British comedy. And here's why, and here's the lineage, and here's the way that it treats emotion or language or whatever. I do think that one of the most subversive things about the show is that it is essentially a, it is now a, Mount Rushmore American prestige television drama that is written by this sort of bookish intellectual British comedian slash socialist, right? And he's never going to play by the rules that we think these things

ought to operate on. But we are watching it through the same lens that we've watched. Do you and I can be comedian slash socialists? I think, I think we can each be one. And I won't say which, but together that's what makes our podcast magic. We're watching it through the same lens that we've watched the last 15 years of these prestige dramas. And so what was, one of the things that was really getting my heart racing last night was realizing what we're being given versus what my heart and brain and body was expecting. Yeah. And what I mean by that is, Logan didn't have any kind of farewell speech. This was not an episode of parenthood. He did not say the thing that needed to be said or the thing that didn't need to be said. He was an

asshole and he got on a plane and he didn't get off of it. And the last thing he said to all his kids was you are not serious people. Yes. He did say I love you. He did. He did have his last comment in the last episode and you kind of felt like that in retrospect. But in terms of episodic television, it was not built to be the end of a major character. That also just historically happens at the end of an episode. It certainly does not happen off screen. And to play it that way was so radical, honestly, and reminding us that this show is not going to play by the rules that we expect on any level, including especially sentimentality. So what we receive instead was chaos. So you know what that made me think of is obviously the reason why Succession is probably a sensation to some extent is because the set dressing and the accoutrement of the show, like private jets and private shoppers and.

I guess cruises to Staten Island and all the things Just boats. That comes with the lifestyles of the rich and famous. That's the fantasy part of the show. And I think that if it didn't have that, it would be missing a huge thing. But the reason why I think the show resonates with people is because without knowing anything about Jesse Armstrong's life

or any of the writers in the show, that moment was pulled from something. I have the same thought. you don't get to hear a parent give you a final speech. Yes. You get a weird phone call and you spend the first five minutes being like, what the fuck are you talking about? And then...

And anybody who's ever had that phone call knows exactly how that feels. And nine times out of ten, it's not your father would like you to come to the hospital so that he can give you a beautiful sepiatone speech before he passes away and you now have complete closure on all the things in your life. and also, like, you find out that the things that you thought were in your hands are in somebody else's hands because they just happen to be next to a parent or something like that. So it's stuff like that that I think that makes this show kind of in a rare error that only belongs to like 10 or 11 other shows in the last decade or so, you know, where it's like you're using, it's the same thing we're bringing bad.

Nobody, most of the people watching that show don't deal meth or understand chemistry or, you know, are ever going to meet anybody like Gus or Mike or Jesse. But the emotional beats of the show are real. Yes, but I would say that this is even more significant. Because I completely had the same thought. I would say I took the same note, but we all know that's not true. Someone, if not more than one person in that writer's room, they talked about what it's like to get that phone call.

They've had this. They've had this happen to them. And most of us will have this happen to us. And I know you and I is like only children with aging parents. Like every time my phone rings. This isn't a great part of me. I assume it's that phone call. Constantly, you live with that shadow.

And I think in terms of a show in its final season, revealing what it is and what it was doing, this was so significant because you could believe you were watching a different show. You could believe that this was a series in which the dominoes were being set up over a period of three plus years for a very dramatic boardroom

coup, you know, or something really satisfying as an audience member to see a plan come together, to have one of the kids pull off what Logan did, mostly off-screen at the end of season three, right? That's not true. That's not what the show is. I feel like everyone is waking up this morning to realizing that. Everything the show did for three-plus seasons was to set up

the dominoes for the episode we watched last night, which was to take characters who exist in a carefully curated emotional and financial world where everything is controllable. I need this boat to go back to shore now. And Hugo's like, yeah, okay, I'll take care of that and also get you in Advil. There's always someone to fix the things for you, realizing that they too live in a world not only that has dive bars and karaoke bars, but has sudden, meaningless catastrophic loss that you were not prepared for. And the first time, and there was more than one time in this episode that really got me. the first time that really, really, really threw me

was when Kendall is on the phone with Frank and, you know, he wants to talk to the pilot. He's saying, you know, and with Jess, and maybe it's with Jess before the Frank phone call. And he's like, I want the world's best this and the world's best that waiting on the tarmac. And he's like, I think he says it to Frank, though. I think he says, I want everything done the best.

I want everything done right. Right. You know, and again, this is why you cast the show the way you cast a Peter Friedman, an incredible veteran New York stage actor and performer who was just in the background of the show. But we remember that he kind of did have a better father-son relationship with Kendall than Logan did.

