A breakneck Succession sees Logan go “piss-mad” as the shareholder meeting arrives
Episode 5, “Retired Janitors Of Idaho” rearranges the Roy children's power rankings.
TV Reviews Succession
Halfway through the third season of Succession, we are finally at the shareholder meeting! We’ve only been hearing about this event since what seems like the very beginning of the series, as the Roys and Stewy/Sandy/Sandi (SSS) argue and fight and snipe at each other over swaying the shareholders one way or another. There have been smear campaigns and ads and phone calls disparaging each other, and tens of millions spent by the competing factions trying to get the shareholders to vote with the Roys or with SSS. Josh Aaronson threw his 4% in with SSS, but what will the rest of the shareholders do? All those “retired janitors of Idaho,” as Roman so sneers, who hold the future of Waystar Royco in their hands?
This fifth episode, named after those regular people whose little shares add up to so much power, continues the “Logan isn’t so healthy” vibe of the preceding episode, “Lion In The Meadow,” but also lays down a few different narrative tracks. Kerry certainly seems a little too giggly with Logan, doesn’t she? There are some shades of Rhea here, which is kind of amazing given that Logan just reconciled with Marcia and I thought he would be slightly more discreet.
Meanwhile, Roman and Shiv continue to fight over Logan’s affections with their overlapping ambitions, with each of them trying to understand the father who plays everything close to the chest, who constantly lies to them, and who in his affected state might not be saying exactly what he means. Who came out on top here? I’m leaning toward Roman, although Shiv certainly was patting herself on the back for securing herself a seat on the board.
We’ll see if Logan lets that stand. And now that President Raisin is out thanks to ATN’s wall-to-wall “Memorygate” coverage of his potential neurological condition, who steps into the Republican power vacuum left by his absence? We’ve seen during the past couple seasons, and just now by the President’s decision not to run for another term, that ATN—despite being a legacy media company without many tech expansions—has outsized power over the Republican base. Who does ATN make their next king?
And I haven’t mentioned Kendall yet, but honestly, I’m not sure what he’s doing. It is very well possible that I just do not understand business; I am simply a lowly pop culture writer! But Kendall bouncing back and forth between SSS and the Roys seems shortsighted, no? And threatening to burn Greg—seems bad! Kendall is floundering in light of failing to secure Josh’s shares and after yet another horrendously personal fight with Logan, and maybe ostracizing Greg isn’t the best idea. I would think with so few allies, Kendall should try to keep the ones he has. Especially because his big move to sway shareholder opinion in his direction fails fairly thoroughly.
No one is impressed, or moved, by Kendall’s awkward walk onstage, commandeering of the mic, listing of the names of women who have been abused, dismissed, or erased by Waystar Royco, and announcement of a foundation to help them. “He looks crazy, and I think that can be good for us” is a very cynical thing to say, but it doesn’t seem incorrect! Kendall, who isn’t even wearing a tie, might be losing public support, and sure, that’s a separate thing from having the FBI and the Justice Department on his side.
But it’s an overall weakening that, even in light of Logan’s diminishing health, doesn’t make me particularly hopeful that Kendall comes out on top of all this. (And, frankly, given how we’ve seen him treat his siblings, and his own combination of weakness and self-aggrandizement, Kendall isn’t a good choice to lead Waystar Royco, either! All the Roys are terrible! Sophie Iwobi is not wrong!)
“Retired Janitors Of Idaho” takes place entirely on the day of the shareholder meeting, and begins with Waystar Royco leadership realizing that Logan is willing to let the day go to a vote. It’s a dangerous proposition since they know they’ve lost Josh, but what they don’t know is that Logan gives Kerry the day off, and she trusts him with his own UTI medication. (Not a great idea since we just saw Logan collapse during a hike, but whatever, Kerry! I don’t understand your motivations at all!)
Negotiations between Waystar Royco and SSS are heavy: The latter want four board seats, and they’re not budging—until Kendall gets involved. In a secret meeting with Stewy, Kendall tries to spin his enlightened-man persona to little effect (“Shouldn’t you be on a rainbow soapbox somewhere screaming ‘Time’s up?’”), but what lands is Kendall’s insistence that SSS reach a deal with Waystar Royco so each can get a little bit of what they want.
But Logan, in his uncanny way, wonders why SSS is now so eager to come back to the table after holding firm on negotiations for so long. So he sends Shiv, Roman, Gerri, and Karl back out to meet with SSS while Frank is forced into stage duty entertaining the shareholders, and while all of that is happening, Logan deteriorates after forgetting to take his UTI medication. He gets “piss-mad.” He starts seeing things, like a dead cat under his chair that everyone has to then pretend to remove. He doesn’t remember where he is or who he’s talking to. And so “Retired Janitors Of Idaho” crystallizes two things we already know: Logan is infirm, and the Roy children cannot run this company together.
But neither of these things is exactly news, and so there is a sort of recurring quality to some of this. Logan, as we’ve seen from the first season, can get confused. Roman and Shiv, as we’ve seen from the first season, might dislike each other the most out of all four siblings. Everyone else in the C-suite, as we’ve seen from the first season, is terrified of making their own decisions lest they disappoint or infuriate Logan. There is a real power vacuum without him at the top given how much he’s limited Gerri, Frank, and Karl’s actual ability to rule without him, and they’ve been trained to tiptoe around the family in a way that even extends past the present.
Gerri would have absolutely taken that first deal from SSS, even with the caveat that they be able to veto family leadership of Waystar Royco, if it weren’t for the Roy children. She cares about “visionary chief operating officer” Roman because, I think, she knows there is no future at Waystar without the children’s involvement. But if the kids didn’t have to be involved? Cut them out, man! Consider her face when she heard Kendall complain about Logan throwing away “everything I have fought and bled for”! The nepotism is toxic!
So the back and forth goes, with SSS getting petty about private jets and the Waystar Royco cabal scrambling to understand what’s going on with Logan. (Asking for Caroline, the ex-wife whom he hates, is a pretty bad sign!) I appreciated the rhythm of the scenes within Shiv, Roman, Tom, Gerri, Karl, Hugo, and Karolina, with everyone seemingly playing a game of “not it”—throwing around responsibility in case someone made a choice with which Logan would not agree. “He’s fucking Dad, he’s six moves ahead,” Roman says, but putting that much trust in one person whose health you know was compromised just recently seems like both bad business sense and like a fundamentally imbalanced parent/child relationship.
Where the deal lands, though, after everyone argues about whether Logan actually supports it or not, is in Shiv’s hands. In a meeting with Sandi where Shiv plays the “daughters of fathers” card, she promises SSS a fourth seat on the board and an end to the use of private jets, and also secures another seat for herself. That ends the stalemate—but it doesn’t please Logan, who becomes more himself after the group tracks down Kerry, learns Logan had his medication the whole time, and gets him to take it. He calls Waystar Royco the recipients of “the shitty end of a deal,” he snaps at Shiv for “buzzing in my fucking ear,” and he congratulates Roman for his work fielding the phone call from the President.
He doesn’t bat an eye at Roman calling Shiv a bitch, and he blocks Kendall’s number. How much longer will Shiv take being alienated by the father who once promised her the company, but who now seems to clearly prefer Roman? How many more times will Kendall fall for the promise of Logan’s approval? How will Roman act now that he’s clearly the favored heir? And now that the shareholder vote is no longer a danger—how long until Waystar Royco is back to their same old shenanigans? (… Did they ever really stop?)
Stray observations
- One of my favorite recurring motifs in this series is the gigantic food spreads that get placed out for family meetings and work events (remember all that thrown-out lobster and seafood at the summer palace?), and how no one ever seems to eat but Greg. He’s got that real “intern who doesn’t know where his next meal is coming from” approach to snacking.
- That poor bunny rabbit. I am pretty sure “If he can do people, he can do rabbits” is not how medicine works! Also, Jess’s pained reaction face when the babysitter calls about the bunny having too much bagel: priceless.
- Connor really isn’t messing around, huh? All the threats about spilling details from “our semen-stained family scrapbook,” and his assessment of his siblings as “Roman’s a knucklehead, Shiv’s a fake, Kenny’s screwy.” Connor is getting increasingly desperate in a way I didn’t anticipate, although I guess being out a couple hundred million because of your girlfriend’s failed play and your stalled presidential run will do that to you. Good luck in Europe!
- Arian Moayed in that turtleneck, we are truly blessed. His sardonic line delivery of “You should save that for Vanity Fair, bro. I’m all good,” was a joy, rivaled only by Kieran Culkin’s faux-aghast “Oh, really? It’s not cool to tell the President to blow me?”
- Shiv’s continued attempts to unsubscribe from Kendall (“I no longer wish to receive these calls”) is perfect bratty-sibling behavior.
- Security guard Colin, played by Scott Nicholson, was the guy involved in covering up Kendall’s accident in season one. Sorry I forgot your face, buddy!
- Hope Davis’ expanded screentime as Sandi has been great, and her belittling “I just do what my dad tells me, like you guys” was wonderfully pointed.
