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Succession: Next Cove Please, Julius!
00:38:02
Succession is finally back! A discussion of what's happened and speculation of what's to come.
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- [00:09]
A
Hello and welcome to the next Cove Julius episode of Sleep Money Succession. We are back, people. Succession is back. Succession season three is coming next week on hbo and of course I, Felix Salmon of Axios, will be watching every episode, as will be Emily Peck of Fundrise.
- [00:35]
B
Hello.
- [00:36]
C
I'm so excited. I can't wait.
- [00:38]
A
We are going to be watching every episode. We're going to be talking about it right here on Slate Money. And to set the scene, we have the most insightful succession observer that I think probably exists outside the walls of the Succession writing room itself. Rebecca Mead from the New Yorker. Welcome.
- [01:01]
B
Thank you. Delighted to be here.
- [01:04]
A
You wrote a fantastic piece about Jesse Armstrong and calling him the real CEO of Succession. He runs this show. He runs a really tight ship, controls more or less everything about the show. This is normal in television, by the way. This showrunner does this on shows, but you had some amazing insights. So we're going to talk to you about season one, season two, and although none of us have actually seen any of the episodes, season three of the best show on tv, all coming up on Slate Money Succession. Rebecca, there has been, I believe the technical term is a fuck ton written about succession in every single publication that I submit, subscribe to. But you win the prize for the best Succession article. It's amazing. In the New Yorker. So we needed to have you on to kick off this season of Slate Money Succession. I know nothing about season three. I have no idea what to expect. I haven't seen a single episode. Neither has Emily. But what we wanted to talk to you about is just like where we're at right now after the first two seasons. And I think the place I would love to start because the thing that really you changed my mind about with this show is that I went into it with season one thinking this is a kind of satire of media moguls. And we had like Ed Leon from the New York Times and all of these people talking about, you know, how much is it Rupert, how much is it Sumner? How much is it Barry Diller? You know, and trying to sort of work out what the subtweets were. And then after reading your article, I started thinking, well, maybe it's not actually a media show at all. It's actually a rich people show. It's much more about wealth than it is about media.
- [02:57]
B
Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Because. Because you might think of it as also as a business show or, yeah, a finance show. But I mean, for me, what was fascinating about writing about it was the way in which the writers and Jesse and his team do this meticulous research into the world, and it's not just made up, but it's all the interviewing of consultants to very rich people, or the sort of digging into this kind of background detail and, you know, which is very much like the kind of thing that a reporter does. So there was sort of an admiration for the verisimilitude of it. But, yeah, I. Yeah, you know, the kind of oblivious rich people element of it is one of the things that I particularly like about it, I must say.
- [03:51]
C
You had this great example, speaking of the details, a great example. On the last episode of season two, the Roys were on this yacht. And you talk about, in your piece, the research that went into showing them on this yacht, like finding out that rich people get their morning papers printed out off the Internet every day for them, or certain things wiped down. I forgot what was wiped down.
- [04:17]
B
Yeah, makeup. The makeup compact. Your powder compact is wiped down for you. I mean, I suppose one thing about being on the yacht is that you're probably, you know, having to do your own makeup, which maybe a lot of the time you're not doing if you're one of the Roys. But, yeah, I mean, that's the kind of thing that, you know, as a reporter, I love to discover in stories that I'm doing if I'm writing about oblivious rich people myself. So to see the ways in which they sort of found those things and, you know, you don't. I guess, you know, I didn't re. Watch it to see whether the makeup compact had been perfectly wiped clean, but I'm sure it had.
- [04:58]
A
You know, but you do get those wonderful lines like sails out, nails out, which is definitely one of the lines that has stuck with me the most from both seasons. You're like, yeah, that's such a rich person thing to say.
- [05:11]
B
But don't you think also that. I mean, you know, one wonders to what extent those kinds of terms are invented by the succession writers and now have entered into, like, the parlance of the yachting community, you know, is that now what David Geffen says when he invites you onto his yacht? I bet it is. You know, there was a thing that. This was in the piece that I wrote, but there's an expression that Jesse Armstrong uses, apparently. I have not actually heard him say this, but in the writers room, he uses this expression that, you know, a character lets Tom say, has shit his whack. Oh, my God. Tom has completely shit his whack. And. And one of the writers Told me about this expression and said that he assumed that this was a Britishism and that people like you and me, Felix, say this all the time and that we don't.
