Month: May 2023

For many people, Ed Sheeran’s music has been there for major parts of their lives. His songs are commonly used for first dances at weddings, to the point that it’s a cliché. Until recently, “Shape Of You” was the most-streamed song in Spotify history, meaning the upbeat tune has probably gotten a party or two going in its day.

Now, it’s the Miami Heat who are leaning on Sheeran’s music and lyrics in a vulnerable moment: They apparently listened to one of his sad songs in the locker room after their devastating, miraculous Game 6 loss to the Boston Celtics this weekend.

On ESPN’s Get Up today (May 29), the network’s Nick Friedell said of the environment in the Heat locker room after the playoff game:

“The disbelief in that room was palpable. That was one of the quietest locker rooms I’ve ever been in after a game. Now you have to understand: Jimmy Butler usually has that speaker bumping in that room, win or lose. It was silent. And after about 10 or 15 minutes, Gabe Vincent walks over to his locker and he hits play on his phone, and he plays ‘Life Goes On’ by Ed Sheeran, and certainly, that’s the mantra the Heat want to have going into Game 7 tonight.”

“Life Goes On” comes from Sheeran’s album – (aka Subtract), and it’s a sad one. The track starts, “It hit like a train, I ran out of words / I got nothing to say, everything hurts / And I know love leads to pain / But memories serve our sweetest refrain.”

The final game of the Boston/Miami series goes down tonight, and the winner will face the Denver Nuggets in the NBA Finals.

Watch Friedell tell the story above, starting at 9:18 into the video, and listen to “Life Goes On” below.

Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Jewel knows her preferred version of the national anthem, and she’s sticking to it. The four-time Grammy nominee delivered it acoustically ahead of February’s 2023 NBA All-Star Game and generated myriad reactions on Twitter, including people’s thoughts on her patchwork ensemble.

On Sunday, May 28, Jewel broke out a monochrome white two-piece — complete with a cowgirl hat and checkered scarf — but her acoustic rendition of the national anthem was the same.

Yet again, people on Twitter reacted, and depending on where you look, Jewel either performed the best or worst national anthem of all time.

“I’m sorry, but the National Anthem should NEVER be changed up like this. Good artist, bad choice!” a Twitter user going by TG MOMMA LAURA wrote. Someone else named Barb Spurgin “loved it,” and the dichotomous reactions continued.

Jewel’s appearance at the Indy 500 seemed personal for her. Ahead of the race, she shared what appears to be a throwback video of her riding a mini race car. On Instagram, she shared a sit-down discussing mental health stigmas alongside IndyCar driver David Malukas.

“I remember doing the anthem at a Super Bowl once, and I knew the song. I was really prepared. I was really calm. And when I stepped up to the mic, my heart rate did its own thing,” Jewel said in the Instagram clip. “That made me out of breath, and I was like, ‘Oh, wait, now I have to sing this out of breath,’ and that was so different.”

In other words, maybe people shouldn’t rush to judgment every time Jewel sings the national anthem.

This post contains spoilers for the Succession series finale, obviously.

Succession came to a close Sunday night after four excellent seasons. And it stuck the landing, which is to say it ended with pretty much no one happy (except for a handful of lifelong corporate sharks who probably aren’t good people either). Not even the person ultimately named as Logan Roy’s successor, Matthew Macfadyen’s Tom Wambsgans, could be said to have a bright future. But it had to be Tom, as creator Jesse Armstrong explained in a making-of featurette that ran on Max after the last episode.

“The idea of Tom being the eventual successor, that had been something that I thought was the right ending for quite a while now,” Armstrong said about Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) naming the U.S. CEO of his to-be-merged company. “Even though he’s not exactly the most powerful monarch you’ll ever meet — his power comes from Matsson. Those figures that drift upwards and make themselves amenable to powerful people are around.”

In the featurette, Armonstrong also explained what he thought would happen to the other characters on the show. Roman (Kieran Culkin), he said, “ends up exactly where he started,” which is to say he’s rich but powerless.

“He is that guy still,” Armstrong said. “And he maybe easily could have been a playboy jerk with some slightly nasty instincts, and some quite funny jokes. He could’ve stayed in a bar, being that guy. And this has been a bit of a detour in his life, I would say.”

