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- [00:10]
A
Hello and welcome to the fairly explosive Mega Fuck episode of Slate Money Succession. The very last episode of Slate Money Succession. It is a sad day. I. I am Felix Salmon of Axios. I am here with Emily Peck of Axios.
- [00:32]
B
Hey, hey, Felix.
- [00:33]
A
I am here with Elizabeth Spires of Media outlets too numerous to mention, but not including atn.
- [00:41]
C
Hello.
- [00:42]
A
And for the very last episode of Slate Money Succession, who better to have on as our special guest than the one and only David Falconflick? Welcome, David.
- [00:53]
D
Thanks, Felix. Probably many better, but delighted to be here.
- [00:57]
A
You are a genuine expert, not only on media in general, but on Murdoch's in particular. Introduce yourself. Who are you?
- [01:06]
D
I'm the guy who covers media for NPR and I've done that for 18 years. But I've covered the Murdochs and I've covered Fox News and various other wings of Murdoch Ianna since 2000. And I wrote a book about Rupert and the Murdoch family that was published back in. I want to say it was 2013. It's been a bit now called Murdoch's World, the last of the old media empires.
- [01:28]
A
But it wasn't, was it? Because after Murdoch came Logan Roy. And Logan Roy's media empire is even greater than Murdoch's because it includes the theme parks and the cruises and a TV channel which seems to be even greater than Fox. So we get to immerse ourselves in the wonderful world of Waystar Reiko for the last time. And for a show where nothing happens, this was. There was a lot of plot in this episode. We had dramatic tension. We had people making momentous decisions which actually had consequences. So, Emily, what's your. How are you feeling right now?
- [02:11]
B
Um, well, I'm feeling a little. It's a little bittersweet, guys. Cause, you know, we've been doing this pod for a while, and it's all about me. So I feel sad about that, but I feel like they ended it. You know, there's a lot of pressure with the television show getting the series finale right. People talk about it forever. It could, like, ruin the whole cast of the show. You know what I mean? Like the Seinfeld finale or whatever. This one nailed it. I think this was. It felt right. It felt right that Kendall doesn't get crowned and it gets just snatched away from him. Because we've seen that happen again and again throughout the series, so we know that that's what's going to happen. And it makes sense that Tom is. He kissed ass enough all the way to the top. And that's the quality about him. That pivots him to the top. And the one thing I really want to dig in is why did Shiv, you know, knife her brother in the back? Why did she Shiv him and stay with Tom? That's sort of the intrigue to me.
- [03:05]
A
Elizabeth, do you have an answer to that question?
- [03:08]
C
Yeah, well, I pre grieved the end of the season, so I didn't. My trauma about it was not too bad, but. And of course I was pleased that this driver came out on top of. In terms of Shiv, though, I think the sort of the theory that I like the best is just that when they all realize that none of them are probably going to get the throne, they also can't tolerate each other getting it on any level. So I think part of her reaction to what was happening in the boardroom was just disgust with her brothers and, you know, some pettiness a little bit, and then maybe seeing a way back into the company via Tom. And I think part of the reason why Tom keeps gets it is because he understands the assignment from Matson. When Shiv pitches Mattson on the CEO job, she says something like, well, everybody's going to understand that you are pulling my strings and that's going to be the optics of it. But Tom understands that is actually what Matson wants. And so he offers to be the puppet and steps in.
- [04:05]
B
And literally that faux Vanity Fair article which has Lucas as the puppet definitely framed his thinking there, right? Like, oh, that's not the optics, actually.
- [04:16]
C
Yeah, it took me a minute to kind of understand that he thought it was funny because Shiv does think that they're in a partnership and he doesn't read it that way at all.
- [04:24]
A
What Shiv tells him in the church very explicitly, I will be your puppet. I will do whatever you tell me. But he realizes, given her background and given her sort of full headedness in many ways, that she's not the world's greatest puppet. And then he asks her directly about Tom and she says, well, Tom will just suck the biggest dick in the room. And Lucas is like, well, I have the biggest dick in the room and so why don't I just get Tom to suck my dick?
- [04:53]
B
Beautiful.
- [04:57]
C
So I'm so.
- [05:00]
A
But David is like, tell me, like, in big media companies like this, how far can you get by sycophancy in sucking up to the brass?
- [05:10]
D
I'm just a highly interchangeable, modular part in all this and I recognize my role, but I would say it depends on which kind of company we're talking about a little bit. You have A company that, like certain others that I've come across in my career in which the last name is highly determinative of who's going to be at the top of the pyramid. And then it's very clear the small universe of people you need to suck up to to get to toward the top of that pyramid. And it's also clear that there's going to be a ceiling on how far you can go.
- [05:42]
A
Right?
- [05:44]
D
And the Disney Company, you know, it was always clear you suck up to Michael Eisner or you suck up to Bob Iger. You know, you suck up to whoever the power is at that time. And that can screw you over if, like Bob Chapek gets thrown over the side, suddenly you've bet on the wrong horse and it's, you know, it's back to Iger. That can get you pretty high, but it gets you to a kind of number two, number three position. You're an executor, you're not a visionary.
- [06:07]
A
The metaphor there of betting on, I mean, that's actually what Shiv says to Tom, right, Earlier in the season. She's like, do you feel like you bet on the wrong horse and your horse is now dead? But it turns out that ass kissing is a highly transferable skill and that he can transfer his, you know, the destination of his ears kissing very easily from Logan to Matson. And he hates this hang. I love this idea of like hangs as job interviews. We're just going to hang, we're going to go to an art gallery, we're going to hang and I'm just going to see if the vibes are right. And it's just the most nerve wracking form of job interview. But like, weirdly, his whole awkwardness and desire to please is exactly what Matson is looking for. And it's that kind of almost Greg like, awkwardness that he has in the hangs that ends up getting him the job.
- [07:00]
D
But notice that at that point it's in the context of Waco, which is no longer a dynastic enterprise.
- [07:08]
A
Right? Exactly. Well, it kind of is. Well, yeah, yeah. We don't know so far. As far as we know, Matson doesn't have any kids. But eventually, at this point, can I.
- [07:16]
B
Just say, like throughout the whole show, he has held down one job for this company. He's been working as an executive for the company. He helped cover up the mess at cruises. And that was a mess, but eventually it got all ironed out. Right. I mean, of the options, he's the only one who's actually has experience as an executive consistently through the timeline.
- [07:38]
C
Yeah, I want to point out that it's not just the sucking up because Matson articulates why he thinks he's fit for the job. And he says, you know, ATN is the profit sucker center. Mincken likes you. You're talented. And I'm not looking for a partner. I'm looking for a frontman. And I need someone who can be a pain sponge. And so when Tom, sort of to the hang question, gives him what's really a very sincere answer and says, look, these are my strengths. I'm not an ideas guy. He articulates, without realizing it, exactly what Matson wanted. But it's not just the sucking up. I don't think there's a great scene with Tom and one of the earlier episodes where he's angry at Logan because he realizes he's going to prison for everybody. And he takes the chicken off of Logan's plate and just eats it and puts it back on there and goes, thank you, Logan. And then walks off. So, you know, he's capable of standing up for himself, certainly. But I think it's not enough just to be a suck up because Greg's a suck up, Hugo's a suck up. He's not the only person who's a sycophant in succession, but he's the one who comes out and talks about.
