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Hello.
Welcome to Slate Money Succession.
I'm Felix Salmon of Axios.
I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios.
Hello.
I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of the New York Times, no matter what the fabulous place
is.
Hello.
And we have a very special guest this week.
Mr. Ewan Rally, welcome.
Hello.
Thank you for having me.
Ewan, introduce yourself.
Who are you beyond being one of the world's great Murdochologists?
I am an investment banker.
I set up an investment banking firm 27 years ago, which causes me to travel around the
world and in my spare time I watched succession.
So this was kind of outlier episode.
I'm going to come out and say, I always say that the first time you watch it, it's tragedy
the second time you watch it, it's comedy.
I can say that this time, the first time you watch it, it's tragedy the second time you
watch it, it's tragedy.
It was written by Jesse Armstrong himself, which is rare.
And Elizabeth, tell me if you think I'm off based on this.
But this really came across to me as Jesse Armstrong taking the opportunity of writing
a hit TV show to basically do a sort of 60 minute warning of what might happen on the
2024 election.
Yeah, I mean, sort of.
I felt like the Minkin character was a little bit Trumpian, I think a smarter version of
Trump.
I thought it was a little bit rehashing what happened in the last election, and particularly
with the whole issue of whether ATN was going to call the election early.
And the opposite thing happened at Fox.
Fox called Arizona for Biden at a reasonable time, but internally in the newsroom, there
was a lot of controversy about that because there was some thought on the part of the
executives that the actual newsroom staff had jumped the gun.
And there was a lot of drama around it.
In succession, ATN does exactly the opposite thing.
They call everything early.
And then Tom gets blamed for doing that.
And you can tell that they're setting it up to be a kind of election integrity scandal
in the next episode or two.
Well, yeah, but that's exactly why I took it more as a warning about 2024 than as a kind
of rehash of 2020.
And I think it's fair to blame Tom.
He was the guy making all of the decisions.
I mean, one of the interesting things about the Tom Wamskans character arc is that he
is really wound up with power in this show.
He really does control ATN, which is an incredibly important job.
At some point over the course of this season, in the middle of all of those layoffs that
he was doing with Greg, he clearly fired Sid.
So he is now unambiguously in charge of ATN.
He is making the decisions.
He is deciding when to make the calls.
And he is taking his orders from the co-CEOs, a candle in Roman, especially Roman seems to
be really in control this episode in the way that we haven't seen before.
And also the way that US elections work almost uniquely is that they are decided by the media.
That like the point at which a candidate is considered to have won the election is it
just is the point at which the networks declare that candidate to have won.
And sometimes that can take days, but when the media says it has happened, that's when
the consensus is that the president has won.
So it really does underscore the power of the media.
And then in the world of succession, ATN has like 50% of the election night viewership.
Obviously, Kendall is telling Tom to juice the ratings at the beginning of the show.
And he's done that.
He creates this incredibly compelling television while also destroying the principles of democracy.
And what I guess my question for you in is, I come 2024 when Lachlan Murdoch is the undisputed
CEO of Fox News and Fox News is in a very similar position.
Is this something that could happen in reality?
Sure, it could happen.
And I think really the magic of this episode was Kendall Roy having a little momentary
bout of kind of liberal guilt or emotional concern that he might be sending the country
in the wrong direction.
And at the same time, Roman is rather sarcastically saying, oh, it's all about the kids.
It's all about the kids.
Kendall is saying he is actually concerned for once about his daughter.
And so I think that reflected, I think rather accurately, maybe the concerns that people
who are in the Fox orbit have, you know, to have to balance the business.
And presumably they have some human consciences as well.
Do you think Lachlan has a human conscience?
Yes, for sure.
For sure, he does.
And I think his friends are, again, I think this is something that succession gets right,
which is their friends are all liberal, coastal, elite, sophisticated.
And so any time that they make a hard-nosed business decision, that's potentially jeopardizing
their social lives and their human interactions outside of the Fox arena.
The received opinion among Murdoch watchers is that Lachlan is significantly to the right
of Rupert.
Would you agree with that?
I'm not sure that's completely right.
I think the younger generation will have some sense of the environment, which nobody in
the older generation has.
I think Lachlan may be the Roman character in this episode, although in many ways he's
more like Kendall, I suspect.
Emily, what's your big picture take here?
Well, I mean, first, just to respond to what you said earlier, Tom Wams Gans has no real
power here.
He's not taking command of anything.
He's taking orders just like you said from these brothers.
It's clearly the brothers calling the shots.
And the striking thing is, of course, that these two comically inept CEO bros, and we
can talk about debate if they're inept or not, are deciding who wins the US presidential
election with really no care at all and no sense of responsibility or sense of journalistic
responsibility and that this is like they're running a news outlet where no one has a spine
at all.
Like at first you think this Darwin fellow that they introduced in the episode who clearly
knows all the standards and kind of has been running election nights for a long time,
you think, oh, he'll stand up, maybe resign or something, but he quickly comes around.
Maybe it was the wasabi in his eyes to the brothers, you know, to doing what essentially
Roman wants and what mangan wants.
