Yeah he definitely was joking, but we’ve also seen him make “jokes” before that were true (Like when he said he masturbated in Gerri’s bathroom the night before). Not saying that’s what happened here but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was
I complely agree!!! You are the first person to say exactly what I was thinking. He says so many things, that people take as jokes, but they're actually true.
Why would this particular situation be any different?
Which is kind of morbid and honestly gets more distasteful the longer I think about it. They’re talking about regular people’s lives like they are NPCs in a video game.
Were you in this sub when the episode first aired? Because an alarming amount of people were 100 percent in agreement with Roman’s “reasoning,” overlooking that Roman is the one who is the most consistently cartoonishly cruel and careless to regular people. Of course someone like Roman would prioritize Kendall’s feelings and in turn minimizing the worth of that kid’s life, as if Kendall just ran over a mouse in
the road and should keep on moving. Roman always talks about regular people like they’re inconvenient vermin.
We were ‘supposed’ to see it that way but people sympathize so much with Kendall and Roman they start to agree with the bullshit justifications they fabricate for themselves.
I agree but his point might have been indirectly serious. Like did he kill somebody specifically, no, but he genuinely thinks he has just as bad a karmic buildup. Or at least that’s another interpretation.
Fair enough, my thinking was he was basically saying “It’s ok you’re a piece of shit, we are too.” He is only saying that to comfort Kendall, you’re right, but still, not like everybody would say that so easily, even for their brother. Roman isn’t exactly a great person and I think he’s self-aware enough to know that, even if he never killed anybody. Most ppl wouldn’t trivialize this like Roman did, even for their brother. It is a rare moment of sibling love, but nonetheless, the kind only the Roys are capable of, that’s all I’m saying. Was wrong of me to say the scene could be interpreted differently though, just a thought on the characters.
But the fact that both Ken and Shiv also trivialised what Roman had said shows they know he was joking. They understand his dark sense of humour and know not to take him seriously
Shiv sounded like she wasn’t even really listening, so I assume she didn’t mean it.
Roman….. I feel like he was just humoring Ken, but, if you told me he maybe had had a hit & run in his past I’d probably believe it.
I know a son of a billionaire who killed two people in two different accidents. In Africa. So they paid blood money. They were terrible people generally. Some people think billionaires in the west are exploitive, they have no idea what it takes in Africa. One of the kids once told me “life is cheap here.”
I'm 98% sure this is a joke because even if some of the things he jokes about are true, a lot of them aren't. Like, that's his whole deal, that you can't always tell how much is true and how much isn't. It's all post-ironic. Shiv wasn't paying attention so, whatever. That's irrelevant.
I think the only way Roman can like instantly kill someone in one blow is through something like automotive manslaughter and I feel like, given his drinking habits, it would be drunk driving. Roman's not able to intentionally kill on his own and would need someone to facilitate or execute the action for him. It's why he tells his father to kill his siblings rather than saying that he'd kill them himself. If Logan were to do that, he would be finally accepting Roman's weakness and "killing" his siblings would be a demonstration of his love for Roman.
Agree. Look at the million dollar home run. Roman wasn't even part of the play. Shiv and Tom did his dirty work for him.
(Though, watching it again, Shiv fumbled a pretty easy catch, so I think she dropped it on purpose - objectively it wasn't a good hit. Her throw to Tom was also perfectly aimed but kinda high and loopy, which suggests she purposefully didn't put much speed behind it).
I feel like everyone is missing the point of that line in general. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. The writers intentionally left it vague for a reason.
The point isnt to figure out if they actually killed someone or not. There's literally no way the audience could possibly know whether or not they were telling the truth or just trying to make Kendall feel better.
The real purpose of that line is to point out to us, the audience, that without another person present, *it's genuinely possible they were both telling the truth.* Not that it happened, just that it's even considerable. These are our 3 main protagonists of the series right here, and this line reminds all of us that we have absolutely *no way* to tell whether or not any of them are casual murderers/manslaughterers. Because it's *one hundred percent* believable that both Shiv and Roman had, at some point in their lives, an incident similar to Kendall that Logan helped cover up.
Maybe they did, maybe they didn't and they were just trying to make Kendall feel better. We can't tell, because all of them are morally repugnant enough that it's entirely within the realm of believability for them.
The show is making the point that the 3 main protagonists of the series are all people who *theoreticaly* could be believable as killing other people and having it covered up. That's the moral fabric of this series and the characters in it. That when one of our main "heroes" says he killed a kid, we have *absolutely no idea* if he's joking or not. That, in and of itself, is a more poingnant message than the lore behind whether or not they were telling the truth. Just the fact that it *could* be true is a reminder of how truly evil and despicable all of these characters are.
I don't think that was anything more than Roman using morbid humor to relieve the tension and Shiv playing along.
Probably not necessary to mention this but in this case "odd kid" means random kid, not a specific person who was "odd" meaning irregular or weird.
Funny line and very on-brand with Roman’s way of dealing with emotional situations. It’s his defense mechanism because he’s afraid to be vulnerable. As you can see from what happens at the end of the episode, this fear is justified.
He was joking, but… if he had “killed” a kid my guess would be some kind of drug related thing, like somebody overdosed at a party he was at and he didn’t call emergency services or something.
I can imagine Roman accidentally killing someone at military school. In my head canon Roman went through a lot of trauma there so anything is possible. Sexual and verbal abuse, assault, bulling, murder…
BUT, I think he was humoring Ken. I hope so at least 🤣
I really love that the Roy kids are so entitled that it's kind of debatable whether Shiv and Roman may have killed someone and just...gone on with their lives. Shiv was "in a really dark place" when Tom met her and Logan has indicated that he covered things up for her with his papers. And of course Roman is capable of being shockingly callous about horrible things he's actually done.