- [08:38]
D
And also he says in that. In that hang interview, whatever we're going to call it, he says, I stay up all night worrying. And he worries about himself. But he also actually, you know, putting aside the morality of his choices and the honor of any of his choices, he's thinking about the company incessantly. Like, you don't see Logan or Roman or Shiv incessantly thinking about how to better the company. It's just, okay, I've got to make a big move. What should my big move be? You know, this is going to be it.
- [09:06]
A
Right, right.
- [09:06]
D
You know, and this is different. Like, you're seeing a guy who's like, listen, I am not only an effective manager and a bloodless one, but I'm also really trying to think about how to run this thing. And that's something you almost never hear from anybody in the family. That's something you might think about Frank.
- [09:23]
A
Yeah. And the way at the end that he draws a very clear distinction between Jerry on the one hand as being like, this extremely competent operator who he wants inside the company versus Frank and Karl, who he sees as Muppets and should be disposed of Quickly, like, this is something that he has clearly thought through.
- [09:42]
D
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's absolutely right. You know, I have tended to imbue in Frank a degree of competence and a degree.
- [09:50]
A
I do. I think you're right. I think that Frank is a. I.
- [09:53]
D
Think it's capable corporate executive at that level in those things. I don't think he, you know, we can get into this later. But I do see some comparisons in the Murdoch enterprises where it's people who are at fairly senior levels who are actually pretty good at what they do. And apart from some of the heinousness that can be attached to it, I.
- [10:09]
B
Think also what may have made an impression on Madsen was the fact that Tom did not attend the funeral in the. The prior episode because he wanted to work. He was that devoted. And I think this because I cheated and listened to the HBO podcast this morning and I heard Alexander Skarsgard say this. So that's where I got the idea. But still, I mean, it was a little like the funeral really was a job interview moment for everyone, clearly.
- [10:35]
D
So it's like being asked, you know, what's your greatest flaw? And it says, I expect too much of myself and others.
- [10:40]
B
Yeah.
- [10:41]
D
And Tom's just proving that I work too much.
- [10:43]
B
I work too much. And it is a victory for the striver to Elizabeth's great New York Times opinion piece from last week.
- [10:51]
A
So the question I have for David is, is Tom a Philippe Domain figure? Is he this kind of guy who gives good son, in that wonderful phrase, where he can do this extremely good job of both being a CEO and managing down, while also being incredibly unthreatening to the one person who actually matters.
- [11:12]
D
So for listeners who haven't followed this, this is the guy who was the surrogate son to Sumner Redstone at the Viacom CBS empire at a time where Redstone's daughter Sherry was holding her hand high up in the air and saying, not I should be the CEO, but I should be really running this company as chairwoman, as her father became incompetent. I think that there is an element of that where he was a good manager down. I mean, Domain also, you know, presided over real tanking of the company stock and devaluation of their properties. But it was more how, what shall I say, managing decline badly as opposed to sort of steering them into decline.
- [11:50]
A
Right.
- [11:51]
D
I mean, Felix, you may have a better sense of that than I do, but he was very good at making Sumner Redstone feel appreciated and still relevant and a familial tie. There was real. There were some very tender scenes between Tom and Logan at times, not necessarily in both directions, that were reminiscent of Tom's relationship with Shiv. One of the arguments I would have with friends is, you know, people would say, oh, you know, Shiv this and Tom that. And they'd talk about. I always felt that Tom, in some ways was, although simplest, he had one complexifier, to use Jeff Bezos word, another billionaire media magnate's words, which was that he made himself vulnerable for love at numerous points before this last episode or two to his partner. Like he really would have been there for her if she had just been able to express love. Right? And Logan had wrecked her for that. And she had also made choices that prevented that and precluded that.
- [12:44]
A
She has this interesting thing in this episode, right when she's in the plane waiting to take off and she calls Tom and she basically says, listen, now that we've said all of the most terrible things we can think of to each other, like, I'm no longer afraid of the underneath, so I've seen the underneath, so I've come out the other side. And this means we can now interact with each other on a sort of quasi normal basis. And Tom's like, what? Which is like a vaguely normal reaction to this. But you can see weirdly that she's reaching out to Tom in a way and saying, I now know you, I know your flaws and you know my flaws in a way that I don't have that relationship with anyone except for my two brothers. And so now you, you know, it's almost as though he's become part of the family in that sense.
- [13:37]
D
I think that's right. But he's the only one who, it struck me, had the ability. All of them are self defeating repeatedly, epically. The striver, in Elizabeth's wonderful terms, he doesn't self defeat like he is striving. He is naked, he is at times impossible and will times stumble. But he basically figures out eyes on the prize. And initially his eyes on the prize is he wants to be loved by Shiv and in the room. And then ultimately it's on his own terms because every time he thinks that he's got that with her, it proves to be, you know, quicksand.
- [14:09]
A
But Elizabeth, is it not the case that it is Tom in this episode who winds up getting anointed and it is Kendall who's the striver and is using every single last ounce of his being to try to get what he wants?
- [14:26]
C
I wouldn't use the striver term to describe what Ken's doing. He just gets increasingly desperate as things start to not go his way. And I think Tom's goals pretty much stay the same. And he does have some loyalty to the people who are the closest to him or that he cares about. You know, at the end, he tells Greg that he's safe, even though he's been betrayed by Greg. He tells Shiv as he's getting into the car. I'm in car 20 if you want a job. And she does get in the car with him. So I think he's fairly. Tom's very consistent. And Kendall doesn't behave like that at all. Kendall just realizes that the deck is stacked against him and starts freaking out, you know, but I don't think. I wouldn't consider that striving. I think it's just him having a freak out and, you know, losing his shit on Roman. So I think it's just a different dynamic.
- [15:10]
A
Can we talk a little bit about betrayals? Because there's a lot of betrayal going on here. At the end of season three, of course, the grand betrayal was the way in which Tom betrayed all three of the siblings. In this episode, there are two great betrayals. One is the Judas betrayal, as Lucas Matson puts it, where Greg tells Kendall that Shiv is not gonna be the CEO. And then, of course, the other one, the greatest of them all, is Shiv's betrayal of her brothers.
- [15:43]
D
Is that a betrayal? I'd be really interested in you guys thinking about this. I was flipping this around like, Emily, Elizabeth, I apologize, Felix, but, like, do you consider that to be a betrayal?
- [15:52]
A
Well, she promised something and she went back on it, right?
- [15:55]
D
I mean, I feel like that is. That's like breathing to these people. Like, is what she did a betrayal? I just wanna explore that. I'm not sure where I landed.
- [16:02]
A
I can guarantee you that Kendall thinks that.
- [16:04]
D
I'm sure Kendall thinks that.
