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Stand up and walk, now! Hello and welcome to The Watch, my name is Chris Ryan, I am an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me on the other line, he knew that copy of In Utero would come in handy, it's Andy Greenwald! Great sync, great sync. A lot of viral marketing for Dave Grohl's auto bio, you love to see it.
So do you think that, Shiv, welcome to The Watch, we're talking about Succession Episode 3 today and it's all happening. I was wondering, Andy, you know, the pivotal scene in this episode where Shiv's town hall gets ruined by Kendall's guerrilla playing of Raimi from In Utero by Nirvana. Do you think she was more mad that it wasn't like... Because personally, I would have gone for like Scentless Apprentice or Francis Farmer will have her revenge as well.
I don't mean anything judgmental in this, but Shiv is a Penny Royalty fan, you know what I mean? Yeah. Shiv likes Penny Royalty, she probably likes the All Apologies Unplugged. I don't know how hard she gets with the catalog, you know?
How old is Kendall? Chris, you're starting with this, how old are any of these people? Well, I was 65 years young! When was Kendall really like vibing out to In Utero?
Was he like, they got Albini to engineer this? It's really, really happening? I can't decide which to do first because I would love to talk to you about their CD wallets circa 1998 because I feel like that's a rich text for us. I also feel like your question brings up an important point, which is the show very intentionally smudges the ages of these children because the whole point is that they're children and they're totally arrested.
And so one could, as I did this week, just Google Kieran Culkin and be like, he's 39! Yeah. Okay, okay. But it doesn't matter and that's kind of part of the allure.
To your question, I think that Ken is probably, he's probably has hit 4-0, 39-4-0, he's in that range. So, yeah, so I think he probably had one of the family's more trusted servants go to Sam Goody and buy him a copy of the Nirvana record. But I don't think he, like, took it to the next level. I don't think he listened to the Fastbacks or the Vaseline.
He was pretty much a long box in the front top ten kind of shopper. Ken definitely seems to be going through a slime season of his own right now. I think he's moved on from grunge in general, especially in a limo. He's listening to rap.
Let's get into it. We'll start with what we usually do with just some broad thoughts about the episode. Good tweet, bad tweet. Oh, I love it.
Okay. I can't break it down. Give me the whole thing. Yeah, give me the big tweet.
Well, okay, I want to put a parenthetical around the fact that I do love that the show is coming from the internet's throat. Terrible. I love that it's coming from the internet's throat in general, you know, from the Z-Way show to just the way Twitter is just, you know, red-pilling or poison-pilling Kendall's brain. That's not what red-pilling means, but I'm going to try to tweet through it.
You're taking back red pill? Yeah, that's okay. I'm going to reclaim it as a Matrix fan. So here's what I want to say about this episode in general, and I think that it speaks to the episode's strengths and a little bit of its challenges.
I think that the show is at its best when it highlights how utterly bubbled off and siloed the ultra-rich are from the world that they purport to run. And I think, you know, Jesse Armstrong's quote at some point in the last few months when I asked about the upcoming or then in production season three about the decision not to depict the pandemic has really rung me in my ears as we've been watching the season. You know, the comment was, we decided not to do it. And obviously there are probably many reasons, including the fact that they wrote this season and were about to film it when, you know, it started to be like ill tidings out of Wuhan.
But I think that his answer, which was, it didn't change how much people behave anyway, so why would it affect our show, kind of speaks to one of the essential themes of the show, which is the total silo of their lives. Yeah. And, you know, by the way, side tweet, am I doing this right? If I was still a TV critic, I feel like there is an essay to be written about how all the great shows of this century have, in one way or another, been about a group of people, a culture, a subculture, a lifestyle that is essentially siloed away.
Where it has been, you know, we don't, I mean, you know, this is not news and this is not news before the pandemic. We as American people don't really talk to each other anymore or cross paths anymore. Everybody's in their own lane. And I think all of the shows, whether it's, you know, The Sopranos 20 years ago or whether we were just talking about the vampires of Staten Island and what we do in the shadows, like none of these people touch other worlds.
It's just like a window inside of a world. But that said, I think that succession is at its best when the characters who are completely confident in their societal Iron Man suits, Stark Industries, are forced to interact with other people's bubbles, particularly if the bubbles are of a different cast or a different social level. I was thinking about the majesty of that season two, I think, season two episode of Turnhaven, when the Roys meet the Pierces and they're both super rich, but they couldn't be more different. And all of the comedy of, it's a comedy of social errors and mores and values just on display.