- [06:03]
A
We do not. I can, for the record, I can confirm I never heard this expression.
- [06:07]
B
But you know what? We will. Because I think that last I heard it was being introduced into one of the episodes in this forthcoming season. And I hope very much that it will become a thing that people start to say and use. I mean, it's wonderful to enrich the language, right, and to do it with these kinds of, you know, flamboyant and baroque linguistic inventiveness of this show.
- [06:33]
C
Well, Felix sent me. I don't know if you saw, there was some piece about Rupert Murdoch's own birthday party recently where they did some kind of succession inspired song or rap or something.
- [06:45]
A
Elizabeth Murdoch, like, put together a video for him, just like, you know, birthday party in Dundee. And it had the succession theme tune.
- [06:54]
B
Oh, that's perfect. That is too, too, too, too perfect.
- [06:58]
A
And all, all of the kids did their little video Happy birthday, grandpa things except James, who was nfi.
- [07:06]
B
Aha. Great. And was it all recorded? And has it all been leaked or do we only know this by, you.
- [07:13]
A
Know, so far, so far it has not been leaked, but. Oh my God, do we, do we want to see that video?
- [07:18]
B
We do, we do.
- [07:20]
C
The one thing I was going to add is that you see rich people now inspired by succession or like, because they think it's maybe like an amusing good thing. And we see this over and over again with depictions of wealth in movies. Even when they're not fetishizing wealth, as you point out, succession does not fetishize how rich these people are. It's still, it still happens anyway, right? The Murdochs are still doing a succession parody.
- [07:46]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, you know, in the same way that you. One assumes the royal family watches the crown, right? Maybe not the queen, but the rest of the younger ones definitely, right? So they must do. So you have to assume that, you know, the Murdochs and all their peers are watching this and, you know, trying to see whether they got it right. You know, I mean, if it were your world, my world that were being depicted, I would want to know if they got, you know, the right kind of coffee cup or the, you know, the right Marks and Spencer's, you know, ready ripened nectarines in the packet on the counter. Whatever it is that is my defining.
- [08:29]
A
Tell me how much. Because there is this tension, right? On the one hand, they do do an enormous amount of research in terms of trying to get things right. On the other hand, it is ludicrously satirical and a bunch of, you know, no one actually goes around saying things like bolus of Gubbins. Right. I mean, it's like you don't actually have the weird kind of affair that you're seeing between Jerry and Roman. Like, a lot of it is exaggerated for comedic effect, and it is a very funny show. And so, like, how do you, like, mentally square that kind of the balance is trying to balance between verisimilitude and just satire?
- [09:15]
B
Well, I don't know. I don't. I mean, I, I, you know, I, I think don't we have relationships like, you know, Jerry and Roman? I mean, you know, myself personally, but I can, you know, one can imagine. It's not, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility, is it? I, I mean, I think, yes, it's all, it's all pushed maybe to an extreme, but, you know, and I think of it very much like, you know, the Victorian novel is, how is the frame that I come, I bring to succession? And it's not. I wrote a book about George Eliot, and this is not, it's more satirical than George Eliot's, but it's not like a million miles from, you know, a satirical English literature trollop.
- [10:01]
A
Right. I mean, like Tristan Shandy or something like that went much further.
- [10:04]
B
Yeah, I don't think that, that you have to think that, you know, something is either true or satirical.
- [10:11]
A
I mean, I think, is it English? I mean, you got, you're English, you're going straight to these English novelists. This showrunner is English. There is, like, how English do you think the show is?
- [10:24]
B
I mean, I think it is rooted in something very English. I mean, it's, it's written by a writer's room of half Americans, half English British people. So it's not like it's a totally, you know, auteur driven, only British writer type thing. And, you know, everybody's international now, so, you know, you cut. It's like, it's not that hard to be au fait with things in New York if you're a certain kind of level of, you know, British person in the tv. But I think that the thing that's crucially English about it is the absolute swerve from sentimentality that, that it is so resolutely unsentimental and it does not allow even like an inch, a glimmer of, you know, kind of, oh, it's redemption. It's. There's none of that. It's. You know, it's. It. And it's all just. Nobody can say what they think. Nobody can say what they feel. You know, that. I mean, that incred. All seen at the end of the. The. The finale of the. Of season two while on the. They're on the yacht and they're just the joking about, talking about their feelings and their funny little voices. Is there a thing where we, like, talk to each other about stuff?
