BONUS It's Not TV - Succession
Guest:So, Mark, the last time we talked, HBO Max was still a thing, and now it is no more.
Guest:And in fact, when I went on today to just max...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To watch what we were going to watch.
Guest:You know, they show you a featured thing on the screen.
Guest:Say, here, here's what Max has.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the featured thing, not like an algorithmic suggestion for me based on my tastes.
Guest:The thing they want you to know is on Max in a big, bright, showcased tile on the Max interface was MILF Manor.
Guest:Really?
Yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Finally, HBO has been dragged down into the gutter of American culture.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Milf Manor.
Guest:Literally a 30 Rock joke come to life.
Guest:Like on 30 Rock, they would have all sorts of terrible shows.
Guest:And one of them was called Milf Island.
Guest:And it was like a reality show where they voted off the Milfs.
Guest:And now it's a reality.
Guest:No, it's a manor, though.
Guest:It's not an island.
Guest:You're in a nice mansion.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But the satire has become manifest as reality.
Guest:As reality.
Guest:And I could have watched Milf Manor right away there.
Guest:It was right there featured for me to click.
Guest:You know what I could not watch?
Guest:Because I couldn't find it.
Guest:In fact, I scrolled down the entire page and didn't find it.
Guest:I had to enter it in the search bar.
Guest:Do you know what I had to do that for?
Marc:My special?
Guest:Succession.
Guest:Like literally like the most talked about show they've had in, I don't know, decades.
Guest:Well, I guess since Game of Thrones really, but it seems like people were happier with the ending to succession than they were with Game of Thrones, but still nowhere to be found on max.
Guest:I could not find it.
Guest:I had to go search for it.
Marc:I had it on, I watch, I get my cable through Hulu, but I also have the max, but I did it through Hulu and it was, it was easy to find it to me.
Guest:watching hbo on hulu now seems preferable because it still feels like this special place whereas if you go to max you're like what the fuck am i in now yeah what garbage trough did i just step into yeah it's like it's like when you went dumpster diving with those people that time with the freegans yeah oh i found a nice look at this i found eastbound and down it's in here look at that yeah
Guest:Larry Sanders is perfectly clean.
Marc:I was looking through... I tried to look up... Somebody I was talking to had not seen... Knows Dana Gould's new wife and had not seen Dana Gould's comedy.
Marc:And I was like, well, you've got to watch the pre-medicated Dana Gould or the not properly medicated Dana Gould.
Marc:And it looks like...
Marc:All of those one night stands from that era are around there.
Marc:I think you can get them on there.
Guest:I definitely, it wasn't recently, it may be seven, eight years ago.
Guest:I definitely watched Dana's and yours and Bobcats and Janine's.
Guest:Like they were there for sure.
Guest:Yeah, there was also a thing in there that I always stuck with me for the rest of my life was about him getting a moth stuck in his ear.
Guest:Like here's the death throes of a moth in his ear canal.
Guest:Yes, that sound on the microphone is so perfect.
Marc:He was a very funny guy.
Marc:He's still funny.
Guest:He is, yes, yes.
Guest:Well, also very funny, but just amazingly great on several levels has been four seasons of the show Succession, which we enjoyed very much.
Guest:We talked about it all the time to each other when it was on.
Guest:And it now has come to an end.
Guest:And we figured, you know, a lot of people were talking to us.
Guest:I actually got a lot of direct...
Guest:You know, I have this comments page specifically around the Friday show and people were writing in on the Friday show saying, can you guys talk about succession?
Guest:So I said, let's just talk about it.
Guest:Me and Mark will do one of our our TV recaps, which we have done now.
Guest:But how did you find it?
Guest:Do you remember anything about finding out about this show or like you were just I feel like you were an early adapter.
Guest:You were definitely in it before I was in it.
Marc:I was in it because I, in my recollection, I was still with Sarah the Painter when it started, if that's possible.
Marc:I don't know when it started.
Marc:It started in 2018, so you sure were.
Marc:Yeah, so she had started watching it, and I was like, what is it?
Marc:But she was in it from the beginning and she liked it and she was like, I don't know if it's going to, you know, if anyone's going to like this show, but she dug it.
Marc:So I got into it, I guess, not long after that.
Marc:I don't know when, but it was around that time that I started watching it.
Marc:And I remember being very taken with the language.
Marc:Because right when you first start watching Succession, there's a moment of sort of like, how is this going to be good?
Marc:And then all of a sudden, the language of it just starts kicking you in the balls.
Marc:And you're like, what the fuck is happening?
Marc:What is this?
Marc:Do people talk like this?
Marc:And then it very quickly doesn't matter whether people talk like that or not.
Marc:You'd like to believe those people talk like that, but I would assume that nobody talks like that.
Marc:And that was part of the charm of the thing was this elevated, you know, almost rhythmic, very guarded, very hostile lexicon that was being used for this thing.
Guest:Yeah, for real.
Guest:And I think, I don't know if this was my direct response to it when it came out, but it came out in the summer of 2018, June 2018.
Guest:It was on 10 o'clock after Westworld.
Guest:So that gives you an idea of how much faith HBO had in it, which is to say none.
Guest:You know, it's basically slotted in there.
Guest:Buried.
Guest:Yeah, let's see if any audience grew for it.
Guest:But I don't remember hearing a ton of talk about it.
Guest:And in fact, I just thought from the initial promotion and that, I thought it was a straight up like parody of the Murdochs, right?
Guest:Like I thought it was going to be, and I knew McKay was involved.
Guest:And so I thought it was going to be close to Vice, you know, this very arch kind of crow's eye view of kind of modern media and aristocracy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, we were right in the middle of the Trump years, too.
Guest:I bet you that kind of hurt it a little bit at first, because who wanted to deal with more shitty people?
Guest:We were dealing with shitty people every day, every minute of every day.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I did not get into it until the pandemic.
Guest:When the pandemic hit and we all had to stay home, it was one of those things where I was like, well, this show I hear is great.