- Grandpa Ewan’s advice to Greg that “You need to take yourself seriously, kid,” seemed genuinely heartfelt, but of course Greg is ignoring it by suing Greenpeace over his inheritance. Seems in line with the continued corruption of our tallest boy.
- I cannot tell if Tom legitimately cares for Logan in some son-in-law way or if he is the best actor in this whole damn family, but “You don’t need me to hold the scepter?” and his stilted “Pop. Poppa?” were the perfect combination of questionably sincere and almost touching. And then he had to go and ruin it by trying to baby-trap Shiv!
223 Comments
2 things:1. I am REALLY rooting for Greg to become head of the company at some point. It would piss off everybody.2. I thought the President in this show was supposed to be representative of Trump, but there is NO WAY 45 would have resigned to spare his family embarrassment.BTW, Tom’s hilarious “do you need me to hold the scepter” was the best moment of this week’s episode.One wonders where he’s going to dump his frustrations out on this week since he didn’t destroy Greg in their one interaction.
The ATN coverage of the Raisin’s mental decline of course refers to the far right wing media’s lies about Joe, and Biden did not run in 2016 because his son had died. But yeah, it was pretty surprising to see a Republican president decide not to serve a second term, in general, and especially for concerns about others. Sci-fi.
I assumed that it referred to the lies about Clinton’s mental and physical health in 2016.To be fair, I’m not sure not running is a party-political thing. The last President to decline to run for a further term after only four years in office was Rutherford Hayes, and it’s only happened three times (the others being Polk and Buchanan; Johnson, Truman and Coolidge had all served part of their predecessor’s term in addition to their own). The last man to voluntarily decline to run in an election he had reason to believe he would win was Coolidge (the only other one was Polk, and Polk was just because he had to promise that to get elected).
[but “out of concern for my family’s privacy” is standard code language for “I want to avoid embarrasment but I’ll pretend it’s altruistic”. That sounded a lot like the President actually DOES have a neurological condition (even though Waystar didn’t know it) and so he can’t plausibly deny it if it becomes an issue in the reelection.]The other obvious historical analogy is Eagleton, who stepped down as VP nomination when it was rumoured he’d had depression. Over on this side of the pond, there’s also an analogy with Wilson, who mysteriously resigned as Prime Minister one day to instead become a chat show host – it’s theorised by some that one consideration was that he was afraid he had the beginnings of dementia.
In Wilson’s case he was both absolutely wiped out after several decades of frontline politics and had apparently begun to notice instances of his faculties declining. He lived for another 18 or so years but he mentally declined through the 1980s and 90s.
He also had cancer. And was disillusioned with politics. And faced pressure from within his party, and from the establishment, and from the US. To be honest, I think the resignation was one of those things where there wasn’t a single smoking gun, because there was an entire artillery regiment. But I haven’t read any of the actual research done on this, so I could be wrong.
But it’s a good example, at least, of how a politician’s internal motivations, their internal landscape shaping their decisions, can be much more complicated, and difficult, than external observers realise. In hindsight we can point to all these reasons, but at the time it (I’m told!) came completely out of the blue, at least to anyone outside his close circle.
He seemed like a decent sort.
Just popped in to say that Thomas Eagleton was a great man. His dying wishes were for people to “go forth in love and peace—be kind to dogs—and vote Democratic.” Rest in Peace.
In hindsight, it does kind of feel as though sending McGovern and Eagleton up against Nixon and Agnew was kind of like sending lambs to fight an industrial meat-grinder…[seriously, though, McGovern’s resume reads like something out of a fantasy today. Boy grows up in poverty in a tiny farming town in Real America; becomes genuine War Hero; inspired by the war to get his PhD and become a history professor; two terms in the House, ten years in the Senate; served in the executive under JFK; was instrumental in founding the World Food Programme; became the leader of congressional opposition to a hugely unpopular (by that time) war. What the modern Democratic Party wouldn’t give for a candidate like that today!]
Agreed. Apparently McGovern didn’t want to make a big deal of his heroism in WWII, which was a shame. I mean he still would have lost but fuck the GOP, now and then.
I was under the impression Eagletone became a concern because he had received electroshock therapy for his depression. Less enlightened time.
I loved Roman’s “Fucking Hercule Poirot of fucking piss over here.” All of the Pissmad anxiety mirroring The Madness Of King George
Correct. THAT was Roman’s best line, not the “blow me” one the author mentioned.
I liked “‘First they came for my private jets and I did nothing.'” Leave it Romulus to joke alter a wrenching Holocaust line and make it about his rich boy perks.
I liked the meat puppet line about Sandy and his daughter
I mean, I liked the one about everyone working at the same Target, personally.Although I think I’d give “best line” to Stewy this episode: it’s hard to beat, “We are a complicated coalition and Sandy is the angriest fucking vegetable”/”belligerent zucchini.”
How could you ignore the line “That is an imaginary cat, now could you please fuck off?” Great episode for Kieran Culkin.
When Karl talks about Syphillis symptoms and Roman responded with, “Been doing a little late night panic-Googling there?” The implication that Karl is constantly womanizing and picking up various STD’s is very funny.
I was surprised by how much I actively rooted for the Roy family to lose control of Waystar Royco in some major way during this episode.I love Succession, but the storytelling is starting to feel a little bit too rote. I would love to see these characters grapple with a true shakeup of the status quo—even an ultimately minor one. Maybe they’re headed that way with the national regime change storyline?
My guess is that in season 4, that senator Shiv worked for will be president.
It became too rote for me about 2 episodes ago. The wrangling over which of the kids will wear the crown… I want something more out of this show.
See, my read on the first few episodes of season 3 were really different. I’m increasingly convinced that the endgame involves none of the children leading the company and the obnoxious in-fighting being a major factor in how they lose control.But I was hoping we’d get there sooner rather than later, and this episode’s developments make me think we’re going to tread water for another season before we get there get there. Hopefully 4 is more than a rehash of season 1; I definitely liked 2 a lot better.
None of the kids getting to run the company would definitely add one more possibility to the storyline, but it’s the framework I’m finding increasingly tiresome. How long are we supposed to care who gets the job, especially since none of the characters are particularly likable? For me, if there had been more tension surrounding Kendall’s ability to carry off the coup, balancing his need for mental health and family unity along with his desire to run the company—that would have been compelling. That would resonate with many of us who struggle to balance our personal life and our work life. For that reason, I found the episode when Kendall was trying to convince his siblings to join the coup most interesting.
I really think the question about who will become CEO is a bit of a red herring to get people to engage with the show more generally, especially the characters and relationships. But YMMV.
Honestly it felt a lot more like Trump until this season, which has felt more “Biden as a Republican.” Which is totally fair as it’s a slightly fictional universe.
I dunno about that—Biden is certainly no friend of Rupert Murdoch (who I assume the Logan character is based on).
This show is not a 1:1 analogue of anyone. Whatever actual people might have inspired the characters, it’s a work of fiction.
This is correct and it’s what elevates it. It allows for a lot more fluidity.
He isn’t but Logan isn’t completely Murdoch as another comment pointed out better than I did originally. It’s playing with relevant themes and something like a one term president not running again due to age concerns leading to another power vacuum is, uh, potentially a very relevant theme.
I’ve always gotten the sense that the president was more of a standard issue Republican, I think my mental image is like if Dick Cheney became president somehow.
Fake News. Nobody’s face was blown off.
I am all for Greg becoming CEO. While the siblings fight each other, Greg is working ATN and parks. More experience than almost all of the 2nd generation of the family!
His “affectionate suing” bit about grandpa was hysterical.Only lines bested by that were Tom’s general obsequiousness, (‘hold the scepter’) and his muttering of “pop… poppa…” longingly when Logan confusingly called him “son”.
These two get the best lines, I’m dying of laughter just pictures these scenes.
I’m catching up to the show and just got done with this episode last night. I really thought that Tom mentioning to the rest that Logan had called him “son” was going to be the thing that convinced them all he was (temporarily) out of his mind.
Kendall’s gonna confess to manslaughter sacrificing himself to take down his dad right?
No. He’ll admit it if he gets immunity and the record is suppressed.
I mean, that would be a great twist, but honestly nah. Everyone in this show is way too focused on their personal bottom line to consider anything remotely self-sacrificing.I could see Kendall confessing if he knows it’s going to come out some other way or if he’s genuinely so stupid he thinks there’s a way to talk about what happened without blowing up his own life. Maybe. But both of those developments would require more narrative groundwork than can be covered in a single episode.
Kendall’s too much of a coward to intentionally face any punishment for any reason.
He can always say he wanted to go to the authorities but his father forced him to keep his mouth shut and they paid off the family.Once again proving what his father’s MO is regarding NRPI’s.
They hint at that in the preview, but I don’t think so, yet…it’ll be interesting to see how much of the concern Kendall expresses about the cruise ship victims is genuine, and if he’ll feel compelled to really make amends at some point.