- [11:49]
A
Normally.
- [11:54]
D
You want to talk to each other in your meeting.
- [11:56]
B
Okay.
- [12:00]
D
You mean talk about the beanshit?
- [12:03]
B
Yeah, we could talk about the beans. We can talk about feelings. How am I the mature one here?
- [12:11]
A
We don't have any feelings.
- [12:12]
B
What are you talking about? Part of the characters. Although, you know, the children all present as American, but I think that deep down they're cold. English mother and their brutalizing Scottish father, you know, are very influential on who they are and what makes them what they are. And I think the fact that the show originates with a British writer and is written in this country that I'm sitting in right now in Britain and has a significant number of British writers writing it is part of what gives it that tone of. That kind of acid bile. Unforgiving, relentless, devoid of sentimentality.
- [12:59]
C
You also had this line, speaking of. This is a show about. About wealth. You had this line in your piece that was like, there's nothing in life quite so interesting as being at court.
- [13:09]
B
Yeah, that was something that Jesse said. Yeah.
- [13:11]
C
And that strike struck me as like, exactly what is happening when I'm watching Succession. It's like. It's like reading one of these novels about the English aristocracy or something where everything's happening and they're all kind of like, trapped in, I don't know, the castle together or on a yacht together or at some, like, dinner together. And it's all like, the palace intrigue is just intense. There are so many machinations going on and. And subtext. And it's just. It struck me as sort of like the same. Just exactly what is going on with this show. You know, it's like being at court.
- [13:46]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and I don't think we really think that a family like the Roys spends quite as much time in each other's pockets as they do. I mean, they, you know, they're constantly. There's a. There's an occasion for them all to be over at Logan's house or, you know, all being called out to the country together. And I mean, maybe the Murdochs will do that as much as that, but I doubt it. But it is a, you know, but we buy into that, don't we? That's the kind of thing that I think, you know, we, you have to buy into as a kind of artistic license, but the kind of baroque cruelty and satiricism, if that's the word of it. I don't, I don't. That isn't, that's just like normal life.
- [14:30]
C
And the, oh, the other thing I worried about, if you're like a very, if you're, if your dad's super rich and owns this big multi billion dollar company and you want to work there, you can never do the thing that all children do, which is separate from your parents. Just literally just separate from your parents. Like I have a teenager now and he is in the process of pushing away, like making a whole, establishing an identity separate from the family, which is key to becoming an adult. But if you are, if your father holds the keys to all the money and your future, your career, everything, you can never do that separation. And that is like one of the big tensions of this show. Like you can't just be a person, you're always an adult child. Like how they used to call, they always call Trump's kids children. His, his child. Da, da, da. And you're like, these are grown ups. But like actually, if you think about it, no, they're not quite grown ups. They've never done the separating. They can't separate because the money.
- [15:27]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's, you know, I mean, one gets the sense that Connor has, who's had longer to separate than anybody else and has, you know, maybe done it somewhat effectively, but is still being drawn back and, you know, and still wants the money, still asking for the handouts. I mean, there's something so great about knowing that everybody's kids ask them for money. It's not just us, you know, it's also them, those poor privileged people who don't have the opportunity to become self made. It's a tragedy.
- [16:02]
A
As you explain, this grew out of Murdoch sort of peace. Equally obviously, as the show progressed and was being written, Trump took over the national consciousness. How much do you think it became about Trump and the Trump kids? There are definitely a lot of very salient echoes here and there. How much was that sort of consciously something they started to include in the show?