And the challenge of the plot that Jesse Armstrong chose for the beginning of the season is that it is a circular firing squad and it's about the people within the bubble going after the other people in the bubble. And so it's starting to feel a little claustrophobic and we're starting to lose some of that cross-current energy. This was the episode where it started to bleed out a little bit because we saw, you know, the media worlds and the government worlds, which I think are going to be more the focus of the season. We started to see what happens when Kendall, whose brain makes perfect sense when he's in his multi-million dollar penthouse, actually takes the elevator down and enters these other worlds and it doesn't go great.
Yeah, in watching the show, like during the episode, I think some of my cringe reflex was kicking in where I was like, this is just so uncomfortable to watch Kendall try to garner the approval of like a group of people or a majority of people out there who probably would just as soon piss on him if he was on fire. And his desire for them to like basically let him into the club, you know, he's been ostracized from his family. He's been ostracized from the way of life that he knew, even, you know, in the second season when he's a shell of a human, he's still protected by Logan. And now he's out there.
He's got Naomi. He's kind of got Greg, who's essentially like almost openly a double agent. He's got Reese, the watch dealer who's popped up. Love that guy.
And then he's out there trying to get away. I think that he's, that he's cool or that he's like a disruptor to name check the name of the episode. Yeah. Or in on the joke, you know, there's something I thought that the episode was at its sharpest when I was going to say when it depicted something.
It actually wasn't even depicting it. Armstrong and his writers, you know, they laid down the benchmarks and the fences, but the episode lived or died. And I think it lived on Jeremy Strong's performance because he is able to channel that sick, sinking feeling that far too many of us understand and recognize when you've done a tweet. You know, you've done a tweet and you're feeling good about it.
And then it starts to pick up and some people are responding to it. And you're like, this is what I wanted. And then it's like eating too much candy corn at Halloween. It's like, no, no, no.
Not only did you not want this, a part of your body that isn't controlled by your animal brain definitely didn't want this. And it's about to get worse. I don't know, but it's trying to, can you help me figure out why I was like, this is corny while it was happening. But then when the episode was over, I was like, that made sense.
I guess maybe it's because of where it ends up with him having a fucking panic attack in a backstage part of the Sophia Wobe show, you know? Well, I guess I, I guess I have two, I guess I have two responses. One is, you know, anytime there's an element always when, uh, an audience sees something that it is slightly familiar with being depicted or sad. And I always point to, we always point to because we worked, we were not like David Simon as newspaper reporters, but I always point to the fifth season of The Wire and it's a picture of journalism and it, you know, it doesn't feel, it feels obvious.
Well, for me personally, it was like the first season because as a long-timer to police, it was just difficult to see the mistakes. Oh, for me to be honest, I spent a lot of years on the docks, you know, and the calluses on these hands speak to it. So for me, we have the supply issues that we do. You pivoted to show running and now you've got fucking sad.
I dare you, the guy I came up with there, Doug, ran that shipyard, you know, with an iron fist. Um, so anyway, all this is to say, um, poking fun at extremely online culture is a very, it's a very strange target and it is rich, but it is also uncomfortably just already kind of self-friendly. So it's odd to train your worship guns on it, which the show appears to be doing. I think that ultimately the show, this episode packs a very succession-esque, very, you know, top-class television-esque wallop because it, not just in performance and execution and the ending montage with the raid and Kendall's breakdown, I mean, it was beautifully staged and Nicholas Patel's music was wonderfully chosen as it always is, but I thought it really highlighted what the show never strayed too far from, which is this weird disconnect the Roys have, and I think we as a society have, between, uh, language and feeling, right?
Because for the Roys, words are just weapons. They just hurl them with absolute insane impunity at each other. I mean, it's been a, I was going to say it was this episode, but it's every episode. The things that Logan says to Roman in particular are just, I mean, you can, you can see every therapist in the tri-state area's eyes lighting up like a money emoji.
I mean, it's just, it's just hit after hit of savagery. Then that writ large is kind of where we're at with how we talk to each other online, the way the show, the TV show within the show, they're all like, hey man, it's just, it's just jokes. Like, we just got to do our thing and you're going to do your thing. We all understand it's not personal, but everything, everything's personal, you know, everything's personal.
