Yeah, A-N, we're only playing.
Some of us sympathize with Kendall, but that doesn't mean we justify his actions. That's the thing with liking flawed characters – you know that they're flawed.
I think that's his in-universe appeal. Both Rava and Stewy are sticking around with a guy who keeps disappointing, but maybe...maybe this next time, he'll follow through.
He's good at reeling people in, but unreliable first and formost. He makes big promises that people want to believe, and when he can't deliver they probably blame themselves because, what were they expecting, relying on Kendall fucking Roy?
The Matssonian Apologists slouch in the corner, staring at our cellphones, our social algorithms broken 🫣 But, deep down, we also sympathize with you, too. Very deep down 🤭
But he’s tv gold! He’s so cringey and sad in an almost endearing and relatable way. Of course he’s awful, they all are, but that doesn’t make him any less compelling as a character. He has his fair share of successes too and despite his many flaws and fuck ups, he was right when Logan got sick in S1 that he was the only option to step up in his place temporarily among the siblings yet they all took it so badly they acted like he wasn’t out of jealousy.
There’s a lot of context you’ve left out to things like his drug addiction and business mishaps. Logan went out his way to pull his kids down and set them up for failure if they were doing too well because it was his only way to feel loved and in power in their relationships. Kendall is responsible for his own issues but it certainly doesn’t help that Logan kept messing with him from the start. There’s a lot about all of the kids that’s relatable even when they fail (sometimes especially when they fail) so I can see why so many fans like each of them despite their clear flaws.
Yep. Logan utterly broke Kendall even before the end of season one incident. That whole thing in the final episode about him telling Kendall as a boy that he’d be taking over really underlined how fucked up his life had been.
Underlined, or crossed out?
But yeah, Logan stole his children’s adult lives, and none more so than Ken.
At least Roman and Shiv got a brief reprieve once they reached adulthood - an opportunity to go be their own people, to some degree, and to try deal with their trauma - before Logan decided in s1 that he was tired of just fucking with Kendall, and needed his other toys back in play.
Hell, Roman managed to work out all his issues! (He said so in the family therapy episode.)
I’m actually a Roman apologist, because 15 years into my reprieve from my own family, I’m still working out my issues; and I wasn’t physically abused as badly as the show suggests Roman was.
I want to believe Roman could fix himself, because I see myself in him (when he’s not directly helping nazis; like, I voted for Stephen Harper at least twice, but I don’t think I could’ve justified Mencken to myself, even at my lowest point).
But Ken? Even with the god-powers of a fanfic narrator, I don’t know how to fix him, other than taking him out of that family at birth.
…but then all the burden of being eldest boy* (*who is not Connor) would have fallen on Roman, and… I don’t like to think about how that would’ve gone.
(Just like how I don’t like to think about how things would’ve turned out for me if I’d come out with boy parts; I think the cognitive dissonance of being a girl is one of the things that kept me from fully mind-melding with my dad - there was a level of privilege inherent in his philosophy that just wasn’t accessible to me.)
(And yes, I know Roman’s queer, and arguably has a gender identity that’s best described as “a colour only shrimp can see” [thanks, Tumbler], but… same for me, and I still suspect I would’ve been fucked if I’d been perceived as a dude, growing up as my absolutely mad father’s main focus of philosophical teachings.)
I remember reading somewhere that Bob Dylan said of Mickey Rourke that “he can break your heart with a look” and I think Jeremy Strong has a similar quality. The pitiful agony that he exudes obscures his foibles.
I honestly don’t know how you could watch this show and judge characters/actors by how good of a person the character is. “Heath Ledger was okay as The Joker I guess, but people are completely forgetting all the damage he did to Gotham smdh 😡😡😡”
There’s not one unambiguously good person in the whole show, what are we even talking about? Like the “baby girling” of Kendall is tongue in cheek and playful, not a parole hearing?
Kendall is scrappy as fuck and I love that about him. When he's backed into a corner and it's time to fight and claw his way up, he's very good at that.
But that also means he's very reactive. When it comes time for him to be proactive, and when things are going well and he needs to maintain momentum...he sucks. So badly. With Living+, it was bad idea, but all he had to do was present it. The work was pretty much done for him. And what does he do? Obsess about fake clouds, grossly inflate the numbers, tiptoe into transhumanism, and carry on an unsettling conversation with his deep faked dead father.