- [16:33]
B
I think that it was Frank Rich said to me while I was talking to him that when they were filming the pilot, which was just after the election in 2016. And they were filming in the Council on Foreign Relations building, which has now been copied to become Logan Roy's apartment. But at the time for the pilot, they were in the actual building and watching the kids. And Frank said, if I'm remembering correctly, that I don't think this made it into the piece, but sort of, you know, I felt like I was watching. Or we are. We're watching the Trump kids in relation to their father. But I don't. I don't feel that as a. You know, I didn't. I don't think they needed to hit that too hard. I mean, I think these. This family exists in its own world, and of course, it's constantly influenced by the news and what's going on, but it's much more thematically, it's much more about news events that you might have read on the. In the Financial Times about this, you know, this financial takeover or this attempt to buy this company or whatever than it is. Let's look closely at the dynamic or replicate the dynamic with the Trumps. I mean, the Trump. The Trump kids, in some ways, are less. Much less interesting. And I also feel like the Trump kids weren't. We didn't follow those brothers quite as closely as we follow the Roys. I mean, in some way, Ivanka, we followed quite a bit, but the. But the other two kind of, like, faded a little bit from view. Maybe they should have not faded quite so much. I'm not sure. I mean, obviously, I think that the fact that the show happened at the same time as Trump was elected was good for the show in the sense that there was a kind of. There's a sort of rapaciousness to the Roys that felt no longer like, you know, well, this is a really ugly world. I'm glad I don't live in this world to, you know, Jesus. You know, I live in a really hideous, terrifying world. And here's a kind of, you know, amusing dramatization of it that I can watch to try to detract myself or from. Distract myself from reading the news and just, you know, laugh instead of crying.
- [18:56]
C
It does make me wonder how the show is gonna hit in this upcoming season, given what you were just saying. I'm thinking about the state of TV now, I guess, you know, where everyone's talking about the show Ted Lasso and how everyone's so nice on it, and isn't that great? And it's just what we need in these times. How is succession going to hit at a time when people just theoretically want to watch you know, nice people doing nice things. This is the exact opposite of that. And I know from reading your piece, I have gleane some, some hints about the next season. One is they're not going to deal with the pandemic at all. They're just gonna pretend. No pandemic, no masking, no. None of that topicality. So I'm curious about that.
- [19:35]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, I think that decision is, you know, I mean, I think they have a sense that they're making a show that will last, you know, and that people will go back to and it, and it would be weird, I think, to tell this story and then have a, you know, hopefully the pandemic will be a thing of the past at some point in our, our short term future or even just in our long term lives. But, you know, I mean, I think as a creative person, you would want to have this show, to have an integrity that was the integrity that you imagined when you began it in some ways. So while there's a lot of reaction to topicality, I think that Jesse made that decision to not address it also. You don't know where you're going to come in on it, do you? You don't know where the pandemic's going to be by the time you, you start filming. And it doesn't air for a year, for another year. You know, how do you know what note to hit? So maybe don't hit the note at all. I mean, I think we'll all buy into that. I think we'll all buy into an alternate world in which there was no pandemic. I think that might be quite nice to watch. I mean, maybe it's going to be, you know, not just like we want to watch nice people, but, oh, look, a world in which nobody's wearing masks and nobody's, you know, and no one has, no one's shouting at anybody for not wearing masks and nobody's, you know, defiantly wearing theirs or not wearing theirs or whatever. You know, that it's not a non issue.
- [21:05]
A
Do you think, do you think the Roy, the Roy's TV networks would add all of the anti vaxxers?
- [21:12]
B
Of course, yeah. I mean, one of my favorite things in the last two seasons has been looking for what they put on the ticker in the credits, you know, and that's going to be fun to see. What the, what the, you know, last time it was, what was it? Transgender illegals entering the country. Transgender illegals. All of, I'm saying this in quotes, please. All of you know Entering the country. Double quotes twice. So, yeah, there's a room there for a sort of mischievous topicality. We'll have to see.
- [21:48]
A
One question I have for you is the sort of metadramatic decision to introduce essential characters, Tom and Greg, who didn't grow up with all of the money and don't actually have a lot of money. And even though they're deeply unsympathetic characters, both of them, they can act as our sort of eyes into, oh, my God, look at the crazy lifestyles of the born rich. Because the kids and Logan, like, they're so rich, they don't even notice it. They're like. It's just part of who they are. And so you need someone in there to kind of notice it.
- [22:35]
B
Yeah, like when Tom takes Greg to dinner and says, I'm going to teach you how to be rich. And they. Then they eat the autolan with the cloth over their head so they don't show their own shame.
