Girls Gone Canon Cast - Succession S4E5: The Kill List ft. PoorQuentyn

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Spoilers! Succession S4E5 The Kill List Ft. PoorQuentyn from NotACastASOIAF NotACast Patreon | My Brother, My Captain, My Podcast Patreon | @PoorQuentyn GGC Patreon | @GirlsGoneCanon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The following music was used for this media project: Music: Modern Jazz Samba by Kevin MacLeod Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/4063-modern-jazz-samba License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Hello and welcome to Girls Gone Canon Watch's 6 watches succession featuring poor quentin i am one of your hosts chloe and i am not eliana you rather not host you're you're the host of this now this is the not a host the not a host welcome back if you're tuning in for the first time. We covered the, wow, the fourth episode of Succession last time and season four. And this week we are covering season four, episode five, Kill List. So if you're not caught up with Succession to this point, log off, come back. Don't want to get you spoiled. Give it some time and watch it and we'll catch up with you later. But if you are here, welcome or welcome back. This podcast is usually an A Song of Ice and Fire POV by POV read through podcast. However, we are covering Succession in the interim as we have a little brief hiatus and because Succession fucking rocks. brief hiatus and because succession fucking rocks uh emmett thank you for joining me say us but it's me one more time the royal us of course my pleasure yes and emmett you also have a podcast

that covers a bunch of nerdy stuff do you want to rifle off what's going on with the not a cast sure the not a cast podcast which i host with our friend Manu, a.k.a. Manuclear Bomb. We go through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter at a time. Right now we're on the lead-up to The Red Wedding, the red carpet rolling out for The Red Wedding. Our next A Song of Ice and Fire episode is going to be on Samwell 3, Sam and Gilly stuck in the winter wasteland north of the Wall. And I also cover Star Wars and Lord of the Rings for all of our $5 and above patrons,

although I'm taking the month off of that, kind of a busy couple months for me. But yeah, you can check us out wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can check out our Patreon at patreon.com slash notacast, A-S-O-I-A-F, and you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram at notacast, A-S-O-I-A-F, and you can find me at poorquentin on Twitter. Thank you so much for joining us this week and for giving us some of your time, because again, as you mentioned, you have lots popping off right now. on Twitter. Thank you so much for joining us this week and for giving us some of your time because again, as you mentioned, you have lots popping off right now. I look forward to hearing more about it

each week. You can also find us over at Patreon at patreon.com slash girls gone canon that's C-A-N-O-N or you can hit us a tweet over at Twitter girls gone canon C-A-N-O-N. Patrons in the $5 and above tier get special perks like bonus episodes monthly. This month's episode will actually be delayed to May due to some unforeseen circumstances. We will be hopping back on Patreon then. Our Patreon is on a pause. We are doing a special brunch slash happy hour for our patrons in the $10 and above tier still this month. That'll actually be happening. If you're listening to this, it'll be happening tomorrow for 29. So if you are listening to this on the Friday before in real time, hop on.

But it's a fun time. We all log on on discord voice chat and chit chat about life, play some games. It's fun. Come on over to the Discord. There's lots of great people over there. So without further ado, before we get too far into the weeds, let's talk about season four, episode five, Kill List. Last time you and I talked a little bit about season four so far. So we get to skip over all of that today. Hooray. And we'll just talk about kill list which according to hbo the description of the episode is after the waystar team heads to norway shiv kendall and roman consider whether to fight for logan's crown jewel all right his crown jewel is none of

his children his crown jewel is his favorite child his news network he loves his news network more than them well his news network actually does something for him so i don't know how much i can blame him for that really atn got all the good grades atn had all the gold star papers put on the fridge yeah the teachers didn't write home saying atn could apply themselves more yeah imagining all all four of the Roy kids had that. Oh, their report cards would be magnificent. I'm going to think about that. Instead of those fake news articles that Kendall had up about all his siblings

during his birthday party, he should have just had their report cards blown up to massive scale. Oh, you know Shiv staged like a walkout of gym in her senior year. But she managed to somehow turn it into a vaguely feminist thing. Exactly.

But it was absolutely not. But absolutely not, because that's the Chivroy promise. Front and center, big things this episode. Nicholas Bertel continues to be the MVP of the show, especially this season. He's busting out new tracks, a new intro slash theme for Kendall as he went into CEO mode mode we could say at waystar that was that was the shit you know uh thank you nicholas bertel for what you do that when they're

on the mountaintop there's this great little melody playing the closing themes are always fantastic thank you thank you thank you made the episode amazing the music does a lot of the uh the emotional heavy lifting on successionion, the emotive issues to steal Kendall's dumbass turn of phrase from this episode. It's a running online joke with Succession that people post like, oh my god, I was crying at this part, and then it's just a picture of an office with a guy standing in it like a stock photo. It doesn't translate to stills, I don't think. You feel it in the moment really because of the music, because of Nicholas Bertel. He's pulling a lot of weight, emotively speaking, as you said fucking i can't help it i listen to him a lot at work i listen

to the the succession soundtracks when i'm getting shit done at work doing data entry i find it very somewhat relaxing but also energizing that's a good way of putting it you're working harder than the roys do it's not i mean really that was one of the things this episode I was like, oh, so you guys are just like all the other CEOs. Good to know. Good to know. You do. Nada.

Zilch. Zero. I had some time on my hands this week, and I listened to Still Watching by Vanity Fair, the podcast, and they had J. Smith Cameron on briefly for an interview, and lots of stuff was actually cut from this episode and this is kind of funny at least to probably me and you because I've had a really weird hyper focus the last few weeks of the Hunger Games I never read them so I just like read them in three days and then I read the prequel and now I'm watching the movies and uh it this was supposed to have a more Hunger Games

premise which you can kind of see some of that with the executives trying to keep their positions. And I think they did a great job of changing that and focusing on the kids because the kids are obviously the real heart of this season. J. Smith Cameron says that they had Swedish counterparts, right? Each one of them kind of had their own counterpart who were more athletic and savvy competing against them in activities like boarding streams, hang gliding, mushroom foraging, the Swedes were all making poison jokes, see who could survive better. And this also included that sauna scene that we did get to

see the legends outside with Carl and Frank. And the execs inside were kind of battling it out to see who could withstand the heat the longest. Really interesting, because Jay Smith said she didn't really get to do a lot to prove Jerry in this episode. And she didn't have to as we see she's not on the kill list. However, she did kind of joke behind the scenes of what she thinks should be happening. And they kind of let her play it that she would like, during the mushroom foraging steal her opponent's basket when they weren't looking. Or, you you know she'd be in the sauna with the guys outperforming and staying longer than them and being like could we actually turn it up it's getting a little cool in here i would have loved to see that had canon is that

behind the scenes i think the hunger games vibes were still there especially when you had hugo at the buffet right very uh very panem not having too much excess food there in the capital. The one-on-one idea is cool. I feel like they already did that with Pierce. Like, that was a fun joke I liked when they were negotiating over Pierce in season two, is that they were just the Bizarro version of the Roy family and just had, like, an equivalent for each of them. So that was pretty funny. And this episode did really feel like a huge remix of that. We'll talk a little more about that, I think, tonight.