Shiv, however, is “still in play,” but in a rather terrifying, frozen emotionally barren place.” By throwing Kendall (Jeremy Strong) under the bus and staying in a loveless marriage to GoJo’s new American CEO, she got what Armstrong describes as a “kind of non-victory, non-defeat.”

And then there’s Kendall. Losing out on succeeding his father, Armstrong said, “will never stop being the central event of his life, the central days of his life, central couple of years of his life.” Where could he go next? “Maybe he could go on and start a company, or do a thing. But the chances of him achieving the sort of corporate status that his dad achieved are very low. And I think that will mark his whole life.”

But at least before stuff went down, all three siblings had some fun with a truly disgusting smoothie.

(Via Variety)

Josh Freese was introduced as Foo Fighters’ new drummer a little over a week ago. It’s wrong to frame the addition of Freese as replacing the late Taylor Hawkins, who died suddenly in March 2022, because nobody could ever do that. But Dave Grohl and the Foos are trying to make the previously inconceivable transition behind the kit as seamless as possible ahead of But Here We Are, their album due out this Friday, June 2.

Last Wednesday, May 24, marked Freese’s first show with Foo Fighters at Bank Of New Hampshire Pavilion in Gilford, New Hampshire, and Grohl took a beat between songs to ask the crowd to welcome Freese, “who has helped save the band.” Before beginning “Cold Day In The Sun” and emotionally dedicating it to Hawkins, Grohl said, “We would not be here tonight if it weren’t for Josh.”

Freese reposted the Foos’ Instagram post from that night, including photos by Scarlet Page, along with the caption, “Surreal, bittersweet, optimistic.”

Foo Fighters headlined Boston Calling Music Festival on Friday, May 26, before performing at Sonic Temple Festival at Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus, Ohio. During the latter set, Foo Fighters continued Freese’s initiation by covering songs from bands Freese has drummed for in the past such as Nine Inch Nails’ “March Of The Pigs” (as captured by NME and noted on setlist.fm) and Devo’s “Whip It.”

“You might not think you know him, but you’ve heard this motherf*cker for the last 20 years,” Grohl said of Freese while teeing up “Whip It” (as seen on Reddit). “This guy has played on like 400 f*cking albums. […] Oh yeah, he was in this band for f*cking 27 years. From Ohio!”

Freese’s Instagram bio lays out his career credentials pretty plainly: “Drums: A Perfect Circle, Danny Elfman, Devo, Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, The Replacements, Sting, The Vandals, Weezer.”

Fans will have plenty of opportunities to see Freese in his new Foos role. See their 2023 tour dates here.

But Here We Are is out 6/2 via Roswell Records/RCA Records. Find more information here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

For a while, the future of Foo Fighters was up in the air after the death of Taylor Hawkins. Eventually, though, they revealed that Josh Freese would be their new live drummer. Freese has since sat behind the kit for a few shows, and now he’s offered a little insight into his perspective on the situation.

On May 25, Foo Fighters took to Instagram to share a photo of Freese on stage with the band and wrote, “Welcome to the Foo Fam @joshfreese.” Freese re-shared the image on his personal account and summarized how he’s feeling about joining the band with three words, writing, “Surreal, bittersweet, optimistic.”

That’s about all Freese has said publicly about joining the band. Dave Grohl has offered praise, though, saying in Freese’s first show with the group, “Would you please welcome the man behind the drums Josh Freese, who has helped save the band. We would not be here tonight if it weren’t for Josh, so everybody give Josh a big f*cking round of applause, please.”

At this past weekend’s performance at the Sonic Temple festival, Grohl also noted of Freese, “You might not think you know him, but you’ve heard this motherf*cker for the last 20 years. This guy’s played on like 400 f*cking albums.”

Russian state TV tends to err to the side of U.S. Republicans. After all, they’re the ones who keep siding with them in their invasion of Ukraine. But recently they’ve been coming for at least one of them. After Lindsey Graham had a positive meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky recently, Russia’s propaganda wing got so mad that they straight-up threatened his life.

As per The Daily Beast, Graham met with the Ukrainian president on Friday, and he told him his nation reminds him of “our better selves in America.” He added, There was a time in America that we were this way, fighting to the last person, we were going to be free or die.” He also noted that the “Russians are dying” in their fight to take over the nation. Afterwards he told Reuters that financially supporting Ukraine has been a “good investment.”

