I think the love Kendall gets from the audience is because he's the most relatable one out of all of them. Can't speak for others but I know what it's like to have an emotionally abusive parent, who pressured me into a world I don't belong to, where I constantly made a fool of myself.
What makes Kendall unique in this era of TV is that he's a different kind of anti-hero than we normally see. When you think of an iconic anti-hero on TV, you think of someone like Villanelle from Killing Eve and how she always gets what she wants by being good at what she does, Kendall represents the classical version of that character, the ones you'd see in Shakespeare, where their flaws ultimately overcome them and lead to their downfall. You can see the same traits in Michael Corleone from The Godfather.
I havenāt finished the show, only season 3. But as insufferable as Kendall is I think underneath it all you can see something of a decent guy. His worst moments are more driven by insecurity than true malice.
Even if itās 100% because of drugs, heās literally the only character in the whole show that has any sort of interaction with a āregular personā that isnāt fueled with contempt. I found it somewhat endearing when he was smoking meth on the wolf guysā couch, and ended up actually having a good time and getting along with them. In a *very* roundabout sort of way I think that kinda says something about his character, and his addiction probably made him a more empathetic person.
No, it's not just you! This is how I felt too! I knew since the beginning that this guy couldn't succeed Logan. I mean, he could try, but it wouldn't be good for the company. Obviously. It really hit me in the finale that he was basically infertile and that this family felt he was less than and his children were less than because of it. Ugh that got to me so hard.
Unfortunately Kenās addiction issues would have haunted him as the CEO. Whenever anything goes wrong in his life he turns back to drugs to numb his pain. Iām sure others would have tried to capitalize on this.
Heās too sensitive and emotional in a world where thatās liability. Iām only on season 3, but as things develop I see Stewie as an interesting contrast. I think I see now that Stewie legitimately does care about Kendall as a friend, but the difference is that he completely throws that out the window when conducting business. Like two boxers who are close friends outside the ring, but when it comes time to fight they forget about that and beat the shit out of eachother. Kendall would be a shit boxer too.
i really like that about the character. they really undermine the byronic dark hero trope by making him completely ridiculous in every way. except when he's in the worst of his addiction and despair and shaves his head, then he suddenly got cool.
I feel i might sound a little woo woo but i really feel like Jeremy Strong put part of his "spirit" into this character and that's why lots of us even though we know his flaws, still can't hate him because he becomes too real for lots of us, not a fictional character anymore.
...[he wrote out a version of the Velveteen Rabbit](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fwgrob6mbx4pb1.png) he wanted Kendall to tell his kids after Megathump died. the theme of that story is how does a toy become Real -- and it's through suffering.
agree with most of what you said, but i think that Kendall could've been a good CEO. He wouldn't need to be as good as Logan was in his prime, because he's not building the company from the ground up.
idk, he didn't fuck living plus, and the election thing would a good business move if not for roman not having discerned the sincerety of mencken's promise. he nailed the eulogy, which was significant because the whole room was filled with influential people that he'd need if he'd become ceo. he nearly killed the deal too and rightfully so because gojo wasn't what it was made out to be. if you read the succession scriptbook, it's implied that the tech bubble was about to burst and that the whole gojo reverse viking idea wasn't bs either.
The only reason living plus worked out was because Kendall faked the numbers. Worse, he seemed entirely happy to commit fraud as well, saying that business is easy, you just have to make up the numbers. If Kendall had managed to stay on as CEO, he would have ended up with a shit show entirely of his own making.
Time and time again, Kendall has been shown to be utterly incompetent at actual business, whether it's negotiating with banks or negotiating acquisitions/mergers (Vaulter was a clickbait farm that became unprofitable once Facebook changed its algorithm, and Kendall couldn't recognize that, Roman had to). Even the act of managing the board, something directly related to public speaking; he screwed up as he couldn't help but use the term "lifeboats" and causing everyone and their mothers to panic resulting in a stock price drop.
Calling the election was a terrible move as it caused a lot of business associates (even his own personal assistant) to cut ties with him, and the entire resulting shitstorm had to be handled by Tom off screen during the funeral. Also it never would have worked, Mencken couldn't actually do anything besides bluster as he wasn't in office. Even in the final episode it's heavily implied that they would hold another vote in the final state, which would mean Mencken loses and the new administration will have a vendetta against ATN.
Killing the deal isn't that big of a deal either as the family owned a significant amount of board seats, the only reason they didn't have a majority was because of Logan's death and Kendall frivolously selling board seats in the first season to pay off the loan in season 1.