- [16:06]
B
I mean, it's not the same level as Tom's betrayal to Shiv in the previous season, you know, when he goes behind her back and does a bunch of stuff so that they can't take control of the company and prevent the merger. Because she's open about it, right? She says, I need a minute to think. She goes in the conference room and she tells them that she can't vote for Kendall. So I wouldn't. It's not the same kind of betrayal of the kind where you go vote for.
- [16:30]
A
The other betrayal we should mention, of course, is Caroline's betrayal of the kids, right? And Kendall actually turns to her and she's like, are you going to apologize for that? And she's.
- [16:39]
B
No, no, she's delightful.
- [16:42]
D
Where she's basically, she's like, I just want a family dinner. And it turns out her idiot husband's idiot business partner is there to pitch them. Right.
- [16:50]
B
A family dinner with almost no food, of course.
- [16:52]
A
But this is also just like, remembering the timeline of all of this quite probably, I would say, almost certainly the first time that she has been with her three children since she betrayed them, since Logan phoned her up and said, well, the funeral of your votes. Well, yeah, but. Yeah, but, like, not just, like, alone with them. So Kendall is like, you totally betrayed us by casting your votes over to Logan. And yeah, she. I mean, she's. I mean, she's amazing. She's kind of. I think she becomes my number one favorite character in the whole show in this episode. Like, the way she talks. What's her line about eyes?
- [17:34]
D
Oh, it's so great.
- [17:35]
A
It's so good.
- [17:37]
B
Oh, right. I don't like to think of all these blobs of jelly running around your head. Face eggs, she calls them.
- [17:42]
C
Yeah, face eggs.
- [17:43]
A
Face eggs.
- [17:45]
B
Face eggs. Human eyes. But betrayal runs through this whole show. I mean, that's the baseline expectation. No one trusts anyone.
- [17:54]
A
So the question I really want to ask here is. Is about Greg, right? When he totally goes behind Matson's back and he betrays Matson to Kendall and comes this close to costing Tom the CEO job. And Tom is understandably furious. And at the end, he keeps Greg on. He, like, forgives him somehow, because why? Because he needs the pain sponge, too.
- [18:26]
B
Yeah, he needs Greg. They have a real relationship. I mean, Felix, you shared the TikTok video of their warm relationship over the years and the love between them.
- [18:35]
A
Jacob Swift one. We're have to try and link that in the comments. It's amazing.
- [18:40]
C
Yeah. Also, Greg's had a similar arc. You know, he is part of the Roy family, but he's always outside the room and he's always boxed out of things. And I think Tom also does this when he experiences betrayal from people. He understands it as a sign of disrespect. They don't take him seriously. So now that he's on top, you know, I feel like that's part of his goal, to get Chiv back. He wants respect from everybody in the room, and so the only way that he could do it in the last season was to kind of betray all of them, to demonstrate that he does have power in the room and that he is a viable contender. But with Greg, it's more like maybe it's just, you know, he projects some of himself onto Greg because neither of them were really invited in, I guess. And he seems to actually care about Greg in a kind of protective way.
- [19:25]
A
I think he cares about Greg much more than Greg cares about Tom. Like, if you remember, there are actually two Greg betrayals in this episode. The first one being when Greg overhears Tom learning from Shiv that Roman is in Barbados. And immediately Greg then tells and like, that whole. The person that Greg is consistently loyal to across the seasons is always Kendall. It's never Tom.
- [19:56]
B
Yeah, maybe it's a family thing.
- [19:58]
A
So my question for Elizabeth is, with hindsight, given how it all turned out, was Greg wrong to turn down Uncle Ewan's $5 million, or is he actually better off this way?
- [20:10]
C
I think longer term, he's probably better off if we assume that Matson and Ewan, Tom, you know, actually make a go of running the company because he's well placed close to both of them. And at various points, he's had their trust on some level.
- [20:24]
D
I think he clearly is going to do better regardless because he's going to be, you know, a jester and a help meet for Tom. But, you know, he's going to actually be a senior executive at this huge company, and he's going to do great, even if he's just there for a few years with Tom. But Tom wants him to build on what Emily and Elizabeth were saying, it seems to me, because he's amused by him. He may see a little bit of himself in him, but Tom think, well, I'm actually capable and Greg isn't. But this is kind of fun. I can get this guy to do what I need to do. He needs somebody to execute for him, too. When he didn't want to lay people off, he was too tired at atn. You know, he had Greg sit down and stumble his way through it, and then it relieved Tom of that obligation. Well, he wants somebody he both trusts and owns. In a sense, you know, he can flush him out at any time.
- [21:15]
A
I think owns is correct, and I think you're right. I think this is actually one of Tom's weaknesses, that he does trust Greg, even though Greg has shown over and over again that he's not actually trustworthy.
- [21:25]
D
But, you know, in a sense that there's a bit of Tomness in that, too. You know, he sees a guy who's also looking through the window pane, you know, at the Inner core of the family. And he responds to that and he builds on that.
- [21:38]
C
Matson explicitly tells Tom that he's going to need him to absorb all this pain because he's going to cut everything close to the bone. So you could sort of see him, you know, making Greg go fire everybody again just because he's seen him do it before. And now his salary is going to get knocked down to, you know, $30,000 or whatever.
- [21:55]
A
So, yeah, Logan. Logan tells Roman to fire Jerry. And, you know, wouldn't it be amazing if Tom told Greg to fire Frank and Karl? Can we talk about the firstborn son thing? Because this is wild.
- [22:09]
D
So great.
- [22:10]
A
Emily.
- [22:11]
B
Yes.
- [22:11]
A
Do you think that Roman and Kendall are actually Logan's kids?
- [22:17]
B
What?
- [22:18]
A
Well, isn't that what they had the big fight about?
- [22:21]
B
No, they had a fight about Kendall's kids. That Kendall has one adopted child, and I guess the other his wife's. You know, they got donated sperm or something, so the two children aren't genetically linked to Kendall and I guess.
- [22:34]
A
Oh, I see. And so. And so basically, Kendall is the end of the bloodline. Right.
- [22:39]
B
And Logan didn't consider the grandchildren, quote, unquote, real. While Shiv has a, you know, her own baby in there.
- [22:44]
A
Shiv has a real grandchild. But of course, Logan never knew that existed.
- [22:48]
B
Yeah. And then Kendall tries to rip Roman's face off, thus ensuring that Shiv will not be voting for him because he be clowns himself.
- [22:56]
A
Also, he tries to, like, assault Siobhan and Roman. Suddenly, in the middle of all of this comes Shiv's defense, and he's like, come on, you can't hit her. She's pregnant.
- [23:03]
B
Yeah. I feel like he loses both of them, obviously, in that fight. He beclowns himself, and it's clear that he should not be running anything.
- [23:11]
A
I mean, he's the final shot of the final episode, right? Him completely alone. Well, not. Well, mostly alone. Except for Colin is like 10ft behind him.
- [23:20]
B
Just like his dad.
- [23:21]
D
Just like his dad.