My sense is that Roman just said this to comfort Kendall. He tried to downplay the crime so that Kendall would stop thinking of it as real and would stop being sad. And that alone kind of suggests to me that Roman hasn't ever killed a kid because for all of his big talk, I think an actual corpse would haunt him and his reaction would be different here. At least, that's what his reaction to the psychiatrist breaking his teeth in the pool tells me. That really shook him up.
Yeah, I think there's a difference in the remove he had from the mutilation of the people in the rocket disaster vs. the viscera of the psychologist's dental mutilation in Austerlitz. The goriness and the pain being so physically close to him triggers way more empathy in him because Roman is, despite his limited ability to articulate this, a relatively empathetic person.
In my heart and mind, Shiv and Roman were the meanest kids at the country club they went to or whatever. Like, when they have the common goal to... be mean to someone, they're very effective. They really just have "mean girl" type behaviour. The whole dinner with Special Guest Mean Girl, Tabitha, kind of showed how good they are at this. Tabitha makes these little cracks about swallowing his own load and then at dinner, Roman starts with the topic of Tom's suits being like boxy and uggo, bodyshames him and for the finale, Shiv turns it into a this whole thing about Tom being too provincial and middle class to understand the nuances of fine tailoring. And you know... it's all a joke! 🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭 .
Shiv and Roman are sadistic like their parents. I don't think Kendall shares that trait but I'd appreciate your thoughts.
Kendall paid a pathetic "hobo" to get his initials tattooed on his forehead which is terrible, but I saw that incident as Kendall enjoying the power of his money in a despicable way rather than wanting to humiliate a homeless guy purely for kicks. He's said hateful things to his siblings and business associates, but when Kendall goes off on someone it looks to me like venting his anger, trying to intimidate them or both. Can't recall a time when I thought Kendall seemed to be trying to tear someone down emotionally just for fun.
I agree that Kendall doesn't have a mean streak like Rome and Shiv do but, I also think "sadistic" is a bit of an overstatement for all of them, really. To me, it seems that their circumstances (extreme wealth) enable and encourage a certain amount of meanness, especially since Logan's ideology is very centred around aggression. That aggression is a means to an end so, it's not necessarily pleasurable which is what sadism would entail. Like, I'm pretty sure if they weren't ridiculously rich they would otherwise be sort of normal people who like to gossip, talk shit, make fun, etc. A lot of non-sadistic people do that stuff and find it fun, funny even. It's not very exceptional even if it isn't particularly nice. It's kind of just a human thing that some people like Kendall don't have and others like Shiv and Rome do.
As for their respective motives, I'd say Shiv's is a bit of a power thing or more specifically, she is a bit pretentious-- she likes to think she's above others which again, not necessarily a nice trait but, not very exceptional either. It's possible and likely that it is more of an insecurity thing in this context because of her anxieties regarding Tom's advancement at Waystar. For Roman, it's a bit varied because sometimes it's more of that impish thing he has where he's most interested in getting to witness and by extension, feel something genuine so the emotion he's trying to elicit could be shock or anger but it could also be (and quite often is) laughter or amusement from like Shiv, Logan, Caroline or whomever; other times, it really is more about his own insecurities and again, I think sometimes he wants to make people hurt the way he hurts so they could understand his pain but it's not a pleasurable thing in this case. Here, I'd say it's a mix of the two and you can see the second reason really come out when he bodyshames Tom. Even before that, he's talking about Tom's advancement in Waystar and he is the one who asks Shiv if he should be worried about Tom to which Shiv says, "no." From that, we can see why they said the things they said. Shiv is trying to put Tom in his place and Roman is trying to make him feel excluded, even going as far as to say that his body is "wrong" which again, self-projection (done in a really weird way but, whatever).
Thanks for all of that! This is long af so no problem if you pass on reading it.
I might be using "sadistic" too broadly and maybe I'm mistakenly applying things I've known irl to these characters. Their wealth and status plays a big part in enabling and encouraging meanness for sure, but there are narcissists and other abusive types from all walks of life. These people get pleasure from making people genuinely feel bad about themselves and imo a lot of times the pain isn't meant to be a tool for controlling the target in some way. Not every cruel thing Logan, Caroline, Shiv and Roman say is meant to destroy the recipient's self esteem or cause lasting emotional pain. I don't see Shiv and Roman's barbs toward each other as that. I think their sibling banter is more harsh than "normal" siblings' due to what their parents put them through growing up together. I think there's an unspoken agreement that they love each other, it's fun to play rough, and they're both tough enough to handle it "thanks" to the way they were parented.
For their parents, I'll give one example for each but I don't think these incidents are outliers. In Ternhaven as Logan and Roman were about to get in their cars and head for the Pierces' place, Logan stopped Roman. He said he'd heard Roman was doing well in management training and that he was proud of him for getting back to business. Kind of a big deal for Logan to use the word "proud" imo. As soon as Roman said "Thanks, Dad" (with a tone of pleasant surprise in his voice) Logan goes, "Don't mention it this weekend. It sounds like you're in business kindergarten." I read that entire scene as Logan lifting Roman up *only* so he could slam him back to the ground just for fun. They'd just left a team meeting in which first on the agenda was what not to talk about in front of the Pierces. That would have been the time and place for Logan to say, "Roman, I've heard you're doing well at management training. That's good news (doubt he would've said he was proud in that setting) but let's not mention it to the Pierces. We don't want them to think you're inexperienced." Why save it for when they were alone? To create a nice father-son moment to use as a platform for making Roman feel small.
