These people are idiots. Idiots! It’s always been obvious that the Roy kids have no idea what they’re doing but it was really pronounced this week. From beyond the grave Logan nailed it: “You’re as bad as my fucking idiot kids!”
That was a truly impressive amount of bullshit from Ken. None of what he said made any sense to me. I thought maybe it was me not getting what he was saying to that finance guy but no—it was just manic bullshit that Ken was trying to sell to his subordinates and the investors. Living+ can expand human lifespans and let us be our best selves. It’s a dessert topping and a floor wax!
So many Roys this episode were trying to get subordinates to do impossible things: build a full-scale model house in a day (though I thought the clouds were kind of charming), turn around the movie studio by throwing money at it, editing the words of a dead man to project a better business forecast (more on this later).
Roman makes an ass of himself, firing the head of Waystar Studios on a whim. Gerri gives him an adult’s perspective that Joy had actual value to the company and industry connections, and will sue (and, I think, win). Roman doesn’t want to hear that so he fires Gerri (later to be walked back).
The confrontation between Roman and Gerri was vicious because these two actually care about each other, albeit in a twisted way. Roman has a point that Gerri doesn’t respect him professionally, as she calls him “a weak monarch in a dangerous interregnum.” But Roman is way off base in saying she’s incompetent. This hits Gerri where she lives. “I am good at my job,” she says with a quiet dignity.
I guess Ken does win in the sense that he drives up the stock prices far enough to threaten the sale to GoJo. Lukas Matsson makes a horrible Holocaust joke, comparing Living+ to concentration camps for seniors, but he deletes the post, so I guess that’s a win for Waystar? Ken is basically grieving on stage in his own twisted way, seeking his father’s posthumous, deceptively edited approval. The Roy kids are all grieving in their own way: Roman has his dad’s speech about Living+ edited to berate his micro-dick and Shiv schedules some time to cry.
Meanwhile, Shiv and Tom are two crazy kids who truly belong together, one-upping one another in public by biting one another’s wrists. Tom wins. “Tom Wambsgans finally make me feel something,” Shiv flirts acidly. They have sex and there’s a moment when Sarah Snook lets Shiv’s defenses drop, but the moment passes and Tom doesn’t see it. Tom admits he betrayed her partially to support his financial lifestyle. He says he’d even live in a trailer park with her, and they both laugh. It’s a toxic stew of love and pain and money and cynicism. By the way, what’s going on with that fetus?
My God, that edited video of Logan speaking to the investors was breathtakingly tasteless, even for these people. The man isn’t even buried yet. I wonder if Roman and Shiv were prepared to see that. Can you imagine how you’d feel if nobody warned you your dad’s image would be projected on a huge video screen days after he died while you were still processing it?
Not only tasteless, that video was also illegal. Greg ordered the video editor to make the projections about Living+ seem much rosier than Logan had projected. The lie is that this new real estate venture will double profits. The Roys better hope nobody finds that original video footage, because they just defrauded their investors, and that will get them sued—and probably prosecuted—into oblivion.
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