feel like a huge remix of that. We'll talk a little more about that, I think tonight, but a huge remix of that and a lot of remix of season one, as we talk about kind of the very first scene that we get. So we open this episode up with a scene that could be season one, episode one of Succession. We have Kendall Roy, new CEO at Waystar. Wow, again, seen this one before, listening to Takeover. And I gotta say, I love the song. And I know you have lots to say about it. And I love the moment. I love the parallels. But my favorite part personally, is Fikrat. Like that he gets out and once more he says, you know, to Fikrat, like, hey, thanks, Fikrat. All right, good. Doing it. There's a lot we can say about Kendall Roy and his performativeness. And like, you know, like he's a he could be a killer or he can be kind of like this fake feminist, whatever.

He's kept Fikret employed this entire show so far and Jess and does seem to care about them, although he puts them through absolute insanity. Dasha had it coming. You know what I mean? Like, come freak's character. Like, she deserved to have to sell those lunchboxes. It's Dasha. But like the rest of them, he's really kept them employed, kept them in his economy. I love that for him.boxes it's dasha but like the rest of them he's really kept them employed kept them in his economy i love that for him yeah it's true he's got his little feudal

obligations uh to his underlings and yeah ken listening to to take over by g by jay-z that had me that had me cackling great parallel and contrast to his opening scene when he was he was rapping along to an open letter to nyc by the beastie boys but in this one he's not rapping along he's just sitting there just silent ice cold behind his shades. And that really ties into Succession as a New York City show, which is not something they do all that much with because it's not really a show about New York. It's more a show about global capital, as this thing that doesn't really have a center or a home base. It's all periphery. You just jet all over the world. Wherever you go, it's beautiful.

You're in charge. Could be anywhere. But you put those two songs together, and that really tells a story in a way that's specific to the setting. An Open Letter to NYC by the Beastie Boys. They released it in 2004. It references 9-11.

It's kind of in that era of the city kind of feeling wounded. It has something to work its way back from. But Takeover by Jay-Z very famously dropped on 9-11. The literal day of is when that album, The Blueprint, came out. So it just instantly became dated in an interesting way, that it became this time capsule of a pre-9-11 New York that was gone. Jay-Z just embodied this, you know, this untouchable, rich guy, cool persona right before that persona came under attack. And that's the person Kendall's trying to be. But I think the real him is more still who he was in the first episode,

that post-9-11 New York. He's scared. He's posturing. He's self-destructive. To cover that up, you get just all his bullshit, corporate jargon doublespeak. Like what he says when he's talking about Matson's perspective on ATN. He says he knows it's an emotive issue for us. Instead of saying an emotional issue,

which is what humans would say, no, it has to be an emotive issue, because you've got to mess with a word just to show you're smart. And then, yeah, he arrives at the headquarters. You get Hugo and all his little underlings, his little additional manpower, as he says, and Kendall just says, welcome, additional manpower. Because he knows they're spies just says, welcome, additional manpower.

Because he knows, he knows they're spies. He knows that the old guard don't really trust them, which is why Hugo, when he's describing their PR strategy, just slips in that little line of CE bros as his new nickname for Kendall and Roman. He just immediately says, that's kind of the bad version. Well, then why did you bring it up at all, Hugo? Just to slip the knife in. And then Kendall hooks up with Roman. And Roman has been interesting

watching his relationship with the siblings evolve that so often he has to be the voice of reason, which is hysterical. It reminds me of in A Feast for Crows when on Cersei's council of outcasts and morons,

Grand Maester Pycelle, of all people, ends up being the voice of reason. Same thing with Roman here. He, of all people, Roman introduced into the of reason and same thing with roman here he of all people roman introduced into the show burning sage for no reason he is the one downplaying theatrics now telling kendall to stop sending so many emails and telling jerry the same thing and it once more shows a lot of their strengths and weaknesses right that kendall is uh able to kind of juggle

some of that corporate bullshit right like he's, I can say the stupid words that mean nothing the buzzwords, you know, lean manufacturing and labor and cut the costs and motive like he can say this shit, get away with it. But Roman is a little lost when it comes to the corporate bullshit. And he's very reminiscent of Logan in some ways in this episode, he's even wearing Logan sweater, it looks like from his office. You know, he the email thing last time he got too many emails when they were CE bros. Didn't he jack off in the corner in the office? Like, wasn't he so overwhelmed by emails that he went and just had to jack off because he couldn't do it? They were just going off. Yeah, I think it's a bigger issue for him, right? Like, I think he's not ready for that part of the corporate world. And Logan wasn't really like that either. He didn't like the email, email bullshit meeting. He was like, get it done. Fuck off. There's this great interview

with Jesse Armstrong where he talks about behind the scenes. Jeremy came to him. Jeremy Strong came to him and said, sent him an email basically, and had this vision of when Kendall was younger, like six, coming with his dad to work, coming with, you know, the boss to work at Waystar, and being like this little princeling, this little lost princeling, that this is his big first homecoming as ATN's lost prince of everything. And I thought that was such an eloquent way to put it because it is you see him coming in and taking that moment and breathing and like, taking it all in that he is his daddy's heir. He's done it. He's back. And this is his terrain and everyone claps for him. I love that coming

back to those corporate spies, that they write off those corporate folks after their first touch point, letting them go off and do whatever they do to make shit happen. And they just go off and do whatever executives do, which is nothing to make make shit happen, which is, again, nothing. It's fake. The place just runs itself without them. Isn't that interesting that this place has basically run itself for the past week without a real boss at the helm? It reminds me of a line in Veep when Ben, the chief of staff who's been in politics

forever, says to his frustrated underlings, look, we all know the White House would run better without a president, but we have one. That's what they're dealing with here. Like, I love something Jerry always has to do, which is very patiently explain what the play is to the Roys, even though it should be obvious. And you can tell she's thinking it should be obvious that why do,

and she had to do it for Logan. She had to tell him what his own interests were. It's something like I see every day, right? Of dealing with like corporate at my work. And I'm kind of in a weird position at my job, not for long, but I'm kind of in this weird position at my own job where I'm like, I deal with corporate a lot, but I deal with like the warehouse and the real workers, the actual people that like do the work that make the money for us in the long run.