And in that moment, when he's just saying, I'm not going to lie to you, son, basically. And he hears Kendall be like, do everything perfect, you know, and we see Peter Frieden's face. They're not even sharing a screen. They're in different rooms. That was so futile. And it was so devastating.

And it's a testament to the writing and the construction of the show that Kendall, who is a punching bag and a clown and an asshole, is also capable of demonstrating this just, of generating this empathy, because this is something that's going to happen to everybody, and nobody's prepared. Nobody's rich enough to inoculate themselves

from something like this. So in the after show that they do, they have like a making of episode after succession. Who hosts that? Did we not get the interesting? They were talking. about how they essentially shot the sort of first 30 minutes of this episode with the kids, the siblings, as more or less one take, you know, like a long one take, even though it was cut,

obviously going back and forth between the play. And that it was essentially as like a one-act play that went on for 30 minutes in my life. It was like switching out reels because they shoot on film because it's succession. It's the best. But that there's obviously inherent in that production. production style or in that way of doing it. It's like you're sustaining... They shoot on film.

I'm sorry, I just need to take a second. Go on. It's crazy. You're able to... By doing that kind of production style, you're able to sustain a certain mood and it feels like chaos. The thing I thought was amazing about this episode,

among other things, was there's the emotional and dramatic chaos of what's happening, and then exactly what you're saying about Frank. is that Armstrong never loses track of where he is in the pitch count or where he's in the count against the batter where he's like, Frank's going to be talking to Kendall. Jerry will be in this room

and then Roman's going to walk in and look for comfort from his lover mother and she will deny him, right? Like the only person at the end of this episode who has anything vaguely approaching a TV moment is Connor. Yep. Who has actual emotional candor with this person that he has largely had a transactional relationship with. You know, like the little things that he makes sure

run through the episode or run through the series or call back or feel emotionally consistent and dramatically consistent. And then even just like the kind of gestures he makes to, it's not even if it's going to feel fucked up because he's in the air and the kids are on the, it's like everybody's floating. Logan is stuck in this limbo in the air

and the kids are all stuck at sea. I mean, it's mythological that way he pulls this off. And he put them in rooms. They were just in rooms and they had no one but each other and you could feel the cameras running in an astonishing way.

In a loud, cranking way because it's on film. Yes, it's a hand. It's a daguerre type they filmed it on and they have to expose each shot for hours. That it created space, and again, this is what you get from multiple years of a serialized television show

for the cast and the ensemble to sing in harmony and to see relationships in miniature like before going out to meet the press when Kendall and Roman are like, you're fucked up, you're even more fucked up, like you are always yourself, no matter what. But that for each of these performers and in turn each of the characters

to have individualized idiosyncratic moments and responses and reactions was really stunning because you were saying Chavon comes in and has a similar reaction. And she does in broad strokes to someone who is emotionally choked off realizing the impossible thing. The recap that I did. Oh, did you? Yeah, I was referring to it because that's the only recap I read. You're my guy.

Scott Tobias could never. But then moments later, cracks appear as they naturally will, right? She said, why didn't you come get me sooner? But then she's also like, she's suddenly, in moments of, like, that. In moments of emotional trauma or chaos or tumult, you shift, shifting sands. You're, you know, where you're stand, in a certain moment, it might feel good to do what Shiv does, which is be like, matter of fact, telling Roman that he's delusional, that he's clearly dead, and so we have to move on. And then in the next moment, when we see her, she's individually

folding Kleenex on her lap, which is an actorly choice, but a one that is inspired and kind of moving because people do things with their hands, with things they find in their pocket. They try to put order into chaos in that way. And that's living in its present in that moment. And other little human things like there's a moment when they're recapping what just happened. You know, you're a recapper yourself, I know. No, but it was like, what was it like when you told her? Yeah, and she was like, I thought it was mom. I wish it was. Yeah. What? And they're sort of laughing at thinking. This is instant.

nostalgia for something for a moment when it wasn't as bad as it is at this moment because it's only going to get worse for them. We should talk about the counterpart because there was a But isn't that like the way life works? Like if you have a terrible day, let's say you're out with your significant other and you guys have like, I remember like often like if I've ever been on vacation with my wife and like it's been a bad vacation day, the way to salvage it is at dinner that night is to kind of start telling stories about that day. And I was like, you mean when we were screaming at each other and like a Volkswagen, like that was, that was fun, you know, but like you can, you can kind of smooth it over by making it a story. Yeah, you look, we're all passionate about

storytelling in this town, you know, but, but that's, that's exactly right. You try to impose everything about these people's lives and frankly everyone's life is about trying to impose order on disorder and to try to put meaning onto chaos and control onto absolute fucking mayhem. And so telling the story of it was a potentially futile attempt to just get the reins back. You know, by retreating back to business, as Kendall does, is the other way to do it. You know, again, they are practicing what they themselves preach in the previous episode. They're like, you know, this isn't a, this isn't personal debt. So now they are taking refuge in it being business again. She says the same thing to him on the, on the helicopter in the first episode of the series.