That set Russian state TV off. In a deceptively edited video, they made it sound like Graham was saying that Russians “dying” was the “good investment.” Multiple state TV figures railed against Graham’s comments, spreading conspiracy theories about Nazis and “dirty money” having been spent to kill U.S. senators like Robert Kennedy and Huey Long.

But it was Margarita Simonyan, head of Russia Today (RT), who went the farthest. “If Lady Graham really said that the money for the killing of Russians is the best money the US ever spent… I hope that in our country, the sons or grandchildren of Sudoplatov are alive, his pupils, or the descendants of his pupils,” she said on-air. “It’s not even hard. We have his address.”

She added, “I have no ill will towards anyone and our religion tells us to forgive, but no one tells us to reward these types of things. When we don’t act in response to these things, it is the same as encouraging them. It causes them to become increasingly more brazen.”

(Via The Daily Beast)

Beyoncé has been the subject of universal adoration for decades, and she’s using her Renaissance World Tour to share the love with others, from tributing Tina Knowles-Lawson on Mother’s Day and employing Natalia Bryant as an intern or literally sharing the stage with Blue Ivy, her 11-year-old daughter with Jay-Z.

Last Friday, May 26, the Renaissance World Tour hit Paris. Fan videos circulated online of Blue Ivy joining her mom and the Renaissance World Tour dancers on the Stade De France stage for “Black Parade” and “My Power.”

“Last night I saw my beautiful grandbaby (11) dance in the front of almost 70 thousand people ! She killed it and was as cool as a cucumber! Blue Ivy Carter [five red heart emojis] No Fear [two red heart emojis],” Tina Knowles-Lawson posted to Instagram over the weekend.

Beyoncé added to the praise on Monday, May 29, with her own Instagram post highlighting her daughter’s stellar moment.

“My beautiful first born [prayer hands emoji],” the all-time-most Grammy winner captioned her carousel. “I’m so proud and thankful to be your mama. You bring us so much joy, my sweet angel.”

The Renaissance World Tour is setting up shop at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for five shows, beginning Monday night. The other London concerts are scheduled for Tuesday, May 30; Thursday, June 1; Saturday, June 3; and Sunday, June 4. See all of Beyoncé’s upcoming dates here.

Taylor Swift sees it all. During her epic The Eras Tour opening night on March 17, Swift assured everyone that she loves her Evermore album despite Swifties’ conspiracy theories on TikTok. Swift also brought one fan’s viral “Bejeweled” TikTok dance to the stage (as captured by BuzzFeed).

Nobody should be surprised by what Swift did during her third and final Eras show at MetLife Stadium on Sunday night, May 28.

The backstory: A Swiftie named Alyssa Yung was extremely upset on April 1 when Swift performed her 1989 track “Clean” as one of her surprise songs at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas (as chronicled by Billboard). Yung posted a TikTok of her distraught reaction while watching a livestream of that night’s concert with the caption, “i think this is the biggest loss on Eras Tour yet.” And Swift commented, “I think I could probably have done it better in a higher key so that’s technically a mess up [kissing emoji].”

For context, Swift explained during The Eras Tour opening night that she would play two “surprise songs” during each show and would only repeat a song if she felt she’d messed it up badly enough to warrant a redo.

Swift’s surprise songs for Sunday’s show were “Clean” and “Welcome To New York,” and according to The Swift Society on Twitter, Swift introduced “Clean” by referencing her April 1 comment to Yung: “I didn’t really mess this one up badly, but I thought I could have done it in a higher key last time.” The account also specified that “Clean” is the first repeated surprise song on The Eras Tour so far.

“pov: taylor swift commented on your tiktok where you complain about her playing clean in texas and you jokingly reply with the dates you’re going to eras and ‘pls plan accordingly’ and… she actually plans accordingly,” Yung posted to TikTok today, May 29.

That TikTok came after a TikTok capturing her bawling (to put it mildly) in the MetLife Stadium crowd:

Swift will likely have a whole new bag of tricks for Swifties in Chicago. She’s slated to next perform at Soldier Field on June 2, 3, and 4. See all of her remaining The Eras Tour dates here.

This post contains spoilers for the Succession series finale, obviously.