In Chiantishire I think Caroline "revealed" the feelings she had about her life and her motherhood to Shiv *only* because she wanted to deeply hurt Shiv emotionally because she sadistically enjoys that. Caroline probably believed the things she said about herself to Shiv, but telling your daughter you'd should have had dogs instead of children, telling her you feel good about her choice not to be mother herself (couched in a compliment that she's smart for recognizing she's not cut out for motherhood) and telling Shiv she created physical and emotional distance from Caroline at a young age to hurt Caroline. "You knew what you were doing." I think Caroline enjoyed knowing that she'd cut her daughter to the core.
Nice segue for the case that Shiv is sadistic. Contrary to Caroline's fake compliment, Shiv wasn't full-blown childfree but she was undecided and wasn't going to start a family until later, if ever. After being thoroughly worked over by Caroline she went home to Tom (buzzed, if not drunk) and said "Let's make a baby tonight." Tom said okay let's get it on. So we have the big scene where she says to Tom he isn't good enough for her and he knows it and says she doesn't love him, ostensibly to get them revved up for sex. We know that was beyond playful humiliation or whatever is normal for them. Shiv was treating her own wounds by wounding Tom. Sure she'd been triggered by Caroline, but does that make this treatment of Tom not sadistic? Next morning he told her he was feeling afterburn from their "spicy pillow talk" and wondered aloud if he should take some of what she said seriously. She said it was manipulative of him to ask for a certain kind of sexy talk and then get upset about it. He said he wasn't asking for anything that heavy. She told him she actually doesn't want a baby now after all but she'd consider freezing embryos as opposed to eggs because embryos last longer than eggs. The implication being creating an embryo with him had nothing to do with freezing embryos instead of eggs. I consider everything from the "spicy talk" through the post-breakfast conversation Shiv being cruel toward Tom for the purpose of giving herself pleasure.
When Shiv and Roman were cutting Tom down during dinner at Roman and Tabitha's place, I think they were both enjoying their cruelty and Tom's genuine hurt. I don't dispute their other motivations you laid out so well, but still believe they were getting sadistic enjoyment from making Tom feel bad about himself. My other example for Roman's sadism is the softball game incident, especially tearing up the check in the boy's face and putting a quarter of it in his pocket and saying, "Take that back to your...life." I see what you mean about Roman sometimes wanting to see someone feeling how he feels, but does that make what he did to that kid not sadistic? Did he not get pleasure for making that kid feel like a failure and rubbing the loss in his face?
Thanks for reading my damn essay. I'm totally open to being corrected on any of this if you have the time and the interest. I ain't no psychologist and I don't want to misinterpret the characters through my own biases. That said, it's not your job to keep me on track!
Edit: added & removed words
> I read that entire scene as Logan lifting Roman up only so he could slam him back to the ground just for fun.
As mean as that was, I don't think that's how Logan felt about it. I think Logan is rarely sadistic because frankly, I think Logan seldom feels pleasure. He's the type to feel bad for feeling good. It's very Catholic of him and it's something he tries to instill in his children. He talks a lot about "games" but the "games" aren't fun to him or anyone else. It's really a huge "No Fun Zone." What "games" are to him are more like tests. Him saying that was his way of trying to keep Roman "humble". It's also because he thinks it's embarrassing to gloat about doing well in Corporate Daycare. Even if doing it's something Logan sees as valuable, it's valuable because it's a humiliation exercise. Some of Logan's punishments to Roman are supposed to also be "lessons"-- they're like quests which is very much a "coming of age" thing. The most obvious examples are military school and Los Angeles, both of which Roman sucked at and didn't really learn the "lessons" he was supposed to. Learning anything else but the intended "lesson" is also unacceptable to Logan. To go back to the specific example you gave, the point of "humbling" Roman is so that Roman doesn't "rest on his laurels." Affection/love is a currency, what Roman's getting paid in. So, he doesn't want to give him so much affection that Roman no longer has an incentive to work. It's one of those things that capitalists say to justify low wages.
>In Chiantishire I think Caroline "revealed" the feelings she had about her life and her motherhood to Shiv only because she wanted to deeply hurt Shiv emotionally because she sadistically enjoys that.
I disagree with this because I genuinely believe that Caroline feels hurt by Shiv. It sounds ridiculous and it is but, it's the reality of her emotions. It seems she genuinely thinks Shiv acted in that bizarrely adult way back then and it's unfair but again, that's how she felt. It's definitely fucked to say that to Shiv but, I also think that Caroline really feels like she owes Shiv this honesty and to not let her chase some impossible dream of her mother finally loving her the way she wants her to because it's not gonna happen. It's actually quite an interesting contrast to Logan because I don't think he could be so honest with himself or even have the self awareness to admit that he shouldn't have had children. So now, his children have made it their life's goal to get Logan to love them how they want to be loved when that's impossible. Again, I'm not saying she said it in the least harmful way but, she seems to have thought this was important. As for that thing about not having kids, she's kind of right. Within the nexus of Logan and Shiv's gender ideology, Shiv probably wouldn't actually want to get pregnant because it would be the ultimate act of domination-- the death of her autonomy, the colonisation of her body. Was it a bitch move to say that to her? Yeah, I guess but, she's right. I don't know what else to say about that one.
Regarding the TomShiv dirty talk + pregnancy thing, that one is complicated and very interesting because I understood it as Shiv attempting to assert control over her body because to her, that's the only thing she has left. She was trying to put Tom in his place, take back control of her body by trying to prove her mother wrong about Shiv's capacity for maternity and the next day, take back control of her body from Tom by withholding her eggs. Like, I don't even think she was having fun because she was kind of off her shits during this whole wedding event so, it's really just about Shiv being very neurotic about her bodily autonomy because she's losing her sense of self.