Right. Yeah. I mean, they, they can say, that all they want. And, you know, again, the genius of the show is that's always been hollow. Yeah, there's no distinction between business and personal. And it's not aspirational. It's not like it would be better if it was. The emergence in the last two episodes of Connor as the only sensible one in a way because of his distance. Because, again, like, sometimes, Chris, you know, I've recently traveled abroad. You know, I don't know if I mentioned it on social media at all. But But I this is trust me on this I'm gonna do this

I'm gonna trust trust me on this I did read this book on the difference between Eastern and Western aesthetics written Was that fucking 30s by Delta? On Delta? It was on a bullet train You know it's very fast train they have there I think Uncle Joe Biden wants to do a similar thing

But it was basically about how Like Japanese houses are built to accentuate space And American houses are built to like cover up the space And are you are you enjoying this? Well you know what it's isn't it funny how all those books are like never mind. All those books about aesthetics written in the 1930s

that we like to reference on this podcast when after a major episode of television. Look, frankly, it doesn't matter. But they didn't get Connor. I was going to say

the thing about this episode is they didn't go get Connor and say like do you want to... There are no jokes, really. There are a couple of incredible lines like the Reagan ones, but there are no jokes.

But one of the things that is like Tenazaki's book on aesthetics is that it's funny in like not ha ha funny but it's funny while you're watching Connor I sorry Kendall and Roman and Shiv freak out and talk into their dead father's ear part of the viewer is like Connor's his kid too like we provide the joke right but anyway but his distance might ultimately be what saves him because as he said at the end of the last episode not true by the way no one ever says the truth on this show

that if you learn if you don't have love you learn to live without it it actually just means maybe he's thought about what it feels like to live without love and what he's willing to accept. Not in a transactional way like business. No, I think they, I mean, it's silly to speculate about a fictional character, but like in some ways, but like I think that Connor is very perceptive in some ways and completely obtuse in some ways. Yeah, but in some emotional ways, he's,

maybe it's like a rough-hewn, you know, handmade kind of logic, but it makes sense. and if you just take his language, it was remarkably, he seemed to be on the fast track towards where he's going. He was being honest to his siblings. He was being honest to his...

Not just last episode, though. He gets the information, and he says, he never liked me. Immediately he knows the truth. And then he says, you know, one of the next things he says is, my dad is dead and I feel old. Yeah.

And then when he says to Willa, like he wants to get married because he's afraid she'll walk away. And it's like for all of this guy's major, major flaws, including what I would argue as a former English major as a dramatic misread of Charles Dickens, he, he, he, everything he says on those on that track is true. Do you want to plug your good reads account just so if everybody wants to see your, it's been dormant for a while. Books on aesthetics and thanks, but I did take a great course in Victorian literature. I remember that. Yeah.

Really blew my mind in the 90s. I remember, I like the promise ring. You'd be like, I like William Thacker. It's incredible. There was a couple other things I wanted to just kind of bounce off of you. I talked about the limbo and the sort of in-betweenness of this episode. We've got characters in the air, characters at sea. Did you notice that they were both appropriately dressed for a wedding and a funeral?

Yes. Yeah, she was wearing black. Yeah. I thought that was... What doesn't romance say at the beginning? Like, you know, I'm excited about the death of romance. Yeah. That's what I'm here for. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something?

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because I think that you mentioned Roman and Kieran Culkin's Emmy tape and this being a very amazing Roman episode. You talked about the actorly sort of gesture that Sarah Snook is sort of folding these tissues.

I thought Roman constantly getting into cross-legged sitting positions and like sitting on the floor and like when he's in a chair immediately he was almost regressing to childhood. He was always, and he is obviously like a stunted person anyway in terms of emotional growth. But I thought it was really interesting that he was the kid, you know, and in some ways, a lot of the emotional currents of the episode ran through him.

He was the one worried about betrayal. He was the one who was doing the betraying, you know, going into this. And then he's the one who was worried about whether or not he had killed his father, you know. And he's the only one that went to see him. Yeah, and he's the only one who went to go see him. Two episodes in a row, the only one that goes to see him. And I thought Sarah Stunk was amazing. You go into this and you're just like, Jeremy Strong's going to put up 35 and 18.