And so I'm kind of in a weird position between the two. So it's funny because you have some of those people that actually know what the fuck they're talking about like jerry who's like this is what it is this is what it means let's put it down to layman's terms and then you have people that are just like putting convoluted shit out there and the old guard definitely is like well we know how to do it this is the way and i like how some of that will play out throughout the episode for the kids who are like, we get it. Yeah, but they're often just pretty pretentious about it. Like I was saying about Kendall's jargon and how always meaningless it is. Which is always fun when people kind of cut through that for him.

So then we get the family, etc. and all their hangers-on taken off to Norway. Greg comes along to just be awkward and cringy as usual. And I love a consistent thing with Hugo is how much just disdain he has, just this dripping disdain for Greg. When Greg likes, Greg like tries to be chummy and says, yo, we're all going to go get laid in Scandinavia. And Hugo says it's, you know, this isn't a pleasure trip. He says it's musical electric chairs, which again is one of those things that sounds clever until you think about it for five seconds. Like the goal of chairs is to be in the chair if you're in an electric chair that's not a positive thing hugo so that doesn't you wouldn't be surviving to the end uh same thing when he says later that there's snakes on a plane which hugo that actually doesn't that's not no hugo's hugo

needs needs training for metaphors he needs like a six-week symposium where he gets educated on all that it has nothing to do with this entire episode. Like he said it thinking he was so clever and dark. He's so smart and clever, but no, he hates Greg, but he's also not. And we'll talk about him a little bit tonight, kind of in with the old guard, just because it's easier, but he's not old guard, right? Like he's like a younger new guard and he has a lot on the line and he's quite obviously fucked. Like he fucked up as we know, and he's fucked a younger new garden he has a lot on the line and he's quite obviously fucked like he fucked up as we know and he's fucked and it's interesting his disdain probably

comes from a place of like greg keeps fucking up and gets to do whatever the fuck he wants and even tom calls him out at this point right he's like he kind of talks okay in private man but like you don't just go saying that in front of all the execs. Like this trip isn't about fucking Greg. It's about getting Waystar's dick wet, not your dick wet. I love the other old guys when we see the scene on the plane, which I didn't realize the first time watching it, what was happening. Then I saw someone talk about it and picked up on it that Carl and Frank are putting on compression socks so they don't they don't die the way Logan did.

But it's also like, you know, almost like kind of a tribute to him. Like when an athlete retires and you wear their jersey. It's like their little tribute to what Logan was wearing at the end there. And we see Kendall and Roman freaking out about a movie project that's going south. Just like the literal turkey movie that Roman was dealing with in season

one. Although this one is called Calispetron Hibernation I believe the movie is the the dumbest movie name ever thought of and we do get this we get we get to like overhear a little clip of it uh later and um first of all is that just a very kind of meta thing about hbo that they're worried about this movie collapsing on them and they don't know how to how to keep their business together but it's also funny because the little clip we hear it sounds pretty much exactly like a michael bay transformers movie which is hilarious that that's falling apart on them.

Because there are a couple Michael Bay movies that I like that I can fuck with, but those Transformers movies are garbage. So A plus. A plus satire there. Kind of topical because a new Transformers literally comes out this week. Just have to put that out there. I don't know if they planned it that way, but very topical. Good for them. Yeah.

There's a new one coming out like Tyro. I wish there wasn't. What is it? A rise of something. planned it that way but very topical good for them yeah there's a new one coming out like i wish there wasn't what's what what is it rise of something and there's like a mechanical tiger anyways but it's bad looking oh is it michael bay again i don't know if it's michael bay well we'll have to look it up someone should tell us clearly it's had an impact well and the calispetron series we've actually heard about in passing before in the past seasons. And it's been on like paperwork and stuff. So I thought that was really clever to bring it back. And like, it's obviously a series. So definitely some HBO meta, right? The Snyderverse comes to mind here versus the DCEU

happening. Meanwhile, Shiv gradually realizes that they've been running press interference without her. And Kendall is like pretends to be angry about it and says to Hugo, whoa man what's going on are you you doing stuff without us he you know protests too much it's like when when asha grayjoy accuses euron of killing bail on grayjoy and euron's like do i control the wind when like yeah actually you probably do motherfucker yeah i like that it calls out shiv's not she's not stupid she does notice that she knows pr there's a fun bit when kendall and roman are hyping up the task ahead of them of confronting mattson and using all again the over-the-top grandiose metaphors and shiv just says you're reading documents is what you're doing which is hysterical but that

you know that also applies to her her political work because that's all she's ever doing either yeah again like she's used to this she completely does this every day she has to read through fucking annoying ass ledgers of shit and then there's the great bit where they offer to cut tom's throat for her uh and she's like she's just kind of taken aback even though this is their version of a nice gesture they think they're helping out and she's like what is he he's messing that up and they're like no no tom's good which is hysterical that like that's not even the point to them like his performance shortly after this the gojo team is referred to as incredibly meritocratic. And here we're seeing how little that counts.

Like Tom's merit is not even factoring into what's happening here. It's just like, you know, he's a pawn to be used in their game with each other. And yeah, I love how the Gojo team is described incredibly meritocratic. That is one hell of a euphemism for fires everybody. That's what they really do. And Jerry has to kind of take the role of, you know, coach at halftftime when we're losing she has to be the one to whip up everyone's energy and all she can really come up with though is they they must be weak because you know europe with their functional safety nets and whatnot they're not as they're not as hungry as us americans yeah i love that very

mild that xenophobia against them like because they're european they're soft when actually like you idiots are all very similar we learn in this episode like yes there are differences in culture but not that different in what you want how you want it and what you're willing to do to get it now that's like i was saying that's the function of global capital is to flatten those kind of distinctions and and bring your class interest to the fore more than anything so yeah she tries to take advantage of that but it doesn't doesn't really make a impact. Maybe not as inspiring as she would hope it to be. And so they get to Norway and they stay in this hotel with like in the woods with the weird looking glass rooms. And this will be very familiar if you've seen the 2015 movie Ex Machina, starring Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson. It was

directed by Alex Garland, the guy who wrote the awesome Carl Urban Dread and directed Annihilation from a few years ago. This hotel is used as the main setting for that movie, and that's very fitting for this because that's a movie all about corporate sterility and about how rogue tech CEOs like Oscar Isaac and that one end up kind of driving themselves crazy from how isolated they've made themselves,

and they wind up trying to recreate humanity. Oscar Isaac makes a female robot that he falls in love with and imprints on and is using domino glycans, kind of like a Turing test for her. And that definitely fits how these guys behave and also how they look at women as we see more of with Madsen.