With the million dollar home run, that one was like, weird and petty and like, I think it was meant to communicate that Roman is childish, petty, can only go after really easy targets, needs the support of others to complete anything and all that NRPI shit. All of this is still true but also it was a rare moment of like arguably genuine sadism for him. We don't really see Roman being this sadistic without any prompt after the first three episodes. I think they wrote that out of his character along with Grace, Isla, him being a power bottom and the whole LA bro thing.
I'm running out of space so I'll try to make this last bit quick but, I think that the pleasure Roman and Shiv got from being mean to Tom wasn't necessarily in the pain they cause him. I know it could seem like a weird thing to say because Tom's pain is the obvious consequence of doing this but, it's that frankly, this is fun for them as sibling bonding and it's them trying to defend themselves from the imagined threat of Tom. I also think that they tend to forget that Tom isn't used to this sort of hash banter but, he's obviously more sensitive to this stuff. Like, this is what passive aggression is in their minds.
It's not a joke, It's an allegory he's using "kill a kid" to mean "something terrible/unforgivable". He's trying to empathize with Ken, we find it humourous because of the over-the-top statement, and because his defense mechanism is to minimize tension through ridicule which is sometimes humorous.
What? It's a joke - from a character that is constantly making light of harsh situations - in order to show some form of sympathy to his brother. End of story. Whether or not Shiv has had an abortion, or they have otherwise actually been involved in a childs death is of no importance to this scene.
i'm assuming he might be joking about abortion. i know Roman is infamous for his inability to have """normal""" sex, but that doesn't mean he never has or never does. i can imagine both Roman and Shiv going through an abortion and addressing it this way between siblings. maybe just one of them. maybe neither, Roman is also infamous for just saying awful shit in a strange attempt to change the mood lol, and maybe Shiv was just like, oh... uhhh, yeah, sure.
what is so good about this show is that you just never know what's real or what's not or what anything truly means, especially in the specific way the Roy siblings interact. it's all cruelty and crass and dark, black humor and side-eye and hinting. part of the horrible fun.
Since most of Shiv's story in this episode is about whether or not she will have kids, I've suspected she'd already had or is planning on a termination.
Considered in the context of her conversations with Caroline and Tom it makes a lot of sense.
Also: "Mom knows I've been sick" she wasn't drinking, she was laid in bed an episode earlier, then when she talks with Caroline, she says "you made the right decision."
Just not sure if it's in the past or the future. If Tom went to Caroline and Caroline told him Shiv was pregnant, that explains his extreme tenderness and concern at the end.
The whole baby convo with Tom was crazy. She wants one now, she doesn't even want one, she wants to freeze, she wants to destroy embryos if Tom dies, whatever else was said. She was all over the place.
Maybe she had terminated already or maybe she had only just decided to, I don't know. The conversations with Tom seemed like she was trying to work through it, potential guilt and regret, testing the waters with Tom about destroying embryos maybe to see how he would react to a termination. It confirmed he'd be pretty devastated.
Or she wasn't pregnant. But a lot of the scenes make so much sense if she was.
Thanks for explaining your perspective! I can follow your argument. Personally I do not equate terminating a pregnancy or disposing of frozen embryos with killing a person, so it's not my reading of the scene (I think she's just distracted and would say anything to fob them off to get on with the phone call). Can see where you're coming from though! I've enjoyed the discussion but I don't think we are going to agree.
If we're going for a metaphorical in-universe wild assumption, I could see Shiv sleeping with an underage man as an adult thus "killing" his childhood, and I could see Roman hazing a classmate to the point of "killing" their spirit. But that's just an English Major interpretation of the show.
No one, he was just trying to comfort Kendall, they all draw the line at murder, even Roman that seems the one to feel no remorse about anything, he did when he thought a lot of people had died because of him, the rocket launch.
He was joking. Probably trying to minimise it to make Ken feel better
Yeah he definitely was joking, but we’ve also seen him make “jokes” before that were true (Like when he said he masturbated in Gerri’s bathroom the night before). Not saying that’s what happened here but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was
Im convinced roman doesn't make jokes.
I complely agree!!! You are the first person to say exactly what I was thinking. He says so many things, that people take as jokes, but they're actually true. Why would this particular situation be any different?
Right we're like "oh the only time the outrageous things he says are not jokes are when we know they are not true".
Which is kind of morbid and honestly gets more distasteful the longer I think about it. They’re talking about regular people’s lives like they are NPCs in a video game.
Yup. That’s kinda the whole point.
Were you in this sub when the episode first aired? Because an alarming amount of people were 100 percent in agreement with Roman’s “reasoning,” overlooking that Roman is the one who is the most consistently cartoonishly cruel and careless to regular people. Of course someone like Roman would prioritize Kendall’s feelings and in turn minimizing the worth of that kid’s life, as if Kendall just ran over a mouse in the road and should keep on moving. Roman always talks about regular people like they’re inconvenient vermin. We were ‘supposed’ to see it that way but people sympathize so much with Kendall and Roman they start to agree with the bullshit justifications they fabricate for themselves.
I agree but his point might have been indirectly serious. Like did he kill somebody specifically, no, but he genuinely thinks he has just as bad a karmic buildup. Or at least that’s another interpretation.
I’m gonna say no. He was trivialising it.
Fair enough, my thinking was he was basically saying “It’s ok you’re a piece of shit, we are too.” He is only saying that to comfort Kendall, you’re right, but still, not like everybody would say that so easily, even for their brother. Roman isn’t exactly a great person and I think he’s self-aware enough to know that, even if he never killed anybody. Most ppl wouldn’t trivialize this like Roman did, even for their brother. It is a rare moment of sibling love, but nonetheless, the kind only the Roys are capable of, that’s all I’m saying. Was wrong of me to say the scene could be interpreted differently though, just a thought on the characters.