It’s pretty obvious that the only reason the security guy is getting screen time is to keep him on everyone’s mind when they bring back the events in England.
Kendall’s goal isn’t to take down his dad, it’s to replace his dad as head of the company*. He can’t do that if he takes down himself as well. *and stay out of jail. It was only when he was made the fall guy that he pulled his little “the company is evil and I can fix it” stunt.
I’ve been going on recently about the show being an emotional drama with emphathetic characters caught in a family tragedy—and then this eposode reminds me it’s a hilarious comedy of stupid, petty wankers. Good job, show! So many Veep-like zingers tonight. I’d have to watch it again. I loved the scene with Logan getting mad at Greg’s innocuous bathroom remark. Logan, essentially high, was in a sitcom comedy but it was very well done. I liked the parallel of “meat puppet” Sandy with him, and Hope Davis in her brief dialogue suggested she’s like the Roys with a terrifying father too.I’m here for Connor breezily coming in, getting what he wants, then leaving the insanity as quick as he can. I wondered if Kendall getting a summons from his dad and waiting for Godot was a “Fuck you!” Logan move or whether Logan was still high and called his loved son then forgot about it. I hadn’t thought Logan was boinking Kerry, but she is pretty hot.
Connor has increasingly become my favorite Roy sibling. Dude’s got a better head on his shoulders than others give him credit for.
Nah. “First Pancake” is a total loser who might be the least self-aware Roy and that’s saying something. Remember the ballet gala from season one? “I’m sorry about the butter” and the whole conversation with the ballet dancer?
Roman is still the most aware among them when it comes to normal people stuff, but Connor has his siblings pegged like no others(among the siblings, of course). That’s what I meant. He’s cuckoo when it comes to politics and business, but the fact that he knows his siblings better than the rest of them know each other, and that he was the odd one out/the outsider among them, makes it all the more ironic.
If you’re pulling for Connor, you’re doing it wrong. Remember, this is the guy who bragged to his niece/nephew that he controlled water reservoirs and would be able to leverage that when people ran out. Just because he’s becoming the fattest leech doesn’t mean he isn’t a leech.
I mean if you’re pulling for *anybody* on this show you’re doing it wrong. That said I’m pulling for PGM to swoop in and take over Weystar-Royco
my heart stopped when he was asking to take the call from The President.
Also Kerry is fug.
or whether Logan was still highLogan was never high—just feverish/delirious. They sort of set you up to make that assumption with the boot and the pills, but based on the dialogue, the prescription medication was antibiotics for his UTI.
Effectively high. He was out of it and confused. It’s the same wacky plot a lot of other shows have used.
Indeed. I was surprised to learn that dementia can actually be a symptom of an untreated UTI.
It’s not dementia. It’s an altered mental state or delirium.
The Veep feel of this episode was insane. Like, the whole premise here and how it worked out was so similar to Joint Session – S4E1 and it was fucking awesome.
I can’t tell if the writers this season have made an active decision to change Conner’s character, or if the reason he seems more with it lately is because we’re seeing him in a new environment. I think he’s always been the most clueless when it comes to how the world outside the Roy bubble works, but he also might have the highest emotional intelligence when it comes to interacting with his father/siblings (he seems particularly insightful this season when it comes to sussing out the emotions driving Shiv’s actions, and I think had a pretty clear view of the Kendall/Roman relationship from Season 1).
Did Connor get what he wanted though? He told his siblings and the ATN people he did, but Logan looked pretty skeptical. Wouldn’t be the first time one of these siblings told someone important Logan had promised them something and it completely backfired on them.
wondered if Kendall getting a summons from his dad and waiting for Godot was a “Fuck you!”Definitely an F.U. from Logan. When Kendall realized he was being stood up, he called his Dad and Logan handed the phone to Kerry and said “Block this number.”
Veep actually used this plot device in the 2nd or 3rd season – great ep., though a trope nonetheless.
I love Connor showing some teeth and him brushing Shiv off with threats of the “old days” at Waystar.
He had a point though – is Roman (without Gerri) really more equipped to handle the company?
It never made any sense for Greg to risk losing a $250 million inheritance by staying with Logan. He’s bumbling but not a complete fucking moron. They never should have introduced that plotline.
It does if you were paying attention to what Logan offered him which is what Greg always wanted to do.
Ewan gave him that ultimatum last season before that job was even on the table. Also, I have no idea how a job in theme parks could be so great that it’s worth turning down 250 million.
My take is Greg instinctively knows Ewan is likely to use the promise of that $250 million to manipulate him for another decade then give the inheritance to Greenpeace anyway. From the glimpses we’ve gotten of Greg’s mother she may have done nothing with her life except wait for that money, and she’s cut off too for whatever reason.
Greg isn’t that smart. He’s been surrounded by all these inheritance wanks so much that he thinks it’s a right rather than a privilege to receive one.
Exactly it’s not like he was terminal he could hang on for 20 more years just out of spite.
Ewan, like Logan, has little sympathy for his moneyed offspring. Logan of course, for pathological reasons can’t respect his children.
Ewan though, has grown to despise capitalism (and his own part in his brother’s empire) and I think won’t give anything to those children and grandchildren who want that money he both treasures and hates. If Greg had announced he wants to go homestead somewhere off the grid, he’d probably buy him all the land and solar panels he might need.
That’s the point. Greg’s an idiot who needs inclusion so bad that he’ll work against his own self interest to get it. He’s exactly what Frank and Karl were at his age, and now they’re the butt of the joke that they don’t even know is being told.
Agree, this plot point makes no sense and undermined the character’s whole dynamic.
It makes sense for the reasons Mary and I mentioned. And on top of that, its obvious Greg thought he could play both sides and keep them both at bay when he isn’t that clever and experienced enough. Especially on the smartness part as he thinks he can sue Ewan and Greenpeace.
Worth bearing in mind that Greg was introduced getting high at work and vomiting in a mascot suit. The guy has a certain weaselly cunning, but he’s never scored highly on foresight, risk assessment, or impulse control (he’s kind of like Roman, in that regard, only more polite).
He sees something he wants in reach, and he reaches for it. Was it wise to accept Logan’s concrete offer of a job over the maybe-one-day-if-I’m-a-good-boy possibility of a share of Ewan’s will? Maybe not. It probably wasn’t wise at all to share illegal information with Kendall to set up a power play that he immediately thought better of and backed away from, and which has now lined him up for potential prison time. It’s certainly not wise to try to sue Greenpeace. In each case, he just did what seemed most profitable in the moment, without really assessing long-term risks. He’s never been wise. [Or, maybe, he is. As Roman’s said this season, sometimes it’s better not to overthink things…]
You are way over thinking the type of guy he is. He’s just a typical who thinks he’s clever and smarter than he thinks he is by playing both sides and that he’s winning 3D chess against all these “old people.” Except that he isn’t and now he’s in over his head.
He explained it, and it makes sense. Anyone can change their will at any point in time for any reason. If someone says “I’m putting/keeping you in my will,” you absolutely cannot bank on being in that will when the time comes. It’s not like it’s a contract, and challenging it is going to be difficult and require a lot of resources Greg won’t have. And if his grandfather has not already provided for his future (e.g. by setting up some sort of trust, etc.), there’s not any reason for Greg to think talk of Ewan’s will is anything more than stringing him along to get him to do what he wants, with who knows how much of a payoff who knows when? Logan, by letting Greg get set up with a nice gig at the company, is offering Greg money RIGHT NOW that he can actually bank.
No, he’s a moron. This is the same guy who got kicked out of the parks management program for puking out of a character costume’s eyes and spent three hours trying to figure out which slippers to bring to the hospital and was more concerned with bringing back the right patterned ones than what papers he was supposed to be retrieving. And had to have his mom tell him that. He’s not smart. He’s not wily.
Because Greg doesn’t really just want to be rich. He wants to be at the cool kid’s table (and for some reason he thinks his cousins are the cool kids). He wants to feel like he’s involved in important shit.Ewan is telling him “Be quiet and I’ll make you rich.” The Roys are telling him “Side with us and we can make you powerful.”
I think people overthink Greg’s character and try to make him out to be some sort of bumbling strategic genius. He’s not. He’s an anxious little puppy who can’t say no to anybody. Whenever anybody asks anything of him, he says yes, even if it directly contradicts the last person he said yes to.
This episode reminded me of Death of Stalin in that the moment the big man is incapacitated and out of the picture, they all become headless chickens that are still terrified of their leader.And you also got it wrong about Connor. For the first time, he actually has a real paying job, even if its useless, and now that the President is going out, I can see him restarting his Presidential campaign and having a serious go at it. And this time, the Roys may take it more seriously and be more supportive if it means Connor killing the investigation the moment he gets into the White House.
Great comparison- I loved how darkly funny it was as it became clear that Logan wasn’t well, and everyone was going to freak out less about that than how it affects his decisions they were trying to interpret
I don’t think we’re supposed to believe that Connor has a snowballs chance in hell of becoming president.