The series finale of Succession was a barn-burner, complete with a shocking twist ending and a disgusting “Meal Fit for a King.” It was packed with goodies, including a scene relatively early on in which Alexander Skarsgard’s Gojo honcho Matsson takes Matthew Macfadyen’s Tom out to dinner, courting him to be the U.S. CEO of his new company. It’s a weird scene, even for Succession, with Matsson telling Tom he wants to sleep with his semi-estranged wife “a little bit.” But at least the scene was a blast to shoot.

Skarsgard made an appearance on HBO’s official Succession podcast, where he told host Kara Swisher the scene was “incredibly weird.” Still, he says, “I had such a lovely, lovely time shooting that scene.”

What about it was “lovely”? Well…

“It’s so well-written, it’s so excruciatingly uncomfortable. I mean, he’s telling Tom that he wants to f*ck his wife. And knowing that he’s holding this little nugget of gold in front of Tom, saying, ‘You want this? You want this?’ And he knows that he can say in this situation that he can say anything, because Tom desperately wants this decision. He knows that he can really lean into that awkwardness and explore it and have fun with it. And it’s important for him to have a sycophant in that position — someone who will be his little lapdog and do exactly what he needs. Tom is proving himself worthy of that, as an amazing sycophant by basically saying, ‘It’s fine, it’s fine, you want to f*ck her. We’re men, I can deal with this. And now let’s go party, let’s have a great time.’”

Skarsgard says it’s all intentional. Tom is clearly bothered and, Skarsgard says, “Matsson knows that he is,” but he “gets the answer he knows that he wants.”

It’s really a test, Skarsgard argues:

“It’s not because he finds Shiv attractive that he doesn’t think she can be the U.S. CEO of the company. It’s not about that. He sends frozen blood bricks to his employees, so he does weird sh*t. He’s not afraid of things being, as he says, ‘clickety-clickety.’ In a weird way, he thrives on that weirdness, that madness of it all. That’s something he says in that moment to see how well-trained a lapdog [Tom] will be.”

So what will Waystar Royco be like merged with Gojo and with Tom as its puppet CEO? We’ll probably never find out unless creator Jesse Armstrong really does do that threatened spinoff.

You can listen to the Succession podcast here. Skarsgard bit begins around the 19-minute mark.

The Succession Report Card is a weekly recap feature where we attempt to assign grades to the important people, things, and themes from each episode of Succession. The grades are entirely subjective and the criteria for scoring will change from week to week and occasionally mid-week. Someone might get detention. It’ll probably be Roman.

SEASON 4, EPISODE 10 – “With Open Eyes”

Kendall

It’s generally not a great sign when you are standing in front of your siblings shouting a phrase like “I AM THE ELDEST BOY” in a way that implies you think it is your best argument in the moment. But this was Kendall’s deal, for the most part. He was never psychologically or intellectually suited to take over for his dad, not at running a massive media conglomerate but also not at the much smaller things like carving the turkey at Thanksgiving, but that’s what his entire identity had become over the years. Most of this was Logan’s fault, for reasons ranging from “telling a 7-year-old boy to be prepared to take over a company” to “just generally being an awful human,” but Kendall didn’t do himself any favors either. Let’s not brush his many faults aside. But he never really had much of a chance.

And… now what? What does Kendall do from here? He has many billions of dollars and a name that will get a lot of people on the phone, but he’s also a mess. On a few fronts. His self-worth was cut down at the knees and he doesn’t have the family business and his relationship with his siblings is strained at best after that scene in the office and his wife left him and all of this is probably going to come out in an article in The New Yorker or a television miniseries or something at some point. (Fun spinoff idea: A new show that exists inside the world of Succession and loosely fictionalizes the lives of the Roy family in the form of a prestige HBO drama.) Things are not going great for Kendall. Which has to hurt even more because of how happy he was in those brief moments in Caroline’s kitchen where Shiv and Roman were making him a puke smoothie to anoint him king.