You know, like this is going to be. And it was that, but not the kind of performance that we're used to. It was an incredible performance by him in this episode. We may end up saying this every week. Like, he may be annoying at craft services. I don't care. This is a pantheon performance of a character because what he has been doing this season,

and particularly in this episode, is demonstrate that he is so profoundly attuned with the inner emotional life of a made-up person that he can 100% be him in radically different scenarios without really doing anything. And, you know, to use the sports analogy, you hear about sometimes great athletes being like, actually, when the crowd is the loudest, that's when it gets the quietest. Or that's when the game feels smaller, the basket feels big, you know.

Kendall is used to chaos, right? Like he actually seeks it out. He has addictive behavior. He was calm in this episode. He was professional, dare I say. he was competent. He showed charisma and leadership qualities that he has always professed to have,

but Ness hasn't necessarily demonstrated. Yeah. You know, what was most striking about that was we haven't seen that in a while. We saw birth order suddenly matter again. Sorry, Khan. But like, the other siblings did look to him, you know, and did cling to him in a way.

And the last shot of the episode, though, was so remarkable, not just because of the iceberg theory of acting where it's all under the surface, but we see it. We had the sense that it was there in just the way he was playing it. And again, a testament both to Mark Milat as a director and also, I guess, the deep reservoirs of film still available at the Kodak Corporation, because I don't know how long they let it roll on his face. That's right. But that shot, if I remember it correctly, is Jeremy Strong's face, giving us everything for the end of the episode. Who knows if this is one of those things where there was a line of dialogue or something that was written and you just cut it because you don't need

it. But the other thing that was visible, I believe, was the moon. Yes. And, you know, as we all know as lovers of the cosmos, the moon really only exists because it's in the orbit of the Earth. The moon is secondary. The moon is just hanging out because something bigger is there and it got drawn in by that thing. Right. If you do believe that that's what that is, because Stanley Kubrick did fake the moon landing. It's a great point. We've never been there. And should we go, maybe we'll find a different story.

Just saying, flags waving? Not so sure. But they, those are two satellites. That's an amazing point. I don't say that enough to you. Thanks. Oh, it's a really good point. That's the last image that we have.

And it was such a beautiful and subtle and artistic statement as to what we have in store for the next seven episodes. Does she experience stuff about Succession gets thrown around? a lot. There's obvious leer elements to it because of the division of a kingdom and inheritance. I think that you could watch this episode and Roman kind of going to his dead father.

Roman obviously having this wild emotional connection to this figure in a bag being brought off a plane, the only one who goes to see him. And this is like Roman's Hamlet episode. Jeremy Strong has talked in the lead up to this season

about Kendall being Richard the 3rd and this idea that he has to destroy himself so much that when he finally gets what he wants he's not even a real person anymore. So it'll be... I doubt that Jesse Armstrong has got the character beats of Shakespeare characters

up on his whiteboard when he's thinking about this show. I think all British writers do. But maybe it's just ingrained into his brain as like the way things work. So, I don't know, maybe this is the big question. It's like, who is this show about now? And it can be an ensemble. But when you think about the sort of like central dramas of the time that we've been podcasting,

ultimately, there is a person that the show is about even if it's an ensemble piece, right? Do you think about like, this show is going to end? Who's going to be in that last shot? You want my prediction? Not, but it's not about who wins succession. This is what I mean. My prediction is this show is about the existential hollowness of capitalism. Like, sorry.

Sorry, Sunday night binge watchers. That's what the show is about. And I really feel like, you know, I saw some headlines like you get my Hollywood reporter email. And I know you read it over a plate of slice melon after your laps in your pool. But, you know, we're all at different stations of life right now. And it was like, the end game begins on Succession. I'm like, yeah, motherfuckers. Like, you thought this was billions?

No. It's not. It's about broken people, I think, grappling with the fact that they're broken and that maybe even the chalice or crown that they're reaching for is tarnished. And that is heady. That is exciting. We said at the beginning that there was bravery in the storytelling. You can't, they're not Trojan horsing it. You know what I mean? So much of what we want from art these days. and from filmed entertainment and what we've always wanted from the great novels that we love or the great films of the past.

Mr. Dickens, you know, my favorite, Thackeray, you know, a minor figure really, but is making, you know, very profound, maybe unsettling statements about the way we live or the way we live now, which was Trollope, you know, but you know what I mean. But when we talk about it in 2023,

we're really sifting in the dust because we're like, oh, you know, they managed to Trojan horse a little skepticism of globalized government into Captain fucking America. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, or that apparently like the Barbie movie is going to really have some thoughts about feminism. And it's just like, and also from visual evidence and Greta Gerwig's career. But that's cool.

But you know what I mean? But we're like, oh, thank goodness. Oh, you finally got that takeoff. I can tell it was really bothering you. I've got weeks to do this. It's not out until the summer. What the fuck? Anyway, but my point being, like, we're so desperate for this stuff.