And so Kendall can say hateful things to Shiv's face because that's their, that's their love language. But when she writes his innermost demons in an open letter to the press, I mean, that is beyond the pale. That's actually triggering something. I think one of the things that has been an adjustment watching this season has been, there have been a couple of events that the filmmaking does not necessarily set up as, this is pivotal, you know, like, that's not a criticism.
It's like when you're watching Mad Men and Don Draper walks into a pitch meeting, I think that Mad Men for a variety of ways trained you to expect something important to happen in a pitch meeting. That's where Don is going to give this monologue about, you know, um, the American experience. And it's going to be this kind of huge moment for the show, but the way the succession is kind of shot with this verite style and everything is sort of happening out of the corner of your eye and conversations just sort of emerge in the foreground or the background. And then all of a sudden are happening.
I don't necessarily always pick up on, is this just another scene where Logan is reading someone out or is this a pivotal plot moment? So the case in point here that I think I'm most talking about is the interaction between Logan and Michelle from the White House after she appears on the TV news broadcast and they kind of have this side meeting. And Logan is just like, basically like, get your guy involved, help me out in the situation. And she's just like, okay, but not really.
And he's like, yeah, like there's that dance that they do, which obviously winds up triggering to some extent the FBI raid at the end of the episode. In the same sense, Kendall and Shiv have had countless amounts of jousting over the last season or two. Sometimes it's very emotional. Sometimes it's very barbed.
I guess it was almost a surprise to see Shiv be like, he ruined my town hall. He's fucking dead, dead now. You know what I mean? Yes.
And I think that what you're highlighting speaks to one of the major challenges of the season, which is it is a little bit unsettling and confusing locating where the stakes are at any given moment because we're presented with characters who are masters of the universe. They obviously have no financial worries. You know, we are, this season is really about an existential crisis in both the company and the family, which are often stand-ins for each other. But it's not always clear where we stand or where each of those particular chess pieces stand.
For example, heading into the season finale last year, it felt like Waystar Rico was on absolutely thin ice due to the shareholder, you know, the hospital takeover, and Sandy and Stewie, et cetera, et cetera. And that was the, you know, Meteor to the Dinosaur event that was going to, an extinction-level event that was going to black out the sun unless they fixed it. Since then, and by the way, nothing has changed with that circumstance. We just haven't talked about it that much.
Obviously, we did see briefly Stewie and Sandy over Zoom or whatever that was going to be in the premiere, so it's not gone. And the show is servicing that. But since then, the other crises have overtaken that in terms of importance, Kendall's betrayal and subsequent media campaign, and now the federal government raiding the company over its criminality and exposure because of what happened in the cruise lines. It can be head-spinning.
There's a lot of crises at once, and it's not really clear which one is paramount, which one is most devastating. And, you know, again, and I say this, I don't really care when they talk about stock terms and stuff because I don't understand it. And it's just, you know, like when Drew and Anthony Edwards would talk about hematomas or whatever you are, like, I get it. I'm worried about this person, too.
I'm good with my level of detail. But, for example, with Kendall, I'm not entirely sure what he's doing because I thought the point was he wanted to still take over the company. But now he seems to just be having a very public identity crisis and tantrum, which is interesting and worthwhile. But it's a little unclear what he is attempting to do vis-a-vis this extremely damaged company.
So all that has left me a little bit, I guess I'm trying to articulate how I feel a number of things at once here. And I think I share some of your reactions. One is, I love the show. I love these three episodes.
I'm having a great time watching them and talking about them with you. I also feel a little bit at sea. I'm not entirely sure where we are after these three episodes that have at times felt like treading water. And then every so often there's just, you know, a massive wave.
And the end of this episode felt like another wave that might push us to another place. Yeah. Like I feel something that's just bread and butter is keeping all of these people in a room together, cutting each other to pieces. And so any one interaction, like this episode featured several.
I guess I actually run through what happens in this episode because I think it might be useful just to give us like a sense of what's going on. So obviously it starts with Kendall giving an interview to, I assume, the Times. I would say it's really quite a renaissance at the moment for people pretending to be Maggie Haberman on TV shows. That has also been a big part of the morning show and everything.
Was she Maggie Haberman or was she? Was this more of a profile? Was this more of like a tracer of Vanessa Gregoriadis in New York Magazine? Because they were an ABCV.
That was my vibe. Okay. I don't mean to reduce everybody down to Habes, but you know what I'm saying. The Leftovers was a great HBO TV show, but I've never actually experienced the, you know, what was it called in the show when everyone just vanished?