- [22:46]
A
What? What now?
- [22:47]
E
Ordolan.
- [22:48]
B
What's ortolan?
- [22:49]
E
It is a deep fried songbird. You eat it whole.
- [22:52]
A
Oh, my God.
- [22:53]
E
This is like a rare privilege. And it's also kind of illegal. Oh, I have it for the head. The exact purpose is debated. Some say it's to mask the shame, others to heighten the pleasure.
- [23:04]
B
The thing about, you know, those characters is that they. They don't give us the sort of vantage point of, you know, the innocent abroad with whom we can sympathize. I mean, they'd love to be as rich and rapacious as the. The Roys, wouldn't they? And they're. Or they're trying. They're trying their hardest. Yeah. I mean, you know, Tom. Poor Tom. I mean, I do feel. I feel tremendous. I do feel tremendous sympathy for them all, though, don't you? I mean, you know, this. This narrative that. I mean, it was especially, I think, in season one of like, oh, they're all such terrible people. And I can't stop watching them. I mean, I don't think of it like that. I think of their, you know, that they're these complex people who are often, you know, don't know what they think about themselves, don't know what they feel about themselves, can't access their own feelings, can't communicate with one another. You know, have an idea that the world might be different, but don't know how to make it different. And, you know, it's much more comfortable and easier to be just cruel and greedy, but that. That's not always all that they want to be. I mean, I feel that with Shiv especially, that her character is. You know, you sometimes see this. No, certainly not just with her, but you. But she's been given a couple of places where she talks about the trap that she is in in some sense. Like when she tells Tom that she wants an open marriage.
- [24:28]
D
I just think, you know, I was in such a total mess when we hooked up and I needed you so much. It's in a very bad way. And we've got the business angle that works. We're good on that. We have a plan. But in terms of the relationship, I'm just wondering if there's an opportunity for something different from the whole box set death march.
- [24:52]
E
The box set death march?
- [24:54]
B
Yeah.
- [24:57]
D
You know, just a different shape of relationship. It could be exciting, right?
- [25:05]
E
Maybe, I guess.
- [25:06]
D
Yes, it's exciting.
- [25:07]
E
It's exciting. Yeah.
- [25:08]
D
You know, because we've torn everything else down.
- [25:11]
E
Right.
- [25:12]
D
Love is the last fridge magnet left, Right?
- [25:16]
E
How do you mean?
- [25:17]
D
Well, I mean that love is like 28 different things, and they all get lumped together in this one sack. And there's a love. There's a lot of things in that sack. It needs to get emptied out. There's fear and jealousy and revenge, control. And they all get wrapped up in really nice fucking wrapping paper. And it just looks really lovely and nice, but when you open it up.
- [25:42]
A
No, no, you're right.
- [25:43]
E
It is. It's love.
- [25:45]
A
It's bullshit.
- [25:47]
D
Yes.
- [25:50]
E
But I. I do love you.
- [25:53]
D
I love you, too.
- [25:56]
A
Fuck.
- [25:57]
B
Sometimes there's this. There's these moments when the kind of acid barbs are dropped for a moment and a character gets to talk for a moment about something that's a glimmer towards more like what they might feel if they allowed themselves to feel.
- [26:13]
C
Yeah. In re. Watching it, I did feel more empathy for all of them, especially because they have such a bad dad. I mean, God.
- [26:19]
A
But not Logan, or including Logan.
- [26:22]
C
Oh, you know what? Logan is maybe the one I don't feel that much sympathy for. I mean, there's a scene early on where they show his back and it has marks like he's been. He's been hit with a strap and you're kind of like, oh, damn. That's why. But I don't feel as much empathy for him. He is so cruel to his children. It's. It's really. It's almost. It's comical, of course, but it did cause me to feel empathy for the children themselves, who are adults, as I said earlier.
- [26:54]
B
Yeah, but there's somebody's. Everybody's always someone's child.
- [26:57]
C
Just like how he plays with Kendall and seems to. I think Kendall's girlfriend in the season finale is like, your father likes you when you're hurt or something like that, you know, because Logan, like, pushes her off the yacht and it seems like just to punish his son. Like, it doesn't seem to be for any particular reason. And he's constantly, like, undercutting them, calling them idiots and stupid, and I don't know, just. That's the last person you want to hear that from.