We're like, well, we're going to Trojan horse it into something larger. And I would have been okay because this show is such a fun, entertaining, sumptuous feast. Yeah. If Logan had died in episode nine of the final season and the emotional wreckage sifting was given... Jesse was talking about some space. He was like, there's a version of this word. in nine, the funerals in 10, that's the show is over. And we would have been like, okay, well,

it really did have some interesting things to say in there, but boy, they were really on the way to the races to wrap things up. So we got what we you know, as my children learned in nursery school, you get what you get and you don't get upset. This is not doing that. There's an opportunity here for him and his team

to be like, no, this is what we were always saying. He also gets to have his cake and eat it too, because now he gets to go back to making succession, quote unquote. Do you know what I mean? Like, he gets to go back to making Sunday night binge watch TV for three or four weeks because he's going to have this gojo deal. And, you know, one of the things, you talk about the empty hollowness of capitalism, those kids, their value literally depreciates the second their dad dies. The second he dies, that shot was incredible. People start treating

them differently, though. Yes, and they know it. Yeah. And they can tell, like, Jerry was not kissing the ring when, you know, obviously she had already been fired by Roman earlier in the episode. But when he's like, oh, I'm really feeling sad, she's just like, great, I got to go. You know, Hugo has a slightly different edge to the way he's moving through the space. There's a lot of phone calls between Carl, Frank, Hugo, Carolina happening without the kids' knowledge, without the kids say so, without the kids' input. And there's a lot of eye rolling that we haven't seen before. I would imagine that Hugo, Carolina, Frank, Carl's faces are permanently creased and their eyes are fucked up from rolling so much. But we don't see that.

Now we see it more. But the value, I mean, we talk about their dramatic relationship to Logan. but within the reality of this show, their value as people is now depreciated because of Logan's death. And that played specifically with Tom, and I think that we should do this every week, but Matthew McFadgin is unbelievable.

And it's unbelievable to have a world-class actor in a part that sometimes isn't even tertiary. Sometimes it's the fourth, fifth string. His, what this episode asked of him was really astonishing because he had to be the grown-up for the people around him, and he was sober and he was emotionally involved. I also don't really think Brian Cox is in on that plane.

So Matthew McFadion is essentially acting like this body double. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Yeah. I think he was doing carpal karaoke at that point. And we should talk about Cox's recent media tour and how it now makes a lot more sense. But when he is trying to articulate his feelings and he's like, I'm sad, which is a word that I feel like these humans have never used before, but he is also realizing that

he is completely exposed now. He made a dramatic existential play, which seemed like the smart play, but he lost his protector. He is not going to take over ATN, most likely. He has to send Greg. He's got a file on his computer called Logistics. I would have named it something else. Lunch orders or something made it a little less suspicious. Yeah.

Tons of dudes have lunch order files. I do. I care about lunch. It's the precarity of everyone's position is very, very intense. guy, aren't you? Yeah. I love... I wish I could just shoot a hyperdermic needle full of protein into my artery for lunch.

You can. They may sponsor this podcast, the company that does that. I don't know. Any skip lunch companies out there want to get at me? Lunch is the best one. Lunch is the best meal. It makes me tired. That's why you take a siesta

as we do in Espania. Can you imagine if I just like, I'm a globalist now? I don't have to imagine, dude. I'm your friend. It does. It does find a track. The, oh, I wanted to talk about the, you know, people are, it was interesting watching these

corroded nonsense figures try to give voice or physical movement to the humanity that does still somehow flicker within them. and Tom did the best at it. He did speak appropriately. You know, he took... He also leaked it. Do you think that's what happened? I think it's the implication is that Greg...

I mean, yeah, you could say it's all sorts of like what Hugo said. He's like, who knows? Well, the Carolina thing about the tail, I do think people do track. I mean, there were Twitter accounts tracking. Sure, and I'm sure there was like, they're calling into like a Teterboro airport,

I'm sure is like also calling the New York Post and being like, we've got Logan Roy's plane is coming back because of a... medical emergency and they get paid $5 a rush for that, whatever. Immediately true. I did think that Tom was telling Greg, make sure everyone knows that I was with him. That's a good point too. Yeah.

But thinking about Tom as appropriate, he takes the abuse when, you know, she says something about their dad's body, but he then tries to comfort her and she takes the comfort and then remembers that they don't do that for each other or that's over and walks away. And the sadness in that moment was palpable. you know, it might be a broken record thing and I don't know, I'm curious what the majority of the viewership thought if they shared this,

but like I found this a very emotionally affecting episode. It was really draining. Like, it took me a while to kind of like come down from it in terms of, and not because I was like, I don't want to give away like things that happen in other series. There have been character deaths that I think I find upsetting because you develop a quasi,

familial relationship with characters that you spend years and years with or whatever this was not that it's not like I was like not Logan my surrogate TV dad you know it was more just that I think it was the depiction and I think it was the mechanics of how they told the story if there had been if it had been Logan has fallen ill in Sweden and the kids fly to Sweden to say their goodbyes

and it's even in that there's maybe some complications I would have been like, yeah, only on succession. Could somebody jump on a PJ and be in Stockholm in eight hours and have this conversation? If they work for Spotify, they might. We'll find out. Yeah. Maybe you and I can test that this summer. We're all excited about that.