Roman's sort of a mangan puppet a little bit in this episode.
So I mean, yeah, no one in the newsroom has a spine.
It just seems like it's all out the window.
You think maybe if Sid hadn't been fired, it could have gone another way, but I'm not
so sure.
And if I was doing power rankings on this episode, I would say Roman won.
Totally.
Kendall came across to me as weak.
Like I guess he cares about his daughter or he did for like a microsecond, but he was
more concerned with Roman having a relationship with this potential president than he was
really with his daughters, anything.
Shiv, I mean, she really cocked it up, you know, by the end she's crying and swearing revenge,
but she comes across just at the bottom of the heap here.
She finally tells Tom she's pregnant and that goes over not well at all.
It's just like a total failure of, you know, information is a bottle of fine wine and Shiv
kind of screwed up her poor with that one, I think, you know?
So yeah, definitely.
I mean, you might disagree with me about the power of Tom, but I think it's clear that
he has more power than Shiv does in this episode.
Yes.
He has a baseline of kind of medium competency all the way through it.
You know, he's trying to adhere to Logan standard about keeping the kids out of the bullpen
so that there's some separation between the owners and what's happening there.
When Khan comes in, he says, Khan, you can't be in here.
And he's trying to manage all this while he's managing the family and fighting.
And in the middle of the chaos, you know, Shiv pulls him aside and doesn't have pregnant.
As somebody who's done election night coverage, I had a moment of sympathy for Tom when that
happened, like, why do you have to do this now?
And he's juggling like three phones as well, which is just such a great little thing.
He's like, Shiv, I have three phones all blowing up in my hand.
This is not the time to tell me the old pregnant.
But none of these people have any kind of like core ethics or standard or any core principle
to act on.
So they're just like bouncing all over the place and it just came across quite clearly.
I think Tom is completely incompetent leader of this newsroom on election night.
I think we can say that pretty clearly despite his having three phones, you know?
Emily, the reason I think it's compelling is because each of those characters probably
believes himself or herself to have a moral core.
But it's pretty clear that they're just looking out for themselves.
And the question of whether Tom has any power, I think he's constantly juggling who's going
to win this?
Should I be in the Madsen camp?
Should I be in the Shiv camp?
Do I have a chance of really getting powerful and rich and staying with Shiv?
Do I have to align myself with the Ken Roy camp?
He's particularly self-interested.
He's not juggling that.
He has thrown in his lot with Roman.
I mean, now I think it's pretty clear.
The way after Shiv tells him that she's pregnant, he kind of walks past her without saying a
word and gives her a glance.
And it's just like, I don't even have any time for you.
And he clearly with the three siblings sitting there and standing there in the room, two
of them, the two co-CEOs telling him, okay, we're going to call it.
Shiv saying, don't do it.
He barely even listens to her.
He ignores her.
He's like, I am 100% part of this company.
I am taking my instructions from the CEO.
I'm going to, you know, call Greg and tell him to make the call.
And he's in the chain of command and he's playing an executive as best he can and not
completely and competently.
And one of the jobs of an executive is to take orders from the CEO and communicate it down
the chain.
And that's what he does.
And that is him becoming the high-ranking corporate executive who ultimately makes the
decisions and it will at least one step down from the CEO making the decisions in the chain
of command.
So I'm not sure that I agree with Emily on his sort of incompetence here.
Emily, you know, when the touchscreen goes on the blink and he runs around in a coke
fuel sort of hyperactive useless circle shouting at people, he's not really being very constructive
or helpful.
But by the same token, I think he does take responsibility for making these decisions.
And when the rival TV stations start putting up stories about how Tom Wamskahn School,
the election too early, like they were right.
Like on some level, he does have that responsibility.
He knows he has to take it.
You know, in the prior season, he was saying, okay, fine, I'll go to jail for all these
mistakes the family have made.
You know, he sort of knows that's the price that he pays for actually being on the inside
and keeping what power he does have, I think.
I'm expecting some twists and turns.
I suspect the Ken Roy, it looks like Roman is the, you know, the king of the heap this
week, but I suspect Tom and Shiv may hatch a comeback.
And I'm expecting, it's congenital optimist.
I'm expecting a little bit of a recovery in the Tom and Shiv relationship.
One question I had, maybe Elizabeth or you knew you can answer this.
When Fox on election night is doing election coverage, Murdochs aren't involved in making
him a call.
Like, is that's just creation of Jesse Armstrong's creativity that Tom Wamskahn looks to the
CEOs to make the call on whether he should call the election, right?
I would think it's more like, yeah, I don't think so.
I mean, they would want to heads up.
And if it was heads up, yeah, going to be a surprise.
I think they would, you know, want some input.
But for the most part, especially for stuff like that, because there are actually, you
know, norms that if you violate that you sort of get kicked out of the pool of people
are taken seriously and given information as the returns are coming in.
So you don't want to.
Yeah.
But those norms are like, don't let the exit polls leak, right?
And also, I think we do need to remember that Rupert is a journalist.