My money is on him just up and moving to Silicon Valley and rebranding himself as a tech bro who wears turtlenecks a lot. Putting his newfound millions into apps that make waffles or something, like a smart toaster that syncs to your phone and dispenses syrup by algorithm. Calling Stewy every week or two with a new idea and listening to the phone ring and ring and ring as Stewy silences his ringer and goes back to his meeting with an actual important person who can be useful to him. Playing in a competitive pickleball league he’s funding out of his own pocket with the dream of taking it international. Real bozo stuff 24/7, once he stops going catatonic on the pier.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: He’s gonna need to figure out a way to spend less time staring blankly out into the sea

Shiv

Shiv got outfoxed and outplayed pretty much this entire season, first getting pushed aside by Kendall and Roman in the initial round of CEO talks, and then getting hurdled by Tom in the new GoJo-led Waystar, some of which wasn’t fair (the cartoon, the thing where Matsson wants to sleep with her and doesn’t want that dynamic in the C-Suite) but some of which was her own fault (the thing where she told Matsson that Tom would “suck the biggest dick in the room” turned out to be the best possible pitch to a guy who just wanted a figurehead). She thinks she’s smart and savvy and she’s just not, at least not much more than her idiot brothers, which has to sting because… like, look at those two trying to rip each other’s faces off in a boardroom with all of their business associates watching.

And speaking of that boardroom…

Shiv was right, right? Kendall would not have been good at any of that. At all. It would have been a huge disaster. I’m not entirely sure this was the reason at the top of her mind as she decided to tank the vote, at least not as much as it was, “Mannnnnnnn, screw this guy.” This was a lose-lose for her, either let her idiot brothers win and probably drag the company into the crapper with a bunch of extending flailing that masquerades as leadership, or push the deal through so her weasel husband can be the CEO under a Swedish billionaire who screwed her over in part because he does literally want to screw her. And she lost pretty good here, essentially becoming her mother, at least from a “sad woman raising a child with a powerful CEO she no longer has any feelings for,” which is just really not ideal for any number of reasons.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Lord in heaven, I hope she and Tom hire a very competent and caring nanny for that poor doomed baby

Roman

ON ONE HAND:

• Remains a broken and sad little boy
• Fled to the arms of his unloving mother after melting down at his unloving father’s funeral and somehow acquired a significant number of stitches in his face somewhere in there, too
• Just got a fascist mostly elected president as part of a power play that all blew up in his face anyway
• Is crying a lot, in the ugly way where veins leap out of your forehead like mountain ranges on a topographic map
• Is continuing to make mean and horrible jokes to and about his loved ones, including his nephews and nieces, just because he only knows how to deal with his own pain by deflecting and/or inflicting pain on others around him

ON THE OTHER HAND

• He, more than his other siblings, seems free now, with all of that business behind him, and you just needed to look at his face as he sipped that martini at the end to see that
• I don’t actually know if that’s a good thing in the long run because… look, I do not think Roman Roy knows who he is or what he wants but I do know he now has many billions of dollars and a lot of free time and neither of those are things someone like Roman is going to do anything productive with

He, more than any of the siblings, is fascinating to me as they head off into the weird new world. I get a sense of where the others are headed. Roman… yeah, nothing. I suspect it won’t be great. He’ll get sued a handful of times for a handful of things. He’s really just a very sad little boy.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Keeping his stitches closed and his blood inside his body

Tom

GOOD NEWS: Gets to be CEO, which is kind of all this big walking Midwestern leech of a man ever wanted out of life, a little power and success and status after a childhood filled with staring at the ceiling and dreaming about it.

BAD NEWS: Is now working for a man who views him as a puppet and told him to his face that he’s really only getting the job because there are clickety-clickety sexy vibes with his wife that might have resulted in a fling or another Ebba-type situation with bodily fluids sent through the mail and lawyers hurriedly drafting settlement and non-disclosure agreements. The man has money and power and is kind of cuckolded in both his business and personal lives and is entrenched in a mostly loveless marriage with a wife he stabbed in the back for a job. Other than all that, it’s going great.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Setting better goals

Matsson

See, he got the deal done, and he won, to whatever degree anyone ever wins anything on this show, but, like, at what cost? I don’t mean just financially, either, although the kids did appear to wrangle some extra money out of him with their very brief show of island-based solidarity. I mean it more from a perspective of, like… let’s just say the concept of an eccentric billionaire buying an American media company is not exactly foreign in the real world. There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny. A lot of people poking around. A lot of negative press for a guy who doesn’t appear to handle that well. Eccentricities have a way of looking like ugly character flaws when you lose the benefit of the doubt.