I think it's worth hammering on this point again, which is we're conditioned, even with the best intentions, to expect certain things from our televised entertainment. And it's not just the parenthood, like, very special episode, but clearly something's going to happen. stuff, it's seeing it. It's seeing him cough a few times and their flex of blood on the handkerchief. Do you know what I mean? What was so wild was that as it's very clear that he's going, that he's dead. I mean, this guy's been dying the entire series. But there's a part of our lizard brains that's just like, well, there's going to be a miraculous turn or we're waiting for the other shoe to drop or we are all Roman in that moment. Well, I mean, I think that was what the

Kendall thing is I was like, what an amazing misdirect if this entire series has been building up to Logan passing away or passing on his empire. And like what happens is it's all for nothing because his firstborn son takes his own life in a swimming pool somewhere. I did that too in like the ninth minute of the episode where I was like, is Roman going to jump off this fucking boat? I just kept, I kept fucking wondering about all of them. When Kendall goes up to the top of the boat, I'm like, oh, I guess is this guy going to take a dive? Like, this is going to be too much. And that's also the power of of the show is not indulging our more

extravagant, melodramatic TV brain assumptions or fantasies. The worst thing that could happen was this relatively non-event thing. There was nothing special about this. Yeah, it's at a fraught time for the company

which will play out over the next few weeks. But, you know, as Kendall says, we're not estranged. We had a meeting last night. Yeah. Right. But there, it's like, it's sort of like that's such a perfect, beat because it's like when you are having a conversation with someone where there's like a kind

of a transactional nature or a business relationship and you're like you're basically trading like who was closer to this person. Well, I talked to this person just yesterday and like and it was like, well, I happened to talk to them an hour ago. So this is, you know, those people on that plane are kind of whether or not intentionally or not are now inferring a level of intimacy. They're like, we were with this guy when he died. We have been stuck. in the air with this guy for hours. We watched them get chest compressions. You were estranged and you're distraught. So we're going to handle the business side of this to try and save this company from watching this stock price go off a cliff right before we're supposed to sell it, you know.

And those kids are trying to say, no, it's our blood ties to this guy that make us the most intimate and the most correct choice to sort of be the face of this. And, you know, the negotiations that happen where they're like, well, it's important that Carolina and Frank and and Carl have their names in the statement. Yeah. You know, I just thought all that little stuff, you know, when the episode began, I was a little confused because the kids are now, we're now back on this deal needs to go through. Yep.

Which they kind of keep going oscillating on it. And I thought for a second, I was a little thrown off because they've done everything they can to sort of slow it down, but now need it to go through so that they can buy peers. And it's, they still don't know that Roman had. gone to Logan and had sort of said, you know, okay, I'll come and Matt's in with you and all this other stuff. So the business stuff goes on. We'll have to say. They just needed to keep it busy. I think, yeah, I think we should talk about what happens going forward on screen and also behind the scenes and the decision making. But just one last point, the autore idea of television is

way overcooked and overused. There are a lot of people that make the show what it is. But I do think ultimately an individual or a team's fingerprints needs to be over something for it to be successful just for it to be tonally consistent and aesthetically consistent and have one to speak with, for a show to speak with one voice ultimately. And that is Jesse Armstrong in this. And I saw recently this idea resurfacing that I think we've even touched on in the past, which is, is it weird that this is an unsexy show? There are no sex scenes. I feel like we talked to him about that or Casey, like, it came up at some point. Yeah. It's not, well, yeah. Or maybe Casey told us this once that basically like, you know, HBO's like, you know, you could have sex scenes. And, and, you know,

him just being like, I'm not really comfortable doing that. That doesn't feel right. And, you know, as a fan or a viewer being like, oh, it's odd that he's cutting off part of human expression, you know, or an opportunity. But what was really remarkable to me in this episode was just how it is a reflection of what he is comfortable with and what he's good at. And what he is ultimately good at is people who retreat into the safety of language or the cerebral thinking or the brain. You know, it's certainly not the heart or the body or the low. libido or anything like that. And this episode was about the limitations of that.