- [23:22]
B
Just as alone as father. His whole arc this season has really been isolating himself, you know, from his kids. He chose Menken over his children. And then Jess, his assistant, his loyal assistant that caused her to leave him. So now he's, like, all alone. He sacrificed everything because he wanted this one thing his dad promised him in a candy store or something when he was 7.
- [23:42]
A
Literally a candy store.
- [23:44]
B
That was his true purpose in life above everything else, and he didn't get it. And every season, he's been trying to become CEO, failing each time. Getting almost. He almost gets it every time where you're like, you kind of believe, like, oh, well, maybe this I believed coming in, I was like, maybe he'll get it. Like, he could. He did that speech, Life Living plus. Like, he. He's doing great.
- [24:05]
C
When he yells, I'm the eldest boy. And then you realize, actually, Connor's the oldest boy.
- [24:10]
A
Or they had that fight, right, with Conor.
- [24:12]
B
Yeah, I'm the eldest boy.
- [24:14]
D
Yeah. I actually felt in that scene in the glass room off the boardroom that he lost them. Just before they talked about bloodlines, he lost them. When she said, well, you killed someone. Siobhan says that to Kendall. And he says, no, I didn't. And at that point where they're like, oh, look, we can get through the idea maybe that you killed somebody. And I couldn't 100% tell whether she was just jabbing at him to get him at his worst vulnerability or whether she was saying, look at the moment of truth and pressure. You panicked when somebody's life was on the line. And I can't put the hands of a company in your hands looking at that boardroom, realizing the enormity of the. Of your character. And I mean that in both senses, you know, like, she couldn't do it or she's just jabbing. But when he says, I didn't kill somebody, they're like, oh, no, fuck it, you know, we're done here. You are denying a human being's life and you took it. You don't get to do both those things.
- [25:06]
B
Yeah, right.
- [25:07]
D
And then when it comes in, the bloodline thing, they're like, you know what? Dad says all kinds of things. If you want to make it this sort of pure Anglo Saxon royalty coming down through the generations, it's going to stop with you anyway and go somewhere else. If it's a bloodline thing, so forget you. You know, Like, I think they just were throwing that in at that point.
- [25:24]
A
Yeah, that's exactly right.
- [25:25]
B
I buy that.
- [25:26]
A
Yeah.
- [25:26]
C
Well, also, there's a great part where, you know, he starts gaslighting them and saying, I didn't kill anyone. That didn't happen. And Roman says, so that was a move and sort of implies it's even worse if it didn't happen. And he just made it up in the moment.
- [25:40]
A
He said, I false memoried it.
- [25:44]
D
Roman tried to dad it at the funeral and he false memoried it. You know, when he's talking about somebody.
- [25:49]
B
Else'S death, how low can he debase himself, basically? Because that used to make consistently through the seasons, the fact that he killed someone made him feel bad, and now he's just willing to memory hole it, to put it away, to deny it ever even happened. It's just like he's lost his soul. So it's so gone.
- [26:06]
D
So weirdly, it reminded me of the thing in the funeral episode, just, I mean, two episodes ago, where Shiv is trying to counsel Matson about how to deal with the two Indias problem.
- [26:15]
A
The.
- [26:16]
D
In fact, he's made up all the traffic in India, essentially. And she's like, you just have to bury the news. This is a perfect time to do it. You've got all the tumult in the streets over the elections and you've got dad's funeral, and it's a great time to just bury it. We gotta bury the news. Meanwhile, they're burying the king of news. Like, you know, in that scene, right? And it turns out that Kendall has never buried this news sufficiently. It's there in the specter of the bodyguard. It's there in his siblings with whom he was vulnerable and acknowledged this great. In a poignant, poignant, heartbreaking scene in Italy, right? Where he's just sharing it all with them about his guilt and his feeling of not just complicity, but active wrong that he's inflicted on the world here. And they just. She just brings it right back up at him. And maybe she's right to do so, but it's, you know, he hasn't buried the news.
- [27:04]
B
Yeah. And he really wouldn't be a good CEO. Like we know that.
- [27:07]
A
I mean. No, it's true. Right? And this is the great, like, truth bomb that Roman delivers, Right? If this is the kind of Shakespearean thing where the fool is the person you turn to to tell the truth, then it's Roman who's the true truth telling fool in this show. Not just this episode where he just turns around and says, like, you are bullshit. I'm bullshit. She's bullshit. And like, he says it out loud and he knows it's true. And he knows that Kendall knows that it's true. And that is the thing that just cuts all meaning from Kendall's life and leaves him completely adrift.
- [27:44]
B
He says, we're nothing.
- [27:46]
A
We're nothing.
- [27:47]
B
We're nothing.
- [27:48]
C
Bits of glue and broken shows, phony news.
- [27:51]
A
We do have $3 billion each from Madsen, but other than that, we're nothing. Right?
- [27:55]
B
Only in this world you can walk away with billions and billions of dollars, and yet you've somehow lost. What? No, that's a win. If you Ask me.
- [28:05]
A
I was thinking about that in that amazing shot of Tom and Shiv in the back of the. The car at the end, where you kind of feel that there's almost some kind of equality or parity in that marriage for the first time. Right. She has the money, he has the power, and, like, they can kind of begin to see a way to make it work. I do think that Shiv's decision ultimately to vote for the deal is a decision to vote for. For the father of her child rather than her brother.
- [28:38]
B
The episode starts with her wanting to get back together with him.
- [28:41]
A
Exactly.
- [28:42]
B
So, I mean, it's kind of a love story.
- [28:44]
A
You're not wrong. Right. If Matson had chosen anyone else.
- [28:48]
D
I'm not laughing at Felix. It's just when Emily says that out loud, I'm just like, ugh. Such a.
- [28:52]
B
It kind of is.
- [28:53]
D
I think you're both right.
- [28:54]
A
On an important level, when Tom tells Shiv that it's him, she is furious. But then she has a couple of hours to think about it and to digest the news. And if Matson had just chosen anyone else, Lawrence Yee Valter guy, then she'd be like, fuck that guy. But because it's Tom and because she has that relationship with Tom, she's like. It's actually, weirdly, she's the big winner. She's the only person who gets to have her cake and eat it. Right?
- [29:19]
D
Right. She is proximate to power, which she would have been with Kendall. She doesn't have it, but she's proximate to it, and she gets the billions in the clear.
- [29:27]
A
Right.
- [29:28]
D
And that is why, actually, to be fair, I don't really consider it a betrayal. I consider it a reversal. It is felt keenly as betrayal. But if you look at Roman, whose own liberation is palpable when he realizes he votes for it, he keeps his word. He's betraying himself in doing so.