Guest:I should catch up on it.
Guest:And I watched the two seasons that were available, you know, like we would watch it nightly.
Guest:Like, oh, great.
Guest:We got another episode of Succession.
Guest:After, you know, 20, 21 days, whatever it was, we watched the whole two seasons that had already come out.
Guest:And I think a lot of people wound up doing that.
Guest:And in fact, even after that had happened, I still didn't feel like it had like a saturation point in the culture.
Guest:until maybe about like the third season or so.
Guest:And now, you know, this last season happened, everyone was talking about it all the time, but it took that long for it to kind of gear up.
Guest:And now it's over, which I think was the right call.
Guest:I think they pushed the story as far as they could and they ended it at exactly the right time.
Guest:The Brits have a way of knowing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it makes sense.
Guest:They're not wrapped up in the same stupid shit we are about, you know, constant growth.
Marc:Oh, you got to get bigger.
Marc:And also just, you know, hitting the same, you know, bell over and over again.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, four seasons was enough.
Marc:And I just, I remember being very...
Marc:kind of sucked into it because you weren't quite clear whether it was a comedy or not.
Marc:And, you know, in some ways, I don't think it is.
Marc:I think it's something, it's not like a, it's not quite a drama.
Marc:It's elevated somehow.
Marc:I'm not sure, there is something about the writing that is, it's almost all about the writing in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, you say it's not a comedy.
Guest:I would go you one further and say it is directly a tragedy in the classical sense of that word.
Guest:It is not a morality play.
Guest:It is not an allegory.
Guest:It is straight up tragic fiction.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that takes on all the the weight that that has historically.
Guest:But on the other end of it, you had these very smart, funny people writing it.
Guest:So there is great humor throughout.
Guest:And yes, I would not call it a comedy, but it is a tragedy with an amazing strain of humor.
Marc:But the thing is, it's sort of structured like those morality plays.
Marc:It's sort of structured like some sort of Shakespearean tragedy.
Marc:But as empathetic as the characters were, it's almost you're not able emotionally or in your heart to read it as a human tragedy, because there's something slightly inhuman about all of these people.
Marc:They're all very well-rounded characters, and you believe them as people.
Marc:But there's a tremendous lack of humanity that no matter how much you're invested in any of these characters or rooting for any of them or sympathetic with any of them, your emotional connection is is detached because they are lacking something fundamental that makes a human.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, I think that was the great trick of the show was to week to week convince you that maybe there was something you were attached to.
Guest:And then, you know, you'd get to another point in the story that they were telling and realize you weren't or realize there was nothing triumphant or admirable about what you just saw.
Guest:But they're able, even in the episode that I watched here, they were able to figure out ways in which you could as a viewer go, I feel like they got a win there.
Guest:whichever character you were noticing at any given time.
Marc:That was almost all of it, because all of the human moments, even when lives were lost and there's real potential for grief and personal growth, or when people were actually seemingly struggling emotionally, they somehow managed to avoid the humanity or the empathy necessary for these characters to experience genuine,
Marc:emotion.
Guest:And the language was what did that.
Guest:And that's why I say it's a tragedy because inherently, you know, a character that is a tragic character has flaws that cannot be overcome.
Guest:And there is no sense of making a right or wrong choice and getting out from under that which is fated to you in classic tragedy.
Guest:And ultimately, and we're ultimately, we're going to start talking about the show in a spoilery sense.
Guest:So if that's
Guest:Something you don't like.
Guest:We've been pretty general up until now, but I'm definitely going to get into spoiler territory here with Mark.
Guest:And if that's not your thing, you might want to bail out now.
Guest:And I'm going to go specifically right to the end of the series here to say that the way that it ended was unavoidable based on who these characters all were from the jump.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's no way for any one of them to have ended on a triumphant, positive note of growth or redemption.
Guest:It was not able to happen.
Marc:I guess, you know, I've been rethinking the ending a bit and I don't because you are, as you said before and as we just talked about that, you're looking for winners and you're looking for, you know, that through line, you know, in this sort of.
Marc:Horrendous, aristocratic, conscienceless world of corporate media.
Marc:But I started to rethink how it ended.
Marc:And given what was going on with Tom and Shiv, is that throughout the course of them abusing each other and then the revelation of her pregnancy, there was actually something...
Marc:Relatively human happening between them emotionally.
Marc:And it was delicate and weird.
Marc:And it did not take away from the bankruptcy, spiritual and emotional bankruptcy of the characters.
Marc:But there was something happening between them that read as human to me in their self-awareness.
Marc:that I didn't see with too many of the other characters.
Guest:Well, yeah, but couldn't you say that they're aware that they're just basically doomed?
Guest:Because that's how I read it.
Marc:I guess they're doomed, but in a way, I've started to think of that ending as the only way Shiv could win.
Marc:And oddly that, you know, that given craven Tom's need or his ambition disabling his ability to have any principles at all, which you already knew about him, that this was the best possible ending.
Marc:I didn't feel at the end that I didn't feel doom.
Marc:I felt that like.
Marc:There was no way that Shiv was going to win if her brothers took over.
Marc:And in this way, with her ability to control Tom to some degree, whether she'll have success at it in the future or whether Tom's confidence will win out, which I don't think it will because he's going to be stuck in between Shiv and Madsen.
Marc:But I believe that Shiv was sort of honestly victorious in the end.
Guest:I don't think I could ever arrive at that conclusion based on the fact that it's been explicitly said that the only power she will wield in the future is because the guy who now owns the company wants to fuck her.
Marc:I get that.
Marc:I saw that more as a test for Tom.
Guest:It sure was.
Guest:It was he was cucking him and making sure that this guy and that again would tell me, oh, well, they're doomed because this guy literally said, I want the power here and I'm OK with you fucking my wife if that's what will get it for me.
Guest:More than OK.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I see that as well.
Marc:But I also see that leading up, you know, the four seasons leading up to the sort of
Marc:the way that these systems work and the way that these people work.