- [27:26]
B
I mean, there is the reason, though, that they're having a family conference about what to do with their company and she is the scion of another rival media company. So that, you know, that is sort of a reason. And maybe Kendall was a bit reckless in bringing her without asking for permission, but you can see why he wanted to, too.
- [27:43]
C
I'm dying to know what happens. I just watched that last episode. So.
- [27:49]
A
What'S like the indelible moment for you from the first two seasons? What's the line that sticks with you or the scene that sticks with you?
- [27:58]
B
Oh, I don't know. I mean, there are so, so, so, so many. I mean, I do think, you know, I mean, in terms of oblivious rich people, the next cove, Julius, is such a. You know, there are in an infinity of coves. And we will go to the next one until we get the next one and the one after that and the one after that and the. You know that. What I love about that too, is that it's Tom who is play acting in some way the role of the rich person. You know, he's inhabiting this newly found identity and it's. Yeah, so that one. That one stays with me. I don't know. There are so many. I mean, it's just. It's just too. Yeah, it's too delicious. I mean, I haven't watched the whole thing again in the last couple of weeks, but I sort of want to again. Before we start the next one, I'm.
- [28:53]
A
Going to try and squeeze. How many episodes is it between seasons one and two.
- [28:58]
C
There's only 10 episodes in season two. And I can remind listeners of what happens at the end of season two if you want. I know you said you don't like plot exposition, but.
- [29:10]
A
But the great Kendall Roy. Mic drop at the end of season two.
- [29:13]
D
Yes.
- [29:14]
C
So the last episode, they're all on the yacht. They're trying to figure out whose skull, who they're gonna fire, essentially, to make people okay with all the malfeasance this company has done. And by the end of it, Logan turns on Kendall, his son, his technically second born son, who's treated like the firstborn son and says like, you have to do it. You have to do this press conference and tell everyone that this is all your fault. All these terrible things that happened in the cruise division, all your fault. And Kendall's like, okay. And he kisses him on the cheek and it's all very sad and he's crying and da, da, da, da, da. And then he flies off with Greg and he goes to the press conference.
- [29:54]
E
Good morning. I have an announcement to make about wrongdoing at Waystar Roy Cove. In advance of the upcoming shareholder meeting, I have been asked to explain my own role in the managing of illegality at the firm and associated cover ups. And it has been suggested I would be a suitable figure to absorb the anger and concern. But the truth is that my father is a malignant presence, a bully and a liar. And he was fully, personally aware of these events for many years and, and made efforts to hide and cover up.
- [30:57]
C
And then they, the camera goes back to Logan Roy's face because he's on the yacht still and he's watching this press conference which has not gone the way they thought it was going to go. And he's watching his son just totally sell him out, throw him under the bus. And he's got this like, smile on his face and it's like, why is he smiling? And that's the episode. And it's so good. And I'm dying to know what happens next. And I feel like Rebecca maybe knows. I don't know if she has the information or not, but I would like to have it.
- [31:25]
B
Well, I know, I know a little bit more than you and I know a little bit more than I wrote in the piece. But I, you know, not, not tons more. But I, you know, I'm enough of an admirer of it that I didn't want to spoil it.
- [31:40]
A
So don't spoil it. But I will say that the. There was a very interesting allegiance shift by Greg basically getting himself out from under Wamsgans and like getting on that helicopter with Kendall and handing over the secret papers that he had rescued from the fire on the, you know, when they, when, when, when Tom was trying to burn them all and saying like, if you want to incinerate your dad, use these. And it's like that, that Greg becomes like a key part of the machinations in a way that no one or I didn't anticipate.
- [32:23]
B
Well, I think if you try. I mean, it's a good point, but I think if you track back, there's an awful lot that Greg knows, isn't there? I mean, at the end of season one, he knows about Kendall's buying the drugs and going off in the car. You know, I mean, he knows stuff. And he. And he obviously knows about the cruiser stuff because he had to do the cleanup and then managed to retrieve those pieces of paper by stuffing them down his pants. Right. Is that what he did? Pretty much, yeah. So it's really. So he. Yeah. You, You. I mean, you know, you. One could watch it again watching just Greg to see what does Greg know. He's also so much taller than everyone else that he can just see everything that everybody. Well, Greg.