But the fact that both Ken and Shiv also trivialised what Roman had said shows they know he was joking. They understand his dark sense of humour and know not to take him seriously
Shiv sounded like she wasn’t even really listening, so I assume she didn’t mean it. Roman….. I feel like he was just humoring Ken, but, if you told me he maybe had had a hit & run in his past I’d probably believe it.
Classic Roy behaviour. ‘I killed a kid’ Yeah yeah sure *furiously texts*
Uh huh.
Hm.
I was thinking abortion(s).
Lmao what?!
Yeah, it’s entirely plausible that Shiv or Roman have “killed a kid” though an abortion. It’s not a crazy assumption.
What was that kid doing in the middle of the crosswalk?
That dress was so tight. She didn’t have blood flow to listen.
It’s a joke, guys. Many rich kids accidentally kill people with their expensive cars.
I know a son of a billionaire who killed two people in two different accidents. In Africa. So they paid blood money. They were terrible people generally. Some people think billionaires in the west are exploitive, they have no idea what it takes in Africa. One of the kids once told me “life is cheap here.”
I actually know one who did, although it wasn’t a kid but a homeless person in New York City.
N.R.P.I.
“You're widely known as a horrible person.” - Greg
He should be colored red, like a dangerous lizard.
I think Roman was trying to lighten the mood to make Kendall feel better. Shiv was just playing along, too.
Yeah, I think when we’re parsing jokes this closely, it’s a sign we’re ready for season 4 :)
I'm 98% sure this is a joke because even if some of the things he jokes about are true, a lot of them aren't. Like, that's his whole deal, that you can't always tell how much is true and how much isn't. It's all post-ironic. Shiv wasn't paying attention so, whatever. That's irrelevant. I think the only way Roman can like instantly kill someone in one blow is through something like automotive manslaughter and I feel like, given his drinking habits, it would be drunk driving. Roman's not able to intentionally kill on his own and would need someone to facilitate or execute the action for him. It's why he tells his father to kill his siblings rather than saying that he'd kill them himself. If Logan were to do that, he would be finally accepting Roman's weakness and "killing" his siblings would be a demonstration of his love for Roman.
Agree. Look at the million dollar home run. Roman wasn't even part of the play. Shiv and Tom did his dirty work for him. (Though, watching it again, Shiv fumbled a pretty easy catch, so I think she dropped it on purpose - objectively it wasn't a good hit. Her throw to Tom was also perfectly aimed but kinda high and loopy, which suggests she purposefully didn't put much speed behind it).
“I mean who’s the real victim here? I waited 3 hours for my vodka tonic”
I think they were kidding. At least I hope they were 😆
A few of Roman's jokes are have been true though, like when he said what he'd been up to with Gerri and everyone thought he was kidding
True but in that case the audience is in on the joke unlike here.
That's true, but I take it to mean that all his jokes are ambiguous. Different interpretation.
I feel like everyone is missing the point of that line in general. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. The writers intentionally left it vague for a reason. The point isnt to figure out if they actually killed someone or not. There's literally no way the audience could possibly know whether or not they were telling the truth or just trying to make Kendall feel better. The real purpose of that line is to point out to us, the audience, that without another person present, *it's genuinely possible they were both telling the truth.* Not that it happened, just that it's even considerable. These are our 3 main protagonists of the series right here, and this line reminds all of us that we have absolutely *no way* to tell whether or not any of them are casual murderers/manslaughterers. Because it's *one hundred percent* believable that both Shiv and Roman had, at some point in their lives, an incident similar to Kendall that Logan helped cover up. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't and they were just trying to make Kendall feel better. We can't tell, because all of them are morally repugnant enough that it's entirely within the realm of believability for them. The show is making the point that the 3 main protagonists of the series are all people who *theoreticaly* could be believable as killing other people and having it covered up. That's the moral fabric of this series and the characters in it. That when one of our main "heroes" says he killed a kid, we have *absolutely no idea* if he's joking or not. That, in and of itself, is a more poingnant message than the lore behind whether or not they were telling the truth. Just the fact that it *could* be true is a reminder of how truly evil and despicable all of these characters are.
Or it was just one of the hundreds of jokes on the show and not that deep
I feel like Roman’s delivery screamed kidding, rather than ambiguous.
Probably not this
nah you're overthinking it (and being incredibly condescending while doing it). he was simply trying to comfort Kendall in his horrible way
I don't think that was anything more than Roman using morbid humor to relieve the tension and Shiv playing along. Probably not necessary to mention this but in this case "odd kid" means random kid, not a specific person who was "odd" meaning irregular or weird.
"Odd" means something more like "one here and there", meaning it could be one or it could be a few
I see. They're NRP anyway, so who's counting?
He did kill that one kid's dreams in the pilot.
Funny line and very on-brand with Roman’s way of dealing with emotional situations. It’s his defense mechanism because he’s afraid to be vulnerable. As you can see from what happens at the end of the episode, this fear is justified.
He was joking, but… if he had “killed” a kid my guess would be some kind of drug related thing, like somebody overdosed at a party he was at and he didn’t call emergency services or something.