Marc:I mean, there was a true vulnerability there in a moment when Mattson, is that his name, Mattson?
Marc:Yeah, Mattson, yeah.
Marc:They were in a panic that the deal was not going to go through, and there was a legitimate scramble of vulnerability there.
Marc:And so that, to me, was telling.
Marc:I mean, you saw it with the father, too, at moments.
Guest:Yeah, like when he found out they were going to try a hostile takeover, you know, there'd be actual panic for a second.
Marc:But it also realized that there were two worlds happening here and that the hands off, you know, that he was going to get this American CEO, not realizing just, you know, the duplicity or realizing the duplicity of Tom, but also that I didn't feel that there was stability at the end in anything other than their relationships.
Guest:Which is very corporate.
Guest:It could be anything could happen after this.
Guest:This guy could get tired of this or whatever.
Guest:But at the same time, Shiv found herself in the same spot in both cases.
Guest:In both cases, she'd be a subordinate.
Guest:But in one of those cases, she'd be a part owner of the company still.
Guest:She'd still have her hands on it.
Guest:And she could not live with that being the case if she had to look at her idiot fuck-up brother as the guy who was in charge.
Guest:Right.
Guest:in order to not have to live with that, she blew up her chance of owning the thing and put herself in the other subordinate case where she's looked at as nothing, where she's looked at as a sex object and, at best, someone who can help in situations but will never be allowed to be in charge.
Guest:And she chose that as her better option because...
Guest:And her stomach, as she said, I cannot stomach you to Kendall, would not allow her to stick around.
Marc:Yeah, but I also thought that she knew the fundamental instability of the possibilities of them owning it.
Marc:And then she also knew, I think, like they all did, that it was...
Marc:her father's desire to have that deal go through.
Marc:And I understand what you're saying, and I can read it on the surface as that, but I guess I'm more emotionally connected to it, is that, yeah, she's a subordinate, but she's a Roy, and she is...
Marc:the wife and the, you know, the progenitor, is that the word?
Marc:She's going to have the baby.
Marc:That there was not, I didn't, you know, at the end, I felt satisfied.
Marc:I felt relieved.
Marc:I thought it was dark.
Marc:But when she took his hand, I thought there was an understanding there that they were still somehow coronated.
Marc:And, you know, granted, they were both subordinate and they were both cucked, but they were still fucking in charge.
Guest:Yeah, but that taking of the hand was so dark.
Guest:Oh, yeah, it was.
Guest:It's like he was the one asking to receive it, right?
Guest:He put his hand open first.
Guest:She kind of laid it there in a, you know, very kind of uncomfortable, subservient way.
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:But we've spent all this time really understanding that relationship more than almost any other relationship between people as something that, you know, had at least some humanity to it.
Guest:Well, or also understood the roles that it's supposed to slot into, much like with any kind of monarchy or aristocracy, the couples have roles.
Guest:And they were playing those out from the start.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But Tom, you know, was really...
Marc:Oddly, the only self-aware character, you know, outwardly in the series.
Guest:Well, especially the only self-aware one to also know that he's not a winner.
Guest:And in many ways, that's the only way he's going to win is by admitting to that.
Marc:So, right.
Marc:So he was the only one with some, you know, just a bit of humanity and also a tremendous amount of vulnerability, which he showed, you know, at times with Greg, but certainly with Shiv.
Guest:But I also found it very terrifying for him to be in charge at the end.
Guest:Like, I find that to be a terrifying message that, like, the... Oh, for the world?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For the world.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Like that.
Guest:The guys like him are the ones who wind up getting propped up and put in power because of their insane vulnerability.
Guest:And also to disperse blame.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:You know, if they're going to be my pain sponge.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:I guess that.
Marc:As much as Tom, as I waffled with him as a character and the decisions he made, that I felt at the end that Shiv, granted there both be subordinates and Cucked and everything else,
Marc:you know, was still in, you know, probably a better place than she was throughout the series.
Marc:She actually had a defined role and it was still within the company.
Guest:See, I take issue with that.
Guest:I think every single one of those Roy kids...
Guest:always denied their best position to be in which was to run as far the fuck away as possible and their inability to do that is why they're all doomed right at every step of the way in four seasons of this series they were all given multiple options to get the fuck out of here and to go away and be billionaires and
Guest:billionaires with a B never worry about anything ever again in their lives.
Guest:And they couldn't do it because of the spell their father cast on them.
Marc:They were cursed.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And their, you know, fluctuating desires and, and a false sense of responsibility to fill his shoes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, it goes right down to that thing that Kendall says about how Logan told him when he was seven, this is all going to be yours someday.
Guest:He killed him in that moment.
Guest:Like, that was a dagger to his heart.
Guest:He couldn't be a human for the rest of his life because of that.
Marc:Yeah, but see, like, I didn't feel like, did any of those characters...
Guest:Change.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, the best indication you get of that in terms of change, like in realization, is Roman finally relenting to the fact that they don't deserve it and they're nothing?
Guest:That's some form of realization.
Guest:But does it change the fact that he potentially ushered in fascism and the end of democracy for no purpose?
Guest:No.
Guest:Does he feel like he has to make amends for that, that anything will be different for him?
Guest:And the show is very good at always indicating that these things happen in the background of their lives.
Guest:And the one time it happened in the foreground of his life, meaning he got popped in the head by an Antifa guy or whatever, it broke his brain.
Guest:He couldn't handle it.
Guest:He had to go run away to the Bahamas or wherever.
Marc:Yeah, but I also felt that there was some sense of the gambler, the James Caan, the Mazursky movie, where once he put himself in that position, which he did on purpose, for whatever weird spin-out he was having, he entered into the fray of that thing, and there's sort of some kind of weird anti-hero's wound there.
Marc:Yeah, he brought that upon himself.
Marc:And, you know, it was almost to, you know, if he wasn't going to get knocked with a sense of, you know, cultural reality in that moment, then, yeah, he was doomed, but something got knocked out of him.