You know what I mean? It's not just retreating to a place where he feels safe and ooh the icky stuff. I don't want to write about or think about or it doesn't apply to my characters. That stuff doesn't happen in this curated world. It was more that this was an episode about the limits of that. The way they said, I think I'm sad, you know, or Romans. Like, I think when this goes away, I'm going to be sad. Like, it's...

Don't you think that the sexual aspect of it is like an incredible extent? of that. Yes, that's what I mean. It's all one thing. Roman, you don't, his sexuality is pretty ambiguous anyway. You know, it seems like he's into his trainer. He's into Jerry.

He's in, you know. Is he into Mattson? Yeah, we don't know. Kendall is essentially into drugs, and I don't know that is necessarily, like, he talks about sex, but he doesn't ever perform it. Shiv, I think,

did you give, like, Nate a handy in, like, one episode? Well, she had an affair, and apparently has, you know, they make fun of it. her a lot for having like a you know a lot of notches in her bedpost so to speak but it's transactional it seems and you don't really get to see you know it's not it's not germane to the drama of the show no but these germane is actually jerry's full name which is interesting

these characters do not relax they do not experience pleasure they don't have those things and I don't know if I'm articulating it fully no you are I understand what you're saying but this is this is not a writer who has limitations this is because all writers have limitations this is not a writer retreating from it this is a writer taking those limitations and making it the text of the show, that, you know, he is the grand maister of hugs that look like hits. Yeah. You know, the way that the physical comforting happened in this episode felt like sometimes they would lurch towards each other, like Kendall would give Roman an arm.

When they did finally hug, you know, it was one in front and one in back. Like they just had collapsed, you know, there was something kind of just desperate and untamed about it. the gesture Roman makes to Connor, where he's kind of like almost like pulling on his jacket sleeve, but sort of a massaging, but it's kind of a hug. It's just like... But they don't... Yeah, these people don't know how to communicate physically.

They don't know how to do it, even though they clearly recognize the need. I was really blown away by that. You talk about writers having limitations. What's Dickens is? Oh, well, more that he just doesn't get enough word count? Well, I think he was a little tough on the super rich. I just don't think you understood

that they're their job creators wealth generators Yeah it seems almost like I don't really know what to say about like what happens next I mean you can watch the mid-season trailer that's like in the following weeks on succession it's quite long I did not watch it

But it's also Essentially what you would expect Which is there is a power struggle For the future of this company That Alexander Scarsgard seems to be cooking And that honestly now at this point I've always

watched this show and wanted it to be exist in this sort of like special little hiding place where it doesn't get it's not about like oh I figured out this show or this show like and somebody was I saw in our Facebook group posted the poster for this season

had the plane in the reflection of the window that they're standing against so I'm sure did last season have the floaty in the pool I don't know or maybe but but of that of LeMencello. I think that it's certainly okay to watch the show that way, but in some ways,

like if you're watching a TV show that kills off one of the main characters in the third episode of the final season, I think we're all admitting we don't know what's going to happen. And that's very rare, and that's very thrilling, and it's a good thing. I think it's also worth noting Brian Cox is no longer on the show. That's wild.

it's also a Pantheon performance and character. He... I just wish you would do an interview about it. He was so good in these first two episodes of the season. I'm surprised. Literally like every website was like Brian Cox on his... It was like horse and hound.combe. With an exclusive Brian Cox interview.

I don't think he's done playing this character. I think that he will be on this season again. He is set as much. Oh, he did. That was my prediction because it's just too much. And also I'm sure he's still getting paid as episodic. But yeah, in terms of tea leave stuff, I think it's pretty clear when he just like, you know, it was just like finally uncorked, you know, like he can't, you can't stop him anymore.

And he was just talking wild shit about method actors and doing all this press stuff. That was pretty clear that his time was nearly done. You said he didn't really want to talk about it. I am kind of... We can't talk about it. I just meant I don't really know that I don't really know that I don't. I don't have some clubhouse favorite of what's going to happen. You didn't want to talk about maybe because you wanted to get to your recap,

but like the behind the scenes inside baseball stuff. Sorry, sorry for doing the work. It's fine. Someone has to. I did think it was interesting that, so can I explain the screener thing? I just thought it was interesting. You can stop listening now if you just want the new critics. Like we just talked about the text.

But I did think it was interesting from just an industry perspective is that those of us who cover the show were given the first four episodes as often we are like about a month ago, you know, before the season started. We got a, with them, we got a message, not a personal message, but I think anyone who received the screeners got a message from Jesse Armstrong

being like so excited for you to share these with you. Obviously, no spoilers, but please, please also don't do, this is, I'm paraphrasing, but it was like, don't do the cutesy thing where you're like, got to watch this one. So immediately we were like, okay, so something big happens

in the first half of the season. So that already gave it away by asking us not to give it away to a degree. I think we, in a text, we were like, Logan will probably die early. It just felt like the thing. And then I put a million dollars on that down.