- [29:45]
A
This, of course, is a callback to season one, right? Where Roman is in the boardroom, and when it comes round to him, squirrels when the pressure's on, puts his hand down, he betrays Kendall. And like, you know, Kendall is expecting Roman's vote. And then Roman ends up voting for Logan rather than for Kendall. And when it comes round to Roman this time, and Roman finally votes yes, I'm voting with. Or votes no, I guess I'm voting with Kendall. This is briefly, like, the greatest moment of Kendall's life. Kendall, you know, his fingernails are on the brass ring at that point, and he's got the one that he was worried about. Right. The thing that all of them were worried about. Is Groman gonna show up? Is he actually gonna vote? And he does show up, and he does vote, and he votes for Kendall. And Kendall's like, oh, my God, I've managed to get my brother on board. This was the thing I was worried about. He doesn't see Shiv coming. When Shiv suddenly gets that expression on her face and walks out of the room, Kendall is totally shocked. He wouldn't have been shocked by Roman in the same way.
- [30:43]
B
Yeah, I think that's right. Though it kind of doesn't make sense because she's been on the other side the past four episodes trying to do the deal on Matson's side. So why he automatically thinks she's on his side now is sort of sus.
- [30:58]
A
But he's very solipsistic. Right. He's not really capable of putting himself in the minds of someone else. My favorite. I don't know if it's my favorite line in the show, but it's definitely one of my favorite lines of the episode is when he's calling to his assistant to organize the private jet down to Barbados, he's like, new jets, new jets, new jets.
- [31:18]
D
You know, I swear to God, I thought he was saying, new jets, new jets. Thank you for clarifying that for me.
- [31:24]
B
So can we just talk about. Is what happened to Shiv in this episode? That was sexism, right. And misogyny. Like, Matson says he can't deal with the mess of, like, being attracted to her or, you know, he's clearly threatened by that cartoon, even though he says, oh, it's so funny. Obviously, it's not so funny. Like, that's pivotal for him. She's pregnant. I think Shiv. She wasn't nothing. She's somewhat competent, but is screwed because she's a woman in the end.
- [31:53]
A
Right.
- [31:53]
B
And she has to wind up just Tom's wife. The CEO's wife.
- [31:57]
C
Well, I think that's a piece of it. But he also says that he doesn't want a partner, and it's clear that she wouldn't tolerate actually being a puppet for him.
- [32:05]
B
Right.
- [32:06]
C
And I also think she, you know, she doesn't actually have any executive experience, you know, and they had talked about that at the funeral.
- [32:12]
A
But I do think Emily's right, that, like, Matson already has one girl psychosexual bolus of gubbins going on, and the last thing he wants is another one. And, you know, to the point of the hangs, all of this time spent Hanging with Tom as a job interview, which even Tom doesn't realize is what he's being interviewed for. This is just a question of Matson trying to work out who can he be comfortable with in that role. And he knows that because of all of this psychosexual bullshit with Shiv, he's never gonna be able to just trust her in a way of like, I'll just tell you what to do, and you're gonna go off and execute you and you're not gonna have your own ideas.
- [32:54]
B
And she's not one of the guys, right?
- [32:56]
A
Well, no, because, like, someone like Oscar Matson hires because he trusts his advice. He doesn't want a CEO whose advice he trusts. He wants a CEO who he can just tell what to do and they will do it.
- [33:08]
D
I think that the edge that is her way into a rapport with Matson, which has a sort of quasi romantic or physical charge to it, is what undoes her in his eyes. Like, he's just like, that's gonna be too much of a frition and it's going to make me not clear eyed and it's gonna make her think that she's more of an equal than she is and forget all that. I think all of what you guys saying can be concurrently true.
- [33:33]
A
Yeah, I think that's true.
- [33:34]
D
You know, as a, you know, cis white guy, right, in my 50s, maybe I'm not the best guy to say this, but I think it's clearly misogynistic. These are elements that should have nothing whether or not she is pregnant. You know, he is commonly, you know, trying to indicate her pregnancy with various hand gestures. And, you know, whether or not he feels that she's an attractive woman, that he feels some attraction should have nothing to do with her relationship to the job. I think that it would be complicating for him and blurring for him in a way that a guy who's got as big an enterprise as he already has and then will have with the combined companies probably doesn't need. And I actually think Kendall would be, of the three of them, clearly the best of a damaged and dynastic lot to run the company. It doesn't mean I think he's the right choice to do it, but I think she's shown that she's repeatedly always listening for whatever her father wants in a way that Tom is listening for whatever anyone wants. You know what I mean? Like, she defeated them so many times. She screwed up their pitches for the Pierces to take over, you know, with a surrogate version of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times. Like she's, she's defeated corporate interests at moments that she could have been vital to her father's priorities.
- [34:47]
A
And she hates Menken. Everyone knows that she hates Menken. And this idea of putting her in charge of ATN ultimately doesn't make sense. Meanwhile, Tom has proved that he can, you know, deliver ATN for Menken, even if he can't stand. Like, like Menken trusts Tom and Matson says as much.
- [35:08]
B
Plus Tom is, is really tall. And I think if you look at most male CEOs, they are also really tall and white. So I think that was part of it too. Just going to put that out.
- [35:18]
A
The other thing I was just, you know, I wanted to talk about a little bit about the Greg betrayal, if it was a betrayal, suddenly Madsen thinks it was. He calls him Judas. The plan was, you know, the secret plan known only to Madsen and Tom and Oscar and Carolina, who are all capable of keeping a secret, was basically that there was going to be this board meeting. Shiv would vote in favor of the deal, thinking that she was going to be the CEO. And then as soon as she casts her vote, basically Mattson comes along and says, oh, whoops, didn't I tell you? You're not the CEO after all, it's your soon to be ex husband. And that would have just completely destroyed Shiv. That would have been like an extermination level event for Shiv. And Shiv would have been even more empty and bereft at the end than probably Kendall even is at the end of this show. And because Greg leaks it, Shiv has those crucial couple of hours to kind of come to terms with it and to see it coming and to actually vote for it, you know, in a way that, you know, with her eyes open, without her being deluded that she's gonna be the CEO. And that makes her relationship with Tom something that is now quasi viable in the way that it would never have been if it had come as a sort of post vote shock to her.
- [36:40]
D
And if you look at accounts of major turnarounds of fortunes or decisions in Fox and News Corp, in Viacom, in other things, the surprise is never the second before something happens. They're seething and livid, but they're never reacting freshly surprised on the airport tarmac just learning of it for the first time, right? They have had a few hours to go through this and absorb and to recalibrate even in their fury about stuff like this. And I think Tom, in some ways one can say forgives, but embraces Greg in part because she is of the family. She deserves to know this, really. And he's not sorry for her to have processed this before it happened, ultimately, but particularly by the time he blasts a sticker saying I own you on Greg's forehead because it means that he can come to some sort of working accommodation, perhaps even a life with Shiv in a different way than if that hadn't happened. Like, Greg weirdly, probably inadvertently served Tom's.
- [37:42]
B
Interest in doing that, because Shiv can now say, I voted for this. I voted for you, Tom. Like, I finally was on your side. After always undercutting him and saying she doesn't care if you fire him and talking trash about him, she finally stuck up for him because she tried to get back together with him at the beginning of the episode and he was not having it, which is a first for Tom, you know, which probably made Shiv even more interested in getting back together with him because look at who her father was.
- [38:09]
A
So, Emily, do you take that I don't know as an I don't know, or do you take it as a no?