Marc:But it was a self-inflicted wound.
Guest:And it was like the wound of shame.
Guest:Like, he had to get that, which is why, like, a lot of people have interpreted it weird ways.
Guest:I took it to mean when he, there's a scene where he's hugging people
Guest:Kendall right before Kendall thinks he's going to get the company.
Guest:And there is hugging him very hard.
Guest:And Roman is like pressing that eyebrow scar into Kendall's shoulder.
Guest:I saw people reading it as though.
Guest:The other way around.
Guest:Kendall was doing it to him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't feel that.
Guest:I felt that it was him wanting to keep that wound open that he's it's it's a it's a now that's a need for him because he's going to lose this company.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's not his going to be Kendall's.
Guest:And the one thing he has kind of close to his father is this idea that he did something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the thing that he did is now marked on his skull because he created a riot in the street.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so he's feeling this guy who has this, you know, sexual problem where he needs to feel pain in order to get aroused.
Guest:Like shame.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:That felt necessary to him to kind of open this cut and feel it.
Marc:Yeah, I didn't really understand that reading either.
Marc:But I miss a lot of things.
Marc:But I think that if Kendall was holding him that tightly intentionally, he would have fought it.
Marc:And I feel like I think it's correct that he pressed into...
Marc:Kendall and Kendall tried to step into some sort of supportive role.
Marc:There's interesting moments throughout the series with these siblings, you know, trying to find the emotional capacity to be there for each other in these moments.
Marc:But I felt that, you know, out of all of them, that given Roman's personality type, that he was the one to sort of like, you know, usher in fascism or do this deal.
Marc:And yet he was the only one that really seemed to
Marc:crave and need and respond to his emotional desire to be parented more than the other ones.
Marc:There was some change there in that he broke down emotionally, which they all have, but at a juncture that was
Marc:you know, pivotal and he couldn't control it.
Marc:And it was, that was the moment before the wound where, you know, he really becomes human.
Guest:I think they foreshadow this a bit earlier in the season when there's like a wake or whatever, a repast at Logan's apartment.
Guest:And he's the only one who shows any kind of compassion toward the assistant that,
Guest:as she's getting booted out of the apartment and he even says like that was a really low thing to do which which is weird because it's like a very roman thing to do to just treat treat somebody like a peon and have him tossed out of the place like we've seen him do it many times and so i you know i i feel like what they were going for with him in his kind of final resting spot with the show was that
Guest:Of all of the kids, of all four of them, he was the one who was still the baby and the one closest to his raw emotions, so much so that he couldn't even get through one sentence of a eulogy for his father without breaking down.
Guest:And...
Guest:Literally, in having that human moment, ruined any chance he had at power for the rest of his life, essentially, from the standpoint of the show.
Marc:And then he runs to his mother's.
Marc:Yes, right.
Marc:And throughout the show, none of them wanted really much to do with her, that she was this strange character.
Marc:But it was there.
Marc:It was mommy.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:And that's where he went.
Marc:And he was more relaxed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, wearing looser clothing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it's interesting.
Guest:So, you know, maybe to get back to where we are now, let's go back to the episode that I was talking to you about.
Guest:I don't know if you had a chance to watch this.
Guest:This was called Safe Room.
Guest:Yeah, I watched it.
Guest:Season two, episode four.
Guest:It felt like a million years ago.
Guest:Yes, this was in September 1st, 2019 was when this aired.
Guest:And it's interesting because what we're talking about with Roman here was essentially the story arc that was going on with Kendall at this time.
Guest:Because this was after he had his bout of really bad drug use that resulted in him getting in a car accident that killed a kid.
Guest:And now that killing has essentially yoked him to Logan because Logan is hanging this over him as
Guest:blackmail essentially to kill a hostile takeover that Kendall was a part of.
Guest:And it's a similar thing that's going on with him in terms of kind of breaking down, breaking his spirit so that he must run to the parent and be parented and kind of be obedient.
Marc:But also that anytime that happens in the show, it reveals that your premise that they're all fuck ups beyond repair and ultimately doomed and dum-dums.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Because they don't have... They were not parented in a way that would enable them to have the hardness of heart that it would take to be successful.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Well, and it's like, it's because...
Guest:They didn't have that.
Guest:It's not just like bad parenting.
Guest:It's abusive parenting.
Guest:Because Logan, I believe that when you back out of the whole show, what was the whole point of this?
Guest:And this guy who is at the center of the seat of power, and the show is called Succession.
Guest:So it's about who's going to get that from him, right?
Guest:His mindset was...
Guest:It was a punishment, a parental punishment that he was never going to let any of these kids have it because he resented them for their belief that they could have it.
Guest:And so everything stems from this idea.
Guest:If you're watching the show with that in mind, now that you've gotten to the ending and you see that they don't get it, you rewatch the show from the mindset of, oh, all of this is this guy fucking with them.
Guest:Just the whole time.
Guest:He is he he will not allow them to get to a point where they are any kind of person for themselves as long as they want this thing.
Guest:If they went and like ran off like Connor, like he wouldn't respect them and he wouldn't like want to be friendly with them, be parent toward them.
Guest:But he wouldn't be trying to kill them all the time.
Guest:The way career wise, the way he is to the other three.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Defying them to try to win and watching them flounder.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And knowing that eventually he will have the upper hand.
Marc:But they almost did it.
Guest:Well, they did.
Guest:And so this season actually ends with a moment where you think for once he might...
Guest:Feel like they deserve it.
Guest:It's with Kendall at the end, you know, coming out and revealing all these things that he says he has in his possession that will bring down his father.
Guest:And Brian Cox, when you talk to him, said explicitly that the look on his face at the end of this season was a look of proud fatherhood.
Guest:Like he was he was proud of his son for for showing a killer instinct for once.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and that's one of the rare times that it happens.
Guest:Well, in any event, this episode that I wanted us to watch was the reason was because I feel like it has a lot of the themes of the show in this one spot.
Guest:And it's, I think, probably aided by the fact that most of the characters are kept.