The great whatever. Like I've never actually experienced that in real life the way that I did the day after the election when I unfollowed Maggie Haberman. You know what I was going to say just when you were asking me that? I was going to say, you mean the snap?
I forgot that that was it. Okay, sure. The snap. That's the mainstream version of the show The Leftovers.
But anyway, that's what Maggie Haberman did. That happened to her in my life the day after the 2020 presidential election. Wait, half the people in the election disappeared? Okay.
I snapped my finger and I stopped following her and then I never thought about it again. With disrespect. Okay, so Logan, Tom and Greg take stock of their liability in Greg's new office. At a journalism soiree, Shiv sees an old flame.
Nate, shout out to my guy from A Teacher coming back. No, my guy from Dan Brown's The Lost Fucking Symbol, man. That's Professor Robert Landon on Peacock Network. Lord of the Cucks on A Teacher.
I love that guy. And Shiv meets with Kendall. They have, I think, a pretty significant interaction. Like, Kendall's, this is you now.
And he keeps, this is a repeated, like, kind of linguistic motif over the course of the season. Is Kendall telling Shiv who or what she is at any given moment, which I do not think she cares for at all. But that was a very powerful moment. And I think a human moment.
Yeah, it is. I think that, him saying that it's you now, that you are now the one who is going to eat shit from our father in a public way. You know, obviously there's a little bit of, in retrospect, a little bit of threat hanging over that because of what happens when she becomes the public face and what Kendall does to her for it. But I do think that there is a, as much as Kendall's capable of it, some honesty and empathy there.
And I think that in some ways that triggers Siobhan's carpet bombing almost as much as Nirvana Neal dropped it. For sure. And I thought just it's worth noting that there was, in some of the looks, and Sarah Stark and Jeremy Strong were so good in that scene, and they've been so good this season in general. Some of that, say.
room level of sort of sensitivity and connection and vulnerability between the two of them it goes quickly she goes back to logan who comes clean about being dirty to some extent you know i thought that was really the way he put like you know is there anything criminal on paper no however he puts it and then greg has to buy the watch tom offers himself as sacrifice kendall gets triggered by a late night monologue and heads into the office he tries to pressure uh logan tries to pressure the white house kendall is visited by the ghost of christmas past and the security guard who turns up uh in the finale of season one to kind of yeah i went back and watched so that's the that's the security guard who basically is like i've taken care of the situation for you and that's when logan brings broken ass kendall into the room is just like i own you now and then yeah so he's visited by that security guard great call back there kendall uh ruins ship's town hall shiv tries to ruin kendall but the brothers won't sign on kendall see shiv's uh statement has a panic attack at the talk show but is buoyed by the fact that the fbi raids waystar roiko um so that's basically what happened you brought up kendall's kind of state of being before i went into the plot synopsis one of the interesting underlying things and i think that there are a lot of triggers for kendall in this episode not the least of which being a security guard who essentially knows that he's culpable for a felony being like icu uh is his right which i always found like a really fascinating element of kendall's character and that the way that they've kind of depicted it has been very uh nuanced he's what we call it manhattan sober when you're just doing champagne and whatever the hell else he's doing with naomi i think that like the naomi presence is really interesting his dad never liked it um he despite the fact that kendall was like swearing that they were good for each other in that regard but he's i think it's pretty lit for most of this episode and you could argue that a lot of his mood swings could be drug related although not explicitly attached to that what do you think what's going on with him i think that what the show is trying to do is is you know this is what japan's letter hints at and i think it's mentioned another point in the episode he's demonstrating addictive behavior i think that he is literally in this case high in his own supply i do not think he is um on cocaine i think that the show has never really been cute about that like when he's using he's using it just seems like he is absolutely on an ego bender and you know decision making like waking up and deciding to go into the office to get another hit is what is serving him in that moment you know i am curious about the naomi piece of it because unquestionably they're good for each other in that she seems very nice to him and they seem to have a good time together but she hasn't i wonder if it's intentional that she hasn't had she's had screen time it hasn't had much to say and i wonder if the show is using that to sort of point to the fact that she is essentially still his drug body and she is enabling this behavior uh if not specifically drugs at this moment and the kendall that we're left with at the end of the episode is it's not the most dangerous kendall for the stock futures of waystar roiko but it does appear to be one of the most dangerous candles for kendall yeah he doesn't have the action or the juice um what does he have right he gives i'll have to go back and watch those sort of frame by frame of it but i thought that his reaction to looking at his phone as it comes out that the fbi is reading waystar was similar to logan's reaction to seeing kendall do the press conference which was this mixture of yes it was it was kind of sphinx like where you're like is he