You know, he is a newsman by trade.
He cares about the news on some level.
And you're absolutely right, Emily, that Rupert's Fox has a relatively strong, relatively not
enormously strong, but like it exists, you know, sort of Chinese wall between the news
core or, you know, Fox News corporate headquarters and the newsroom.
But is it fair to assume that like, like Glenn, who's much less of a journalist, much less
of a news guy, doesn't have newsprint running through his veins would take the same way,
not necessarily.
And also even Rupert was perfectly happy to, you know, effectively step in as the editor
and chief of the New York Post and tell it what to cover and how to cover.
And, you know, when that famous thing about like Dick Gephardt becoming device presidential
nominee was just a story from Rupert that he decided to put on the front page of the
New York Post, maybe he treats Fox News differently from how he treats the New York Post.
And in principle, yeah, the Murdochs medal, of course they met Rupert turned behind Tony
Blair, which helped him very significantly in his first election.
I think there's a great line in this episode when Tom says no brass on the battlefield.
That's one of Logan's Geneva conventions.
Obviously, completely butchering what the Geneva Convention is.
But anyway, I liked the idea that there are three principles coming down each to try
and influence.
And I suspect that does reflect the way the Murdochs behave as best I can tell or the
way I've seen it from a distance is I think Rupert tried not to get involved micromanage
but would come in with a big call every now and then.
I don't think they're in the on the fringes of the newsroom in a conference room deciding
how to call it quite.
But that may be a bit of poetic license, dramatic license.
But the classic Roman Roy power move, which is literally the most cunning piece of power
politics that Roman Roy has ever played in four seasons of succession is when he leaves
the room and tells his siblings that he's going to take a shit.
And instead he goes down to the newsroom floor and basically tells Mark Ravenhead to start
you know, saying that you know Wisconsin has been one in he just freelancers this and Mark
Ravenhead obviously jumps at the opportunity to be able to do this.
And that was Roman just absolutely crushing the wavering Lily Lippert liberal sensibilities
of his siblings right there.
Well, I think that's also the Romans arc in this season in particular he increasingly
becomes more aggressive, less charming, more impulsive.
And there was that exchange that he had with Kindle in one of the conference rooms where
they're talking about steak and chicken.
And Roman says, you know, you never let me win.
I was wanted steak and you guys want to chicken when we were little and Kindle says, you know,
so all this is that you're mad that we had so much chicken when we were kid.
And he explains that the reason why they never let him win, he's like, you were always throwing
these tantrums and we were afraid that if we let you have the steak that you would think
that the tantrums were sort of an effective tactic.
But Roman's been throwing tantrums for the last three episodes.
You know, he fired Jerry impulsively and he's just asserting power in this kind of like
steamrolling way.
And so I think that, you know, leaving to go just tell Raven said to start to go ahead
and call it is in keeping with his development where that kind of tantrum aspect of his personality,
it really drives the way that he behaves as a manager.
He's definitely being reckless, but he's also correctly in a Machiavellian way calling the
power move when he has the chance.
He becomes quite graphic.
He says, if we don't call it now, we're going to be the most tickless eunuchs in cuck
time.
He says he's going full, he's going full Breitbart on his brother.
And then I mean, yeah, and his decision and he actually quite explicitly says to his siblings
what the what his decision is, which is quote, let's just jam our heads in the bosom of
history and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like he's like, yeah, he's diving in.
He's like he's seizing the moment in a way that makes 100% business and commercial sense
given his strategic aim of preventing the gojo takeover of way star roco, right?
Because he has a cast diet, what he thinks is a cast diet and promise from manken that
the merger will be blocked.
Obviously, given the timeline of this show, manken is not going to get sworn in to block
the merger by the time season 10 comes around.
So I suspect that's a moot promise and that the gojo acquisition will blow up as the
Indian numbers get revealed at some point possibly in the next episode.
If I were Madsen and I watched that all play out, I would not want ATM or anything to do
with this company anymore.
Like I feel like manipulating the results of a presidential election is a good reason
to get out of a deal or perhaps I'm naive.
I don't think Madsen is buying ATM.
I don't think he really cares.
Like he would like to buy ATM.
He obviously wanted to pay a premium to get ATM.
But what he really cares about is the ratings, right?
It's just like the number of people who watch it, the number of cable distributors in America
who pay $3 per subscriber per month to waste our roco to be able to carry ATM.
And he wants to turn ATM into a gray Bloomberg thing, right?
So like if ATM is terrible right now, I don't think that's reason for him to stop wanting
it.
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I was going to ask if we could please talk about the new Greg.
In this episode, he is a new relationship with Madsen as a normalist and has seemed to really
cultivate that new relationship.
And I feel like if again with power rankings, Roman's on top, but Greg is shifting slowly
upward.
Although Tom does try to rank him back down to Greging, he still seems to have a little
more power than he used to.
They're all insulting Greg all the time and they've got partial when they're busy on election
night, they're all particularly insulting to Greg.
I think there's some foreshadowing here.