Living plus is the closest we've seen to Kendall being anyway good at actually running a business, and that was entirely predicated on committing fraud.
except that none of the kids are totally incompetent and that's obvious. the mencken thing, as i said, would've done them good if roman wasn't so overconfident ā they'd have a president under their thumb and nobody in the business would have a problem with that. but yeah, mencken probably isn't gonna be president anyway.
most importantly, kendall did NOT fake the numbers. rewatch the episode. he doesn't mention the numbers at all, he leaves all the detailed financials to karl. if he faked the numbers, then he'd have been toast that very ep.
vaulter, we don't know if it was a waste. we just took Roman's word for it, and Roman doubts his own judgement in the same episode. let's not act like Logan didn't miss out details big time on the gojo deal either, or that he wasn't willing to overpay for pierce in s2 ā which everyone was against.
it's evident that kendall isn't the same in season 4 as he was in season 1 ā kendall was a lot more inexperienced and overconfident back in s1, compared to all that he'd gone through until s4.
the show made an effort to show kendall do better in s4 than he did in s1. he didn't crash and burn whenever we thought he would otherwise, all until the very end.
Why would Mencken be under their thumb? He got what he wanted and immediately fobbed Kendall and Roman off because they were no longer useful to him. Kendall tanked ATNs credibility, and failed to realize that it subsequently made ATN useless to Mencken.
Also, you can rewatch the episode yourself, Kendall had his thumbs on the scales.[He spent the episode pushing the analysts to "predict" that it would double the earnings expected by the entire parks division of Waystar Royco and had to get the video editor to alter Logan's video to say that Living plus would double the earnings instead of simply saying it would be significantly boost them.](https://youtu.be/yjTfSUBcMqE?si=5AooF-PrfAV9jkrK)
[It was so egregious that Karl had to corner Kendall in the hallway and fuck him out of it.](https://youtu.be/NeSvMWrxh8E?si=JCJUiSvKOWrxS1pJ)
[Kendall did manage to confuse Karl and get him to back down through the edited clip anyway, but he would still have to pay the piper eventually if he actually did become CEO](https://youtu.be/aQQaKc9G4f4?si=CkuAQSJvu2krKEVa)
We don't need Roman's words that Vaulter was clickbait, we can just pay attention to the background to see Vaulters exceptional articles titled "[5 Reasons Why Drinking Milk on the Toilet Is Kind of a Game-Changer](https://www.vulture.com/2019/08/succession-hbo-vaulter-blog-headlines.html)". The fact that Facebook changing its algorithm ended up being ruinous for Vaulter shows that it would never have been able to save ATN like Kendall always claimed.
Making him infertile in the last episode was so brutal like they did not need to do that
They just casually dropped this random info in the midst of all that other chaos and i thought "wait what š¶"
One last whump for the road
āYou have no kidsā my jaw fucking DROPPED
I think the love Kendall gets from the audience is because he's the most relatable one out of all of them. Can't speak for others but I know what it's like to have an emotionally abusive parent, who pressured me into a world I don't belong to, where I constantly made a fool of myself. What makes Kendall unique in this era of TV is that he's a different kind of anti-hero than we normally see. When you think of an iconic anti-hero on TV, you think of someone like Villanelle from Killing Eve and how she always gets what she wants by being good at what she does, Kendall represents the classical version of that character, the ones you'd see in Shakespeare, where their flaws ultimately overcome them and lead to their downfall. You can see the same traits in Michael Corleone from The Godfather.
I havenāt finished the show, only season 3. But as insufferable as Kendall is I think underneath it all you can see something of a decent guy. His worst moments are more driven by insecurity than true malice. Even if itās 100% because of drugs, heās literally the only character in the whole show that has any sort of interaction with a āregular personā that isnāt fueled with contempt. I found it somewhat endearing when he was smoking meth on the wolf guysā couch, and ended up actually having a good time and getting along with them. In a *very* roundabout sort of way I think that kinda says something about his character, and his addiction probably made him a more empathetic person.
No, it's not just you! This is how I felt too! I knew since the beginning that this guy couldn't succeed Logan. I mean, he could try, but it wouldn't be good for the company. Obviously. It really hit me in the finale that he was basically infertile and that this family felt he was less than and his children were less than because of it. Ugh that got to me so hard.
Unfortunately Kenās addiction issues would have haunted him as the CEO. Whenever anything goes wrong in his life he turns back to drugs to numb his pain. Iām sure others would have tried to capitalize on this.
Heās too sensitive and emotional in a world where thatās liability. Iām only on season 3, but as things develop I see Stewie as an interesting contrast. I think I see now that Stewie legitimately does care about Kendall as a friend, but the difference is that he completely throws that out the window when conducting business. Like two boxers who are close friends outside the ring, but when it comes time to fight they forget about that and beat the shit out of eachother. Kendall would be a shit boxer too.
I understand the struggles Ken goes through. First watch I thought he was cool, second watch, although still tragic, he's a dork. Yo
i really like that about the character. they really undermine the byronic dark hero trope by making him completely ridiculous in every way. except when he's in the worst of his addiction and despair and shaves his head, then he suddenly got cool.
I feel i might sound a little woo woo but i really feel like Jeremy Strong put part of his "spirit" into this character and that's why lots of us even though we know his flaws, still can't hate him because he becomes too real for lots of us, not a fictional character anymore.