Guest:separate in little clusters for a large portion of the show right like so you have roman he's down doing his like management training you've got uh shiv and kendall and logan they're in a safe room together tom and greg they're in another safe room together connor is at the funeral and so you really get a sense of how all of these people have to operate in the little ecosystems that they find themselves in all the time
Marc:Well, but the thing at that time with Roman, though, and Jerry, which it was almost sweet, that perverse relationship they had, was that he was being infantilized and treated like a baby.
Marc:So, you know, he was sent away to do something that, you know, there was really no reason for him to do.
Marc:It didn't matter.
Marc:But it was literally, you know, go to kindergarten, you little boy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, like literally to the point where you could do group activities like kids do in school, like sit and make arts and crafts together.
Marc:But, you know, in talking that we were about before, this is the psychological type.
Marc:You know, the reason that it is...
Marc:it kind of reads and is attached to NCEL disposition that, you know, that the desire that he had to create fascism or to enable it and also his weird occasional moments of power tripping was essentially the emasculated adolescent emotional structure of what is the threat to our country now.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, there's one point in this episode where he even equates going to the management training seminar and succeeding with, he'll be like, yeah, I'm going to be on the straight and narrow.
Guest:I'll be able to have regular old phone sex with my girlfriend.
Marc:Yeah, which he tries to do and he can't.
Guest:Can't do it.
Guest:Yeah, but I just like that.
Guest:He right away equates the two things.
Guest:Like, if I can succeed in business, I'll finally be able to fuck properly.
Marc:Yeah, or be like, you know, figure out what the normos do.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, so as I mentioned, when this episode starts, you see that Kendall is like fully a broken man.
Guest:He's stuck to Logan all the time.
Guest:And nobody can really get why he is, because it's only between him and Logan and Logan's bodyguard as to why this blackmail is happening.
Guest:And this was at the same time when Shiv was finally asked to come into the company.
Guest:She had been previously working with the senator's office, Senator Gill, and he fired her or she quit.
Guest:Basically, it's whoever story you believe.
Guest:And now she's in the company for the first time thinking, because Logan has told her, you're going to be the one eventually.
Guest:She's thinking this is her start, her start to take over the company, which is him fucking with her again, by the way, as you see by the end of this episode.
Marc:Yeah, that look he gives her is bizarre.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:And all very compliments Kendall.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And he just looks at her with like almost like a goofy face.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like, it's like a look you would give to a stranger who is like, you want that stranger to like, no, like, Hey, something happy just happened, but you don't want to give up anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um,
Guest:I also love that when this episode starts, there's been some problem with this guy Ravenhead at the News Network, who's like the Tucker Carlson clone.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And they're talking about how there's... Shiv and Tom are in a limo going to the office.
Guest:They're talking about how there's these fascists rallying around this guy.
Guest:And Shiv is questioning it.
Guest:Tom, it's a great quote here.
Guest:He's like...
Guest:Now he's grown up now.
Guest:He lives in Connecticut.
Guest:He's crazy about the Knicks.
Guest:He's a lovely guy.
Guest:And, and he skews younger.
Guest:It's a perfect TV line.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And like anyone who, I mean, I have heard very similar things said directly to me about equally terrible things.
Marc:And there's that other great line when he's grilling or interviewing or trying to figure out what's really going on with that newscaster or whatever he is, that personality.
Marc:And the guy reels off all the deaths that happened in World War II, the millions of Russians.
Guest:Seven million Germans, 20 million Russians, five million Poles.
Guest:And then Tom goes, aren't you missing a few?
Marc:What did he say?
Guest:He says, just checking the till here, Mark, but it seems you're short a few million.
Yeah.
Guest:And at that moment, a gunshot goes off, right?
Guest:Like that's a perfect structure of that as a, you know, a device for this story, right?
Guest:That this gun thing is going to happen.
Guest:But just like when they're driving into the office, they get there and there's like...
Guest:People protesting outside.
Guest:And they're like, who are these people?
Guest:And Tom's like, they're our people.
Guest:They're like our fans.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then they see Antifa coming from across the street.
Guest:And they're like, who are these guys?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Let's go inside.
Guest:Like, and that's it.
Guest:They just go in and they're like, yeah, that's thing.
Guest:Whatever it is, it's happening in the background.
Marc:But that was a theme, right?
Marc:I mean, the whole show.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The background is the world.
Marc:That we live in.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:They're doing this to us and they don't care.
Marc:Right, at all, because it's an insulated game and it's the one that drives everything.
Marc:And that was very prevalent in the election night.
Guest:Yeah, that it just happens all the time.
Guest:All of a sudden, it's election night there on the show.
Guest:I loved that about it.
Guest:I saw people complaining about it.
Guest:Well, it's weird that they sidelined the election.
Guest:Yes, because they would sideline the election in their life.
Guest:I thought that was genius.
Guest:Yes, I agree.
Guest:It's the right move.
Marc:But this is also the episode where you see, you know, Greg and Tom actualize their love.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:In a fantastic way, too.
Guest:I forget, you know, when you're watching and you're going through the kind of progression with these characters.
Guest:And what's in my head with Tom is what we just watched for a season.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like he's now he's.
Guest:like logan's second in command basically he's got a little more uh gravitas to him and he's emotionally dealing with the breakup of shiv but going back to this season two it was amazing how uh kind of goofy he is like in the office there like
Guest:strolling through and like sid is uh you know kind of talking up greg like oh you you know you seem like a smart guy in that and what do you do here for tom as his executive assistant and you know he's like oh i get you know i keep the latte train going and i just and she's like you're an ambitious guy you should come talk to me and tom's coming down the hallway he sees this and he's not happy he does not want greg talking to her and he's like greg
Marc:latte me up man immediately says the thing that was just getting made fun of yeah five seconds ago and then and then you know greg you know uh the moment that they really fall in love is when greg you know steps up with the blackmail possibility and tom is so impressed that he's such a scumbag amazing that that it's sort of like they're going to be together forever
Guest:That whole scene is so great.