And when I'm predicting the future arc of the show, I like Shiv and Greg to come into
power.
And I think from the liberal viewpoint, maybe Shiv's going to win in the end.
But I Greg, who says at the beginning of the show, he says, I'm feeling pretty good.
When Tom's like, no, of course I'm tense.
This is a tough situation.
And there's a moment where Greg takes a beat, he steps back and he says, I'm feeling pretty
good.
And what is the shortest pre-credits sequence of the show?
It's just like boom.
Greg feels like he has some information, maybe even Tom's teaching him how to guard that
information.
Or I think rumors of Greg's demise may be overblown.
I like him for a comeback.
He keeps hilariously overplaying his hand.
And so when Shiv corners him in the closet and he admits that he knows about her and
Matt's in, he tries to extort her and he says, you know, silence is golden, but how
golden.
And she completely just eat through the deal.
The deal she offers is not very appealing.
He says, how about I offer to let you keep all of your internal organs on your inside
instead of pulling them out of your asshole and then he backs off.
I love that scene because she's so much shorter than him.
She's really looking up at him and it's such a weird, like the power dynamic of having
to look up at someone where you're trying to like, bring them out is a little dodgy.
And it's also great when she asked him, you know, Gregory, are you attracted to me?
And then there's this very uncomfortable pause for a minute.
And then she just lets him have it.
She goes, because if you try to fuck me, I'll kill you.
You and I need to ask you what happened last night in that sort of weird coke top to botched
evening with Matt, son and Greg, where Matt, son forced Greg to dance with an old man.
He didn't want to dance, but they made us dance.
But that's a real Logan move that Matt's input pulled back there.
He also had to drink some drinks that aren't normally considered to be drinks.
So it was a hit to bodily fluids.
So yeah, it's exactly.
I think just one of the magic things of this TV show is the script writing is so dense.
And I know in your last episode, they talked about playing it straight, that they never
want to play the humor too heavy.
But you can tell there are writers just throwing zingers in all the time.
I love the line also about, I don't want to get addicted from two nights in a row.
He says when Tom tries to make him take coke to so that he can't subsequently blackmail
Tom, presumably.
I think, I mean, if you'd like me to project my own vile fantasies, I think they went
out pretty late around New York downtown.
They went to some probably inappropriate bars and probably a couple of gay bars too.
I think Matt's son is pansexual.
And Emily, you were being naive, I'm afraid.
I think when you said Matt's son doesn't want to own this somehow compromised asset.
I think Matt's son is the most cynical player of the whole lot.
I think he's half Daniel Eck from Spotify and half of the CEO of Tesla.
I think he's really just out there for shits and giggles.
And I think he's kind of playing again with his head of communications and with everybody
else.
I think he did detest Greg.
And again, there's a certain lurking cunning to Greg.
Greg is almost a, I hope I'm not becoming too pretentious now.
It's a Shakespearean character.
He's the fool who actually has the wisdom.
And I think Greg knew very well what he was doing.
And somehow, you know, against his better interests went out with Matt Sinan, the crew
who despised him and condescend to him and won them over by playing the game.
And again, I'm going full in on this prediction.
I think Greg's got a pretty good future in the last couple of episodes of this TV show.
I mean, that's not, I was thinking it parallels Greg's arc with the Royce too, because he
comes in as a fool.
They see him as a fool, but he still managed to ingratiate himself into, you know, the
chain of command and be Tom's, you know, right hand guy.
Tom treats Greg exactly as far as I could tell as he was describing Matt Sin, treating
Greg.
Like that's what Greg is for.
He has love treats Greg and his candle Creek treats Greg.
But like in the, like there is definitely a dynamic in this family where you demonstrate
your ability to rise up the ranks by just taking a bunch of shit from a bunch of people.
And the more shit you take, the more you survive.
Did Greg tell us he didn't, when he was firing a hundred people in two days, did he tell
us he didn't really feel anything?
He was, he was fine with it.
I think, I think Greg's learning quickly.
But there's that great piece of writing where, you know, in the beginning, Tom gives Greg
the speech about information and the wine bottle and blah, blah, blah.
You know, information is key and you'd store it, you heard it and then you smash somebody
in the face with it.
And he talks about going out with Matt Sin and you think, oh, they just made fun of him
the whole night.
But then later, it reveals that he found out about the shift Matt's in alliance while
he was out drunk with Oscar and Matt's in all those people.
So he has that wine bottle of information.
And then he uses it to kind of smash the potential alliances between the three siblings later.
Well, he uses it against shit, right?
Kendall, and the Kendall-Greg relationship is really interesting because remember that,
you know, it was Greg who gave Kendall the notes that he saved from the fire to try
and bring down Logan at the end of season two.
I think I can't even remember my seasons anymore.
But like that Kendall-Greg relationship, there's still something there and Kendall's
still the CEO and when Kendall comes up to Greg and just asks him, is Shiv working with
Matt Sin, Greg says, yes, he immediately coughs up the information.
It is unclear to me whether he does so with like some sort of cunning motivation because
he wants to harm Shiv or whether he just does so because he's congenitally incapable of keeping
a secret and if someone asks him for a secret, he will just tell them.