smirking is he happy is he freaking out because this is all real now like what's happening here and he asked for it i mean it didn't happen because of his high-powered attorney but when he was absolutely flying you know he's like i'm you're the boss you're the boss but by the way could we do this and by the way are the laws really the laws he does say like could we get some sort of public raid and he gets it so be careful what you wish for i guess what did you think of kendall being like uh greg i'm not buying a fucking watchman but that's a perfect indication of who kendall is you know what i mean yeah well like one of the shows always excelled at is the way depicting the myriad ways in which bullshit flows down the mountain because everyone can be um both you know master commander and cuck like on the show like they're just constantly and you know the best example of that is when tom is logan facing and he's just eating shit like it's an ortolan bird at you know fancy manhattan restaurant and it immediately turns and just absolutely marquis de saad abuses greg like when he puts mints on his table and says they're cyanide pills um so seeing kendall do that so easily and so well is funny and it's also a reminder of just how he actually works and thinks in the world you know if he was ever actually challenged by anyone or asked explain what he means when he shouts about the patriarchy it also is one of the show's recurring motifs which is that at a certain point they probably should stop mistreating the gangly cousin who knows everything like that you should probably buy him the watch you know like that seems fine but it seems like maybe something that would be helpful in that moment i mean even tom is like i will buy you a watch if you come over and talk to me um what did you think of our tom shavon check-in we haven't really had a lot of uh uh this is i think the first time that they've been together since the aborted for reason you know it's like they've essentially been apart since the boat right well they have i mean since they're not just the aborted for reason but that's sad like the cove where it's like i'm more sad being with you than i would be without you i thought it was interesting if i thought of this episode had a theme it was these characters wrecking like reckoning with the impossibility of not being roy's you know and that goes all the way down to the people who are really only peripherally on the in the roy family like tom or greg and contemplating what life would be like outside of it and i think that's part of what is fueling kendall needing a whole posse to go with him everywhere and laugh at twitter tweets about him and egg him on and obviously also milk money from him somehow but it's also there when tom is like would it be good if i voluntarily took on prison time for the sake of your family essentially and you know i know that you know there's obviously the implication that he would be taken care of but you know and lodin's like what's your angle the angle is because he's he wants to be a roy and he thinks that's the price money actually doesn't matter in this world i mean connor suddenly being like i need 100 mil that was that was interesting but generally that's what we're looking like i need some sucky sucky is that what you're talking about i meant last season when he's his dad for yeah but i think he needs a lot of things apparently but yeah like they're just so so lonely you know you just want to be they need to be in the room or else what do they have and then they have another room i guess it's extremely well appointed and the show never never spins on that i mean uh the the tom sioban is like a completely like sanitized modernist hyperbaric pod but like even like a water bottle she pulled out of the refrigerator was just like salted ceramic yeah yeah um she baked a ziti for her robin and car or something that's what they need like that they need yes which is cooking in your house like they need to be in the room otherwise what are they and what do they have um and it's that i mean that the moment when kendall puts on the tv and we see the sophie show for the first time and all these people in the room it's like wait who are they and what are the power dynamics of the room because he's like it's gonna laugh it's funny i'm loving this i'm loving it everyone's like this feels gross this feels very weird at this moment and i'm not sure what to make of it yeah i mean as far as tom and shiv go i don't know i was kind of wondering whether you saw any like what did you think of the clearly bringing the nate character back as opposed to i mean aside from succession's real ability to never truly like flush a character out like it's not like you're just doing three episodes and then you're gone like it wouldn't surprise me if holly hunter popped back up or jerry jones popped back up one day but shiv's like sort of road not taken do you think that's what that was about by seeing nate and then also see having tom kind of be broken in her arms there i think everybody on the show is so brilliantly um illustrated in terms of what motivates them who they are uh what they want and what motivates or what's not motivates what sustains javon i think is this construction that there's always another option for her right i think that's what allows her to feel in control of the situation and not feel like a prisoner of the situation and i think what we're starting to see as we hit in the third season is she is choosing a lot of her door number twos i think that the version we never really got a full glimpse of was her career outside of the family business which she did with i guess you know joy and brio but was able to do so because she knew at any moment she couldn't go back yeah and so then she got what she most wanted slash was most afraid of which was she got brought in and she really really wanted it and then what are the choices after that like she's not exactly going to go back to