Yeah, cutting, shocking. Connor cameo this episode, I have to say on a like overall season look, they've been keeping my Connor away from me. You know, I'm a con head at heart. I really love Connor scenes and they've been keeping him real second fiddle while the kids play out the emotions of the company so I hope this latter half of the season oh my god uh the latter half of the season that we are now within will hopefully showcase him a little more as we get to the election but I was real I was kind of bummed. Like, obviously, Connor needs something

to do. Right? Like this is the reckoning ball of all time for him burying dad. He is very busy with it. He's like, we must not have cold butter at dad's funeral. It's also really sad. And I guess I say this coming from a place of like watching other people go through this of because I don't have siblings, I don't have this issue of watching like one sibling do all the work when the parent is dying or dead. And that horrible burden of grief that they take while the other siblings are allowed to go do whatever and don't aren't able to participate because of their own grief and the way they're handling it. And how, you know, the sibling who shoulders all the bullshit, you know, that that's kind of Connor here.

He's doing the actual hard work of burying dad and it sounds silly, right? Like he's calling them saying like this little frilly thing of what he's going to wear, what they're going to put him in in the casket or how they're going to do the casket or where the casket is going to be located at the funeral. All this stuff sounds silly to the siblings and it's framed that way. all this stuff sounds silly to the siblings and it's framed that way but in real life when you think about this shit it's like a devastatingly exhausting part of grief and losing someone and it makes me feel for him like that is he's the only one willing and able to take that responsibility right now and they brush him off there's that great mix of tones always with connor where on one hand you do feel for him because they've left him to handle something that's so painful that they really ought to be working on together, not only logistically, but to kind of share the pain. But on the other hand, he's just so hapless

and petty always that you kind of understand why his siblings' first instinct is to make fun of him. I think about when he was running that art event in season one, and he was just going like complacent, fired to the people working under him. And yeah, but it's interesting what he's dealing with specifically is that he's uncertain about whether they should dress up Logan in a kilt.

And again, I go back to kind of the sense of cultural grounding versus the kind of cultureless world of global capital, where that kilt is a, you know, it's a nod to Scottish tradition, to Scottish culture where Logan is from, but he didn't really live like that meant something to him, that that mattered to him. This is really like the only hint of that in his life, only in his death. And it, I think the reason Connor is struggling is that it doesn't, it doesn't feel like something

he would actually choose. It feels like something that's being imposed literally upon him by Marcia to make it seem like that was important to him. As Connor says, he's going to look odd. He's not going to look like himself. And it's like they said, right, that history is being rewritten right now about Logan Roy and that we've seen him in this show run from that. He wanted out of there. He wanted nothing to do with that culture or that lifestyle. He wanted to be able to say he was an American made man.

That's what he wanted for him and his siblings and for his family and what he wanted for his future. Despite being a Scottish Canadian. Despite being a Scottish Canadian. Shit. Well, what's more America than pretending that you were always an American? Yeah. That defines America right there. Well, that's America. You can. You can just show up and say it.

Who cares? I don't. You want to be American? You're American. You're American. Congrats, Emmett. No, thanks. Poor Connor. And I will say Willa stood up for him. I caught this. I didn't catch it.

I don't think on our first watch, on our second watch, and especially because of the subtales, I noticed she says when he answers the phone or calls them to his siblings and they answer the phone, she goes, don't let them make fun of you. Good for her what a good wife you know that's that's wholesome that's wholesome shit right there because they do they're very mean to him it's true but also what's he gonna do about it i know he brings it on himself he has no leverage over them it's the thing yeah for the next parts of the episode let's kind of get through the big negotiation shares we're there we're overseas we're uh we're at the thing the the um what's it

called the their gathering employee gathering their annual retreat retreat it's what they do retreat to move forward as they call it in 30 rock it's funny though because it is kind of like a really silly thing to name this battle thing like it's their retreat when kendall's trying to retreat that's interesting roman's trying to interesting uh let's talk about the old guard right golden parachutes for carl and for all like you said last week that's the focus that's what they want i love the sauna scene uh where the kids are inside the sauna jerry's inside the sauna anyone that's fighting to be a part of this hunger games as we called it it's fighting to be in there in the room where it happens in the sauna it's kind of like a literal boiler room right like they're all in there and the heat is just boiling their blood up and you can tell that like it could break at any moment this is a very

fragile negotiation back and forth and outside vibing like they've never vibed before our frank and carl who know that they don't count don't matter no one wants them there don't give a fuck and they're just on their little chairs because they've been there they've already been in the sauna every day with Logan Roy was a day in that motherfucking sauna okay like they're good they're good without it I love that and I like the occasional allusions to these guys actually having been firebrands back in the day. Like, Jerry in an earlier episode mentioned Carl having done something revolutionary with cable. And so while they seem kind of smug and complacent, as Connor would say nowadays,

it's only because they've earned it. Like, they had the juice back when they were the up-and-coming generation. And it is very generational, even the way Kendall describes them as mom and dad just stopping by to see if we have food in the fridge. So their crises are always purely logistical, like how can we get this done? How do we avoid getting eaten alive by the corporate Vikings? They don't worry about what the kids worry about. They don't worry about there's no identity angst like we see with the younger generation, which is why someone like Jerry, I think, can see right through the kids, because they have no juice. They have no swag. It's an entire generation of Ron DeSantis's, or DeSanti. I don't know what the plural of DeSantis is. Thankfully, I don't think I'll have no juice. They have no swag. It's an entire generation of Ron DeSantis's. Or DeSanti.

I don't know what the plural of DeSantis is. Thankfully, I don't think I'll have to learn. And hopefully, I swear, we never want to find out. And it's emotional for the kids. Very emotional. They have so much emotional stock in this. And we see that in this episode. I think that's one of the biggest things that rings true throughout it.

Like, you see Roman react to it. You see Kendall react violently to it. You see Shiv react in her own way to it, like how they are grieving Logan is the emotions attached to this company in this episode. And these guys are done. They're like, we already had our emotional attachment. We were young once, but it's over now. The old guys just want to preach and read sonnets about the art of making money. And there's nothing wrong with that, right?'s more perfect though that kendall holds up a clipboard with the number circles it 144 he's like that's it right i just gotta beat this number in the middle of their sonnets and soliloquies about how to do it how the ought of negotiation shall happen here kendall straight

up is like this is it this is what you want me to do see i know exactly what you want me to do and now i'm gonna go do it goodbye leave me the fuck alone that's the constant back and forth in the series about whether this is just a numbers game or whether they're the the personalities actually do matter that's what stewie confronted ken and logan about in previous seasons and i think it's valid enough to reduce it to a raw number that is the goal but carl turns out to be right that starting with a joke is the way to go like Mattson says he likes that Shiv can take a joke and everyone keeps pointing out that yeah the numbers game is important but it's also really basic because you can't just reduce it to a number the question is what what soft skills what social techniques do you have to use to get there yeah I'm excited to talk about Shiv's entire scene

here with Mattson because that's what humanizes him almost, right? It's becoming a listening ear, becoming a person that's like, oh, that's fucked up. You did that, but you're still a human being. So I'll listen to you. And that makes him kind of bend to her a little in a few ways. That's something that Kendall has written off. He's mechanical here. He's full killer mode. He says numbers, slash them, slash their throats, cut them, bleed them dry, take their money. I can do that. But that's actually not what negotiations are about, right? Because like in business, in my business job, like you can get a discount, but like you're not going to get the discount past a certain point.