I think their lives are so transactional, they have to make judgment calls on the fly and
Greg is kind of bumbling his way through, but he seems to keep his head above the water
quite well and he does whatever he has to do to keep his head above the water.
Yeah, I'm not sure that was super cunning, but I think he like all of them, right?
That's the premise of the show.
They're all keeping their options open.
You talked about it in the last podcast.
There are constant flows backwards and forwards.
There are no real friends.
There are just useful contacts at any point.
So I don't think Greg's decided exactly which team he wants to be on yet.
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Hey, Tom Sharpling here, the host of The Best Show.
And if you've never heard of The Best Show before, everything you need to know is right
there in the title.
Each week we put on the best live podcast you're ever going to hear, featuring live callers,
celebrity guests, music, plenty of surprises.
Who knows what's going to happen?
Last month alone we were joined by Conan O'Brien, Patricia Arquette, Jeff Tweety from
Wilco, Nathan Fielder, Sunan Archives, John Oliver, the list goes on and on.
So what are you waiting for?
Join us live every Tuesday night on Twitch at 6 p.m. Pacific time and find us the next
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I'm Jonathan Brelock.
I'm Draw Milligan.
And I'm James III.
And we're the host of Black Men Canch Up in Hollywood.
It's a comedic podcast that reviews films with leading actors of color and analyze them
in the context of race and Hollywood's diversity issues.
Yeah.
Listen to new episodes on Mondays.
Find us wherever you get your podcasts.
I don't care where you get them.
I just want you to listen.
Don't threaten the people we need them to listen to.
Oh, OK, OK, OK.
Sorry, guys.
Listen, listen to us.
Yeah, put on a happy voice.
Let's talk about the biggest fuck up in the episode by far, which is when Kendall asks
Shiv to call Nate, she doesn't.
She just called him and it's like, just fucking call him.
Like even if you can lie about what he tells you, you can make something up.
But like, at least call him.
You know, that was just Shiv just on self-destruct mode.
Yeah.
Yeah, she could have just called him.
She could have even said, my listen, my brother's woman asked you this.
Yeah.
I would have played it.
And then, yeah, fudge the answer a little bit.
But it was so obvious that she was lying.
It was almost like self-sabotage.
Her whole trajectory in this episode felt like self-sabotage.
Yeah, she starts off low and gets lower over the episode.
She achieves nothing.
She just loses.
Give her a break.
She's got a lot going on.
Her father just died, Felix.
She's concerned about hypocrisy.
The pregnancy thing.
She's pregnant.
Yeah.
She hated Slash, loved him.
And she went to Tom to apologize, remember, like that is also in succession.
Like, you're not, I don't like you're supposed to do that.
That's part of their fucked up dynamic, right?
They're constantly either accumulating or showing hints of frailty.
They're going to get back together.
They're probably going to win and maybe Greg's going to be part of it.
And she even screwed up because she had gone to Kendall and Roman and said, you know,
Tom can't be trusted anymore.
And they immediately had her back.
And in maybe like the following scene, Tom said something to Shiv.
Like, you're getting hysterical, which they say to her on multiple occasions in this episode,
which was sort of interesting.
She'll immediately like says something like, watch it, buddy, you know, is on her side,
which is good for her.
It feels like, oh, she's got backup.
By the end, she's destroyed it.
She's sabotaged.
Isn't the show runners playing with our emotions?
Because at the end, the closing stages, she's walking away from Fox News or whatever it
is from ATM.
And she's on the phone to Matt's and then she swears revenge.
Right.
The fascinating thing is there was a brief minute, right?
So Kendall and Roman gave her an offer on the private jet, like, do you want us to fire
Tom?
And she demers.
She's like, yeah, then she has that big fight.
You know, in the previous episode with Tom, she has a really bad interaction with Tom in
the hallway.
And she's really angry at her soon to be ex-husband.
And they make the same offer a second time.
They're like, do you want us to fire him?
And this time she's like, yeah, I think I do want you to fire him.
And they seem perfectly okay with that and willing to fire Tom, but she can't keep that
alliance with her brothers for long enough for that to happen.
Like the weird thing is that Tom was, you know, one breath away from getting fired.
And it's only because she fucked up on that phone call to Nate thing that he didn't get
fired.
But she's Elizabeth Murdoch.
She's disparaged as a woman.
There's a heavy laden hint of sexism through all of this.
The two brothers said that they were going to take care of her and include her in every
decision.
They've completely blown through all of that.
She's absolutely morally right to be plotting against them.
Okay.
So you and since you know these guys personally, tell us about the parallels between Shiv,
Tom and Elizabeth and her, you know, Matthew Freud, her ex-husband.
Well, the Matthew Freud thing is pretty dysfunctional.
I don't know what kind of lawyers you have reviewed these before they go out.
But Matthew Freud fathered a baby by Elizabeth's best friend.
And Elizabeth, the best friend didn't say who the father was.