the non-profit gala circuit after it becoming the public face of um of nirvana's rape me you know that's that door is no longer open to her similarly you know she could be engaged to the right person within the company but also have whatever other relationship she wanted and that door closed when she got married when tom maybe wasn't as freaky as she wanted him to be so now what and the thing that's on sarah smook's face in this episode i really appreciated was a kind of increasing sense of the walls closing on her she's not going to prison her husband is eagerly volunteering to but her options feel a lot less vibrant i think than they were a short time ago when you read this show as a drama which i think it is ultimately even if it's got a lot of comedic elements a lot of what the comedic elements do act as uh sort of distancing tactics it's like siobhan shiv never really has to sit her neck out because she can always just be like well i'm not the president or my brothers did it or my dad did it or i also might go work for bernie sanders or whatever and in a lot of ways i thought that the whole town hall is the prep sequence and the actual town hall was my favorite scene in the show the episode just because the whole idea of like here are all the real questions and it was just like what the fuck is going on and then they're like well we made a list of what people really probably wanted to ask and shiv you know gets up there and she's so well composed and she's so well put together and her brother undermines it with you know a tactic probably you know best appreciated by rock critics of our age but still like a really you know like effective um viral kind of stunt and the spit into the journal was really powerful like i thought she was like she was conveying a lot of different emotion embarrassment hurt pride pure rage humiliation you know everything in these people's lives is designed to minimize exposure to actual base emotions whether it is you know anger or you know or love perhaps um but there are moments the show excels in those moments when the armor blips off like we saw in fatal moments of dune you know and they are exposed and they cannot be protected from it and you think about you know siobhan just being publicly humiliated and there is no escape she looks around she can yell at fisher stevens all she wants but it happens there's nothing that can be undone about that and it makes you think of um logan's attitude you know which throughout the episode up to the very end is welcome and when he's asked to explain why he's like well it's like the law is just basically people and people are politics and i can handle politics yeah yes that is a galaxy brain way of looking at it right up to the point that the fbi breaks in your front door like it is all well am i really saying that you're not really saying it so we're both agreeing not to say yeah it's all bullshit like as we've learned in america over the last few years laws are basically bullshit until suddenly they're not and probably better for them to be uh to do not be bullshit the majority of the time but there is a breaking point for for everyone and that's what the season appears to be doing um methodically to each member of the cast can i just mention you know when we first uh we first got started with the season you had a theory where you pointed out that this show is so excellent at bringing on uh new york theater actors and putting them like in plug-and-play roles into this and uh lisa edmond who plays michelle ann from the white house is just another example of that people might recognize her from tv from like good fight or good wife or i mean she's she played someone in carolyn like four times on three different law and order shows but she is like a super she's been in multiple tony kushner plays she did death of salesman with philip seymour hoffman like this is that good shit that that's it's actually just like when they need somebody it's there i wish i hope everyone is learning from this and um you know i just sent you before we recorded vulture has a wonderful interview with the great theater actor steven mckinley henderson who's having a you know he's in his 70s he's having this amazing not career renaissance but suddenly like widescreen boost with by being in dune and devs and ladybird etc people are figuring out what a titanic actor is well if you've seen august wilson plays and things or been involved in watching new york eater for the last 30 years you know you know who the titans are and they're there and i love you pointed her out because i mean think about what the casting director saw in the scripts which is basically like we need a new character to come in cold and like it's basically like who's the person on the bench who can come into the game midway through it and face the pitcher who's throwing 100 miles per hour congratulations you're going into a glass office with brian cox i'm not just brian cox brian cox playing a character who is the fucking bull after the fourth matador has brought the swords out you know what i mean like you are not walking into like benign logan roy on a boat you're walking into the absolute firing squad and you got parry back and that being said i do feel like i'm sure i'll be proven wrong so far it's not lathan's character seems the most uh compromised by covid because it's been i feel like it's a lot of like talking to lisa for 30 seconds or calling her on the phone yeah well i do wonder it's interesting i mean is it we could play a game with the show maybe other shows where we play a game called context or covid like one of the worst things ever to happen to film entertainment was the cell phone because characters don't they don't have to go over yeah yeah i mean like like seinfeld they're just walking into each other's apartments all the time you know what i mean like that's the nature of film entertainment um there's a case to be made that super rich people don't need to always