You have to bend humanity to get that discount. And that's the ticket. Hugo taking all that excess food. He's not old guard, but he's going to go here. Like we said, what an obvious metaphor. There's a lot and I saw kind of some conversations about some people that are European that were like, Oh, this whole episode was just Europeans making fun of Americans. And it was hysterical. And there's a lot of that, right. And it's such an obvious metaphor that Hugo taking all that food killed himself right there on the rock in front

of them. To survive, you don't need that much food, first of all. If you're in survival mode, you shouldn't be taking all that food. You should be taking enough. Second of all, you put yourself on the kill list just by doing that and then by joking about it, right? Like, then by straight up joking about it. Oh, God, Hugo. My lord, you're not long for this world of succession. I love that his plate is literally full.

Yeah, that says it all. for this world of succession. I love that his plate is literally full. Yeah, that says it all. And this is where we get the great little moment when Tom is talking to his equivalent or just the guy they've appointed to be his best friend for the weekend. And the guy's like, Tom, Tom of Siobhan,

which is just such a great dig at him. Like it's Brienne of Tarth. Like Siobhan is where he's from and what he owes loyalty to, which is true in terms of how they see him. But Tom definitely doesn't want to think of himself that way. He just spent a whole season trying his hardest to break away from being only Tom of Siobhan.

And his only other thing was Tom of Logan. And Logan's gone. And now nobody sees that at all. No one sees Tom of House Logan Roy. They see Tom of House Siobhan Roy. Welcome to the house, Tom. Welcome to the house. I think he should embrace it. You know, at this point, just get a little gaudy with it. Maybe a house banner

flared around. Ken, Roman and Mattson. What tension? My God, what joy I felt watching this so out of their element. Mattson's kind of weirdly alpha male, but also like just weird qualities were so loud, right? Like him with his shirt and being all like, let me take my sweater off. And here's my abs for a moment, but not for too long. And Kendall and Roman just being like, his masculinity had them feeling like they were four toddlers in a trench coat. Straight up. They were like, fuck, we are four years old all over again there's something that really stood out that roman in this episode was the only one interested in keeping shiv in the loop three different times he straight up was like should we get shiv involved should we

get shiv involved and he was also the only one trying to kind of keep ken on track as far as going rogue like reeling him back in it takes a lot of work being more pale than a scandinavian but somehow ken and rome pull it off i, Ken kind of always looks like a corpse on his third cup of coffee, but it's really notable here at just how much more comfortable Matson looks than them. They're talking over each other and he mocks them while telling them to relax. It's classic bully shit. It's actually straight out of Logan's rulebook. Making fun of the way that they're speaking. They, you know, they're babbling back and forth with him when they're talking over one another.

He babbles back at them and makes fun of them, not unlike Logan at Shiv in season three. When he's like, They want to be Logan. Both of them in their own ways in this episode. They think they are their father, Ritz Small, in so many ways, but they're really not. Mattson's actually the one playing Logan. In fact, Mattson is like Logan in Turnhaven,

where Logan was out of his mind, shoving money, trying to own Pierce, and Shiv was the wild card of the season, who was the person you needed to make the deal go through once more. And this is in spite of the fact that Mattson, from what we've seen, is generally a pretty vacant, standoffish kind of guy. And it might be a deliberate change in the characterization here. He was much more sullen in season three, and now he's more talkative, he's more outgoing. There's the casualness with which he brings up finding his own dad dead, like in his car with the motor running, and then just says, what, no sorries for Lucas?

Then again, we do get back to the weirdness pretty quickly. So maybe the idea here is that Mattson only really comes alive when he smells blood in the water, so to speak. Or blood in the jug that he ships to Ebba's house. Maybe with Logan, he met his match, right? Maybe the reason why Logan had him so blank and awkward was because Logan was his match he had the leg up on the conversation Logan's a legend and it's hard to understand how to play where Roman and Ken kind of wear that on their sleeve they wear their personalities up front they they don't lie about who they are and they think they do they really think that they're lying

about who they are but they're not he can through them. That gives him a little time to be maybe a little more characterized. It makes for a great contrast. Roman can just wilt in comparison to Matson, and they aren't prepared at all to improvise their way through this meeting. They had a script, they were ready to stick to it, and when he deviates from it, all Roman can say is, we weren't expecting that. Roman is the one behaving more like Matson when we first met him at Ken's birthday party. He's sullen, he's brittle, and he keeps falling back on what Dad said about ATN,

which really isn't relevant anymore because you know, Dad's dead. And then, you know, Ken reacts poorly to the deal too, even though in the process, Matson is offering them more money. What happened to your little clipboard there, Ken? I thought it was all about the bottom line. And Matson, he really here takes advantage of apparently running his company like a tyrant

that he doesn't have to check in with anyone he doesn't have to check in with the board any of his underlings and that has its has its obvious advantages and drawbacks in a corporate context you know Ken and Rome have to rely on other people but that also means they can it doesn't have to just be one guy with his one skill set and so I like the bit when they're after that meeting they're walking back towards the old guard and Ken and Rome quietly say to each other, we say, yeah, yeah, we say like they just want to be sure we're telling them everything. Yeah, we're telling them everything. It's good that Kendall is checking with Roman on that, at least like he's not completely gone because this entire episode and to be fair, he's manipulating Roman so fucking heavily. And we're going to talk about that in this episode to his side to like make him, you know, yeah, we're going to fuck him over.

Fuck this guy. He's playing on Roman's grief really heavily. And but like, it's good. At least he's still checking with Rome because Ken's pretty out there this episode. He's pretty he's ready to fuck it all. He's ready to burn it all down. And it makes me think he's ready to just burn his dad's legacy down. I think he wants it dead. Shiv and Mattson, what a charged scene. Weird tension between them. Mattson needs a mommy,

and she's mother. So I think it all worked out really well. Mattson sending blood to Ebba, really well. Madsen sending blood to Ebba, his comms director, the person who directs communications about his companies, the person who directs communications about him, the public figure that he is, he's sending,

oh, casually half a liter of blood to her all the time. Cause they're like broken up. That's how How romantic. Normal. Weird. Interesting. Some Elon and Grimes shit going on in this house.

Shiv and Mattson are both manipulating each other. And I think that's very sexy. Very cool. I'm excited to see more of that moving forward. He's manipulating her to get to her brothers and she's manipulating her him she's manipulating him for a lot of reasons like her own whims of money Tom uh fucking ATN and maybe her brothers right like her ATN agenda of selling ATN cutting out the bad political ties with Mankin Shiv Jendaenda's winning in this episode. Tom's off the kill list. Sid maybe can be fired. Baby in the basket. Think Shiv thinks she could have it all.