That was last season. As I mentioned, things are different now, especially if the family chooses to back him and put their full media empire behind it. I bet he still has his “conheads” supporting him. We’ll see.
He’s still a fringe candidate who wants to abolish the income tax, no? I think you’re overestimating the influence ATN will have when the question is “should a member of the Roy family be president / get the nomination.” It’s a pretty blatant conflict of interests I don’t see how that could work.I’m pretty sure the joke was that only in Connor’s mind did the path to the white house just open up for him.
This is the same ATN that managed to convince a Republican incumbent out of all types of people to not seek reelection with just a moderate bit of negative reporting and pressure. If anything, you’re underestimating the influence ATN has. And if they’re supposed to be an analogue for Fox News/Murdoch owned media, then they do have outsized influence on elected officials and voters.
And also, this is the Roy family here. Since when do they give a shit about conflict of interest? Saying again, if it gets the feds off their back, they’ll gladly pour time and money into getting Connor into the White House. They can and will spin it into whatever they want.
To be clear I’m not saying the Roy family cares about the conflict of interest. I think the voters would. Like if Roger Allies kid ran for president and was trumpeted as the second coming on Fox News I think people would be suspect. The last thing I want to do is give Fox News viewers the benefit of the doubt, but they are a suspicious people and many of them did turn on Fox News when Fox News started reporting things they didn’t like (called Arizona for Biden, can’t say the election was stolen anymore because of lawsuits)Fox/ATN have influence, but that doesn’t mean they can elevate on of their own (and Connor, no less) to the presidency. It’s presumably a lot easier to take down a president* in the court of public opinion than to convince enough voters that your son with no political experience is the man for the job oh by the way while we’re being investigated by the government. *also note that they weren’t trying to do that. It came as a total shock because ultimately it was President Raisin’s unexpected choice to say “fuck this noise” and give up. It wasn’t some grand plan of theirs that worked perfectly.
The last six years just showed and proved that voters on the right don’t really seem to care about quality of candidate or whether or not that candidate has a conflict of interest with anyone. As long as they hit the right ideological notes and is sellable on TV, ATN will furnish the pictures and furnish the war just like how Murdoch did in real life.And also, you seem to be really overthinking and doing this whereas i’m just spitballing here based off of the sneak peak for the next episode and Connor’s behavior this episode where you can see the lightbulb going on in his head whenever the President was brought up. Like I said, we’ll see if something like this becomes a major plot point.
I didn’t watch the preview, but again I think the lightbulb over connor’s head was a joke. Like I said he’s the only one who thinks this news re-invigorates his campaign. I think you see that in Cyd and other’s reactions to Connor.
Then you should watch it because its seemingly about who they want to replace the President to which Connor brought himself up. Again, we’ll see if it amounts to anything and works.
I feel like I don’t have to watch it to know that they’ll be muffled snickering, a zing from Roman and then Logan shooting the idea down as a non-starter.But yeah we’ll see!
You know, I thought they put the Connor-for-president plot to bed last season when Logan told him to drop the campaign in exchange for a small cash infusion of $100 million. But I wonder if the showrunners, seeing Trump and the Republican party just go all-out anti-democratic in the past year, thought there might be some life left in the plot.
Pretty much this. This is the point i’m making that Bad Kuchi missed. That I think they might be resurrecting “Connor as President” plot to make a statement about that. Will be interesting to see executed.
To be clear I’m not saying the Roy family cares about the conflict of interest. I think the voters would.Have you just been ignoring the world for the last 40 years?
“This
is the same ATN that managed to convince a Republican incumbent out of
all types of people to not seek reelection with just a moderate bit of
negative reporting and pressure.”We don’t know even the name of the president, let alone what made him makes his choice. He might well actually have the neurological problem (Alzheimer most likely).
He’s Steve Forbes Jr., who was just as much of a joke candidate as Trump, except all the late-night ridicule stuck on Forbes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Forbes#Campaigns_for_presidentI assume Succession would give him the Forbes treatment, mocked mercilessly until he bows out of the Republican primary with a handful of votes and tens of millions of dollars lighter in the wallet. But really they can do whatever the hell they want with it and not be any more absurd than the actual Trump story so who knows.
Fuck, I’m rooting for Tom. Macfadyen is just so good in the role.
It’s the best performance in a show stuffed with great ones. His ability to look wounded, and make you feel sorry for a man as loathsome as Tom, is masterful.
I feel like my opinion about who is giving the best performance changes from week to week. It’s crazy.
I could be swayed by arguments in favour of, like, ten of them or so.It’s quite liberating to have a “favourite” character (Tom in my case, at the moment) who I am in no way rooting for to succeed. It makes watching it a lot less stressful, though there is stress-a-plenty, like watching Kendall walk up on stage or whatever.
I think if you’re going by a points-per-minute metric, the answer for me, since the very beginning, has been Stewie. He drops in for 2 minutes, and it’s all gold. I love how he never takes a beat between thoughts “Yeah, ok sure, bullshit.” And his deliveries are always perfect. he even expanded his range in this ep from smarmy finance bro to pretty frustrated at “the angriest vegetable.” We hadn’t really seen any cracks in the Stewy/Sandy alliance yet.
Arian Moayed just steals the scene every time he’s on screen. Stewy is one of the best-written characters on the show. I love every time he’s talking with Kendall because Stewy has the confidence of someone who knows what they’re doing (and what they’ll be doing six maneuvers into the future) and that just makes it even more obvious how much of a pretender Kendall is.
You can tell Moayed is having a great time with the role, it comes through in his performance. If this were GoT, I’d legit root for Stewy (or cousin Greg) to take the throne.
YES THIS, why do I love Tom so much? He uses people as furniture! And yet I’m like, “Shiv let his man come home from cushy white collar prison to a baby!” I cannot explain it.
IME people’s responses to Tom has a lot to do with their understanding of “Minnesota nice” as a culture/concept. (See YouTube video below for more context. Also Fargo.) As someone who grew up in the Twin Cities, Tom is probably just as self-serving/calculating as anyone else in the Roy family. He just has a lot more experience expressing himself in the least compromising/most passive aggressive terms possible.
Tom can be the worst of them sometimes because he’s insecure. “Does the phrase human furniture mean anything to you?”
“In what way?” “Have you ever used another human as a piece of furniture?”
“Um, I have a variety of motivational, um, tactics that I’ve implemented…” that whole hearing is such a great scene.
Thanks for posting. Love Succession, love this clip “How to TalkMinnesotan” even more. Whatever.
I absolutely love his performance, but I just don’t understand what they’ve been doing with him this season. His arc about offering himself up then worrying himself sick just doesn’t land with me.
The whole ensemble is fantastic but I am so glad Macfadyen’s performance is getting more praise this season.
The way Macfadyen moves from genuine moments of warmth/connection with Greg to nearly unhinged to pathetic to very human – often in the same scene (e.g. last week’s confrontation with Greg) – is beyond impressive.
Tom also gets some of the best lines, which is saying something. His obsequious-ness towards a confused Logan this ep were mint, I was dying with laughter when Tom muttered “thanks…pop” and mutters “..poppa..”. in a contemplative manner. when Logan called him “son”.
Don’t even me started on the iCal of Shiv’s cycle, which actually ended up on a sympathetic note for Tom (and I’m with Shiv, that’s creepy).
Like the whole cast, Macfadyen knows precisely when to step back and when to step up to the plate.
Honestly how tender Tom was with fucked up Logan really tugged on my heartstrings
Such delicious black comedy in this one – two powerful men, incapacitated, with the fate of a corporation more powerful than the President in their hands, while their children try to read their addled minds.
Also, “is there a way to sue someone, in an affectionate way?”
It seemed odd to me when Logan blocked Kendall. In response to what, his stunt at the podium? Kendall’s tribute to past victims of Waystar came across as too silly and ineffectual to justify the seriousness and finality of Logan’s gesture. It’s certainly nowhere near as grave a blow as numerous others Kendall has struck against his father to this point.
I took the block as a response to Kendall’s “puppet master” role throughout the episode, which Logan instinctively recognized as the major stumbling block between the two teams, sowing discord and confusion where there was initially tentative peace. Kendall did a decent job at first, getting Stewy to fold by reporting that Logan would take things to the vote, but because of his meddling with both sides the two teams kept trying to figure out how the other was screwing with them. Once Logan came out of his fugue and got the story of the day relayed to him, I think he pieced it together that Kendall’s desperate, insecure flailing is why things were repeatedly fucked.
Logan’s comment about blocking Kendall’s number is a testament to how irrelevant Kendall’s actions have become in the ongoing battle for stakeholder hearts and minds. He doesn’t know about Kendall’s failed attempts to backchannel and he doesn’t need to. He scheduled the meeting based on Kendall’s on-stage antics and cancelled it when he realized how unimportant those actions were in terms of the real, ongoing problems the company faces.