Guest:Those two actors are so tremendous in it.
Guest:In the first sense, because it's just happened after they were in the panic room, right?
Guest:After this gunshot happened, they all have to go in these panic rooms.
Guest:They're in their shitty panic room that Tom is very unhappy about.
Guest:They got stuck in this lousy panic room.
Guest:And Greg's freaking out.
Guest:And Greg thinks they're going to get killed, but Tom just doesn't like it for a status reason.
Guest:He's like, you put us in the...
Marc:Wrong room.
Marc:And the fact that there were two underlings in there.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Who witnessed that entire fucking thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And a security guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Tom losing his shit and cucking Greg and then getting fucked around.
Guest:Well, I also love that Greg tries to give a little dig in there, Adam, when he's sitting there and he's watching the broadcast and he sees Sid is like calling in from the control room.
Guest:And he's like, look at this.
Guest:She's going to make me look like a coward.
Guest:I'm sitting here and she's out there like she's breakdancing through gunfire.
Guest:And Greg just kind of under his breath goes, you did run pretty fast.
Guest:He's like, we all ran, Greg.
Marc:But again, with, you know, the entrance of the building, like, you know, with the possibilities of what that gunfire was, whether it was Antifa or whether it was a Nazi or whether it was, you know, whatever the threat was, once they find out it was some guy who shot himself, it was, nothing was said.
Marc:No.
Marc:Really.
Marc:They don't care.
Marc:If anything, they made fun of him.
Guest:like they were walking by is he still there yeah there's that and and then logan says to jerry when jerry tells him like oh this guy had complained a little while ago about a bullying work environment and he's like it's a fucking newsroom not a kindergarten yeah it was just like it was it was nothing yeah
Marc:And that was also the beginning of the other media company.
Guest:Or trying to acquire Pierce, right?
Guest:Well, that's the other subplot that's going on here is that, you know, Holly Hunter is the CEO of this kind of weird amalgam of New York Times and CNN, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're clearly made to be their rival television news operation, but also they own a prestige newspaper.
Guest:So you figure it's Times and CNN stuck together, and it's called Pierce.
Guest:And you see this play out as the siblings are stuck in the safe room with Holly Hunter and Logan.
Guest:And it's interesting because this is a moment where they start working this deal out, right?
Guest:And Kendall...
Guest:Is good at it.
Guest:Like to the point where he gets them on the right page.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's interesting that I didn't really think about him to watching it here.
Guest:Like I was saying to you earlier, the only chance these kids ever had is if they ran the other way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But here was Ken's only shot at actually eventually becoming his dad.
Guest:Only, only, only if he was completely under his thumb.
Guest:And continue to be so.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like if he went to ultimately at the end of this season, when when Logan decides you're going to be the sacrifice, you're going to take the blame for the Cruz problem we've had.
Guest:You're going to go to jail if he had gone to jail, if he had, you know, dealt with all the the dirty work.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Maybe at that point he comes back and would get the company, not because Logan saw him as a killer, but saw him as the same way he saw Tom, a guy who's just going to do whatever I tell him to do, you know, and he and and it's only because of Kendall's one killer move that he doesn't become that.
Guest:If he had a move to follow up that move, maybe he'd get somewhere.
Guest:But he didn't because he's doomed.
Guest:Because he has no ability to actually be his father.
Guest:Because he can say, oh, I have these papers.
Guest:I'm going to take my dad down.
Guest:He has nothing after that to actually win.
Guest:And Logan figures that out very quickly in that third season.
Guest:And Ken is easily not an issue after one or two episodes of that.
Guest:Why did you pick this episode?
Guest:Well, mostly because, like I said,
Guest:there's a sense in each of these like groupings of the people where you can get a sense of who they are in the dynamic of the show.
Guest:Like even, we didn't even talk about him yet, but Connor, this is a great Connor subplot where he has to go to the funeral of one of the executives, one of the executives who's been embroiled in the scandals there.
Guest:They called him Uncle Mo, but they find out, you find out in this episode, his name's actually Lester and Mo was a joke because he was a Mo Lester for real.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he'd been with the dad since the old days.
Guest:Since the old days.
Guest:And they found out in the last episode that he was a mole talking to a Maggie Haberman type who's writing a book about Logan.
Guest:And so they go to this funeral.
Guest:And I don't know if you noticed that there's a lot of, it was a different time jokes.
Guest:Yeah, I saw that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's a great line where he's talking about this guy, Uncle Mo, and how they weren't allowed to go in the pool with him and whatnot.
Guest:It was a different time.
Guest:And his girlfriend's like, but it wasn't a time before they invented laws.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But what I liked about Connor's story here is this is exactly what I was saying to you when we started talking about this, about how the show would trick you into finding wins for these people and linking your sympathies with them coming through on the good side of things, on the plus side of the ledger.
Guest:And the reality is, if you just take a step back in what's happening in this scene, this is a pedophile, a sexual abuser at the very least, right?
Guest:Who was involved in some terrible things in the Cruz's division of this company, probably murders from what we understand that they talk about later.
Guest:So this is a bad guy.
Guest:There is a reporter in attendance at this funeral waiting to hear
Guest:How the family, which is Connor there as the surrogate for the whole family, talks about this guy and sees how she can then put that in the book.
Guest:And so this is like bad people protecting a bad guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah and your sympathies are with them like you're like i hope they don't reveal anything to this reporter it's like it's like the scene in psycho where the the car is going into the muck and it stalls out and you're like come on keep sinking
Marc:How'd they do that with all of them?
Marc:Because you were sort of emotionally invested in really all of them.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I don't know how they pulled that trick off.
Marc:I think it must've be that combination of the acting and this amazing writing.
Marc:you really didn't want to see any of them go down.
Marc:I mean, there was sort of, when Logan went down, you were like, what?
Guest:I mean, you didn't feel grief.
Guest:Yeah, no, because he went down in the exact way that happens, right?