- [38:13]
B
I took it as an I don't know. Like, maybe not girl, you know, like this. You've gone too far this time. I don't know.
- [38:21]
D
Well, that means. Makes it sound like he thinks it's a knot, really.
- [38:24]
B
I think it's a not. It was a not really. Like, and she was clearly hurt by it. And I think that even the playing field between them, she always felt like she had the upper hand. She called him a meat puppet not too long ago. Right. So, yeah, this episode was a love story. It was about how Tom and Shiv repaired their marriage through betrayal and power plays, basically, and humiliations.
- [38:44]
A
Can we also talk just very briefly about, like, marriages, how Willa has now completely embraced the role of actual Roy family wife, and she is just like, oh, yeah, I'm tossing everything out in this house. I'm putting in the cowskin couch. And, you know, I have a play reading in six to eight months, so probably I won't even see my husband for that long, assuming he goes off to Slovenia.
- [39:07]
D
Oh, don't you assume that's a setup for a divorce? I assume it's. She's saying, this is going to be my house and that he's going to be away, and when he returns, like, we're done. Like, I assume she was not setting up for the long term. I assume she was saying, I want to resume life as a human being. I went through This. I was his loving partner. We got through this. Now that's just me.
- [39:25]
B
It did seem like a turnaround. Cause she had been so loyal to him all season. And I was like, wow, they're really showing the audience what can be done here, that you can have a nice marriage.
- [39:36]
A
I don't think she needs to divorce him. So long as she's three and a half thousand miles away from him and she's doing her plays and he's doing his ambassador thing. I don't think she feels the need to go through the divorce thing, especially given that we know a little bit about divorce. Roy, Family prenups from the relationship between Tom and Shiv, you know, I don't think she would do so well in a divorce.
- [40:01]
C
Well, there is a. Either Roman or Shiv says, oh, you know, is this the second week itch where you're implying that this is some kind of separation?
- [40:09]
A
Maybe not a legal one, but it's clearly a separation. Right. That's what she. That means how she's framing it. It's not like a separation separation. It's more of a, like, physical separation.
- [40:18]
B
Yeah, it's an exciting new phase.
- [40:21]
A
Okay, favorite lines. David, do you have, like, one in particular that jumped out?
- [40:25]
D
Well, we brought up some of them earlier, but, you know, there was the one about the. Where Shiv calls Tom the highly interchangeable modular part and then hastens to add, but, you know, this is just how I feel. I'd say the same thing to his face. You know, it's just absolutely vivisecting. And yet, in a sense, clarifying Tom's value. She calls him competent. She says he's capable. She does that. The thing that struck me was actually one that you guys alluded to also when Kendall says in that room, I think it's in the kitchen at their mother's place, Caroline's place, in Barbados, Caribbean, wherever they are. Barbados. He says he fucking promised it to be promised when I was seven. Sat me down at the Candy Kitchen, Bridgehampton, and he fucking promised me seven years old. Like, can you imagine? And you. Or I think initially he's basically saying, and therefore I'm it prime a janitor. Which is ultimately what he shouts at. At ship when she's reversed herself. But he then says, you know, that was messed up. He's like, that was wrong. This isn't what you should do to somebody. What makes Kendall, in some ways, a richer character than he even perhaps deserves to be is that at times he has this self awareness. Like, this is so late in his Life and his story. For him to be able to articulate that it was wrong, you know, and you see him sort of touch on it, you think, in the eulogy, but then embrace the darkness. Now he's just saying, look, this was just hurtful. This screwed us. You know, when they're saying their goodbyes earlier in the season to their father because he's dying or. And. Or dead, right? They aren't even able to articulate the right reason that they're angry at him, right? They're all saying, you know, you didn't give me approval, or you didn't make it clear that I was the anointed, and I'll forgive you, but I'm still angry, what have you, or, I love you, but I won't forgive you for that. It's like, how about your life were a series of targeted nuclear bombs dropped on us as children that left us without love or any idea of filial support, right? Like, that's actually what they should be angry about. They're angry about that with their mother, but they don't identify that question. They identify the question of, he didn't give that to me, but they don't identify the fact that he destroyed that for them. And in this thing in Bridgehampton, which is such a great little detail to put in there that he's at, My father has taken me to a confectioner's that he thinks a child would enjoy at the most privileged place I can think of in that part of the world, right? And he's telling me that I will be a great corporate chieftain. And it was wrong. And I just found that incredibly poignant.
- [42:56]
A
Elizabeth.
- [42:58]
C
My favorite was when Roman and Shiv decide that they are going to support Kendall, and Roman says, you get the bauble. Congratulations. It's haunted and cursed, and nothing will ever go right, but enjoy your bauble.
- [43:12]
B
And he doesn't even get it in the end.
- [43:14]
D
Well, which he does for about a day.
- [43:16]
A
They are so. I mean, that's like the dramatic arc of this episode, right? Where I was saying earlier how there's actual drama and plot in this episode in the way that there really isn't in so many of the others, in most of the others, that you do have that significant period in the sort of second act of this episode of where the kids have come together and they're. And you see them being happy together for the first time, and they're making that, you know, crown of inedible eggshells.
- [43:49]
B
And Tabasco, a meal fit for a king.
- [43:50]
A
A meal fit for a king. And they're laughing. And I think it's the only time that you ever see Kendall, like, when he's like, laughing about Roman going down on Peter's cheese. Kendall is like making a happy joke. He's not making a sarcastic joke. He's not making a mean joke. You know, he's genuinely happy about it. And then they go into Logan's apartment and they all, like, have a good cry over, like, the video of Logan being happy. And there's that period in the middle of the episode, which, of course, you know, there's been succession. It's not gonna be like, it's not gonna last, but where they're actually briefly happy for a moment. I mean, like, I think that was Jesse Armstrong going, like, I can actually create a sort of feature length arc.
- [44:34]
B
Within this episode in another creator's hands. You could see that being sort of the way it wraps up this sort of like triumph, like, the gang gets back together. I mean, that's the plot of a million movies and TV shows. The gang comes together. In the end, they get over all their differences and then they have a big win. You know, at any other show, that's how this would have gone. But of course it didn't.
- [44:55]
D
I just want to ask you guys, since we're on this moment, is there any world in which you think that Shiv reverses, as well as the Tom element, as well as the hey, like, in terms of how I come out, just logically, this is better for me, you know, money and I'm proximity to power. Is there any world where she's just there, she's the last vote, they're in that same boardroom and she's like, we're gonna fight for this just to keep doing this shit, like, if they prevail, even if she's part of the fold, like, we're just gonna keep doing the same shit. Is there any way in which that sort of plays into, you think 100%?
- [45:31]
A
Like when she said as much in episode one, right? When they're talking about this whole question of do we do the hundred or do we try and buy Pierce, right? She's basically like, haven't we bought into this idea of, like, just embracing our billions and doing something new and following our dreams, rather than being tethered to this thing that Logan invented? And. Yeah, I can definitely see that.