It’s interesting, I feel like Logan never intended to meet with Kendall in the first place, he just set up the meeting and then not turn up as a power play, not unlike the helicopter game he played last episode. With Greg gone Kendall has gone from threath to a guy that is just on the sidelines and I don’t think Logan respects him enough at the current point to even sit around the table with him.
I thought Logan might have tricked Kendall into the room to make sure he was out of the way when Logan was leaving the building and vulnerable to another ill-conceived Kendall ambush.
Seems like a plausible explanation as well to be honest! Logan, more than anybody else on the show, is extremely opaque in his thoughts and feelings. Really fantastic writing, if you ask me, that I could see it going either way (or neither!)
Actually, losing Josh’s 4% of the vote was a pretty huge blow and it created the whole fiasco to begin with. The vote would have been a non-issue if they’d kept Josh on-side, but his antics shot that down. Kendall also cost them a board seat, which again, when you look at the no-confidence vote is also huge. He knows Kendall was responsible for much of this crap. Also, Logan effectively iced him from any post-meeting media coverage by sticking him in a back room, which is the sort of thing Kendall craves.
But people aren’t talking about the stuff with Josh in this conversation. We’re talking about Kendall’s attempts to play “puppet master” in terms of the negotiations with Sandy/Sandi and Stewy, which had little impact beyond making both sides slightly more annoyed than they were already.
But the conversation is moot if they had Josh’s vote. And if you don’t think giving up an extra board seat is a big deal, you’re missing the bigger picture. It was more than a little annoyance if Logan was willing to go to a vote instead of entertaining the negotiations. Yes, the private jets is petty, but it’s also a status thing, which undoubtedly pisses Logan off. Plus just getting played by Kendall stings, even for something as minor as private jets.
This conversation=the comments you are responding to, not the negotiations in the show. I know that responding to other people is your only way of participating in the conversation as someone stuck in the grays, but please stop presenting your random thoughts as a rebuttal to arguments I never made in the first place.It’s undoubtedly true that Kendall’s actions are a big part of what led to the situation where the Waystar Royco team needed to make a deal with Sandy and Stewy in the first place. But Sandy’s desire to take over Waystar Royco in order to humiliate and undermine Logan Roy exists entirely independently from Kendall’s shenanigans. His vendetta was the driving force in the shape the deal eventually took; that’s why it made Stewy, who just wants to make money, so nervous.Kendall keeps trying to be relevant this episode and keeps failing. At this point, his grand gestures no longer elicit any sort of reaction from the stakeholders; it’s just more of the same. That’s not to say that things couldn’t change moving forward, or that his actions haven’t been important in the past. They just aren’t especially relevant right now
TBF, Sandy and Stewy would never have been in on Waystar in the first place were it not for Logan’s wildly irresponsible loan-taking in the 80s, which caused the massive debt problem that was revealed when he was incapacitated post-stroke. Kendall HAD to make that deal and let Stewy in, otherwise, Waystar would have had to pay the bank loans and show massive ass publicly about the debt, and the stock would’ve continued to plummet. By taking in Stewy (and Sandy, though unknowingly), Kendall really did save the company. And what did Logan say to him about it? “You’re a fucking idiot.”
Kendall also isn’t getting ENOUGH credit for convincing Stewy to take a deal in this most recent episode, which Stewy used to help push Sandy and Sandi along. Shiv might think she made the move and got the deal done, which is true, but that ball wouldn’t have already been rolling were it not for Kendall’s conversations with Stewy (and Frank).
I’m skeptical Kendall’s backchanneling really had that much of an impact with Sandy and Stewy. I’m not saying he didn’t have any influence at all, but I really do think things would have gone down about the same with or without him. To my mind, he maybe sped things up by making people feel more confident about paths they had already chosen at most.
That was my read on Kendall in this most recent episode as well—that he took the crucial step to push Stewy. That phone call between Frank and Kendall is key to understanding what Kendall does next. Essentially Frank is making the ripcord call to Kendall, saying that no one in the Waystar war room is going to be able to get Logan to budge, and both Frank and Kendall know if it goes to a vote they likely lose the company. They both also know that Logan will never acknowledge that and will go down with the ship rather than be seen as the “loser” in a compromise deal. Kendall was the one who made Stewy see that Logan was willing to fuck it all and go to a vote, and that that could mean Stewy loses everything. Compromise, Kendall says, and you’re assured of seats at the table and compensation. Risk it with my dad, who never compromises, and you could get nothing.
Uhhh….why would Logan block Kendall’s number? Well, it was Kendall who BROUGHT Stewy (and by extension Sandy/Sandi) into the company in the first place. It was Kendall who nearly brought him down with a vote of no-confidence. It was Kendall who worked with Sandy and Stewy outright to start this whole hostile takeover bid. It was Kendall who betrayed his father at the press conference where Kendall was supposed to be taking the blame for the cruise scandal. It was Kendall who ruined Shiv’s first big presentation as President with that “Rape Me” stunt, and it was Kendall who put on that embarrassing display just as the deal was being announced. It also doesn’t matter that the stunt it came across poorly and probably (???) won’t hurt Logan, it’s another betrayal. And it’s not just that one thing, it’s the series of betrayals.
I think there are material reasons, as other commenters have said, like the fact that the shareholder meeting is now over so they don’t need to have a semblance of an alliance to save face.That said, I think the main reason is that Logan is a spiteful mean person. He’s pissed off at the way the deal went down, he’s pissed off at Shiv for agreeing to it and this is a way to lash out at someone, even if they weren’t involved.
And he also told Kerry to get Kendall to meet him in a separate room, and then left him hanging.
this is amazing post which I have ever read always you have provided amazing information thanks for this. One wonders where he’s going to dump his frustrations out on this week best photographer in dehradun since he didn’t destroy Greg in their one interaction.
Yeah, you’re right. You definitely don’t understand business because you don’t seem to have a clue about what’s actually happening in Kendall’s storyline LOL. You think he’s still vying for Logan’s approval? He’s not. That was the point of the entire “veto power” arrangement. He is aligned with Sandy/Stewie and needs the deal to succeed so they aren’t all cut out by shareholder votes. And the reason that Sandy/Stevie wanted “veto power” over Roy children as opposed to “No Roy children” is because Kendall is the only Roy they’ll approve since they know he’s in their pocket. Kendall walking out on stage wasn’t an attempt to actually change shareholder minds. There was no vote; it didn’t matter at that point. Kendall only cares about three opinions…Sandy, Stewie, and the collective idiots of the Twitterverse. He went up there to embarrass the family and because he’s dumb enough that he still thinks that the woke crowd sees him as an ally. That’s why he was so tickled by the “Sermon on the Marriott” tweet. He didn’t go to meet with Logan because he wanted his approval…he went because he was deluded enough to think that he’d be able to take some kind of victory lap in Logan’s face.
He absolutely, 100% still cares about what his father thinks. His whole storyline right now is about trying to impress his father. Yeah, he’s distracted with being a twitter-hero or whatever, but overall his primary motivation is proving to Logan that he’s “a killer.”
Exactly, the look on Kendall’s face when he was alone in the room waiting for Logan was one of smug arrogance. He thinks he’s the reason the deal was made and that he saved the company and is now primed to take over. When Jess tells him that Logan already left, he is instantly deflated, and it’s exactly what Logan wanted.
“If he can do people, he can do rabbits” Fun fact in the United States it’s a statistical possibility for you to be more likely elected to the House of Representatives than to be accepted into veterinary school. Only an average of 125 people a year are accepted into those schools.I know a surgeon who is one of the best in his field and he was turned away by a vet school.
It’s like Kramer’s logic…doctors only have to know people. Vet has to be ready for dog, cat, chicken…
Yeah, but vets can also just throw their patients in the garbage when they fuck up. Harder to do that with people.
people are more cumbersome to be sure
Or Vimes’ logic: if an elderly relative dies, everyone says “oh, what a shame”… but if a prize race horse dies, the owner will be sending someone round to break some legs. So the vet tends to have a much more pressing motivation to keep things alive…
or a horse… and large animals have their own challenges.
The moment Kendall greenlit his kids feeding the bagel to the rabbit I knew it was doomed.Not because I’m a veterinarian or because I know anything about rabbits – but because Kendall is the type of person that, if given advice/directions/instructions by him, you do the exact *opposite* thing.
Several people (here and elsewhere) called the rabbit’s demise last week. I’m a little surprised that it happened so quickly.
What kind of idiot babysitter feels she can’t put her foot down and tell the kids “no we cannot give your rabbit a piece of bagel. It will make her really sick and she might die. Is that what you want?” JFC. I have worked as a professional pet sitter and the number of times I had to sit a family down and explain to them they were slowly killing their pet if they didn’t stop giving her pizza and Jimmy John’s, or to stop changing their food every month because they were too lazy to buy the same food. I laughed at Roman “We’re all going to work at the same Target” comment. Because yeah, poor little rich kids don’t have enough money in their trust funds to live off for the rest of their pathetic useless lives.
