Considering everything Shiv has put Tom through, I find zero sympathy for in regards to their marriage falling apart, since she pretty much took the bulldozer to it. Tom never would have gone to Logan the way he did at the end of Season 3 if Shiv hadn't stuck about 10 knives in his back prior to that.
True but any sane person would get out of the toxic situation, including the dysfunctional family business. Tom driving a wedge between a daughter and a dad to jockey for personal gain as he takes a wrecking ball to the failing marriage may have been what Shiv deserved, but it takes a special kind of creep to actually do it. Tom was always a sick puppy. Greg told him that Shiv was cheating the day of the marriage. Tom chose to ignore it and blame the messenger, so he really signed up for those 10 knives in his back.
The wedge was already there between Logan and Shiv; Tom is simply trying to work it to his advantage, although that remains to be seen if he is successful in that regard or not (he will be a man on an island if/once Logan kicks him to the gutter like he does everyone else). Let's face it, none of those people are good people; they are all creeps, to varying degrees. Like the others, Tom wants power and money, so he is not that dissimilar from Logan and his kids.
Logan had made Shiv president at the company and although he was horrible to her, she could sort of write it off as him having health/marital issues and being a grumpledumpus. Yes, the wedge may have been just as bad if she succeeded with her plan to band together with Roman and Ken at the end of S3, but Tom betraying her and becoming a driver in that wedge crossed many lines. Logan and his kids had always been in a sort of toxic situation, living in the .1% and facing issues that 99.9% of human beings never face. You can sort of understand why they are the way they are, and the writing seems realistic for them. Early in my career I could never understand why CEOs fought so hard to stay in power after they had become multimillionaires. I thought if I was them I would take the golden handshake and go enjoy my life. But then I founded a company and worked really hard to try to build it. Ultimately my first team fell apart and I recruited a second team that also fell apart. I opted to sell my invention at that point, but if I had been successful in building out a large organization, all the work and vision I put into it made me understand why CEOs fight so hard and feel a sense of duty. Tom, on the other hand, married into it and is clearly not committed to anything. He seems like an opportunistic frat-boy-turned-sociopath. His behavior throughout each season is alarming. Regardless of how much Logan and the kids try to cling to power or climb ladders, it takes a real creep to exploit the problems they're having as a family for their own gain, even forgetting that Logan would have far less regard for Tom than his daughter.
Doesn't matter if your a CEO, President, King, Godfather, whatever. While money certainly has something to do with it, Power is something else altogether. Most of our worlds leaders would seem to fall in this category. But I guess anyone, anywhere feels a sense of power when they're simply a leader.
Yeah, that's part of it for certain personalities, but there is also the part that few people experience. That is to be responsible for creating something that you believe in, providing goods or services or technology that can uplift humanity and managing the people responsible for executing it. Of course Waystar is supposedly evil so there's that.
Good episode again last night. Some of the business chatter is over my head lol, but seeing Logan trying to be the subdued sensible guy when talking to his kids for a change shows how much leeway they have made this season in getting in his way. As I said before, they will find a way to mess it up, and Roman already looks ready to defect back to daddy's side, but it's good to see Logan scrambling in a real way for a change.
I heard about the show's immense popularity so I watched about a season and a half. I don't mind crude language if it flows in a natural way but I think they use crude language to disguise the shallow scripts.
From a business perspective re-opening negotiations on settled points is a no-no. As a negotiator, there is nothing that will get the other side more ticked off than doing that. I’ve been on both sides and it’s not a fun conversation. That being said, nothing is final until the agreement is signed. When Logan says that his kids are not serious people he’s right. His kids can’t see beyond the anger they have for their father. Many family run businesses have personality issues. As far as language goes, I’ve seen that too. The scene where Greg tries to talk to Kerry was a riot. Been there too and it ain’t easy.
I think the series is brilliant. Murdoch and family are quite odious like Logan and the kids. Remember the News of the World scandal. Roman I would think is poised to defect back to Logan. Remember who runs Fox, its Lachlan Murdoch who is as horriblexas Roman. The rich are quite horrible people. Look at Musk for example.....
I believe Ken is deliberately trying to sabotage the deal so the company stays with the family and he can take over. It’s all he ever wanted.
It's not as simple as that, though, as Shiv and Roman (before he defects) are on equal footing with him as far as what they are doing, so Ken would have to be pretty delusional to think he can pull that off and just think his siblings will step aside and let him take over once they have theoretically defeated Logan. My question (to everyone) is this: What happened to Logan's medical issues? The series began with him taking a leak on the floor because of how out of it he was and then he later has a stroke...yet he is all fine and healthy now? That seems a bit strange.
Excellent point. You can interpret it in different ways. Some elderly family members and shall we say people in leadership positions occasionally say or do nutty things that you can attribute to mild dementia. And sometimes they say or do such things purposefully to be manipulative, make a power play or to test those around them. Sometimes it seems to be a combination of both. Sopranos did this kind of thing to perfection with Tony's mom Livia and uncle junior. You could never tell when junior was really going senile or having trouble with dementia vs targeting Tony out of sheer hostility. The show tried to make it a grey area, like many family dynamics. Melfi would tell Tony that old people are like children who need to feel like they're in control, and Tony had the strategic functionality to play on this. Logan's kids don't have that strategic ability. If they didn't have money, they'd be nowhere. Logan is much more strategic. Yes, clearly he's old and has health problems, but they seem to crop up mainly when he's trying to test loyalties or urinate on those around him and he knows everyone wants him to name a successor before he dies. The character is set up to feel that the only reason his kids want him to live is to name a successor. So when he pees on the carpet or goes comatose, yes it seems he is not all there. But compared to his kids, even in those moments he maintains the upper hand and by the time he comes out of it he seems far more shrewd at his worst than his kids are at their best.
We’ve seen that his medical issues are managed if he actually takes his medications, though, haven’t we?
The prediction I made last season is that the show will end with Logan's death. I'll stick with it. And that won't necessarily mean that the kids "won." But it will mark the end of how they identify themselves in the world, i.e., through him and how they react to his power. He is the axis around which all their worlds spin. I have no idea how the power struggles will play out. The main lesson we've learned over the course of the series is that even when you win financially, you leave a trail of frayed and damaged relationships. I guess we'll see what he leaves behind.
I tried this show but I had the same experience as early posters in this thread: no one to like and no one I relate to. I guess you're just supposed to enjoy watching the awful characters rip each other to pieces.