Her white picket fence and her corporate career. She could be both. All of it. Any of it. And what's, I think, really great about this scene is that Skarsgård's brash charisma completely falls apart. And all of a sudden, he's just Roman trying to explain dick pics to Logan. Not only do these guys sexually harass women, they can't even explain what it is exactly they're getting out of it. And that is, I think, also, again, a generational thing. Like, Logan is totally fine with sexual harassment, as long as it's something he understands. We saw that in the backstory with Molester. We saw it when Roman first sent the dick pic and Logan tried to pass it off as Roman being Roman. But this, this is just a mystery

even to the men doing it. So why are they doing it? And I think the honest answer is boredom. They can't access the thrill of genuine seduction or romance. Like Madsen, from what the rumor we hear in this episode is that Madsen listens to podcasts while he's fucking. What he says to, what Roman says to him, you're going to get bored and move on. I think that's very, very true. So they have to keep upping the ante. They have to go for the shock factor, this feeling of getting away with something that no one else would get away with. That's why at the end of the episode, Mattson asks Shiv for a picture of her brother's faces. He gets off on their misery. But when he's called on it, or when Roman is called on the dick pic, they fall apart and they get, they look like kids. They look sheepish.

Not because they're ashamed of their actions, I don't think they are, but because it's so obvious that it's all posturing and they're just blue-balling themselves so they can feel something, anything. And it lines up with what Mattson said when Roman visited him in his little place in wherever they were again they just had a love of the world of Switzerland or Austria wherever it was and he was just like I found the most beautiful place in the world and I'm just completely bored with it I love when Shiv points out that Matson said that you know sent my blood as a joke and he was and she's like

first of all good one that's there's no joke there and he keeps going back and forth on whether it was a joke and both Roman and Matson with their their little piccadillos here, they talk about it like like it's not even them doing it. Like they can't explain their own decisions. It's more about the other person. It's about provoking a reaction. They turn into like schoolchildren write about it like ashamed, like even Matson. You could see on his face. He kind of like like you said, he got bashful with Shiv.

He's like, well, well you know it was a joke and because he's being called on the carpet realizing he can't even fucking explain it because he's fucked up he's fucked up if this came out about him it could be a bad thing right like would you say if you were sending half liters of blood at monthly every other month to a girl you dated that worked for you, would you say that if that was found out, things would go well for you, Emmett? I think I would be so lightheaded from all that blood, I wouldn't know what was going on, to be honest with you.

That's a fair amount. Maybe that's the real problem, is that he's really lightheaded all the time or something. And taking psilocybin at breakfast, too, with that much blood loss, he's in trouble. I'm just saying the amount of acid this guy has to do every week on top of losing that much blood. I'm worried for Matson, man. He's not going to last the year. It also shows like he's taking his daddy's death a lot harder than they are right now. I will say they haven't fully gotten into it, but damn, he's got some issues that man does does this sounds like a great time for them to give him atn maybe maybe not right because that weirdness could be wrangled to him instead of

waystar because like that blood thing comes out it's over i mean like some immigrants on a carnival cruise line falling in the water oops oops they've been able to pass that one off at the doj that's what they've been saying to the doj oops they fell but like you're shipping blood to your your axe that works for you i don't know that one the american people may not stand for which is what shiv says and i definitely think shiv is ready for someone else to take the fall for atn especially with regards to the potential scandal she brings up here about atN being directly in touch with Mencken's campaign. And that's different for the boys, or especially Roman. ATN is something Dad loved.

It's the part of Royco most associated with him. It was him. And for Shiv, it just embodies the nasty kind of politics that drove her away from the company. And it comes back to what Connor and Ken said last season, right? Like, you knew. We all knew, you guys, that this is what it is. And now Shiv realizes that is what it always was. Like she can kind of admit, I think, to herself now. That's what it was. Gojo's just as fucked up as Waystar. That's the core of capitalistic rot in both of these companies,

cover-ups and fuck-ups. I do think there's something at play with Shiv hiding her pregnancy still, obviously, and we see her later talk to Tom, and I think she's ready to reveal some of it. She's obviously not doing drugs. Obviously, the sip of champagne that she has at the end of the episode. All right, I'm going to get real. I've seen a lot of comments on the old internet being like, Shiv's out here being an irresponsible mother already, falling down and doing drugs our parents

the people that birthed us if you're listening to this podcast i can guarantee people that birthed you probably did fucked up shit leading up to 20 weeks of birth too right like a lot of people don't 100% know they don't 100% know how prego't 100% know how preggo they are yet. So I'm just saying they probably did a lot of smoking, drinking, maybe some drugs. If you turned out okay, you turned out okay. I know that I probably had those first 20 weeks lend a lot to my characterization personally. I think it's very clear she is hiding it. She doesn't do the cocaine. If you watch clearly, she holds the bottle to make him feel at ease so he can talk to her. And then he interrupts her so she doesn't have to. And she's kind of pretend sipping at the scotch and later the champagne, a sip of champagne is not going

to murder her child. Interesting, though, definitely hiding it still because that takes away literally a lot of her power when people find out that she is carrying another human being. That's just how it works. I can't explain it to you. I don't know. Soon enough, though, it's like it has to come out. Like, very soon. It's almost 20 weeks. We're 17-ish, 18-ish weeks, I think. It's subtly done how she doesn't actually use the cocaine or take a drink.

It's like Roman. Roman when he didn't, when he wasn't taking the coke in the bathroom with that one guy in a previous season. But yeah, she's clearly trying to avoid having to talk about it, and she's not going to be able to for much longer. Our brothers, our disgusting brothers, Tom and Greg and Mattson and co. I love the conversation with Greg and Tom standing in front of dead turning meat. Two on the nose, right? But like definitely dead meat roasting behind them says something. Like when the sauna scene earlier when Carl and Frank were making fun of everyone

inside saying they were hanging out the window like Peking Duck. Same idea here. And Greg thinks he's safe because he's part of what he calls the Quad Squad, a name he is very proud of. Came up with all by himself. He's part of the team. It's like, yeah, sorry, there's three Musketeers. There's D'Artagnan, but Greg, you're not even D'Artagnan level. Four is a crowd, Greg.