To be fair, the babysitter DID tell the kids they couldn’t feed the rabbit a bagel and then one of them ratted her out to Kendall. While any normal babysitter should be able to tell a parent “Hey, this is a bad idea,” I think the point may have been to show another example of how the obscene wealth of these people makes them think they can literally break physical/biological laws and get away with it.
What kind of idiot babysitter feels she can’t put her foot down and tell the kids “no we cannot give your rabbit a piece of bagel. It will make her really sick and she might die. Is that what you want?”I think she did, but then the kid did an end run around her and called daddy. Who thinks being a good father is never saying no to the kids he hardly sees.
Thanks! I need to stop watching at 6:30 am. Not awake enough to catch all the details.
The best baby-sitter in the world is no match for an awful parent like Kendall.
Only an average of 125 people a year are accepted into those schools.That doesn’t seem right unless you mean each school accepts/enrolls 125.In 2017, first year enrollment at the 30 accredited vet schools in the US was 3,371https://www.aavmc.org/assets/Site_18/files/Data/2017%20AAVMC%20Public%20Data-%20Final%2010.18%20(ID%2095283).pdf
https://equimanagement.com/news/2019-data-on-veterinary-students-available-from-aavmcMore than 13,000 individuals are studying veterinary medicine at 49 accredited colleges.
Veterinary school admission is very competitive but it’s not that insane. There are 435 seats in House of Reps up for election every two years. A quick google shows that America was graduating ~2700 new vets annually as of 2015.
Number of people accepted to veterinary school is a really, really weird thing to lie about.
The biggest flub of the whole episode is that — as with Kendall’s failure to prioritize Logan’s health, in the prior episode — no one thought to check Logan’s pocket for pills! At this point, and particularly after his stroke in season 1, Shiv, Kendall, Roman have no excuse at this point: they should know (or be informed of) their father’s potential pill needs! Even Roman didn’t want to tend to him (“let me know when he’s less… scary”). While Shiv chided Kerry for not bringing up Logan’s UTI earlier, which created the whole mess, it was just too mild given the circumstances. No one is looking after these details! The irony is that no one outside the family would even feel comfortable enough to intervene and teach them. So for all those reasons, I’m Team Tom all the way, for whom no scepter is too intimidating (except his overzealous scepter affinities clearly overstepped with Shiv).BTW: interesting that Karl’s settlement announcement, which clearly interrupted the part of the corporate video about how important women are to Waystar, was met with applause, but Gerri’s (well-practiced) speech was met with silence.
Yeah Sherry should have told Gerri or Karolina about the UTI and the pills, in case Logan needed them and forgot he had them. How do the kids not know he’s sick? They heard about what happened at Josh’s.
That was heatstroke; this was a UTI. They’re entirely unrelated, and unrelated to the stroke in S1 too… except in the general “he’s getting old!” sense…
god them making karl and frank a comedic duo might be my favourite development of season 3. also i love frank. i know jesse armstrong didn’t help co-write death of stalin with iannuci like he did in the loop but the death of stalin vibes were strong in this one.
I think their comedic duo leanings started in Season 2 when they were both trying to throw each other the bus on the yacht about who should be given up in the press conference
Yes!
I think it’s certainly clear that he comes out of that Iannucci/Morris school of writing.
To me, the analogy here was to Rise of the Nutters/Spinners and Losers, the two-hour little miniseries in The Thick of It – the chaos, the uncertainty, the little cliques meeting together, the games of telephone, the bottom-feeders shuffling from group to group (Greg here, Ollie there). The backtracking on stage here mirrors Ben Swain’s Newsnight appearings in Nutters, and the reversals of leaks to the paper in Spinners (more generally, leaving a character with nothing to say at a lectern is a staple of The Thick of It – on one occassion they even atttempt to claim that not having anything interesting to say WAS the interesting thing). The bit with the President not running mirrors the way that Malcolm’s games in Nutters accidentally trigger the PM to resign early (leading to the events of Spinners, or in this case next week’s episodes) – in both cases the manipulator attempts to take hits against what he assumes is a solid wall, only to accidentally bring the roof down on his own head. After Nutters/Spinners, we see a similar approach to escalating chaos and the comedies of inadequate information in Season 4 of TTOI and, as you say, The Death of Stalin (both of which Iannucci wrote without Armstrong), and even more darkly in Babylon (which Armstrong wrote without Iannucci, and again, if anyone hasn’t seen Babylon, please let Succession be the spur to get you to go back and watch it!).
“Do you think it’s possible to sue a grandparent in, like, an affectionate way?”-Lol, love it! Greg and Ewan was exactly the scene I was looking for based off last week, and given what was said (“You need to take yourself seriously, kid”) I hope this subplot leads to a turning point for his character- the only one I’m rooting for. His status as a distant relative and lowest member on the Roy heiarchy allows Greg the opportunity for the most change out of all of them, imo.Similar to the lady who was going to testify last season, Shiv got another knockout scene where her social manuevering both save the day, and serve her interests if she scored herself that extra seat on the board. Although this time I wonder if she had this in mind from the start, or if her negotiating was more on the fly, and she come up those pretty enticing ideas in the moment.It’s been interesting to observe Kendall’s inflated sense of self (moreso than usual) this season, and his obsession with the optics. “I think my absence makes me look like a little bitch.” It’s a smaller thread this episode, but after the presentation, he promptly shows up to meet Logan the minute he’s summoned, gets stood up, and precisely ends up looking like a little bitch.
I have to say the PJ stuff was pretty petty. Also, when did Sandy become so incapacitated?
They mentioned the rumor about Sandy having syphilis in Argestes; I guess it was true? I was wondering if the actor was actually sick, if not they did a good job making him look horrible
Who you gonna sue next, Greg? Save the Children?
I think the offer was off the cuff – she saw, and recognised, Sandi’s desire for more of a say. The fourth seat wasn’t just the offer to Sandy, it was also the offer to Sandi specifically to find a way to make the deal stick.
I know Shiv has been genuinely obnoxious for most of this season, but it’s kind of mind-blowing how frequently/quickly the Roy brothers reach for a gendered put down when they want to put her in her place. Usually there’s at least some plausible deniability in terms of how pointed/purposeful the gendered language is. The Roys often speak in crude sexual metaphor, Logan is legit using Shiv’s gender for optics post-cruise scandal, etc. But Roman’s whole “Shiv being a bitch?” line at the end of the episode felt like a new low, especially when paired with Tom’s creepy baby comments.
Thank you. I’m usually a fan of Roman (and Shiv) but his calling the latter that was sexist *and* suck-up(ish). Speaking of sucking up, Roman’s continual obeisances to Logan throughout the episode came across as extreme Daddy fawning. This isn’t the first time (this season) Logan has shown blatant disrespect to Shiv. I wonder if there will be eventual consequences to this.Speaking of daughters and their fathers, I wonder if Sandi (the Younger) is running a long-term con on the Roys. I wonder if Sandy (the elder) is completely incapacitated and his daughter is the one running the show by using their father as a way to disarm everyone.It would be convenient to set herself (Sandi II) up as powerless and have people like Shiv talk up vital information to her because they assume she (Sandi II) is not a major decision maker. Ewan’s holier-than-thou behavior about money is so irksome. There’s nothing worse than someone who is sanctimonious about money because they never had to worry about not having it.Considering his bathroom interaction with Logan, I too, was softening on Tom (I haaaate his bullying of Greg). But his going all Handmaid’s Tale about Shiv’s monthly put me back at square one.Gerri continues to be the (secretly) smartest person in the room.
I was also begrudgingly coming to accept Roman’s supposed growth this season. But yeah, the Shiv comment really changed my personal calculus around his supposed concern for Logan’s wellbeing. Unless he just genuinely has some very deep seated issues around relationships with women, which is entirely plausible at this point.And yeah, I was totally hoping that Gerri seized this moment to show she was more than a puppet. It was a bummer to see everyone dismiss her right away.
Ewan is just a more bitter older version of Connor
Logan didn’t give Kerry the day off. He wanted her to sit among the shareholders, eavesdrop, and read the temperature of the room. But I do agree that there’s definitely a vibe between her and Logan. You’d think Logan would be more discreet given his reputation with respect to how he treats woman is an issue.
Logan didn’t give Kerry the day off. He wanted her to sit among the shareholders, eavesdrop, and read the temperature of the room. But I do agree that there’s definitely a vibe between her and Logan. You’d think Logan would be more discreet given his reputation with respect to how he treats woman is an issue.
I work as an EA to a managing partner of a family business. There can definitely be no hanky panky going on, but you do become the one person they trust to get shit done. You share a laugh over stuff, sometimes they need to vent about their family or employees and trust you to keep your mouth shut. I would think at this point in Logan’s life and his health issues, it’s not a concern of Kerry’s.
Does anyone else want to see the cut of this episode that is just Frank on stage, talking for about 2 hours about nothing?I liked addled Logan’s defence of Frank, “Only I can be mean to Frank” (I’m paraphrasing).