- [45:55]
D
Well, it's a whole different conversation about, you know, generational, you know, energy. But you just see, you know, Rupert Murdoch to mention of person who comes up in my world, a bit, you know, he wasn't the first in his line to do.
- [46:08]
A
No, no. He took his dad's baby newspaper company.
- [46:11]
D
And turned it just a little thing.
- [46:13]
A
Global, enormous and enormous, and ended up buying, you know, 20th Century Fox. You know, he. It was a big thing.
- [46:20]
D
It was a big thing. What these guys would be doing is kind of managing and trying to come up with deals that would allow them to present themselves to the world as in the mold of their father without having done anything like that. You know, they would acquire properties, they would shed properties, they would announce new philosophies or strategies, they would completely abandon them without. Without a flicker of, or vestige of, what shall I say, echoing of what had come before. And it would just all be kind of an effort at mimicry. And it's a. It's just interesting to think see that play out.
- [46:54]
B
So my favorite line isn't really a line and I don't know if I'm going to be able to successfully say this, but here we go. After two stickering perambulation circuits, objects will be assigned to the higher sticker bidder where the sticker claims are tied. We move on to the tie break stickering perambulation circuit, after which all unstickered items will be put pooled and distributed in reverse alphabetical order other than those stickered by the second tier bereaved. Do I make myself clear?
- [47:23]
A
So glorious.
- [47:24]
D
Amazing.
- [47:25]
B
Comic relief.
- [47:26]
D
And can you give the acronyms?
- [47:27]
A
Oh, the FPC is the. SO sticker Perambulation circuits. But yeah, no, so that was glorious. And so Connor. And the second tier bereaved is just the most amazing second tier brief.
- [47:39]
B
And then camera pants to them and.
- [47:41]
A
There'S a carrier and there's like, yeah, there's Greg. He's like, I guess I'm second to Ygvreev. Also like Connor, like calling the medals for himself in advance is so common.
- [47:52]
B
And they don't even care. They're like, all right. You know, he just admits it and then no one does because.
- [47:57]
A
Because, yeah, there's nothing in that house that any of them actually particularly want.
- [48:01]
B
Right. Shiv, had they showed what she took. It was like some pictures of her and her dad. Yeah.
- [48:06]
A
You know, even Tom has like a sticker left over at the end to shove onto Greg's forehead.
- [48:11]
B
I love that so much. Just the payoff of the stickers. And then why reverse alphabetical order?
- [48:17]
A
I think that's just an extra line.
- [48:18]
C
That's just Connor.
- [48:22]
B
Just wonderful. Just wonderful whimsy.
- [48:25]
D
I thought that there was a gentleness to their reaction to Connor, sort of an amusement, in part because they were in a good place.
- [48:30]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [48:31]
A
They come off the jet, they're super happy.
- [48:33]
D
You know, it's a reminder that you don't need something that's tangible if you actually are sustaining. You're not fighting for something if you have something. They, in that moment, for this briefest of times, they have each other and each other's support, and there is a realness to their bond. That moment where you see Roman tear up as he's watching his father sing with the Frank and the others and Kendall tear up. But Shiv rubs Roman's back and Kendall puts his hand on Shiv's arm. And it seems completely without guile or intent to accomplish anything except to support. And that is the moment they're in at that time. And that's why they don't care if Conor, who's already appropriated, essentially buying the townhouse. Like, they don't. It's fine.
- [49:21]
A
It's fine. They're fine with that. And in fact, this is the one point at which Roman manages to make an executive decision. When they're coming off the plane and Connor's calling them all and saying, like, I know you have a board meeting coming up, but can you just, like, swing by the apartment? And Siobhan and Kendall are like, what the fuck? You know, we have important shit to do. And it's Roman who brings them together and goes to the Great reallocation. Let's go. And they're like, okay, fine, Roman, we'll follow you to the Great Reallocation. Partly because they think that Carl and Frank are going to be there and they can, like, you know, take advantage of the opportunity to get them on board. We should also just mention the other great piece of writing in this episode, which we haven't mentioned, which was the way that. That Kendall managed to get Roman comfortable with the idea of voting for Kendall as CEO to take over when, like, why would I vote for Kendall to do it when I could do it? Why can't I do it? And Roman is looking at his reflection in the. In the mirror of the drink service, and he's like, this scar on my head is not so bad. Like, a CEO can totally have this scar. It doesn't disqualify me in any way. You can barely see it. And then they have that, like, pain hug where Kendall shoves the scar into his shoulder and holds it tight until it pops and Roman starts bleeding. Pain is kind of Roman's love language. But also having that actual, literal bleeding scar on his head makes romance feel like he's physically, invisibly disqualified from the job and therefore capable of voting for his brother.
- [51:05]
B
Wait, Kendall did that on purpose, you think?
- [51:07]
A
Yes. One last scar.
- [51:09]
D
Absolutely.
- [51:10]
B
That is awful.
- [51:11]
D
Now, the question I had about that was, was it that it was Kendall's way of helping Roman liberate himself from being in the running?
- [51:21]
A
Yes.
- [51:21]
D
Or was it Kendall saying, I can abuse you in an echo of the way Logan abused you and therefore you will defer to my authority?
- [51:29]
A
No, I think it. I think it was.
- [51:31]
D
He was liberating him.
- [51:33]
A
Showing love to Roman in the only way that Roman can accept love. Right. That it's a fucked up way of. And you see echoes of that relationship between Roman and Jerry as well. Right. That the only way you can actually get through to Roman is by abusing him and inflicting pain on him.
- [51:49]
D
It's like a liberation. And Kendall thinks it's enough, but the actual liberation he needs is for them to be out of the company. He just needs to be. He's like, listen, I'm happy being on every beach in the world with several billion bucks in a way that Kendall can't be.
- [52:01]
A
Right. Exactly. At the end of the episode, Roman is sitting at the bar with his martini, and he's like, he's this billionaire sitting in the bar with a martini. And like, he's lost very little compared to Kendall.
- [52:14]
D
Yeah, right. Well, I mean. And meanwhile, Kendall is contemplating does he want to throw himself in Hudson Bay or not.
- [52:20]
A
Right. But it's a very pretty, like, sunset. Hudson Bay, so probably not. My favorite line, I have to say, is the throwaway line from Tom to Mattson where he was talking about how he runs atn. He goes, you know, I'm cutting heads and harvesting eyeballs. Which is not only a great line, but is also a level of cynicism about the media business that Matson definitely has and Tom clearly has. But I think that certainly Shiv would never have and could never talk in such a way. And I think probably even Kendall couldn't. Right. Like, if you recall back to when Kendall was talking about the hundred, or talking about, like, how he was going to reinvent PS News and make it more international and stuff. They all have some kind of. Even Roman has some kind of, like, political feelings, and Tom is just. No, my job is to harvest eyeballs. That is what news does.
- [53:16]
B
Red meat and tar. Right? Give them the red meat and tar they want.
- [53:20]
C
Yeah, he articulates that kind of nihilism that we all assume that is behind outlets like Fox News. So he says something like, I don't think it's my place to offer dietary advice to the audience. And he says, if they want red.