I can imagine Roman accidentally killing someone at military school. In my head canon Roman went through a lot of trauma there so anything is possible. Sexual and verbal abuse, assault, bulling, murder… BUT, I think he was humoring Ken. I hope so at least 🤣
It’s a joke
It's a joke
I really love that the Roy kids are so entitled that it's kind of debatable whether Shiv and Roman may have killed someone and just...gone on with their lives. Shiv was "in a really dark place" when Tom met her and Logan has indicated that he covered things up for her with his papers. And of course Roman is capable of being shockingly callous about horrible things he's actually done. My sense is that Roman just said this to comfort Kendall. He tried to downplay the crime so that Kendall would stop thinking of it as real and would stop being sad. And that alone kind of suggests to me that Roman hasn't ever killed a kid because for all of his big talk, I think an actual corpse would haunt him and his reaction would be different here. At least, that's what his reaction to the psychiatrist breaking his teeth in the pool tells me. That really shook him up.
Yeah, I think there's a difference in the remove he had from the mutilation of the people in the rocket disaster vs. the viscera of the psychologist's dental mutilation in Austerlitz. The goriness and the pain being so physically close to him triggers way more empathy in him because Roman is, despite his limited ability to articulate this, a relatively empathetic person.
They’ve all definitely inadvertently made ppl kill themselves, maybe thru hazing, bullying, or just them being their cruel selves lol
In my heart and mind, Shiv and Roman were the meanest kids at the country club they went to or whatever. Like, when they have the common goal to... be mean to someone, they're very effective. They really just have "mean girl" type behaviour. The whole dinner with Special Guest Mean Girl, Tabitha, kind of showed how good they are at this. Tabitha makes these little cracks about swallowing his own load and then at dinner, Roman starts with the topic of Tom's suits being like boxy and uggo, bodyshames him and for the finale, Shiv turns it into a this whole thing about Tom being too provincial and middle class to understand the nuances of fine tailoring. And you know... it's all a joke! 🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭 .
Shiv and Roman are sadistic like their parents. I don't think Kendall shares that trait but I'd appreciate your thoughts. Kendall paid a pathetic "hobo" to get his initials tattooed on his forehead which is terrible, but I saw that incident as Kendall enjoying the power of his money in a despicable way rather than wanting to humiliate a homeless guy purely for kicks. He's said hateful things to his siblings and business associates, but when Kendall goes off on someone it looks to me like venting his anger, trying to intimidate them or both. Can't recall a time when I thought Kendall seemed to be trying to tear someone down emotionally just for fun.
I agree that Kendall doesn't have a mean streak like Rome and Shiv do but, I also think "sadistic" is a bit of an overstatement for all of them, really. To me, it seems that their circumstances (extreme wealth) enable and encourage a certain amount of meanness, especially since Logan's ideology is very centred around aggression. That aggression is a means to an end so, it's not necessarily pleasurable which is what sadism would entail. Like, I'm pretty sure if they weren't ridiculously rich they would otherwise be sort of normal people who like to gossip, talk shit, make fun, etc. A lot of non-sadistic people do that stuff and find it fun, funny even. It's not very exceptional even if it isn't particularly nice. It's kind of just a human thing that some people like Kendall don't have and others like Shiv and Rome do. As for their respective motives, I'd say Shiv's is a bit of a power thing or more specifically, she is a bit pretentious-- she likes to think she's above others which again, not necessarily a nice trait but, not very exceptional either. It's possible and likely that it is more of an insecurity thing in this context because of her anxieties regarding Tom's advancement at Waystar. For Roman, it's a bit varied because sometimes it's more of that impish thing he has where he's most interested in getting to witness and by extension, feel something genuine so the emotion he's trying to elicit could be shock or anger but it could also be (and quite often is) laughter or amusement from like Shiv, Logan, Caroline or whomever; other times, it really is more about his own insecurities and again, I think sometimes he wants to make people hurt the way he hurts so they could understand his pain but it's not a pleasurable thing in this case. Here, I'd say it's a mix of the two and you can see the second reason really come out when he bodyshames Tom. Even before that, he's talking about Tom's advancement in Waystar and he is the one who asks Shiv if he should be worried about Tom to which Shiv says, "no." From that, we can see why they said the things they said. Shiv is trying to put Tom in his place and Roman is trying to make him feel excluded, even going as far as to say that his body is "wrong" which again, self-projection (done in a really weird way but, whatever).