“talking for about 2 hours about nothing?”is probably what Frank would start sounding like after 20 minutes up there freestyling his speech. I really should read these things more thoroughly before I post.
I’m also picturing what it would be like to be in that audience with no idea what was going on behind the scenes. Sitting there, fuming, like ‘what the hell is he talking about? Get on with it so we can vote. And how Gerri? What is she… is she going to tell us her whole history with the company? Finally she’s done…. Wait, a video? What? She just said all this!”
Karolina looked so pissed when Gerri went to the video so quickly. I love how the PR people get furious when people can’t just endlessly bullshit like they can.
On the one hand, yes, it would be hilarious. On the other hand, having been on a stage with way too much time to fill, it might be too painful too watch!
Shareholders going, this guy is paid to do nothing?
Throughout this series, Kendall is wanting too much, overplaying, being too confident about himself, his abilities. And again, he is left outside, lost. I dont see him coming back to the family, he burned too many bridges.
In regards to Shiv, I’m suprised that so many didnt see how power hungry she always was. She covered it up, due to not being part of the company, but since season 1, in both her private and business life, she aims for power. She’s not much different than Kendall. She thinks she’s the smartest, she wants to lead, and you can clearly see the dislikes she’s getting from Karl, Frank and Gerri. My assumption is that by the end of the season, she will be in a simliar position like Kendall. She will be outclassed, looking forward seeing this.
Going forward, I really think that Roman is the best choice as a CEO. Why ? He might come across as a jerk, a sexists, but he does not have such venom / poison in himself like Kendall or Shiv.
Shiv has that self-inflating quality that makes no onein the company respect her, at least not like Kendall when he was around or Roman now. It’s telling that she used her position to try and land a seat out of the deal for herself, Kendall or anyone else would’ve never gone for that in her position. She is the smartest probably of the kids, but also severely myopic, so concerned with getting ahead that she’s burning any goodwill for the company which only brings her status down more.
Yeah, Kendall and Shiv and probably Conner (regardless of whether they want him or not) are totally going to be teaming up against Logan and Roman by the end of this season. I’m still reeling from the emotional weight of when Roman told the fly-fishing story and Logan was like “what was that?” and Roman was like, “It was a real story, but it wasn’t you, it was Conner” and you realize that Roman is absolutely the most psychologically destroyed by his father but also will never ever leave his side. Also if Roman and Gerri don’t bang I’ll just die.
Going forward, I really think that Roman is the best choice as a CEO. Why ? He might come across as a jerk, a sexists, but he does not have such venom / poison in himself like Kendall or Shiv.
Roman is consistently arguing that the company should take the most aggressive, most hard line stance possible. He’s poisoned by his need for affection from his abusive father. (I mean, they all are but he’s the one who emulates is worst qualities with seemingly no moderation).
I guess we’ll see how everything plays out, but the people the show portrays as competent (Gerry, Stewey, ect.) are the ones that think it’s a terrible idea to do things like go to a vote, not cooperate with the FBI, and smear the sexual assault victims).
Roman’s issues just aren’t as apparent as Shiv’s and Kendall’s because he is driven by ambition to make his dad happy not personal ambition, but that is potentially worse in the long term.
It’s actually kind of hysterical that the one straight-shooter no-bullshit guy in this whole thing is Stewy, the venture capitalist rat-fuck.
They’ve each internalised a concept of power from their father that they’re trying to emulate. Connor is trying to be the aloof prince in his palace in the desert (patron of arts, judger of wines); Kendall is (or was) trying to be the corporate shark, ruthless, focused on the bottom-line; Siobhan is trying to be the smooth operator, the doer of backroom deals, attender of galas, arbiter of political fortunes; Roman is just trying to be a sadistic bully.
Their father is all of those things; but perhaps crucially, each of those things is an excuse the children have created for why their father is cold and loveless. Connor’s image is of a father who was just above all the petty things (like children); Kendall’s is of a father who couldn’t let children distract him from the boardroom; Siobhan’s is of a father who lived in a complicated and mysterious world of smoke-filled rooms that she couldn’t understand because nobody had given her the decoder ring; Roman likes to tell himself that his image was of a father who simply expressed affection through abuse, though really I think that it’s of a father who is too goddamn awesome to give a shit about someone as pathetic as Romulus.Ironically, although their father was all those things, I’m not sure he was that great at any of them. I think their images outshine him, and that each in their way has surpassed him already, which is partly why they’re all frustrated not to have earned his respect, even though they think they’ve done what they think he wanted. In fact, he was just some moderately cunning guy with a colossal ego who lucked out – and the people he does respect or admire – Ewan, Caroline, Marcia – he does so for reasons his children don’t understand…
Yeah. I think of the three siblings, Roman somehow manages to be the most decent while also still being a total shithead.
I’m surprised how much I’ve grown to completely dislike Shiv. Last season she
had no issue tapping into the sisterhood to silence a rape survivor, in
part assisted by false promises that she would impose change. Meanwhile
we’ve had to listen to her righteous indignation at Kendall being a fake advocate all season long.
Of everyone, (a) she was
the only one willing to publish that awful letter about Kendall, (b) she
was the one lining up for Kendall to go to jail in Season 2
(which she got behind to save Tom, only to then be totally fine with Tom
going to jail after all in Season 3), and (c) while all three siblings
share a tragically outsized sense of entitlement and delusion that any
of them are deserving of the job, Kendall worked as the actual
successor for years and Roman went through management training. Shiv got
a walk-on role with no effort and has no problems condescending to
everyone she encounters at the Company as though she were their of her own merit.
I’m team Gerri, who seems to be the only one that wasn’t aware of the cruise line issues and capable of making decisions and suggestions that Logan doesn’t agree with (like cooperating with the FBI). After Gerri I’m leaning Roman, who showed a lot of competence in the overseas meeting, has invested the time in crafting actual relationships (albeit sexually questionable) with people that work at the Company, refused to sign the letter, was willing to sit down and provide a nice fake story about Logan (Shiv couldn’t be bothered), and did the work on the west coast under Frank.
Shiv’s goals have been clear since she blew up her working relationship with Senator Gil Eavis (after he’d offered her Chief of Staff to boot) as soon as Logan dangled CEO in front of her at the summer palace.
Ok, but what’s the deal with all the (parenteses with sentences ending in an exclamation point!)? A bit too much, don’t you think?
The Karl and Frank interactions are killing me, man. How long did Frank have to be on that stage? Nobody knows for sure!
I loved Frank throwing Gerri into the mix and announcing her onto the stage. That trio of Gerri, Frank and Karl is always enjoyable.
This episode felt more like an episode of Veep than Succession with all the fumbling that went on once Logan wasn’t cogent enough to make a decision. It was good but it felt like I was watching a different show. Maybe they’re trying to showcase how inept the kids are and how without their Father but it was a little on the nose for my taste.
I thought it fit, it was a lot like the first season episode where Kendall had so many snafus trying to make in through the city and back to the vote. It is kind of a Veep/Thick of It/etc kind of chaos the Brits are fond of but the show does have that DNA.
It honestly felt like a rehash of the first few episodes of Season 1 in a lot of different ways to me. And not necessarily in a good way. Like we’re back to square 1 when I wanted the show to finally be ramping up.
To me it fit. I’ve always watched Succession as primarily a comedy.
I liked how quickly things devolved without Logan calling the shots. It hearkened back to the first season, where you saw the power vacuum develop as soon as Logan was stricken. The farce at the shareholder meeting showed how little everyone at Waystar has learned from that incident, and it showed how a lifetime of Logan’s leadership—both at the company and with his family—has produced sniveling suck-ups and mewling failsons, none of whom are capable of steering the ship in Logan’s absence. Logan never really reckoned with his condition/inevitable departure from the company in season 1. While some folks have said this feels like a rehash, to me it felt like chickens finally coming home to roost. Logan’s flaws are exposed when he is physically weakened, because that’s when you get to see the rot that he has allowed to fester underneath him in his effort to rule with an iron fist. He could have emerged from the stroke with the understanding that the company needed the stability of a clear succession plan, and that his legacy would in part be about ensuring that. But his ego cannot allow him to see that or to surrender control, and so his hubris will become his fatal flaw.
also really amused by roman saying logan is 6 moves ahead. echoing some people who watch this show that believe logan is some sort of mastermind playing chess while everyone is playing checkers even though the show has shown us throughout the entire show that this version of logan is very much not that, at least not anymore.
That was a great little detail. Personally I think even the Logan of old, in his prime, has been mythologized and probably wasn’t truly the mastermind he’s made out to be. That’s the brand he’s built for himself, intentionally or otherwise, across 50 years. But as with any brand it’s built on as much falsehood as truth, if not much more.
He was no dummy, but my guess is that once he got to a certain level of power and wealth, he begun to win by simply bullying or strongarming whoever got in his way. What pisses him off about Sandy being in the company is that he can’t do that to him.