And Elizabeth held a baby and was very supportive of her best friend single mom.
And quite quickly discovered that Matthew Freud was the dad.
I think Matthew Freud's a lot more slick than Tom.
Tom is sort of clunky, right, in this show.
And although he has a certain cunning, Matthew Freud has more cunning and maybe even less
scruples.
But the interesting thing is for Elizabeth, I think she's always been on the fringes.
And she had some success in the TV arena.
But I think there was always a suggestion that she probably wouldn't take over because
she was a girl and it should probably be a boy.
I think we're seeing a lot of echo of that.
And I think I'm looking forward to finding out just how woke the show runner is.
Because if he's woke, the woman's going to win.
And the conventional modern TV book, a movie arc in the United States today is the female
character has to come out on top.
So now I'm being a little cynical.
But I think there's a really good parallel there.
I don't know if you've talked about this in the podcast, but one of my favorite news
stories of the last year is the idea that in Rupert Murdoch's latest divorce settlement
from Cherry Hall was as one of the clauses of the settlement.
Cherry Hall purportedly had to agree not to discuss any biographical ideas or any show
ideas with the writers of succession.
That was part of my divorce settlement, which I think goes to show how closely this
does mirror the psychodrama that's the Murdochs.
And I think she is Elizabeth for sure.
There was definitely a lot of misogyny running through this episode with the way she was treated
in those boardroom meetings, calling her hysterical, telling her to calm down, portraying
her as crazy.
And she acted it too in a way where she was getting choked up a lot.
And that was intentional, I think, intentionally kind of like playing up her weakness in this
world, at least according to these people in this world.
There was also a rumor some time ago that Lachlan had accused his brother James of leaking
stories about the family to the writers of the show.
I've met them all a few times.
I'm not close to any of them, but people who know them better tell me the parallels are
uncanny all the way through.
And I think when real life is so, so juicy, it's a rich mind of information for the show
runners here.
In terms of the gender relations here, the other thing that gets dropped in is Kendall
creating what he calls an extra layer of bubble wrap around his daughter, which completely
freaks out rather because he didn't bother to inform her mother that he was going to
be sending dark SUVs to follow them around the city.
Which is just like, he then has this conversation with Shiff about whether or not he's a good
dad.
And he realizes on some level that this is just not what a good dad does.
But there is a feeling or undercurrent there that he's trying to do the man thing and protect
his women folk from whatever dangers might be lurking around the next corner.
I think he says in this episode, like, everything I do is for you and it's just so nakedly false
rings so hollow.
It echoes the kind of thing that Logan would say.
He's his only model for fatherhood is Logan.
And so he's of course concerned that maybe he's fucking up too.
Which is he's conscious about, right?
He has that line to shift about the poison dripping through or something?
Yes, good line.
I don't think we should simplify it too much because I think both things can be true again.
I believe these characters really think they're doing the right thing and they get caught
up in their venal self-interest and they're appalling, amoral behavior.
But at the same time, you know, Shiv tells her brother Kendall, you're a good person,
right?
And so they're trying to live human lives throughout all of this.
The other misogyny which you haven't talked about in this week at least is is Mattson
and Eber, which is like really quite extreme.
And there are some definite Elon Musk echoes, I'm afraid, and you know, the kind of this
bizarre behavior towards Eber, which is incredibly dehumanizing for her and that's left her as
a kind of empty shell.
I suspect there's some scope for her to bring some revenge before we're done.
Yeah, she can sink Gojo anytime she wants just by leaking the numbers about India.
Meanwhile, of course, Shiv, this reminded me, do you remember that woman?
I can't even remember who it was.
I think it was in the UK, Ewan, who immediately after the claims hit the World Trade Center
on 9-11 sent out an email saying, this would be a good time to bury bad news.
And this was Shiv, she was like immediately on the phone to Mattson saying like, oh, shit
is going down with like, you know, the election right now.
This would be a great time to bury the bad news that you actually have two India's.
It wasn't Rebecca Wade, subsequently Rebecca Brooks was it.
But I think again, there was a Rupert had a very bizarre relationship with his head of
news in the UK, basically.
And I think it's a slightly more complicated sexism because sometimes, you know, the female
characters most notably Shiv, Shiv can be like the truth teller at certain times and has
a certain power that comes from that.
But when certainly her brothers try to assert sexism over.
In this episode, I think it's clearly Roman, who's the truth teller.
He's the one who's just calling bullshit on all of the, you know, wishy washy concerns
about democracy and just saying like, look, this is I have a plan here, which makes perfect
sense.
Also, it helps that he is a Menken supporter.
Although the relationship between Menken and Roman, that amazing scene where he walks
into Menken's war room and they're on opposite sides of the room.
And they do this kind of ritualistic exchange of insults in front of everyone before they
then go into the corner and have a real conversation.
It's like, what?
What's unusual about that?
I feel like that's not normal among like, you know, the way that CEOs talk to, you know,
presidential candidates, but I could be wrong.
Yes, a little unusual.
I think maybe, maybe Roman is being a little bit naive thinking that Menken will abide
by his bargain.