Guest:Where you're just like, just totally sideswiped by it.
Guest:And then you have to pick up all the pieces.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In the power vacuum.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But yeah, but I think that that episode was sort of, and it's funny that, you know, getting back to Roman in this episode is that everyone else is, you know, Shiv is kind of worming her way into, you know, charming herself into a negotiation, you know, um,
Marc:And, you know, Kendall did what he did and and Connor did that thing.
Marc:And and and Roman won the prize for making the best ride.
Guest:And he does a thing that at the time you're watching, you think it's going to be, you know, oh, this is going to play into something in a further episode.
Guest:And it does not.
Guest:he magnanimously promotes that guy who he was partnered with.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's this, again, it's like this one act of like charity or it's not even charity.
Guest:It was, it was good management.
Guest:It was, he was seeing that someone he was with there had value.
Guest:And I think the great thing, this is an actor, Zach Cherry, who's on.
Guest:Very good.
Guest:He's very funny.
Guest:It was also that he was an honest guy.
Guest:He was honest and he had confidence despite being a kind of like physically sloppy, you know, like he was not the kind of person the character Roman would think anything of if he saw him walking around.
Guest:He'd be like, but he knew who he was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, that's true, too.
Guest:But I'm just saying like Roman would look at a guy like that and dismiss him much the same way he like spit the pastry back out into the plate after he took a taste of it when he showed up at the place.
Marc:But also that guy kind of, you know, stood up to Roman, knew exactly who he was immediately and was still focused enough to do what was expected of him.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Guest:You mean you didn't, he didn't really think he was, uh, uh, Ron Rockstone.
Guest:Uh, Severance.
Guest:That's, I couldn't think of the name of the show that that guy is in, but yeah, he's from Severance.
Guest:Um,
Guest:Well, also, you know, at the very end of this, it's interesting because there was something I didn't realize when I first saw it, or actually I thought it felt kind of out of place when I first saw this episode, that Logan is so concerned with where Kendall is when the gunshot happens.
Guest:And at first I thought they were just, it was a kind of out of character thing for the show to do, to lay it on so thick that...
Guest:To make us see, oh, well, look, now he's siding with Kendall because he's, you know, Kendall's his whipping boy and he wants to make sure he's all right.
Guest:And I didn't really buy it in that moment.
Guest:But watching it through again now, it's clear to me he's worried that Kendall has killed himself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That all they know at that point is there's a gunshot.
Guest:And so he's going, where's Kendall?
Guest:Is Kendall OK?
Guest:And he knows because of the secret info that he has that this guy's on the edge.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this all plays into Kendall, you know, basically surrendering at the end of this episode to Shiv saying, you know, it's not going to be me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And please take care of me when you get it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Cause what does he say?
Guest:He says, he says, it's not going to be me.
Guest:And if dad didn't need me right now, I don't know what I'd be for.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then he hugs or he cries and he goes up on the roof of the building and realizes they've extended the glass so you can not jump off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's basically his representation of just completely being trapped.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But what he says to her in the very last episode is,
Guest:is when he's begging for the company and saying, you know, you have to vote me, you have to vote on my side.
Guest:He says, I feel like if I don't get this, I feel like that's it, like I might die.
Guest:And it's in both cases.
Guest:He's in the same spot.
Guest:But in one case, he's begging her to be merciful to him.
Guest:That he has no life beyond what he's doing there with Logan in those moments.
Guest:And so please, when it gets to the point where you're in charge, have mercy on me.
Guest:And here in this last episode where he thought he was at the verge on the verge of taking over the verge of power of having the seat and it's going to be taken away from him.
Guest:He's pleading for a separate type of mercy.
Guest:Please bestow mercy on me here so I can get it.
Guest:And like, I really feel like that's the show saying, like, this is where these people are fundamentally broken.
Guest:They don't know how to be.
Guest:They don't know how to be in and of this world.
Guest:It's just things being given, given, expected.
Guest:The kind of dead end, no turning back result of unlimited privilege is what these people get.
Marc:But oddly, I did not feel at the end that, you know, Kendall would ever kill himself and
Marc:No.
Marc:Or that Roman was going to be, you know, any worse for wear.
Marc:Or that Shiv was in a situation that she couldn't withstand.
Marc:Like, I did not feel that any of them were...
Marc:necessarily, if anything, their lives would become mundane.
Guest:But that's the thing.
Guest:That's why I say from one of the first things you asked me, do you think any of them changed?
Guest:No, they're the same, which is what they were at the beginning of the show.
Guest:The only thing that has changed is any hint in their mind that they might take over this company, right?
Guest:That's changed.
Guest:But as people, they're going to be the same.
Guest:And him sitting there staring off on a park bench, wondering what just happened to him,
Guest:is no different than when he was sitting there staring at his dad, you know, showing up for his dad's birthday party in the first episode, and his dad told him, eh, plans changed.
Guest:I'm not announcing that you're my successor.
Marc:But it's interesting that the idea of...
Marc:successful drama of any kind is the characters changing supposedly right that there there needs to be on some level a change um or maybe that's just something i made up well no i think that's that's something true in a very kind of modern three-act structure storytelling but if you look at all the classic tragedies nobody changes it's it's right and that's i guess that's what makes it it it
Marc:But if you think about it, the only one that changed was Logan.
Guest:He became dead.
Guest:Well, it changed in that sense, yeah.
Guest:But if anything, he died in a moment where he was the least changed he'd ever been.
Guest:He was right back to being like, I'm going to take over the world again, right before he died.
Right.
Marc:Yeah, he was very excited about the network, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, so this show is over, and I don't see anything replacing it on my steady diet of things to take in.
Marc:And I'm completely satisfied.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:How often does that happen?
Marc:I mean, it happened with Breaking Bad, too, for me, really.
Guest:I had one thing that I was... It's a nitpick, and I don't take the show... It's hard to wrap a show up.
Guest:I get that.
Guest:What I would say is that when you look at even this episode that we just watched...