Four is a crowd, Greg. Four is a crowd. That question that they get right about what's going on with France felt like a test, very much a test to see how they answered. Tom actually gave kind of a good answer, one that I think will benefit him. Greg, God bless you, but my God. But Tom spoke about rebuilding, right? That America doesn't care what happens, but they'll be there after the fall to build up once more, which is kind of a perfect response to Waystar and Gojo and what's happening with them. The buildup is where you make the money. And yeah, specifically, Madsen asks about France, will they make it? Which is such a specifically dumb question of the kind you see come up in political discussions. Like, what does that mean? Is France going to literally collapse

as a nation state? No, you just think it's not going to be the kind of country you'd want to hang out in. And yeah, Tom's answer is pretty flippant, but he does hit on something. We've rebuilt France before. We did it with the Marshall Plan after World War II. But if we're a late empire, as Tom calls the United States, can we do that again? You know, we've lost our baby boomer era icon of Logan. Are we really up for the job of rebuilding the world again? And should we? Yeah, and I think he actually performed really well in that moment because he showed from an American news stance, right? Like he answered as the head of the American news office for ATN. He said, this is what the American people think. And this is what they give a fuck about. We don't give a shit about what you Europeans think. And he kind of showed them he's an asset in that moment he is an asset for atn at

least where again greg cringe so cringe oh god with his uh what did he say the uh the economist is what he quoted the economist is what don't don't count old old old old france and immediately tom with his bully instinct senses he can pass on the hot potato that he can at least be the second lowest person on the totem pole in that scene he turns on greg as he has pass on the hot potato, that he can at least be the second lowest person on the totem pole in that scene. He turns on Greg as he has before because he knows that all the bullying laser sights are focused on him. He just has to move it on,

which is a very, you know, classic thing in masculine social circles that you try to sense weakness. I say masculine social circles, but, you know, girls do that too, just differently. Yes, we do. Thank you. Thank you.

We absolutely do. So shut up, Emmett. I'm just kidding. Gotta support women's wrongs on the podcast, we do. Thank you. Thank you. We absolutely do. So shut up, Emmett. I'm just kidding. Gotta support women's wrongs on the podcast. I understand. That's why we talk about Shiv a lot. I love Lem Lemoncloak from Game of Thrones who's in this. Richard Lawnmouth is in this show and he says to Greg, or about Greg, sorry, re-Greg, he calls him two meters of inbred nepotism and a Habsburg giant, which you can make out some of it in his conversation, but my God, never chortled so hard. Those are great. Two meters is about right. It's about right. Again, you're saying, you know, orphans or little kids in a cloak, kids in a trench coat. That is just Greg. He's four toddlers in a trench coat exactly i like that you

put it as orphans though that that makes it better yeah greg feels spiritually like an orphan even though we know he still has a mom v oliver twist you know so then we move into the heart of whether the deal is going to happen we get to the negotiation between rome and ken and mattson uh and mattson says i want atn i want that to be part of the deal. He wants to change it up. Originally, ATN was carved out. Wouldn't be for him. Would stick with the family. He wants ATN too. And he tells the brothers that you don't want ATN, which is true. I don't think they actually do. I think it's more about their dad at this point. But it's such a dickish way of putting it to tell another person what they want. Mattson is right, though, that the graph, as he says,

is horrible, that their futures prospects, even if they're great right now, they don't look good in the next five, ten years. Logan said that, too, and Mencken agreed with it in that one political episode that their audience is aging, the clock is ticking, and they need to pull off a pivot. And I love the line that Madsen says about Roman Ken, which is that you're a tribute band, which cuts to the core of it. They're just covering the greatest hits of Logan at this point. And they can't do that forever. He says, all I really want to do is make you rich. And Kendall, as the great killer come back, we're already rich. Which is true, but it's not enough. If it was enough, they wouldn't be doing all of this.

I mean, that's what the family told Ken when he was originally thinking of selling the companies. They don't just want the raw amount of money. They want the prestige and the access that comes with running a company, a big company. raw amount of money they want the prestige and the access that comes with running a company a big company the problem being that this company's been ridden into the fucking ground and is in wild amounts of debt that's the biggest part of this is like you two can't fucking dig yourselves out of the debt hole you're in you need to sell it grow up well as roman said ken will self-destruct because it's his favorite that's what he loves he loves the sensation of over the edge, pretty much regardless of the details of what he's doing when that happens. Like Ken used to use Greg to get drugs. Now he uses him as a mole to seed info

as part of his disinformation campaign against Madison. But it's the same emotion for him. It's as he describes it, it's a tightrope walk on a straight razor. And Roman just looks at him and says, why does that make you smile? It always does. And now he's riding the high of Logan's death while Roman's, at least for the moment, caught in depression, trying to tie up these loose ends in the name of closure. But I think it's a nice twist

that Roman is actually the one who self-destructs when he sees Logan's corpse, when Connor sends them the picture. I don't know if it has the kilt on him or not, but Roman says it's dad, but not dad, which is the core, I think, of what anyone feels when they look at the body of a loved one.

And that's right after that is when Roman just can't take Matson's mockery anymore and we're seeing Roman reach the point where he of all people can't be ironic his usual defense mechanism because this time he actually cares about something and Hugo for once says something insightful about this towards the end of the episode he says that Ken is unreadable it's Roman you want to watch because yeah Roman is now wearing his heart on his sleeves. And he reacts so poorly to Matson calling Logan a prick. But, you know, from Matson's POV, I think he's actually praising Logan when he calls him a prick. From a guy like Matson, that's a compliment. And Matson's able to cut through their manipulation pretty quick when they try sandbagging him,

scooby-dooing him, and saying that their movie's going poorly. And he immediately sees, oh, you're trying to get me to not buy the company and act like it was my idea. He knows how to use their grief against them and roman just just can't handle that he just loses it on mattson and calls him you inhuman fucking dog man and he goes as far as to say that mattson's responsible for logan's death that he drove him to without of stress and i think he's only saying that because like shiv he fears that really they're the ones who stressed logan out to the point of dying just like they almost did at the beginning of the show. Yeah, he thinks it's his voicemail. I mean, that's the big thing.

He, at night, sits there alone because, you know, his girlfriends all left him because he wanted to have them play like they were dead during sex. But glossing over that, he, and he's emotionally unavailable glossing over that too but he that's what he thinks about at night that his voicemail is what did him in and he'll never have the confirmation of that yes or no and in a way though like he's not wrong on some of the things he says to mattson maybe perhaps he should have reeled it in but he breaks he fucking breaks and all of his breaking plays straight into kendall's hand for tanking the deal without even knowing. And it's interesting because while Roman can sit there and say Ken's going to self-destruct, Roman doesn't understand what that means, what it affects, or see it happening at the

exact time it's happening. He only sees it when Ken goes crazy. He sees it, which it looks like it'll be next episode, by the way, from what the previews entail. He sees it when Ken's off the rails on drugs. He doesn't see it now where Ken is using him and using his breaking to shoehorn the tanking of the deal in. Mattson's right with what he says to them that tanking the deal is a violation, right? Like the shareholders can, should, and may go after them if they try to tank the deal,

which of course explains why he calls Frank with the details, because that's probably what a lot of people did with Logan. Actually, now that I say it out loud, they probably called Frank because they knew that's how you get around the Roys. You call the CEO friendly adjacents. Matson giving them more money is also really interesting. He's kind of... After this episode, I would say Mattson's kind of an emotional baby. I feel like we watched him unravel a lot in this episode,