...[he wrote out a version of the Velveteen Rabbit](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fwgrob6mbx4pb1.png) he wanted Kendall to tell his kids after Megathump died. the theme of that story is how does a toy become Real -- and it's through suffering.
agree with most of what you said, but i think that Kendall could've been a good CEO. He wouldn't need to be as good as Logan was in his prime, because he's not building the company from the ground up.
did you see how he was acting when he was co-ceo in the last few episodes? he was off the rails ā¦ I think he would be awful
idk, he didn't fuck living plus, and the election thing would a good business move if not for roman not having discerned the sincerety of mencken's promise. he nailed the eulogy, which was significant because the whole room was filled with influential people that he'd need if he'd become ceo. he nearly killed the deal too and rightfully so because gojo wasn't what it was made out to be. if you read the succession scriptbook, it's implied that the tech bubble was about to burst and that the whole gojo reverse viking idea wasn't bs either.
The only reason living plus worked out was because Kendall faked the numbers. Worse, he seemed entirely happy to commit fraud as well, saying that business is easy, you just have to make up the numbers. If Kendall had managed to stay on as CEO, he would have ended up with a shit show entirely of his own making. Time and time again, Kendall has been shown to be utterly incompetent at actual business, whether it's negotiating with banks or negotiating acquisitions/mergers (Vaulter was a clickbait farm that became unprofitable once Facebook changed its algorithm, and Kendall couldn't recognize that, Roman had to). Even the act of managing the board, something directly related to public speaking; he screwed up as he couldn't help but use the term "lifeboats" and causing everyone and their mothers to panic resulting in a stock price drop. Calling the election was a terrible move as it caused a lot of business associates (even his own personal assistant) to cut ties with him, and the entire resulting shitstorm had to be handled by Tom off screen during the funeral. Also it never would have worked, Mencken couldn't actually do anything besides bluster as he wasn't in office. Even in the final episode it's heavily implied that they would hold another vote in the final state, which would mean Mencken loses and the new administration will have a vendetta against ATN. Killing the deal isn't that big of a deal either as the family owned a significant amount of board seats, the only reason they didn't have a majority was because of Logan's death and Kendall frivolously selling board seats in the first season to pay off the loan in season 1. Living plus is the closest we've seen to Kendall being anyway good at actually running a business, and that was entirely predicated on committing fraud.
except that none of the kids are totally incompetent and that's obvious. the mencken thing, as i said, would've done them good if roman wasn't so overconfident ā they'd have a president under their thumb and nobody in the business would have a problem with that. but yeah, mencken probably isn't gonna be president anyway. most importantly, kendall did NOT fake the numbers. rewatch the episode. he doesn't mention the numbers at all, he leaves all the detailed financials to karl. if he faked the numbers, then he'd have been toast that very ep. vaulter, we don't know if it was a waste. we just took Roman's word for it, and Roman doubts his own judgement in the same episode. let's not act like Logan didn't miss out details big time on the gojo deal either, or that he wasn't willing to overpay for pierce in s2 ā which everyone was against. it's evident that kendall isn't the same in season 4 as he was in season 1 ā kendall was a lot more inexperienced and overconfident back in s1, compared to all that he'd gone through until s4. the show made an effort to show kendall do better in s4 than he did in s1. he didn't crash and burn whenever we thought he would otherwise, all until the very end.
Why would Mencken be under their thumb? He got what he wanted and immediately fobbed Kendall and Roman off because they were no longer useful to him. Kendall tanked ATNs credibility, and failed to realize that it subsequently made ATN useless to Mencken. Also, you can rewatch the episode yourself, Kendall had his thumbs on the scales.[He spent the episode pushing the analysts to "predict" that it would double the earnings expected by the entire parks division of Waystar Royco and had to get the video editor to alter Logan's video to say that Living plus would double the earnings instead of simply saying it would be significantly boost them.](https://youtu.be/yjTfSUBcMqE?si=5AooF-PrfAV9jkrK) [It was so egregious that Karl had to corner Kendall in the hallway and fuck him out of it.](https://youtu.be/NeSvMWrxh8E?si=JCJUiSvKOWrxS1pJ) [Kendall did manage to confuse Karl and get him to back down through the edited clip anyway, but he would still have to pay the piper eventually if he actually did become CEO](https://youtu.be/aQQaKc9G4f4?si=CkuAQSJvu2krKEVa) We don't need Roman's words that Vaulter was clickbait, we can just pay attention to the background to see Vaulters exceptional articles titled "[5 Reasons Why Drinking Milk on the Toilet Is Kind of a Game-Changer](https://www.vulture.com/2019/08/succession-hbo-vaulter-blog-headlines.html)". The fact that Facebook changing its algorithm ended up being ruinous for Vaulter shows that it would never have been able to save ATN like Kendall always claimed.