Point being: Matsson almost blew up the whole deal over a cartoon. I know he has ideas, or at least thinks he does, but I do not think this is going to be as fun for him as he thinks it is.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Being careful what he wishes for

Logan

Logan:

• Created a multibillion-dollar operation that stokes fear into people and manipulated the entire world into his own gross and cold vision
• Really just mangled his children through a combination of neglectful and openly bad parenting
• Was a sociopath who probably never loved or cared about anything other than winning the fight that was right in front of his face in the moment

Not a great dude.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Hmmmmm the damage is all pretty much already done here, and he’s gone now and has no way to mitigate any of it even if he wanted to for a single second, which he would not, so let’s go with… let’s just stick with “staying dead”

Shiv and Tom’s unborn child

This kid is going to grow up with money and access beyond its wildest dreams, with every advantage available and every door swung open and a lifetime of people thinking this all represents a dream life.

This kid will also be the child of Shiv and Tom, two irredeemably shattered people who appear to be locked into a sparkless marriage full of blank stares and limp handholding.

This kid has no chance.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Stay in that womb as long as you can, kid… it’s not gonna be a lot of fun for you out here

Colin

Gets to spend the foreseeable future following around a deeply depressed man who is spending kind of a lot of time staring into bodies of water with a look on his face that implies he might heave himself into the watery abyss at any given moment. I suspect a part of Colin hopes Kendall does it. Just to be free. Just for a little.

Poor Colin.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Colin should really think about trying to get on the security team for a rock band, maybe Dave Matthews Band or some other group with aging and docile fans who pose minimal threat

Lady Caroline

See, I was tempted to give her a C at first. I had the whole entry written out and everything, with bullet points touching on her living on an island and her being kind of nice to Roman and her seeming a little happy in the moment that her kids were doing something together.

BUT

Then I thought about it some more. And I realized two things:

• These kids are the way they are in part because she just straight-up bailed and left them to be raised by freaking Logan Roy, of all the people in the damn world
• She kind of used this familial crisis as a means to try to hoodwink her sad children into listening to a pitch from her dipshit new husband and the business partner he flew in from Monaco for the express purpose of extracting money from them as they all spiraled down the toilet bowl on a personal and psychological level

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: I mean… mothering?

Peter’s special cheese

This GIF is revolting to me on many levels but I still had to make it.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Getting licked

Getting a big blender full of semi-rotten slop dumped on your head

I do not think I would enjoy it very much. It seems sticky and gross and smelly and bad. But we grade on a curve here and I think there’s no denying that this is markedly better than any of the people or things that received failing grades.

GRADE: D

MUST IMPROVE: I gagged a little when I saw the clumps tumbling out and onto Kendall’s head

Cousin Greg

Toughest ranking on the board for me. Because, like, he survived, kind of, probably, with his role as assistant falling under Tom’s very limited scope of authority. But he’s also taking a massive pay cut and a loss in status and the guy he’ll be working for did just slap him in the face in a bathroom as retribution for an act of betrayal, so… could be better on that front.

I don’t know, man. I really don’t. I used to love this gangly goofball and then I watched him turn into an evil little goon who would affix himself to anyone who would let him keep playing with the nice things and I hated him and then I kind of cheered a little bit when he discovered the Shiv news by surreptitiously recording Matsson and Oskar with a translation app open. I have a strong suspicion he’ll either end up in jail or running the entire company in the next 10 years.

GRADE: C

MUST IMPROVE: I’m still sticking by my theory that things went south here when he got that haircut and that he should let it all grow out again to see if it makes him less revolting to me, personally

Connor

Connor:

• Rigged his own sticker system a little bit to claim the items of Logan’s he wanted
• Is gonna try a long-distance thing with Willa where he’s off in Slovenia doing ambassador things and she stays in New York to do a play
• Performed a lovely little rendition of “I’m a Little Teapot” on the tape with Logan

Tough to gauge it all. Came off weirdly less of a mess than his siblings. Which… is not exactly “scaling Everest” as far as accomplishments go. And he is still $100 million poorer after the election debacle. But, like, still. This is way better an outcome than I think anyone could have expected for him going in. Let’s just split the difference.

GRADE: C

MUST IMPROVE: Explaining various systems involving stickers

Eyes

Face eggs…

Balls of jelly…

Kind of weird and gross in ways I had not considered until Caroline brought it up in this episode…

But…

They help us see? That seems important too. Lots to think about here.