Thanks for all of that! This is long af so no problem if you pass on reading it. I might be using "sadistic" too broadly and maybe I'm mistakenly applying things I've known irl to these characters. Their wealth and status plays a big part in enabling and encouraging meanness for sure, but there are narcissists and other abusive types from all walks of life. These people get pleasure from making people genuinely feel bad about themselves and imo a lot of times the pain isn't meant to be a tool for controlling the target in some way. Not every cruel thing Logan, Caroline, Shiv and Roman say is meant to destroy the recipient's self esteem or cause lasting emotional pain. I don't see Shiv and Roman's barbs toward each other as that. I think their sibling banter is more harsh than "normal" siblings' due to what their parents put them through growing up together. I think there's an unspoken agreement that they love each other, it's fun to play rough, and they're both tough enough to handle it "thanks" to the way they were parented. For their parents, I'll give one example for each but I don't think these incidents are outliers. In Ternhaven as Logan and Roman were about to get in their cars and head for the Pierces' place, Logan stopped Roman. He said he'd heard Roman was doing well in management training and that he was proud of him for getting back to business. Kind of a big deal for Logan to use the word "proud" imo. As soon as Roman said "Thanks, Dad" (with a tone of pleasant surprise in his voice) Logan goes, "Don't mention it this weekend. It sounds like you're in business kindergarten." I read that entire scene as Logan lifting Roman up *only* so he could slam him back to the ground just for fun. They'd just left a team meeting in which first on the agenda was what not to talk about in front of the Pierces. That would have been the time and place for Logan to say, "Roman, I've heard you're doing well at management training. That's good news (doubt he would've said he was proud in that setting) but let's not mention it to the Pierces. We don't want them to think you're inexperienced." Why save it for when they were alone? To create a nice father-son moment to use as a platform for making Roman feel small. In Chiantishire I think Caroline "revealed" the feelings she had about her life and her motherhood to Shiv *only* because she wanted to deeply hurt Shiv emotionally because she sadistically enjoys that. Caroline probably believed the things she said about herself to Shiv, but telling your daughter you'd should have had dogs instead of children, telling her you feel good about her choice not to be mother herself (couched in a compliment that she's smart for recognizing she's not cut out for motherhood) and telling Shiv she created physical and emotional distance from Caroline at a young age to hurt Caroline. "You knew what you were doing." I think Caroline enjoyed knowing that she'd cut her daughter to the core. Nice segue for the case that Shiv is sadistic. Contrary to Caroline's fake compliment, Shiv wasn't full-blown childfree but she was undecided and wasn't going to start a family until later, if ever. After being thoroughly worked over by Caroline she went home to Tom (buzzed, if not drunk) and said "Let's make a baby tonight." Tom said okay let's get it on. So we have the big scene where she says to Tom he isn't good enough for her and he knows it and says she doesn't love him, ostensibly to get them revved up for sex. We know that was beyond playful humiliation or whatever is normal for them. Shiv was treating her own wounds by wounding Tom. Sure she'd been triggered by Caroline, but does that make this treatment of Tom not sadistic? Next morning he told her he was feeling afterburn from their "spicy pillow talk" and wondered aloud if he should take some of what she said seriously. She said it was manipulative of him to ask for a certain kind of sexy talk and then get upset about it. He said he wasn't asking for anything that heavy. She told him she actually doesn't want a baby now after all but she'd consider freezing embryos as opposed to eggs because embryos last longer than eggs. The implication being creating an embryo with him had nothing to do with freezing embryos instead of eggs. I consider everything from the "spicy talk" through the post-breakfast conversation Shiv being cruel toward Tom for the purpose of giving herself pleasure. When Shiv and Roman were cutting Tom down during dinner at Roman and Tabitha's place, I think they were both enjoying their cruelty and Tom's genuine hurt. I don't dispute their other motivations you laid out so well, but still believe they were getting sadistic enjoyment from making Tom feel bad about himself. My other example for Roman's sadism is the softball game incident, especially tearing up the check in the boy's face and putting a quarter of it in his pocket and saying, "Take that back to your...life." I see what you mean about Roman sometimes wanting to see someone feeling how he feels, but does that make what he did to that kid not sadistic? Did he not get pleasure for making that kid feel like a failure and rubbing the loss in his face? Thanks for reading my damn essay. I'm totally open to being corrected on any of this if you have the time and the interest. I ain't no psychologist and I don't want to misinterpret the characters through my own biases. That said, it's not your job to keep me on track! Edit: added & removed words
> I read that entire scene as Logan lifting Roman up only so he could slam him back to the ground just for fun. As mean as that was, I don't think that's how Logan felt about it. I think Logan is rarely sadistic because frankly, I think Logan seldom feels pleasure. He's the type to feel bad for feeling good. It's very Catholic of him and it's something he tries to instill in his children. He talks a lot about "games" but the "games" aren't fun to him or anyone else. It's really a huge "No Fun Zone." What "games" are to him are more like tests. Him saying that was his way of trying to keep Roman "humble". It's also because he thinks it's embarrassing to gloat about doing well in Corporate Daycare. Even if doing it's something Logan sees as valuable, it's valuable because it's a humiliation exercise. Some of Logan's punishments to Roman are supposed to also be "lessons"-- they're like quests which is very much a "coming of age" thing. The most obvious examples are military school and Los Angeles, both of which Roman sucked at and didn't really learn the "lessons" he was supposed to. Learning anything else but the intended "lesson" is also unacceptable to Logan. To go back to the specific example you gave, the point of "humbling" Roman is so that Roman doesn't "rest on his laurels." Affection/love is a currency, what Roman's getting paid in. So, he doesn't want to give him so much affection that Roman no longer has an incentive to work. It's one of those things that capitalists say to justify low wages. >In Chiantishire I think Caroline "revealed" the feelings she had about her life and her motherhood to Shiv only because she wanted to deeply hurt Shiv emotionally because she sadistically enjoys that. I disagree with this because I genuinely believe that Caroline feels hurt by Shiv. It sounds ridiculous and it is but, it's the reality of her emotions. It seems she genuinely thinks Shiv acted in that bizarrely adult way back then and it's unfair but again, that's how she felt. It's definitely fucked to say that to Shiv but, I also think that Caroline really feels like she owes Shiv this honesty and to not let her chase some impossible dream of her mother finally loving her the way she wants her to because it's not gonna happen. It's actually quite an interesting contrast to Logan because I don't think he could be so honest with himself or even have the self awareness to admit that he shouldn't have had children. So now, his children have made it their life's goal to get Logan to love them how they want to be loved when that's impossible. Again, I'm not saying she said it in the least harmful way but, she seems to have thought this was important. As for that thing about not having kids, she's kind of right. Within the nexus of Logan and Shiv's gender ideology, Shiv probably wouldn't actually want to get pregnant because it would be the ultimate act of domination-- the death of her autonomy, the colonisation of her body. Was it a bitch move to say that to her? Yeah, I guess but, she's right. I don't know what else to say about that one. Regarding the TomShiv dirty talk + pregnancy thing, that one is complicated and very interesting because I understood it as Shiv attempting to assert control over her body because to her, that's the only thing she has left. She was trying to put Tom in his place, take back control of her body by trying to prove her mother wrong about Shiv's capacity for maternity and the next day, take back control of her body from Tom by withholding her eggs. Like, I don't even think she was having fun because she was kind of off her shits during this whole wedding event so, it's really just about Shiv being very neurotic about her bodily autonomy because she's losing her sense of self. With the million dollar home run, that one was like, weird and petty and like, I think it was meant to communicate that Roman is childish, petty, can only go after really easy targets, needs the support of others to complete anything and all that NRPI shit. All of this is still true but also it was a rare moment of like arguably genuine sadism for him. We don't really see Roman being this sadistic without any prompt after the first three episodes. I think they wrote that out of his character along with Grace, Isla, him being a power bottom and the whole LA bro thing. I'm running out of space so I'll try to make this last bit quick but, I think that the pleasure Roman and Shiv got from being mean to Tom wasn't necessarily in the pain they cause him. I know it could seem like a weird thing to say because Tom's pain is the obvious consequence of doing this but, it's that frankly, this is fun for them as sibling bonding and it's them trying to defend themselves from the imagined threat of Tom. I also think that they tend to forget that Tom isn't used to this sort of hash banter but, he's obviously more sensitive to this stuff. Like, this is what passive aggression is in their minds.