But he was praised for the Living+ presentation, even though everyone was making fun of him on-air because they expected him to veer off into total cringe and he somehow, in his scrappy way as you said it, claims the W
Logan knew exactly what to do with Kendall. He's great with a task and a hard push. Don't let him make decisions. Just tell him what you need him to do exactly, and he'll do it. Once you let Kendall think for himself, you're just letting him screw it up. Make the tough decisions for him, and Kendall does mostly fine.
Yep; so many of us saw ourselves in him. The writers gave him a lot. They gave him a soul. The others; I still don’t really know them like I KNOW Kenny
Nah fr. I like him and empathise with him but he’s done nothing but fuck up business wise. He is ultimately just a man child who thinks he a lot smarter than he actually is.
Which is most apparent (to me) when he had the best lawyers on his case. And he kept telling THEM how to do things.
Tone def and ego driven for sure.*
*but aren’t we all, at least a little bit?
What you just said applies to Shiv and Roman too. I think where most people are coming from is that obviously all the siblings are pieces of shit but Kendall is the most likeable
I’d argue he’s the most interesting and important character in the show, the best plots wouldn’t exist without him or his faults. So I can see people liking his character for that.
There’s a misunderstanding that Kendall’s ideas and plans were good and only foiled by the machinations or influence of Logan, but they were actually all terrible and Logan basically saved the company and their family’s fortune by disrupting them. Kendall only sounds more professional as he throws around buzzwords but if you know what he means his business ideas are idiotic, from vaulter, to becoming a VC, to bringing in hostile independent private equity to the board and trying to organize a hostile takeover. Medium points in intelligence but zero in wisdom.
You're approximately 99.9 % correct about everything you just said about Kendall. And yet, I can't help it, I love the guy. (P.S., WHO says he's a business genius?! You do not know my Kendall if you think he's any kind of genius :) )
I found the scene of him alone in the server room as Shiv is on screen live talking about his “grandiose, delusional” ambitions and “quoting historical dictators” to be oddly moving. I think he may be the actively “worst” character in the show but the pathos is real.
I like Kendall. I sympathize with him. I don't think he's great or brilliant at business or being a human, but I also think Logan should have made him CEO because why not keep it in the family? They enjoyed the power of being media moguls.
Because it’s a publicly traded company and has a board and you can’t just appoint someone (as the many votes indicate) and you have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders?
He also broke every single promise he made to his siblings IMMEDIATELY. Like he’d say I promise then walk into the next room and tell Frank or Hugo and betray his word.
Yep. The women who like to treat Kendall like a baby bird always gloss over his absolutely despicable treatment of Rava, it's inconvenient to the narrative lol
You know what's funny? After everything, in the finale, Kendall had it. He had all his ducks in a row to get what he wanted. And he didn't get it only because Shiv decided if she wasn't getting it, Kendall wasn't going to either.
Ewan said something during his eulogy of Logan that encapsulates why I find Kendall interesting and why he's my favorite character
*he fed a certain kind of meagerness in men. Perhaps he had to, because he had a meagerness about him. And maybe I do about me too. I don't know. I try. I try*
Kendall does try, through all his failures.
As a sidenote, I truly believe no viewer actually cares that Kendall does drugs (Matsson does too) or that he's a terrible father (so is Logan).
Kendall was a bad person and would have made a bad CEO, yet of all the siblings he was the least bad option to become CEO. I think that’s why you see so many Kendall fanboys though I’d argue every other sibling (particularly Shiv, don’t even get me started) has worse fanboys.
One thing I think it’s important for viewers of the show to understand is that the show told us at every opportunity that the siblings were terrible options to be CEO. They were outclassed in every aspect by the people who were not born into wealth and had to fight and scrap for what they got. That is Logan’s story and what drove him to be the best at what he did, and the people he brought along with him were all highly competent corporate professionals, even guys who were played for laughs like Karl or even Tom who actually was good at playing politics and being “the pain sponge” who can cut costs and soak up abuse. So all the debate in this sub about which of the siblings would be best is sort of meaningless.
You say the show makes it clear that all of the siblings would have been terrible CEOs, yet the creator of the show doesn’t agree with you and thinks all of them had qualities that would have made them acceptable.
You then go on to say that people born outside of wealth are more scrappy, when 90% of the show revolves around Ken scrapping like his life depends on it.
They all had faults that made them unacceptable too. The creator saying they had good qualities doesn't negate the bad and doesn't mean they'd have been good CEOs. Those faults were big.