- [33:11]
C
Greg actually is the one who introduced Kendall to the guy he. Kendall accidentally kills in the. In the car accident. Greg had also been talking to him at the wedding that night also. So just a little.
- [33:25]
A
Does Greg know.
- [33:25]
C
You can't just leave that alone.
- [33:27]
A
Does Greg know that Kendall killed him?
- [33:30]
C
I don't think. No. I don't think he knows that, no. But Greg is the one that told Kendall. He was the first to inform him of the death of that guy.
- [33:38]
A
Intense. I mean, like, that whole wedding scene was that. That was the finale of season one, right?
- [33:43]
C
Yes.
- [33:44]
D
Yes.
- [33:45]
A
Yeah. Which was like, yeah, we. This, this show, I will say we'll. We'll. We'll end here because this is the right place to end it, but this show is amazing at endings. The. The ending of season one was amazing. The ending of season two was amazing. And Rebecca, you were just talking about, like, you know, are the writers out of the writers room? Like, are they. Are they writing season four right now? Is that happening?
- [34:13]
B
Well, I'm not 100% sure, but I imagine they either are or they are about to, because that was the sort of. I started following Jesse in the fall of 2019, like, so two years ago, thinking that this would be. I would, you know, follow what was going on in the writers room, and then I would go to New York and do the reporting in the early 2020, like April, you know, March, April 2020. And then the show would come out in the fall and da, da, da. It would be like a year project. And it ended up being a two year project because the show did not start filming in March, in. In March 2020 in New York. So either they're. They're congregating now or they are due to. I think they probably haven't quite started yet, but I don't I don't know, 100%, but it'll be any, any moment now. So they'll be going.
- [35:05]
A
But there will be, there will be a season four.
- [35:09]
B
I, I mean, yes, I assume there is a season four. I mean, you know, I, you know what? I, I assume that in the way that I, I think there's, you know, there's going to be like the sun's gonna rise tomorrow, you know, I mean, I live in London. It may not. Yeah, no, I don't think there's, I mean, what, they could cancel it? Come on.
- [35:32]
A
Do you, do you? Well, I mean, so this is the risk, right? Like, does this become like a rich person soap opera? Is there a risk that it starts becoming something other than the sort of. I mean, obviously it can't be as fresh and new come, you know, season four or season five as it was in season one. Right. Because like we're used to it at this point.
- [35:57]
B
Right, right. I mean, I don't know how many seasons Jesse has in mind, but.
- [36:01]
A
Does Jesse know?
- [36:03]
B
You know, I'm sure Jesse knows. I'm sure he knows and I'm sure I tried to get him to tell me and I, if he did, I managed to forget it, but I don't think he did. But I have the feeling in my mind like we're sort of like we're kind of at the top of the, I think we're on the, like we're tipping over now into the next. I'm sure he doesn't want it to go on forever, you know, and I'm sure he doesn't want to, but I am, but I, I'm also, I trust his kind of artistic sense of shape to, to have, to have an idea that he's got, you know, he knows where he's going in the end and like a Victorian novelist is writing in installments as he, as he gets to the point that he expects to get to. But I could be just projecting, you know, and thinking that that's how it's going to work. And in fact he's like scrambling from day to day trying to make it up.
- [36:57]
A
Rebecca, will you come back for season four to do a little post mortem on this?
- [37:03]
B
I'd love to. Yeah.
- [37:05]
A
Excellent.
- [37:05]
B
I can't wait to listen to your, your talk about it. Well, I mean it's such a, it's so fun and we just can't get enough.
- [37:13]
A
If everything goes according to plan, then we will be here next Monday with a full on recap of episode one with everyone's favorite Londoner, the one and only Janine Gibson.
- [37:28]
B
Oh, great.
- [37:29]
A
Janine is gonna crush it. We love Janine so much. And. And we'll take it from there. It's gonna be awesome. We look forward to Slate Money Succession kicking off in earnest with episode one, same time, same channel, right here on Sleep Money.