I think Menken is happy to take it from Roman on election night when Roman can be helpful.
I suspect we may discover that to Menken isn't quite as good a friend to Roman as Roman
thinks.
How do we feel about Connor in this episode?
My friend.
Oh, Connor, with his weird concession speech about what was it?
Jack rabbits?
Like, just rambling all over the place.
But he's going to get his ambassadorship, it seems like they seem resigned to it.
And then go to ambassadorship.
I don't know.
Will is on board now.
Put me in a van to to Jikistan.
Your rhymes are compelling.
It's one of my favorites.
Yeah, his potential ambassadorship's are becoming steadily less attractive.
He tried for the UN early on.
That was always a reach.
But to Jikistan, there aren't many who want less than to Jikistan.
Couldn't I just be our fun guy in Uruguay?
You're going, well done.
I know they seem that Connor is winding up, if not on top, and then if not in such a bad
place, not where shiv is by any means.
He sort of did his own thing.
And now he swoops in at the end and he gets his little ambassadorship well played.
Mogadishu was a little too carb on me for him.
I can't remember the way it is.
He's an appealing character.
And it's almost too good, right?
Because he's so separate from it.
He's not playing a succession game.
So he can be in a funny way, the most morally upstanding of all of the siblings, and definitely
the only one who's got a functioning personal relationship and this rather improbable relationship
with Willow, it just turned out to be a very healthy, mutually supportive, happy.
Yeah, when it's coming through for him, it's like, wow.
Connor comes out so upstanding because when he loses Kentucky and Willis says, you know,
fuck Kentucky, he's like, no, no, no.
Alas, Kentucky, will a last entity, you know, he does the grown up thing, which is increasingly
unusual in our times.
Okay, so favorite lines, Elizabeth, any standouts in this one?
Yeah, mine was when Tom asked Greg to get him coffee and Greg says, I don't get coffee
anywhere.
And then Tom goes through this escalation of what's going to happen if he doesn't get
coffee.
And he says, if I get drowsy and I miss Colorado instability, then the US loses Colorado, China
spots an opportunity in Bates, Taiwan, tactical noots, fucking chick goes kabooie.
And we're all back to Amoeba.
It's a long way back from pine life because you failed to get me a double shot.
I like the day, the sushi.
Are you insane?
That would take a sushi.
Like, you know, that turned out to be the check hobby and gun that caused the wasabi
in the eye.
Became a central character.
I wasn't expecting the sushi to play such a central role.
That scene was wonderful when he pours the Le Croix, the lemon.
It's Le Croix.
It's natural.
It's medical.
It's not that lemony.
It's just a hint of lemon.
Emily, make it alone.
Again, I really like Connor this episode.
So from his concession speech, I happen to be a billionaire.
Sorry.
But honestly, America, you flunked it.
I guess you're going to have to find some other poor moocs paps to suck on the corrupt
bipartisan system zombie marches on.
Yeah.
Maybe there was, I really did feel like Jesse Armstrong was in full on tragic mode here.
Weirdly, my favorite line, I think, was the no line at all where ATN calls the election
for Menken.
And you just see these shocked expressions on the faces of bunch of, you know, right-wing
or presumptively right-wing people in the ATN headquarters, whether it's Shiv or the
producers in the room or, you know, and then eventually we have RAVA crying on the phone
when she's talking to Kendall.
Like the enormity of what ATN just did is sinking in and ATN is presumably winning
the ratings for by making this incredibly huge announcement.
And no one is happy about this.
Everyone in the room is seeing Menken being proclaimed the president elect and they're
like, holy shit, what the fuck have we just done?
And then he winds up, you know, and then we move on to his like crazy dog whistle racist
acceptance.
It's a decision made by a guy on Coke, you know, and then an impulse decision made by
a guy on cocaine.
And then the end of the episode is just coming off the cocaine basically for everyone.
There's a nice irony when Menken is saying, you know, what is the clean broom?
He's bringing back a clean, non-transactional, no compromises.
And you see them looking aware that they've just tried to do a deal with him.
And they think they've done a deal with him.
We'll find out.
Yeah.
And then, you know, when he makes that line about the marketplace where cunning men haggle
for the best price, that's not me.
And you're like, oh, great, we're just going to do the whole sort of anti-Semitic thing
right in our acceptance speech.
Let's yeah, great.
Awesome.
And everyone's like looking at this horrified because this was ATN without ATN.
He wouldn't be out there.
He wouldn't be saying this.
And they're like, we have created this.
And absent the anti-Semitism, of course, he absolutely did just haggle.
I think it's precisely what he just said.
Wait.
So the saying he won't haggle is anti-Semitic?
I thought it was a hint of anti-Semitism in there.
It was a little bit of merchandise, not quite the money lender, but something like that.
He also talks about he uses the word purity and cleanly just sort of nods to white supremacists.
Yeah, he says proud and pure, which is clearly like, you know, a proud boys thing.
Yeah, very white supremacists, clean and xenophobic.
Got it.
Cool.
Good job.