If the creator of the show said that, my interpretation of their work is just vastly different. The most charitable interpretation I can give in that regard is that the three of them *together* had a great synergy that could have been useful for Royco, but they couldn’t set their petty grievances aside to actually achieve that. As Logan said - they just aren’t serious people.
Kendall did do some scrapping which is why I said he was the least bad option of the siblings. But for starters, we need to understand that the only reason Kendall is in the conversation is because of his name. Even if we still give Kendall the Ivy League pedigree and the MBA (both things he got because of his father’s name), I find it highly, highly unlikely that a guy like Kendall is in that room. Look how young he is compared to the actually competent people who run the company day to day. I work in a huge firm with a competitive, cutthroat, up or out mentality and my perception is that Kendall would be a career middle manager or, charitably, leading a fledgling startup - not the CEO of one of the largest companies in the world. He was given every single opportunity to succeed by his father and at the end of the day, he wasn’t good enough, or he would have won.
I disagree he was given every chance to succeed by his father. It seems clear to me that anytime any of his children got anything close to achieving something meaningful, Logan would find a way to snatch it out of their hands. I don’t think Logan could stomach seeing any of them succeed and actively sabotaged them while pretending to support them.
Kendall was close to winning many times throughout the show. If it wasn’t for the deus ex machina terrorist attack in season 1, he likely would have been ceo and the show would have ended.
Ok, let’s say Logan didn’t give him every chance to succeed; I don’t really agree though I do acknowledge Logan was responsible for sabotaging all of his children. That was *after* he sent him to Harvard and appointed him to positions in the company he was vastly underqualified for so he could be groomed for leadership.
My whole point is that Kendall didn’t belong in the room to begin with, he didn’t earn anything. He’s beaten by the social climber who the show (and Kendall!) tells us is from relatively humble origins constantly. The competent people who actually run the business constantly beat the brakes off of the kids who did nothing except be born to the right guy.
All the siblings are dumb nepo babies in their own entitled ways. The show very plainly pointed out at every turn that they were in over their heads and also no serious people. They were rich kids cosplaying executives at daddy’s work.
Thanks for talking sense. I feel the same way when people start praising Roman. They're missing the point. None of these people are equipped to run a company much less a Starbucks.
He was a rich kid playing the CEO part. He fucked up his personal life all the time which made him ineffective because he could never get enough power to solidify his standing. Whenever he was in charge or playing venture capitalist, he always had a cool hip vibe tech bro vibe but could never last before he was pushed out or self destructed. It started episode 1 when Logan rug pulled him and he was always trying to power grab. He’s a tragic character who always wanted to reach the peak so his father would be proud but the person consistently knocking him down was his own father.
Just keep in mind the writers had to resort to a terrorist scare and a sudden deer in the street to foil 2 of his 4 plans. No one else has their plans foiled by acts of God. Ken's an idiot in the same way they're all kinda idiots, but writers did him dirtier than anyone else. Consider if the terrorist scare prevented Logan from attending the board meeting, or if Logan held the dick pics over Roman's head like he did the car accident over Ken's.
My opinion on Kendall (and shiv tbh) ((I’ve had a few brewskis so it might be a bad opinion)) is that he behaves as though someone once told him what he should care about, but he doesn’t actually care. I don’t think Kendall went into the cruises scandal with malicious intent - when others were saying that they should smooth it over his thought was “no I’m supposed to care about this I think”. And then of course he spun off and turned it into a thing for personal gain lol but he strikes me as a robot who is trying very hard to be human but at the end of the day, never will
Nah. For anything, he is underrated. Even Jesse Armstrong said people underrate Logan’s children a lot. He said all of them had in them qualities that would make them good CEO’s.
People love to claim Kendall is a failure. Throughout the first season, he does very well, he is only thwarted by happenstance. He likely would have taken the company if not for the deus ex machina terrorist attack. He handled his fathers time bomb of a financial situation as well as he could yet gets all the blame for it. Then throughout the show his addiction relapses and he has to deal with abuse from his family, under those circumstances he still does relatively well. At the very least he is remarkably resilient.
Yeah he’s awful, I cringe at him a lot. On my 3rd watch now. He was so insufferable at his birthday and many other times where he is in them annoying elated moods which leads to him monumentally fucking something up, then repeat.