I rather liked it when Shiv pressed Logan to spell out EXACTLY what he would have done to save the company if he hadn’t been strung out with UTI infection, and Logan says, “I would have figured it out.” Uh huh, sure, Pops. Like he always makes great decisions (as @BlueSteelCage reminds us Logan buried Waystar under so much debt it’s still digging itself out). This is what happens when you believe your own PR.
TBF he did also say something along the lines of “Dad just goes with his gut and it usually works out for him” which is more or less true.
Is it? Did trying to take over PGN work out? Did racing back to work after his stroke (out of spite) work out? Did Rhea work out? Did offering it to Shiv work out? Did choosing to scapegoat Ken work out? Did fighting the DOJ work out? Did using ATN to try to turn the screws on the president work out?
I think there is ZERO chance Kerry and Logan are involved. No one I talked to got this vibe whatsoever.
Is no one going to mention that Kendall’s ringtone is the Tenet score?
Kendall being a Nolan Bro is on-brand.
omg I didn’t even notice that! I love those small kinds of details
Shoutout to David Rasche for maybe having the highest line-to-laugh ratio on the show. Karl doesn’t always get a lot to do but every one of his line deliveries is hilarious
His panic attack in Turkey in Season 2 was so hysterical. He’s just sitting there calmly and tells Jaime and Roman that he’s having a panic attack during the hostage standoff.
“Oh? You look kind of the same.”It seems increasingly plausible that Karl’s life is just a giant, nonstop panic attack.
Except for when he’s frequenting the “massage parlors”.
Where else is he supposed to get his manicures?
As a person who worked for an embarrassingly rich person, I can 100% confirm that the executive suite is run by 15 Karls and 1 Gerri who keeps the lights on. Sycophant chaos!
I don’t think Tom could believe Logan was being nice to him – even if Logan was out of his head. It was genuinely sweet and touching when Tom called Logan “pop.” The man who once called him the Cunt of Monte Cristo no less.
The hold the old man has on all these people is astounding; and what they’ll forget and forgive. I do think there are some people who are constitutionally able to work for an authoritarian and some who are not.
I’m totally rooting for Connor! He can run ATN AND be President of the United States of Earth at the same time!
I’m begging for Kendall to gain a crumb of self-awareness.Also, “Waystar cares about women” then Karl walks out and interrupts the video. Great joke.
That was the best visual gag of the whole episode, maybe the entire series. I, a woman, laughed out loud, and the two people I was watching with (both men) did not get it.
Curious what others think is happening in this show’s universe in terms of the presidency. My guess is that there is currently a ‘regular’ Republican politician in office right now, not some Trump-like figure. This is based on how the Roys talk about the raisin and how they seem to deal with him. As one example, in discussing Connor’s plans to run for president, nobody says anything like, “well nobody thought the raisin had a chance either.”
With that being the case, this would set up Connor to mount (and win?) a presidential campaign, and be the Trump of that universe.
General question about Kendall: A lot of people talk about Kendall “killing” the waiter in the car accident, but did he? He’s certainly in some legal jeopardy if that ever comes out, but in a larger sense, how responsible is he for the guy’s death? The waiter reached over and grabbed the wheel, causing the car to go into the water. Kendall escaped and (twice?) went back under to try to save the guy. Once he was out of the water, the right thing to do would have been to call or run for help, but at that point, the guy is not making it anyway, right?
I’m becoming a mix of on-the-edge-of-my-seat and faintly anxious that this is starting to peter out a little.
Plotlines are being raised then dropped at a moment’s notice. See the FBI raid (Logan: it’s just a stunt). They’ve been pounding the President on ATN, now he’s dropped out. Didn’t anyone see that coming? It wasn’t even mentioned as a possibility. And it’s not been done in such a way that shows how chaotic Waystar has become, that everyone missed it, isn’t that funny. It was actually a great opportunity for Roman or Shiv to caution that going after the President might cause damage for them. And what the fuck was the strategy in hammering the President in the first place if they didn’t have anyone else to rely on? It makes no sense.
The biggest for me though is character development compared to previous seasons. Kendall started S3 with an awesome wave of self-righteousness, but he’s not been working any clear angle the last 3 episodes now. He’s lost his AGENCY. And that’s a problem dramatically. Is he working an angle with SSS or Logan? Who knows! The writers are starting to no longer give us character insight. Just colour. Sort of ‘here’s about a dozen examples in a row of Kendall being a cringeworthy social justice advocate in public’. Instead of showing where and how he’s growing and/or changing. Kendall’s always been the heart of this show, and the pulse is weakening, I fear. And I do NOT say that lightly.This is really bugging me too: If this SSS deal was so terrifying, and it’s been built up for over a full season now, why are the details on why SSS are now so SUDDENLY happy to cut a deal not being made clear?! You can’t set up this end-of-the-Roys deal for over a season, then with a few throwaway lines concede, actually they’re not as solid as the Roys thought!
Look, it’s still by a country mile the best thing on TV right now, but I’m getting nervous about the rest of this season’s trajectory.One thing I am happy about is Roman absolutely killing it on strategy repeatedly. Ever since Turkey he’s been consistently ahead of everyone else tactically.
Your complaint about Kendall is the point, isn’t it? He’s floundering because he doesn’t really stand for anything. At this point he’s just moving, moving, moving, always moving so as to keep from sinking.
Frankly, I think the entire plot (who will Logan pick?) is weak and I no longer find it particularly compelling. I realize the series is called “Succession”, but I expected more depth. Unfortunately my expectation of high standards, set by watching The Americans for six seasons, have ruined me forever.None of the kids have developed critical thinking skills for business, but how could they have? Dad’s an egomaniac who’s never going to allow any of them ever to make real executive decisions. That’s why they’re all doomed to forever rotate around him like tiny satellites around the Sun.The SSS was suddenly happy to make a deal b/c Stewy Hosseini saw the benefit when Kendall talked him into it; Stewy just wants his payday. And Stewy talked Sandi into it.Roman killing it on strategy? What about TattooMan?
It feels to me like the major theme in this season is how each of the children tries and fails to impress Logan in different ways. Roman is still a suck up who takes Logan’s abuse with ‘good humour’. Shiv is trying to BE Logan, by acting like the boss in the office and going ahead making decisions, but she forgets that Logan doesn’t appreciate their independence or input. And Kendall is trying to KILL Logan, though he’s so narcissistic that he can’t manage that without repeatedly humiliating himself in the process.And then there’s Connor, who seems to know he’s a lost cause at this point, but wants to take what he can get.
It’s the classic family biz phenomena. Competence won’t get you success if there’s an authoritarian at the helm who wants to maintain control. It’s more of a currying favor skill set that’s required.
I love how it’s almost a touching moment when Logan says “Thanks son” to Tom..And then Tom immediately makes it weird and awkward with “Thanks Pop. Papa”.
Is his name Romulus but everyone just calls him Roman for short? Isn’t that like being named King but people calling you Subject? And yes I realize I’m asking this in the middle of season 3.
Pretty sure that’s Logan’s nickname for him but could be wrong.
Yeah, I think Romulus is just a pet name.
More like if your name were King and people called you Arthur. Or Elvis.According to ancient mythology, Romulus was the founder and original ruler of Rome. The original Roman, if you will.
I should add for Succession relevant context that he maybe murdered his twin brother in the process?
Shiv’s continued attempts to unsubscribe from Kendall (“I no longer wish to receive these calls”) is perfect bratty-sibling behavior.I interpreted this differently. I thought she didn’t mind hearing what he was saying, if for no other reason, to at least have some information, but she didn’t want people nearby to know it was Kendal, so she said that to make it seem like it was a telemarketer.
Yes, this is exactly what I took from it too. It wasn’t like when they were in Rava’s apartment and Kendall started rambling and she said, “Unsubscribe.” She actually took Kendall’s information here and later helped use it to leverage the deal with Sandi.
as the new owner of a giant flemish rabbit who struggled to find a vet last week (and called 7 different “we take rabbits” listed vets with no luck) I was not feeling very optimistic for that poor thumper. Bagels? You can’t feed a rabbit bagels! WTF KENDALL! They literally die if they eat too much human food, like literally. Greens, carrots, apples, dried cranberries for treats. Alfalfa. That’s about it. You fkng moron.
My favorite element of the episode (among the many listed in this recap) was the notion that Logan in control and Logan out of control look essentially identical from the outside. The differences between the two are microscopic at best. The whole thing reminded me of the idiotic 4 years we spent hearing about Trump’s mythical 3D chess. Sometimes it’s just fucking checkers, guys.
The thing that gave me pleasure in this ep was how none of Roystar’s execs would commit to any side of the fence when asked. Karl’s shifty opportunism was brilliant. Everyone was paralysed without Logan and seemed afraid of being on record as having made a wrong choice. I’m sure having execs that can’t/won’t make decisions is a legitimate thing in business.
Also, surely the chaotic scenes at the shareholders’ meeting would have tanked Roystar’s share price as everyone ran to distance themselves from a clearly imploding company?