Because if they hadn't called the election for him, presumably what would have happened
is no one would have been called for no one.
And sort of that fight over Wisconsin would have taken place over weeks and weeks, whatever,
something we've gotten used to, I think, in the post Bush v. war America.
Right.
I think the politics rings quite true.
But as a banker, I just want to say the business also rings really true.
I love the way that, you know, Matt's and capriciously added whatever number of billions
it was to his offer.
The kind of the cadence of the proposed M and A deal, the merger of Matt's business in
the ATM is exciting.
And, you know, we'll see whether the reverse Viking thing ever comes off, whether maybe
the Roy's take over.
Oh my God.
Two episodes left.
Two episodes left.
Next one is the funeral is Kendall going to attempt his reverse Viking run in the middle
of his dad's funeral.
Like this is a very succession move to have like two huge things happening at the same
time.
Yeah, who was it earlier in the season who said I'm pre grieving?
I'm pre grieving the end of this show because I've really absolutely loved it.
And as I say, the dense script with all the little one liners that you could miss, I probably
have to go back and watch the whole damn thing again for it to be the comedy which
Felix promises us that it's a very dark comedy.
This is about as dark comedy gets.
I mean, Jesse Armstrong, you know, came up through the ranks of British TV with Armando
Ianucci who did the death of Stalin, which is the only other thing I can think of which
is quite as dark comedy as this.
But they are really.
You know, it reminds me a little bit of yes, minister because it's so the writing is so
deadpan and it's so character and one liner driven.
It doesn't have the overt.
This is obviously a comedy.
But that's the thing, right?
It's the VP and yes, minister comedies, right?
And the death of Stalin and succession are much darker than that.
And they are love out loud, funny.
I'm going to lose the potential to be friends with Emily now for the rest of my life.
But it reminds me of American Psycho.
And the reason it reminds me of that is because the characters are so totally abject and horrific.
But I kind of want to be them.
And there's a little bit of me.
I keep thinking I want to be, I think I want to be Kendall, but I do.
I think I kind of want to be Kendall.
And then, you know, sometimes I think, Oh, shit, I'm a bit more like Roman.
Anyway, there's some part of me that finds them all quite appealing, not Tom, but Greg
Kendall and Roman.
But this is, but this is absolutely right.
This is the running conversation that we've been having with Taffy brought us to Agna
over three seasons now.
It's the degree to which the Roy is aspirational.
You know, they are terrible people, but there is this hint of aspirational wealth and power
around them and it's undeniable.
I do investment banking in the fashion industry and this notion of the quiet, it's become a
cliche now.
The quiet luxury of their clothes has permeated the discussion of investment activity going
into the luxury goods business and the apparel business.
And you know, succession is having quite a significant impact on the way investors think.
I mean, it's crazy to say that, but on some level, they're absolutely aspirational.
Guilty is charged.
Wait, the quiet luxury thing, we should, we'll talk like a brief few more minutes about that.
So that's basically like wearing very expensive clothes, but they're not flashy or have logos
or anything like that.
And that succession has basically made that a thing now you're saying.
Yes, Brunello, Kuchenelli, famously, you know, Kendall cares, Jeremy Strong cares a lot about
what he wears.
And he's very particular.
It's this Brunello, Kuchenelli thing, which is the kind of, if you're rich enough, you
want to wear clothes that nobody will understand.
You know, it could look like a basic sweater, but only an insider would notice Laura Piano
or Brunello, Kuchenelli.
So it looks like a regular zip up mock turtle neck or something, but it costs $8,000.
And people that's, you know, it's considered, it's becoming considered the right way to
think about luxury, a more subtle, refined, restrained luxury, personified by Jeremy Strong's
character in succession.
That's so American that you have like this show about like the worst people ever.
And then people aspire to look just like them and a whole industry is pivoting to be like
them more.
What a dream to behave so badly as the rise.
I had my book party this week and the financier turned up wearing a very lovely sort of sport
coat, which turned out to be made of boiled cashmere, which is apparently a thing.
And when I complimented on him and said it was the thing I was most jealous of on the
whole, like the whole party, he said, yeah, the thing is, it's the second most expensive
material object I own after my car.
He's like, that is how expensive these things get.
I think it's a year in Naples has really run with the boiled cashmere thing.
Yeah, it's a very exciting trend in menswear.
And they boil the cashmere.
I don't why it gives it a little extra texture.
Interesting.
You wouldn't notice unless you notice.
You don't know unless you know.
If you know, you know.
Ewan, thank you so much for coming on this show.
This was absolutely mind-expandingly awesome.
What a pleasure to be on the podcast.
You're doing God's work and this is such a wonderful show.
Thanks for letting me chitchat about it.
We'll be back on Saturday with regular slate money.
We'll be back next Monday with episode nine, which looks like it's going to be Romans,
I mean, Romans, you know, Logan's funeral.
It's going to be only one Roy dying in this season.
And yeah, many thanks to you and Rely for coming on and many thanks to Jasmine Molly
of C-Plane Armada for producing.
And we'll be back on Saturday.
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