GRADE: C

MUST IMPROVE: Now I’m thinking about that suction SCHHHHTTHHHWAP sound they make sometimes when your eyelid pulls away a little and I do not think I like that at all

Various Karls, Franks, and Karolinas

I’m tempted to focus on Karolina giving an impassioned speech about changing the culture of Waystar and putting an end to the cutthroat backstabbing and self-interest and then immediately jumping to “but let’s gut Hugo like a fish,” but I really don’t see how I can gloss over the Karl and Frank of it all.

Two old corporate warriors, who have been through and seen more than all of the Roy children and Matsson combined, standing there as it all goes down, rivals at times and brothers in others, debating whether to take their golden parachutes or stick around to destroy Tom and seize control in the power vacuum. I suspect they’re getting out. I hope for their sake they are. But they did look like they were having a lot of fun thinking about sticking around.

GRADE: B

MUST IMPROVE: I hope they go on vacation together every year in retirement

Willa

Good news and bad news for Willa…

The good is that this long-distance relationship plan, the one where Connor goes to Slovenia and she stays in Manhattan to be a fancy rich lady who does plays, seems like a best-case scenario for her, just from a mental health standpoint.

The bad is that, in order for this to work out, she has to pray before she goes to bed every night that a creepy fascist gets to become president despite a court fight. And also… I do not think the artsy people she’s doing the play with will be huge fans of the billionaire lady who is married into a family of right-wing kingmakers swooping in and taking parts from their struggling peers. That might not be as fun as Willa expects it to be. She is in for a lot of nasty snickering behind her back, by actors, who are some of the best snickerers around.

But hey. That all counts as a win on this show. I guess.

GRADE: B

MUST IMPROVE: Willa is really going to need to feel this one out for a while

Gerri

Gerri:

• Is on the verge of signing a massive payout related to the thing where Roman sent her pictures of his penis and then fired her, which is actually a pretty good answer to the “Why not me?” thing he did while crying into Kendall’s shoulder so hard that he opened up his stitches
• Might get pitched on coming back
• Hopefully will not

I have this image of Gerri sitting on the beach at an island resort in a very floppy hat. I enjoy that.

GRADE: B+

MUST IMPROVE: SIGN THE PAPERS AND RUN

Succession, in general

Good God, what a television program. I suspect I’ll need to sit with it for a while before the totality of it sinks in, but I really did enjoy that ride, all the way up through to the very end, to the extent there was anything “enjoyable” about a show where a bunch of wounded piranhas swam around and took little bites out of each other for an hour every Sunday night. I don’t particularly like any of these people. I wrote an ode to Karl a few weeks ago even though he’s a corporate goon at a fictional company that actively tries to destroy many of the things I care about. There is a little Stockholm syndrome here. I know that. We’ve talked about it. You could put all of these people in a big sack and heave it over a waterfall and the world they inhabit would probably be better for it.

And yet, for a little second there, when the kids were all smiling and coming together in Caroline’s kitchen and it looked like there might be a sappy little ending for them that involved taking down Matsson and running the company as a team, I found myself feeling… happy… for them? It was weird. We’ve followed these people for long enough that we know their flaws and demons were placed inside them a long time ago through parental disinterest and mistreatment. There’s a little voice in me that feels bad for them, that wanted to see them form something resembling a healthy family unit and come together and be as close to healthy as any of them can ever be. I am softy like that.

But also, as things fell apart during the meeting and they brought up old homicides and quite literally tried to rip each other’s eyeballs out, I quickly realized that this was how it had to go down. Everyone on this show is a monster in some way. They weren’t getting out clean. There was just no way that was ever going to happen. And, short of my “put them in sacks and toss them off a waterfall” idea, this was probably the best way for it to play out. The waterfall would’ve been fun, though.

Anyway, good show.

GRADE: A

MUST IMPROVE: Leaving me with something to watch on Sunday nights

Jess Jordan

What do you think Jess Jordan was up to while all this was going on, fresh off of quitting after the election fiasco and watching Kendall fall all the way apart in front of her and anyone else within earshot on the sidewalk? I like to picture her in her apartment in a very comfy robe — plush, like wearing a full-length teddy bear — sipping a cup of hot tea on the couch while the news coverage of the Roy family meltdown plays on the television in front of her. Then I picture her turning the television off in the middle of the report and sighing and never looking back.

GRADE: A

MUST IMPROVE: I SAID NEVER LOOK BACK, JESS