showing us that he's not really a king. He's a stupid rich kid as well, who wants attention and he wants someone to play with him, which Shiv did. In fact, it kind of shows how wrong Logan was about Mattson. He said that Mattson would walk if the kids push him, which Shiv did. In fact, it kind of shows how wrong Logan was about Mattson. He said that Mattson would walk if the kids push him, but the kids pushed, Shiv helped the push, and now Mattson's giving them more money. A 50-50 cash stock deal that he offers them, though, however, isn't maybe an issue? Like, that could come up to be a big problem. And just to throw some numbers around,

right. So that's a payout offer, half in cash, half in stock options, which as we talked about above, just shy of 200. So like, if you had 187 stocks, you would get 50% from the company and the other 50% would be like $935. So before Logan's death death ken had 12,904,663 shares according to his birthday card so 1,238,847,648 dollars and then he would still have some 6,452,331 shares remaining that he could hold on to and keep some control. But then if Mattson makes, you know, if he tanks the company and he fucks Waystar over and his bloody shit comes out, then you lose all those shares and all that money, right? That tanks, you don't make that money. So obviously, maybe he has more shares now from his dad dying,

you don't make that money. So obviously, maybe he has more shares now from his dad dying, but and maybe the writers needed stakes to be a lot higher for Ken last season, right with the birthday card early season four kind of implies that their fortunes stand in about, you know, like the billions 2.5 to five ish billion dollars with stakes of like 2.5% of the company each. So if it's somewhere around the shares mentioned if mattson tanks this was blood bank dick pics it stands to reason half their fortune is no longer shit some great work with the numbers there chloe where'd you go to business school i didn't bitch really you didn't go to hannah barbara fucking business school actually i graduated cum laude ah that that is one of my favorite parts the h Hanna-Barbera.

That was, I cried laughing when he said that to them. That was the funniest fucking line. Yeah, they are at risk. There is a risk right now, and I think they need to mitigate that risk. They need to do some ameliorating. Too sweet. So then we get into the Kill List itself at the end of the episode. Whenever they bring up Kill List on this show, I always think about one of my favorite recent

horror movies from like 10 years ago, a British horror movie called Kill List, which is about a couple of Iraq War veterans who get into the private hitman game and end up caught into a cult and a conspiracy beyond their reckoning. And there's a great bit when the main character

meets his best friend's new girlfriend, who is an HR person in a big company. And the hitman, even though he's a veteran from the Iraq War, he's a hitman, he kills people all the time, but he has such contempt for what she does and says that you're a hatchet person, you take people's lives apart. So it's a great comparison of literal assassinations

to the more kind of bloodless corporate downsizing and associating the two, which is also what we see here. Yeah, and coming back to some of those season one parallels, it's like we're back at Valter and here's our new kill list, right? Like very, very season one only with the kids in charge. It's like an AU, an alternate universe of season one. Interesting. We should watch that. I don't know if I could handle it though. Kill list? not okay so we shouldn't watch that we're not gonna rip hugo you did this one to yourself no comments no notes i mean that's a wow hugo you and your weirdly squidward shaped head i don't know what to do with you you have to appreciate how relaxed all the olds on the plane are when they're hearing

about everyone else getting killed off and like huh too bad anyways uh while they're being bought you know people that are like i'm fine i don't know about your problems when all these people are losing their jobs uh real awkward plane ride i was like damn you guys don't have any sort of remorse at all i wouldn't either i'd be happy i'd be rich but I guess that pays for a lot of it. Tom, you're so lucky that you said that really good thing earlier about America. And then also that your wife is really confused about her feelings for you. That probably saved you a little bit. And Shiv, I think I think she's definitely kind of protecting him on accident in a way because Mattson definitely saw her reaction to when he asked what's up with that. And she kind of told him the truth ish about it like it's fucked up we're fucked up we got lost

I uh I appreciated that she was a little vulnerable with him to gain that trust because it worked for Tom apparently I did love the scene where she gets his shoes dirty and then he grabs her earlobe and says it's chubby I love love it was. It was like an early Tom and Greg scene. And that's the classic dynamic, I think, of an on and off relationship like theirs is that when you're on, you want to be off. But when you're off, you kind of want to be on. You're reminded of all the things you like about each other. But yeah, I think that's the best case scenario for Shiv is that she kills off ATN but manages to keep Tom. Yeah, she wants him back.

That's what that was. That little dinner date ask out. She wants to tell him about the bun in the oven. And I think you make a great point about the early Tom-Greg energy, and this is probably what their original energy was like. They probably bullied each other a little, flirted, you know. They have that bully love kind of energy going on. And coming back to what i said earlier

i really do think she thinks she could have it all right like she could stick it to her parents and her brothers and her mother that she could girl boss she could housewife she could win this game of thrones going on except somehow i do feel like that isn't how this ends however i don't think we have to deal with that next week because from the previews i think the first implosion we're gonna have to deal with is kendall i think it's kendall flipping his nut next week he's going full nut nut family therapy on it i'm thinking that shiv is going to be more of an end of the season break so we'll see well i'm happy halfway to the end of the season we made it kind of kind of uh and by the end of the season'm happy halfway to the end of the season we made it kind of kind of uh and by

the end of the season i mean halfway to the end of the season and then to the end of the end of the end of the of the show oh god we have to find other shows my lord that's a topic for another day let us know what you're listening and watching to right now? We might need to cop whatever you guys are watching out there, figure out our next steps, but we got five weeks for that. So until then, Emmett, please let everyone know where they can find you online.

You can find me on Twitter at BrookWenton and you can find the Not A Cast podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts and you can check out our Patreon at patreon.com slash notacast, A-S-O-I-A-F. We will link those below for you to follow and of course you can find us over at patreon.com slash girls gone canon c a n o n where there are tons of perks for you to discover over at that website a reminder that we are paused on patreon for pay cycle until

june so if you want to pledge next month in May, that would be your best bet. Thanks so much for being patient in the interim between episodes right now as we wait to get back to A Song of Ice and Fire in May 2023. Until then, you will probably be hearing some succession. We'll be working towards getting our bonus Patreon episode out as soon as we can.

For Victarion 1, the win's a winner. For patrons in the $5 and up tier. And you can also find us over at Twitter, girlsgonecanon, C-A-N-O-N, as well as at Gmail, girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. If you want to shoot us a message about the episodes for Succession or A Song of Ice and Fire or whatever else we're talking about that you're listening to. Thanks so much for listening. Make sure you're subscribed to us on a podcast platform near you.

Whatever one is your favorite, I promise you'll find us there. I have been one of your hosts, Chloe. And I'm Emmett, also known as Porkwentin. Thanks. Bye.