I wasn’t sure of his status, and had forgotten but I got the impression he was dead already, thus Greg suing Greenpeace, who he had left all his money to. Unless he was doing that before his death.
I’m pretty sure that he was changing his will and writing Greg out of it because he wouldn’t leave Waystar. (and yes, leaving it to Greenpeace) but no, he isn’t dead (unless I’ve completely missed that bit)
Ewan Roy is very much alive and
he’ll appear in tonight’s episode
Well the theory that Mattson is just as much as an emotional dumbass as the Roy kids sure seemed to come true. Holy shit, what a terrible decision!
My gut reaction: Kind of a “meh” episode. Nothing really new, and kinda just more of the same.
Also didn’t think much of it. One thing though is it’s keeping me on my toes as far as predicting how the rest of the season will go. Will it implode and they go to jail for faking projections (is that illegal?) or will Kendal end up as CEO of an independent Waystarand carry on his father’s legacy? No idea.
Oh, I think making up projections out of thin air - and editing the tape of the dead CEO to hype up the stock price - would have the SEC coming down hard, with serious jail time on the docket for market manipulation. There’s a reason why Karl and Geri were so concerned about exactly what projections Kendall was going to promise.
So, is his play to get the board to reject the bid under the idea that the fake projections (along with their obvious bullshit story + holocaust tweet) make the bid undervalued?
Yep, if the stock goes up enough than 192 (or whatever it was) then Mattson’s bid may not be high enough… the Holocaust joke just makes it harder for Mattson.
Both Kendall and Roman are acting erratically. However, Kendall 100% had Roman’s back re the firings (eg, fuck it, who else do you wanna fire? Etc). But when it was Kendall’s turn with the presentation, Roman bailed on him and left him alone.
The siblings being in this together is very much fracturing. First cutting out Shiv, now Roman cutting himself out.
Did Kendall send Roman the edited “gif” of his Dad at the end of the episode?
Not sure, but the dude has so many daddy issues and gets off on verbal abuse, i half suspected he commissioned it himself.
I believe the incoming text with the GIF said it was Kendal sending it.
Each of the siblings seem to represent a fractured piece of Logan. Roman had his volatility this week and if you noticed Kendal referred to Shiv as Pinky which was Logan’s nickname for her.
Each week, a different sibling seems to be winning, but then crashes.
So apparently the Living+ is based on an actual idea by Disney (though without the living forever piece, I imagine):
Disney Launches New Business to Develop Residential Communities - The Walt Disney Company
And yeah, “Storyliving” sounds just as bad as any name the folks on Succession dreamed up, lol.
My wife thought Roman looked suicidal, as he watched the “micro dick” gif. Probably not…he always looks like that.
Tom had the best line: “How am I supposed to follow that? He just promised them eternal life!”
I’m not sure Kendall is acting erratically. He clearly has problems editing himself and believes that every idea he has is a good one, and no one around him is able to tell him otherwise. (See previous cringefests like “L to the OG” and his 40th birthday party.) So his whole thing on stage was just Kendall being Kendall.
Roman is trying his daddy’s pants on, and they clearly don’t fit. He’s just not the icy bastard that his dad was, nor is he as decisive, so his attempts to be both are just painful.
I think Kendall knows that about Roman, but given his history with rehab* he understands the importance of “fake it 'till you make it”. Roman, on the other hand, can’t pretend that Kendall’s flair for misguided theatricality is anything but terrible.
- I also thought about this when he was the one who was able to voice uncomfortable truth when he was talking to his dying dad: “I can’t forgive you, but I love you.” Sounds like the kind of thing one learns to say in rehab.
One thing I find implausible about the current plotline is the idea that the old guard (Karl, Frank, Geri) would ever approve Roman as co-CEO. Kendall at least sorta sense. Despite all the drama of the past seasons, he clearly spent his life working at Royco, was obviously the heir apparent back at the beginning of season 1, and clearly took knowing and understanding the business seriously. Even if we, as the viewers, suspect he’s shit at it.
Roman, on the other hand… has he ever actually done any actual work at all? He was COO, but did he ever do COO things? Go to meetings, look at spreadsheets, ask questions about them, etc? As far as we can tell all he ever does is swear at people and do pervy things. And he’d never even been involved in the business until a few years ago.
Maybe he also has another entire life of being a reasonably responsible company executive. But without that, it’s hard to see any reason for him to end up as CEO other than to-move-the-plot-forward.
I think the Roman as “co-CEO” thing was a very temporary thing just to get the deal done. Show continuity to the Board, etc. It was less about the inner circle old guard opinions, and more a big picture opinions. Without a pending deal, I don’t know that it would have went that way so easily.
With that said, Roman does have good business traits (they all have terrible ones). I find him good at reading people, situations, and seeing a big picture (not in this last episode, though). He’s not just not good at executing what he sees. He needs his Dad for that.
DoctorJ, that’s a good take. Kendall was mostly just being Kendall which is inherently “erratic” by nature. I still think he has an impulsiveness (if that’s different than erratic) that is lately different than his normal personality. He was all in with Pierce and they needed to sell Wayco to do that. For example, days ago, he presented a very clean/this is easy: 146 good, 147 better, how hard is it to sell the company. 100% sell the company was Kendall’s vision. Then, 24hours later, then vision did a 180 to “let’s tank the deal” - he was all in on tanking the deal.
Now, as CEO, and it’s hard to tell if this is part of tanking or actually trying to run the company (or both), it’s all in with Living Plus. He’s all in in his typical Kendall way to be sure, but big picture I’m not certain he knows what he wants - why is he all in to sell, then to tank the deal, then on propping up (almost illegally) Living Plus as a legit CEO running a company, etc.
Kendall is very able to execute a vision in his own way, but his vision is constantly, and seemingly erratically, changing. Roman is not able to execute a vision, nor commit to one, without big boy help.
To be fair, Kendall’s Dad died which changed the dynamics and that might be changing his “vision” or making it hard to know what he wants. I’m excited to see where all this goes.
As I recall, Roman has been responsible for exactly one business operation – a rocket launch, and it blew up on the pad. I think he adds absolutely zero value to Royco.
One thing I feel like Succession has done poorly is continuity between the earlier seasons and the later seasons. Now, I may be very wrong on all this because I’m not a superfan rewatcher… but I feel like the status quo as established at the beginning of season 1 has largely been forgotten and abandoned… and not just because things have changed, but because the showrunners basically just changed their minds.
That is, if you started watching Succession starting somewhere in the middle of season 2 or so and then had to guess what the various characters you were now becoming familiar with had been up to back before the show started, I think you’d assume that all of the three main kids had been basically involved in Royco forever… all were “plausible heirs”, who had spent their adult lives doing business-y things, but may just slightly different ones in different parts of the company. Which, of course, was not the case at all for Rome or Shiv. And not in a good way of “holy crap, what a journey Rome and Shiv have been on” but in a bad way of “…and then they never mentioned the name Armin Tanzarian again”.
Or is it finally being revealed that Logan Roy had all along been giving them jobs like Vice President of Toner Restocking, and Project Something with Crayons?*
While it was not the most compelling episode this season, it and the previous one showed just how shallowly rooted the siblings (and Mattson) were in their decision-making and how contingent on an immediate brain-fart over long-term plans. In the context of Season 4 it shows that whoever ‘wins’ the big Ming Vase has infinite capacity to drop it a day later.