sit down with their lawyers in midtown but there's also a case to be made that when you're under strict filming protocols and your cast is divided into zones one through six you get a lot more phone calls that being said the town hall was chock full of people yeah are you doing the thing are you this level of savvy covid watchers like when the episode begins and there's a nice valley shot through the restaurant i am not looking at our eventual destination which is where kendall is sitting i'm looking at every table and seeing how many people are sitting at them and if they're tables between the tables like i am absolutely wondering how they because whenever you're making a scene or shooting a scene with extras there is an element of curation like i want this couple here oh this guy's interesting looking put him here she can't keep her eyes out the cameras or bury her in the back or whatever but i think in covid you really do have to paint it like a bob ross masterpiece where you have to very lovingly and carefully put certain people in certain places and then you can't move them until you're done filming do you like a fennel salad for lunch like fennel i was very curious about his fennel because it seemed like where he is with his ego and how absolutely freaked out and control freaky he's being that he obviously had downloaded the menu before arriving and chosen what would be the most like magazine feature detail yeah we got to circle back to that i want to talk to you about her um but then he actually ate the thing so i'm not sure i mean chris like i i tried to be a salad guy in my life i admire salad people i feel like a big bowl of greens and stuff feels like the right thing to eat in the middle of the day i have to admit that i'm just not that person it's not satisfying to me and i would say about salad life is that um it's pretty private for me like i don't really feel comfortable having other people watch me eat sweet green i don't think it's constructed for elegant eating they shred it so that you can just put as much into your gaping maw as possible yes it's a delivery service for nutrients and calories and i'm trying to get out of there i'm not trying to like chat with uh lynn herschberg while i have kale in my tea that's why you truffle fries with lynn herschberg that's why i infamously did i um you know i've come around on sweet green i have an order that i like now but it doesn't make sense to me because because i'm so physically hungry when i'm eating lettuce i eat i overeat salad but i think i eat less if i get a sandwich and a bag of chips for lunch if i get sweet green with chicken and almonds and spicy broccoli or whatever and i'm just like there must be more satisfying things hidden here i just keep digging you'll eat like the amount of salad i eat in a sweet green salad it way outweighs the amount of food i eat when i have like most of a sandwich yes okay thank you there's something about the shoveling of it that is like this is my private personal time for me and timberwolves highlights and nobody should be watching me it's my shape but i feel like it's kind of an external reflection of one of the great statuses of life which is this never-ending gatsby's green light hope that something better will be there but maybe underneath the crisp rice puffs or whatever like maybe there's something that's gonna like oh did i get the heirloom tomatoes is that gonna satisfy this is when you actually get like a repository of like green goddess somewhere in there and you're like oh man flavor town it's like it's like fucking rented and trained by when you finally get to like an actually good part of it yeah um so i want to ask you so the dash of red scare thing yeah first of all that was real sticky for you like that was great for the brand when you mentioned that two weeks ago people love that but you're not always checking the i'm checking the menchies checking what goes viral the dirtbag left came out yeah they did because you outed yourself so i didn't know uh what you were talking about i just like google but could you explain because whoever she is i'm really enjoying her on the show as kind of kendall's uh internet advisor slash greg's watch consultants i'm not gonna um embarrass myself by trying to describe red scare other than the fact that it is just a podcast that has emerged out of i would say i don't even know what we're like you would really like isolate them on the political spectrum like it's just like a politics and social culture podcast that has like come out over the last couple of years but is she an actor or is she a podcaster she's recently kind of emerged as a director and as an actor yeah i think she's delightful on the show great bagger no i think she's really funny and i think the energy is really good of kendall's boom squad pouring out of the mystery machine well it's interesting how she's become kind of like part of the crew and i guess is kendall's body man when it comes to trending topics but is also sort of his facilitator and is like yeah yeah like great should buy this watch and we should go to this party but seems to have a much better idea of like this is bad for you actually get utterly dunked on by z way like that's not like a good look no but i mean i think that succession is many things and one of the things that it is looking incredibly good at is just being a devastating not even parody just devastating indictment of what passes for work in the 21st century like honestly none of these people are doing anything you know i mean they're just talking about the people who talk about doing things and in order to live that lifestyle we're podcasting right now so i am not pretending that we are not included in the blast area of this particular bit of social satire but um i lost my thought because i realized i pointed the bullseye back at myself but your show is satirical about like what work constitutes and yeah like a symbol of that as well yeah so you