Guest:and how there are kind of deal terms in place at the end of this episode, right?
Guest:They're going to buy this Pierce thing, he said, for $24 billion, which is funny because ultimately it gets sold for $10 billion to the kids, and they don't even finish that deal, but somehow the value of that company plummeted.
Guest:But in any event, they have a deal in place.
Guest:Holly Hunter says, get rid of Raven Head, and they go, okay, and he gives kids,
Guest:uh kudos to ken and uh you know you you end that episode much the way almost every episode of the show ends thinking well this person is up this person's stock has dropped this yeah you know this advantage is happening here this might go toward this person and ultimately and this is not this is not a criticism ultimately none of these things matter and
Guest:Like in the end, their destiny was to not get it.
Guest:And they don't.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And because of that, I have a minor quibble at the end of at the end of this final episode that there was a lot of time.
Guest:It's a 90 minute episode.
Guest:And there's a lot of time still in the course of that 90 minutes spent jockeying.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Now this person's a little up.
Guest:This person's a little up.
Yeah.
Guest:If you could have reduced that by five minutes and given Jerry, Connor, Greg, given them all a little curtain call of some kind, right?
Guest:You know who had it was Frank and Carl, right?
Guest:There's a little moment with Frank and Carl where they're looking around, surveying the territory.
Marc:Are you going to stay or are you going to go?
Marc:Yeah, right, exactly.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I do think it's important when you've invested four seasons of a show and a lot of mental time otherwise, spend time with these characters.
Guest:You do start to care about them, right?
Marc:Well, I feel that Greg got his curtain call with this sticker.
Marc:I get you.
Marc:I agree with you on Jerry and Connor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's like, it's not that I needed closure for them.
Guest:It's almost like I wanted it like in a play where the person gets to come out and take a bow.
Guest:You know, it's like, I felt for them as actors that they didn't have that moment, you know?
Guest:And I kind of, I kind of missed that in the final episode of the show.
Guest:So not, not just Jerry's character got a little soft.
Guest:Yeah, well, and they kind of, you know, feel like they they buttoned it with her telling Roman, you know, I could have taken you to the promised land here and you should have just stuck with me.
Guest:And that was like the end of her character.
Guest:And yeah, it was missing something.
Guest:And I felt it.
Guest:But that aside, I agree with you.
Guest:It's a satisfying conclusion.
Guest:And I'm very happy they chose to do it in four seasons and not squeeze another one out of it.
Guest:Yeah, it was great.
Guest:And you basically spoke to everybody who's involved with the show.
Guest:I mean, I guess not Jesse Armstrong.
Guest:That would probably be an interesting guy to talk to.
Guest:The writer?
Guest:Yeah, the showrunner.
Guest:Or Tom.
Guest:We didn't get to talk to McFadden either.
Guest:Who really is...
Guest:I mean, everybody on the show does a great job.
Guest:The acting is tremendous.
Guest:But I was thinking about it watching this specific episode just in terms of the changes.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:Panic Room?
Guest:The Safe Room one, yeah.
Guest:Just in terms of the changes that they made throughout the course of the show.
Guest:Like re-watching the acting specifically on this episode, it's noticeable that Brian Cox is great, but it's the easiest of the roles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And Matthew McFadden is doing something in this episode that winds up becoming even better in the later episodes.
Guest:But the thing he's doing in this one is so necessary and fundamental.
Guest:You really do see how his character changed and how he as an actor responded to each of those little changes.
Guest:It's a really tremendous piece of work, especially when he starts getting worked up and crying in the safe room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Greg is trying to break up with him.
Guest:Like, just like as good as it gets with that scene.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, he was, you know, with all the talk about Jeremy, you know, McFadden did an epic job.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because maybe no one changed, but...
Marc:But his character evolved.
Guest:Surely, yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do love that when Greg pulls him aside and he's doing the reluctant blackmail.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, first he says to him, Greg realizes he's got him in a vulnerable moment because Tom tells him, I don't like who I am sometimes, Greg.
Guest:And this is the moment where, okay, maybe I'll put this pressure on him.
Yeah.
Guest:he says such a quick little thing and they're like in an alcove there's nobody around he says oh you know uh when you had me destroy those documents at cruises and he looks him straight in the face and goes no
Guest:Even in that moment, it's like, what are you doing?
Guest:No, I did not.
Guest:We will never talk about this.
Marc:Yeah, the secrets.
Marc:That's another thing we didn't really talk about.
Marc:It could be a whole other conversation if we were real nerds to deconstruct it, that they all had these shifting secrets.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that was the currency, really.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Of all of them.
Guest:Power, yeah.
Guest:And Greg realized it in whatever that was, the third episode.
Guest:You had to hold on to his secret.
Guest:And wasn't it just in the last or second to last episode, Tom says that to Greg?
Guest:He says, we deal in the currency of information.
Guest:And information is like a fine wine.
Guest:You bottle it.
Guest:You let it sit.
Guest:It ferments.
Guest:And then when you need it, you take it and you bash someone's face in with it.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's beautiful.
Guest:I also love that when he tells him he's going to blackmail him, and like you said, there's this moment where he's very proud, and it's like their love consummation in this moment.
Guest:And then he tries to slip in.
Guest:He's like, oh, where are those papers?
Guest:And Greg goes, oh, I'll never tell.
Yeah.
Guest:That's when he's like, oh, yeah, you're a fucking slime ball.
Marc:This is a beautiful romantic moment.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, maybe someday we will revisit more episodes of this show.
Guest:We have other shows that we like talking about that we could do the same with.
Guest:But I think it's safe to say there will not be another one like this anytime soon.
Guest:And I'm glad for that.
Guest:I think a unique experience is what we all need from time to time.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it felt great that it could still happen with something so dense and so deep and so creatively and beautifully executed in a very high art kind of way.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Bravo to Succession people and Succession fans for sticking with it.
Guest:All right, man.
Guest:We'll talk to you again soon.
Guest:Okay, buddy.
Thank you.