A fan tool, you and Drake. But then, but we don't watch ahead. We watch one episode because we are... Yeah, because it's discipline. And we, you know, we are... We're just the... This is the blue-collar podcast.

You know what I mean? We're just in the trenches with the viewers. I don't want to go talk about episode two, pretend like I don't know what happens on episode three if I've seen. I couldn't do that. So we watch it the week of and we podcast about it because it's also more fun for us. Then they pulled the screeners, which causes people like us to, as a practical note, be like, we don't have screeners for this week. Which telegraphs to our listeners, the thing that they asked us not to telegram. Well, we could have just been like we're not going to record on Sunday.

We're not going to have our episode up on Sunday night. Yeah, but then they would have thought we were slackers. And they already think that about me, but I won't have them think that about you. Not when I'm crafting these recaps. No, you work too hard for that to happen. So it was weird. It's like a damned if you do, damned if you don't. And ultimately it doesn't matter because like 900,000 people watch it on Sunday next.

I mean, they could just have not sent skirtings out. And that would have been... Or send the first two. Frustrating. But like, yeah, I mean, I think that if... The relationship between a show and how a show can influence the conversation about that show is way inside baseball. it is pretty fascinating. You know, this idea,

there are some shows that send the whole season out so that they can kind of like give people a sense of like, here's where things are going. If I had to guess, I would think that those first few episodes were sent out to guard against people

after the first two being like, so we're just going to like, we're just going to negotiate with one another for 10 episodes. It's got too cute. I mean, they don't need my Hugo and Carolina advice here, but like they wanted the reviews

to be like, wow, this season is really the final season and they're going for it without saying why. And the first two episodes were really, really strong in a lot of ways but also treading water and others. Which is not uncommon with this show as we've talked about in previous seasons.

But, you know, I don't know. There's no way to win this and ultimately it doesn't matter. And actually, I mean, honestly, like it was kind of cool. Like, I mean, a lot of the times when we do recaps for recaps, when we do reaction pods. Yeah, I know. I think you graduated.

when we do these, it's like you're kind of doing it into a void, so you don't get to see the other discourse or listen to the prestige TV pod or other sort of viewpoints on it. So it was kind of cool to watch the show, have a mild panic attack,

then go read a bunch of pieces that had been written in advance for the episode and kind of get a sense of how people were feeling about it. I wouldn't make a habit of it, but it was interesting. I haven't seen anything, I haven't seen any zags where people are like, this wasn't good.

See, that was your process. I watched the episode in real time, then took half a Xanax and left a voicemail for my dad. Did you really? No. What if we opened up the next era of podcasting

with like guys? Radical transparency about my relationship of my parents. Anything else? Couldn't be more excited about the rest of the season. And about Bad Batch

coming back for a third and final season, right? Wow. That also, finally, finally, cartoon Thrawn will line up with live action Thrawn. Like, it's been a big, big weekend for the real Victorian literature fans like us.

You know what I mean? Let's do, we'll come back on Thursday. I mean, we have to, contractually. That was weird. I was going to say that we'll talk about Top Chef then. I had like a, like, a, you'd see, like, why don't we just do Top Chef at the end? But then Kai hadn't seen it. Oh, Kai, you got to see it.

I'm caught up. She knows. She just spent too much time watching Fanderb. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't mean that derisively. What did you say she was doing? She watched too much Vanderpump this weekend.

Oh. I didn't have time. Was it a big Vander weekend? Yeah, you know. It was just... Is it always a big... Oh, because it was like the thing where the Tom's were like, this is what I did to these women, right? Yeah.

It's an addicting show, I'll say. And then she didn't want to watch Top Chef because she almost blew up her grill. Oh. And it was like... I did a chicken thigh incident on Friday. What do you want? I'm the chicken doctor on this podcast. She didn't call me.

She definitely didn't call you. Well, if it was wet chicken, it would have probably not lit on fire. That's a great point. If you would just apply to a liberal dose of H2O. I'll get Chris's recipe for a flame retardant. Some people, they want those scorch marks, but not in the Ryan House. No, no. Just rubbery and gray.

Wow, gray. And then a thick slice of loony cake for dessert afterwards. That was a great line. That was dark. Yeah. Great to see you. Thanks to Kai McMullen for producing us. And we'll be back on Thursday,

probably a little bit more upbeat, I would imagine. Do you think, like, can you imagine if this was the first, if someone had like not watched Succession and then just decided to tune in for this one? That would have been a really weird impression of the show. Yeah, they would be like, is Brian Cox on this show?

Yeah, I was told. What's the deal? That guy who just phoned it in. All right. Thanks to everybody for listening. See you Thursday.