- [53:32]
D
Meat and boiling charms, great line.
- [53:33]
A
I don't assume that. I don't think that Roger Ailes was a nihilist who didn't care about politics and only cared about harvesting eyeballs. I think that Roger Ailes, the former Nixon Aiden, cared very much about politics and was a right winger to his core and wanted to build a media force to support the Republican Party.
- [53:54]
C
I think he cared about power, which is a little bit different, I think. But you can be value neutral and care about power. You can be a nihilist.
- [54:02]
A
Murdoch is value neutral and cares about power and will support Tony Blair if he needs to. Right? Roger Ailes would not have made that call. Roger Ailes would not have suddenly switched Fox News around to, to support Hillary if he thought that she was going to win.
- [54:16]
B
Harvesting eyeballs is very tech, very Matson. I've worked for people like that. We just want to harvest the eyeballs.
- [54:22]
C
Just write it.
- [54:22]
B
I'll get clicks. It's fine.
- [54:24]
D
I mean, the thing is, I can't say. The funny thing is, I mean, if you look at what Disney is doing at the moment, if you look at what Warner Brothers Discovery is doing at the moment, cnn, look, my shop for very different reasons. But unless there are deep cuts being made at the effort that they are desperately trying to slake and serve the audience's thirst and appetites, and it is sort of a reductive, brutalist way of saying what is at the core of a lot of what's going on at the moment. And the question is, do these places stand for anything? Do they believe in what they're doing? Does Tom? You know, Tom seemed like he was on board with endorsing Mencken, but I don't think it's because he has any value belief in Menken at all.
- [55:08]
B
His dog is named Mondale. That's supposed to mean something.
- [55:13]
A
It does mean something. So let's bring this back into the real world. David, since you're here. This was, but no coincidence, very much timed to the great rebranding of hbo. Max to Max. We all had to watch this on a brand new app. And first question for you is like, was that seamless for you?
- [55:36]
D
It was a little bit of a pain in the neck for me. And then I had to walk my mom through it. And it turned out by the time she did it. Which was only a few days ago. They had an app or a button on her app that said download the app now. And it seamlessly came. And she didn't have to enter the new password in or validate it through her Apple TV thing or whatever. I had to go through like a full three or four part validation verification process.
- [56:01]
A
You're just too much of an early adopter.
- [56:02]
D
Not that early. I was, to be honest, catching up. I wasn't totally up to date in real time on things. So I've been having to avoid Twitter certain days of the week. But, you know, they clearly got better at it. And the anger over the Max branding has subsided as people realize that HBO lives on as its own vertical. So it's not that HBO has gone away, it's that Max wants to look a lot more like Netflix or something, or actually more like Amazon, to be honest, where you have the Everything store and then within it you have a bunch of different brands. So personally, I attached something to the HBO brand that I attached zero to the what was Cinemax and now is Max brand. You know, the HBO Max thing was always kind of a weird jumble anyway. Now they're just saying we're the Everything store. And the word Max kind of stands in for that. I don't like it, but I at least understand it in a way that a week ago I feel that I didn't.
- [56:51]
B
I don't like it. I don't understand it. I don't. I'm not pretending to understand it. HBO is a good brand that everyone knows and Cinemax is associated with kind of like fake porn on cable. So why lean into a brand no one cares about called Max? Why like diminish your premier brand?
- [57:10]
A
I'm reminded of when nations bank bought bank of America. And they were like, we have this land that means nothing to anyone and bank of America actually has a brand. So we're gonna keep the bank of America brand and actually kill the brand of the acquire. That's the thing that makes sense. Whereas David Zaslav is doing the other way around. He's like, I just want lowest common denominator. And I'm just going to make something so bland and meaningless that no one is going to imbue any brand value into it.
- [57:38]
D
Let me just say one thing which is analogous to the cable stuff, which is when I got my start outside of college reporting, I worked for a summer in Charleston, South Carolina. The bank that I banked with down there was then bought by North Carolina National Bank. My first full Time job was in Durham, North Carolina. So my bank was North Carolina National Bank. Each of them separately were bought by bank of America. I moved to the Baltimore sun for a decade. I get Maryland national bank, it's bought by bank of America. At that point, I'm just like, screw it. I'm going to bank with bank of America. It's fine. Life is conspiring. If you look at like Max, you know, the combination of these discovery channels and the Turner channels and HBO and Max and all these things, it kind of feels like, you know, one of these enormous bank conglomerates that's, you know, all stream together and they have these different little, you know, regional banks within them, but it's the same damn bank ultimately. But the reason, you know, look, I'm not a defender of this move. I think HBO is a fantastic brand with meaning that actually stands for something which most brands don't, right? And they deliver on their brand promise pretty impressively. But I do understand that hbo, not only is it not for everybody, it's a friend of mine noted on Twitter yesterday, today that's like, you know, like David Muir is watched by five times as many people, you know, as the host of World News Tonight as watched succession. And that's greatly diminished from back when Peter Jennings, you know, was the host of that show. So HBO is not for everybody. And they're trying to get everybody into this streaming thing so they can get their payouts.
- [59:09]
A
So, yeah, this is the last episode of Succession. It's the last are. It's the last episode in a way, of the great pre Zaslav HBO shows. We will see whether anything like this ever gets done again. Like, you know, I don't know. Elizabeth, do you feel like this is the very last episode of the golden age of television? Is that a risk here?
- [59:33]
B
No.
- [59:33]
A
Whoa.
- [59:34]
C
I don't think so.
- [59:36]
B
Whoa.
- [59:37]
C
I think consumer standards are too high. If they don't do it, somebody else will come in and do it. There's demand for it.
- [59:43]
B
I don't know. The writers are on strike. We might never get another succession at this rate.
- [59:47]
A
Not until AI can write this well.
- [59:50]
B
Never.
- [59:51]
D
I think if Zaslav wants to lose, not just have 50% churn, but like 90% churn, they're going to have to find ways once they resolve this strike or I guess if they don't, but they're going to have to find a way to get a high level, quality, multi part series, multi season series back on the air. It may have a different tone. We may be in a different age. It may feel differently with more antiheroes or more serious or what have you. But HBO needs these. And to be honest, I think we do too. Like think of all the kinds of things we've worked through this episode in the course of your series.
- [60:25]
A
Slate needs it. Because if we don't have a succession recap podcast, what even are we here on this podcast? We have loved being with you for the past three seasons. Thank you for listening loyally to every episode. For those of you who have, it's been great going through it all. I am personally very sad. I know that Jessamyn Molly of Seaplane Armada who produced this show is also very sad. But it's been awesome having this thing. We are going to come back with more special seasons. We're going to go back to the movies again with Slate Money goes to the movies. We might have a Villains special season. In any case, we will be back on Saturday with another normal regular news based Slate money. And with that I think it just falls to me to thank David Falkenflick for coming on the final episode. Thank you David.
- [61:12]
D
Oh my God. What an honor.
- [61:14]
A
And thank you for listening.