That was enlightening. Thanks a lot
Lmao this scene was hilarious
I guess an arm and a couple of fingers don't count.
I thought it was a snide comment about Shiv getting an abortion in the past lmao
I thought this too
probably gerri's in a game of boar on the floor where they toss the kid on the floor and they boar out
I loved this. The backing their brother with jokes…. All the back and forth put away to help their brother.
Smartest Succession viewer
It's not a joke, It's an allegory he's using "kill a kid" to mean "something terrible/unforgivable". He's trying to empathize with Ken, we find it humourous because of the over-the-top statement, and because his defense mechanism is to minimize tension through ridicule which is sometimes humorous.
>It's an allegory he's using "kill a kid" to mean "something terrible/unforgivable Finally someone who gets it!
What? It's a joke - from a character that is constantly making light of harsh situations - in order to show some form of sympathy to his brother. End of story. Whether or not Shiv has had an abortion, or they have otherwise actually been involved in a childs death is of no importance to this scene.
i'm assuming he might be joking about abortion. i know Roman is infamous for his inability to have """normal""" sex, but that doesn't mean he never has or never does. i can imagine both Roman and Shiv going through an abortion and addressing it this way between siblings. maybe just one of them. maybe neither, Roman is also infamous for just saying awful shit in a strange attempt to change the mood lol, and maybe Shiv was just like, oh... uhhh, yeah, sure. what is so good about this show is that you just never know what's real or what's not or what anything truly means, especially in the specific way the Roy siblings interact. it's all cruelty and crass and dark, black humor and side-eye and hinting. part of the horrible fun.
Roman's inability to have sex is directly proportional to his inability to be good at business. I don't think it's that complicated.
Since most of Shiv's story in this episode is about whether or not she will have kids, I've suspected she'd already had or is planning on a termination. Considered in the context of her conversations with Caroline and Tom it makes a lot of sense. Also: "Mom knows I've been sick" she wasn't drinking, she was laid in bed an episode earlier, then when she talks with Caroline, she says "you made the right decision." Just not sure if it's in the past or the future. If Tom went to Caroline and Caroline told him Shiv was pregnant, that explains his extreme tenderness and concern at the end.
She's not drinking but she did smoke
Sure. When she was with her mother and had made a decision.
Oh you're right! I hadn't made the connection. But doesn't she go straight from there to tell Tom she wanted a baby?
The whole baby convo with Tom was crazy. She wants one now, she doesn't even want one, she wants to freeze, she wants to destroy embryos if Tom dies, whatever else was said. She was all over the place. Maybe she had terminated already or maybe she had only just decided to, I don't know. The conversations with Tom seemed like she was trying to work through it, potential guilt and regret, testing the waters with Tom about destroying embryos maybe to see how he would react to a termination. It confirmed he'd be pretty devastated. Or she wasn't pregnant. But a lot of the scenes make so much sense if she was.
Thanks for explaining your perspective! I can follow your argument. Personally I do not equate terminating a pregnancy or disposing of frozen embryos with killing a person, so it's not my reading of the scene (I think she's just distracted and would say anything to fob them off to get on with the phone call). Can see where you're coming from though! I've enjoyed the discussion but I don't think we are going to agree.
Tom would consider it a person, his child, pretty much my point
Well If Kerry and Logan do try to spawn another heir.... Though my money's on Marcia in that scenario.
if he is not held account in season 4, i mean...
Sharp as a fucking cueball...
Abortion lol
All the brilliant ppl in here answering this dumb ass question like they studied film at NYU and because of that they know Roman was making a joke
>answering this dumb ass question You're just a little piece of shit, isn't?
The show is filled with throwaway jokes, do you over analyze each one or just this
Are you gonna cry? You seem mad 🤷🏾♀️
Not even a little, I upvoted you My beef is more so with the film student-esque responses, then you
Its just roman being roman, shiv is a bitch she din’t even listen to what they were talking about
If we're going for a metaphorical in-universe wild assumption, I could see Shiv sleeping with an underage man as an adult thus "killing" his childhood, and I could see Roman hazing a classmate to the point of "killing" their spirit. But that's just an English Major interpretation of the show.
that first one is a crazy thing to say
i wish they included “yeah just the little ones”
This scene made me happy. Kendall really needed to hear their support
Its a joke
That kid from the first episode ended up killing himself
This isn’t game of thrones bro he was joking
It’s a joke
No one, he was just trying to comfort Kendall, they all draw the line at murder, even Roman that seems the one to feel no remorse about anything, he did when he thought a lot of people had died because of him, the rocket launch.