know to be a twitter consultant for someone who is spiraling out and thus creating more tweets and thinking tweets are important you kind of have to feed the beast while you're also giving the beast medicine um and i mean i thought the moment obviously i thought this moment was important and significant but the moment when kendall crashes the writer's room you know and they're all just sitting around and like i'm dealing at the lampoon i mean it's all connected first of all and second um you know in that very very brief uh glimpse of people wearing phoenix sweaters and drinking 5 p.m coffees which are all late night show writers rooms you also got that whiff of everyone makes their own deals with the devil in terms of their level of complicity and one thing you know that you could say if you're writing on a tv show that i'm not sure you know we won't get into necessarily after one episode what the sophie show is contributing to the world in any particular way but but the writers are like at least we're not that guy yeah you know they can always punch up and maybe they can afford rent in manhattan or at least some of the older neighbors of brooklyn and that works for them but they also went to harvard and if they had chosen what they deemed to be a less morally acceptable path they could live in tribeca but also potentially have legal exposure for what happen in cruises you know what i mean it's all a kind of sustained performance yeah it's like one turn of the wheel we're all one turn of the wheel from one another uh any other notes on this episode before we get out here i want to give i feel like this is this is kind of like the roman roman reigns part of the podcast kieran culkin's body language is really special yeah the moment when he reads the letter and then so much of what he does after that and this is so verbal his body starts to to break you know and he walks all the way backwards to the wall and almost and hinges at the waist it's too painful for him you know he actually can't play in the arena which i think is something that is you know that logan already thinks and that maybe they all think maybe that speaks well ultimately but really like might also be good at his job you know it's that's the thing that's he's such an interesting character another example of what you're talking about is when he goes to see logan after the interviews come out and logan calls him what he calls him and he does the rest of the scene with his chin and his clavicle like basically like you know with his chin down and like it's just like it's his suit of armor to get through that conversation a because logan has essentially been like why are you going into jerry's office but also is like when the fuck did i take you fishing and he's like you didn't connor took me you know but i just thought it would make a copy his way of like kind of like shelling up like turtle shelling up is so it's so perfect i don't believe in playing the game of watching the show being like who's redeemable like who's a good person i think the show succeeds because it doesn't play that game but the guy who blew up a satellite of all of them who is the only one that consistently demonstrates some like twitching tendrils of baseline humanity weirdly as roman right i don't think i have written down here is uh i love that kendall's black baseball hat with no logo uh it's like his batman uniform like his batman costume was just like it gives him some sort of power of anonymity but also like flair but also like still take me seriously just his whole like getting into the office thing was really really funny him sending the guy out to go get like a sonos system and and yeah the look on his face when he sees that security guard approaching i don't think it's the last we have seen of that plot point is what i will say i've not watched ahead but it's we've now got a couple of records it's been seated yeah so everything everything's absolutely intentional where we're going here i i think just to circle all the way back to what i said at the beginning like i am eager for their non-covid societal bubbles to crash into another one and it feels like the government stuff is about to take a bigger a bigger turn and i'm i'm very ready for that i think the show clearly has a lot to say about the cozy relationship between uh right-wing media and right-wing government and i'm maybe just because of where i'm sitting more interested in that than i am in the low-hanging twitter parody which i'm also here for so i'm eager to see what happens with that um yeah i don't know it just feels this is a critical point in the season because i think that this next week might be the moment when we see if these three episodes were kind of circular firing squads because that is what that particular plot twist where kendall betrays both the company the family demands or if that is the engine of the season whether for covid or just character reasons that jesse armstrong wants to pursue because i do think that the aperture needs to get a little bit wider to uh to succeed not i mean listen the show succeeds but i mean in order i would like to see that yeah this show this episode had like a good relay race of like cause and effect and from scene to scene which i think made it feel a little bit more like propulsive you know it was like this happened because of that this happened because of that this happened but we have now kind of done three episodes about you know what are we going to do about kendall and now that this fbi thing is coming i anxiously await the arrival of alexander skarsgard and adrian brody and some other people that are supposed to be on this this season so we'll wrap it up there thank you for listening to our uh succession pod today thank you to kai mcmullin for producing and i think kai's not gonna forget to watch the episode before we record again i feel pretty confident about that we'll be with you guys back on uh thursday thanks for listening to the watch