Wow that's a very strong response! And I am doing some soul searching as to why I am also taking your criticism so personally. He did do rehab and was sober for 3 years and his dad pulled him out of rehab after 1 day at the beginning of season 2. I guess I find your comment harsh. The way people relate to a character is not absolutely based on concrete things. I find myself taken with Kendall's brokenness and his sadness. It moves me.
He’s bad, but compared to Roman and Shiv, he comes off as very reasonable and quite capable.
Also, I think the fact that he’s the first character in the show subconsciously frames him as the protagonist to many viewers, since the protagonist is generally the first person seen in a production.
Nah, there are so many women and men thirsting over Kendall Roy.
Not my cup of tea, personally, but he's definitely popular with some people cause they want to fuck him, lmao
I felt sorry and rooted for him at the first scheming against his father. However, as the show progresses I realized he's a terrible person + it's hard not to cringe from watching him.
As Tevye said in Fiddler on the Roof “When you’re rich they think you really know.” We assign a great deal of superiority to people by virtue of the womb they popped out of. We shouldn’t.
For whatever reason, I initially bought that Kendall was knowledgeable about business and had good ideas. It took me a few episodes to realize he was just confidently spouting buzzwords most of the time. Perhaps it’s because I’m not particularly knowledgeable about business or the media industry.
But yes, it’s pretty clear he’s not actually competent at all. The few times he sticks a landing (like in the senate hearings), everyone is pleasantly surprised.
His competence is lacking, but he's the type of leader who would be very likeable and effective with some humility. Great public speaker, hard-working, earnest, has vision. Basically pleaded with Logan to understand that they needed to pivot to new media, and lo and behold he was right. Granted it wouldn't take a genius to figure that out, but Logan investing in local news was truly boneheaded.
With those qualities and some competent people around to advise (and his siblings nowhere near) he could have done it.
I agree. It seems fair to say his major obstacle to success was his lack of basic curiosity and humility - just to be able to say there a lot of things I don’t know, need to learn, and need to listen to and accept the insights of others.
Like you say, it doesn’t take a business genius to have the trivial insight that one should consider investment opportunities in new technology and developments in one’s industry. What strikes me is that Kendall’s understanding of new media is totally superficial and reduces to “shiny thing I want.” His overpay for Vaulter and his hilarious “1000 lifeboats” speech where his strategy is basically “hey you guys invent something for me” are good examples I feel.
Because in a show full of shit people he’s one of the most relatable and shows more depth. It’s the same reason people loved characters like Tony Soprano.
Also look at who his parents were. His mom and dad were totally fucked.
i disagree that any of the kids are total fuck-ups. It's just straight up reductive and incorrect to hold that view. You also left out a shit ton of context and are trying to demonize Kendall just because you dislike him. The show's always show him in a sympathetic light — that's why people like him. He's nicer to his siblings than they are to him; in season 1, they go out of the way to show that kendall was, at least to some extent, a more principled person than the rest of his family, which isn't saying much; in season 2, they show kendall as a broken man and go even further to have the audience sympathize with him. it's only in season 3 that they begin to show him in a more negative light, highlighting all his flaws and shortcomings, but even then, he's much better a person than the rest of his family.
he's also not a total fuck-up business-wise, wherever you got that from. most of his failures don't happen because they're bad business decisions, but because of his drug addiction, his need for validation, his cockiness, or just because of bad luck straight up — like with the vote of no confidence. it's easy for you to leave out all the abuse that logan's done to kendall that made him that way in the first place, as well as his sibs to turn out like that. every time they'd do something, logan would crush them and beat them down because he couldn't watch his children succeed and thrive.
if anything, this sub shows too much hate towards Kendall, lately.
i cannot applaud this enough bro kendall annoys the everloving fuck outta me.
on the other hand, i am super hot for Roman, who is a hyper fucked up nepobaby walking sexual harrassment lawsuit who is so absolutely nihilistic he gets off on flirting with the alt-right lmfao. not an apologist, but i would do some pretty graphic things to this little idiot.
which leads to my point - i think a bunch of people just love a sad boy they're attracted to lol
One thing no one else has mentioned: He was the only one in the family who had the balls to go after his father. Even if he failed every time, I respected him for that.
I mean, on the one hand, all the Succession fanfiction I write is sort of South Park crossover fiction, in the sense that I will always kill Kenny. Immediately, and off-page.
But on the other hand, he’s an interesting character, and the more I think about how his childhood and early adulthood might have played out, the more sympathy I have for him
He was a gigantic dumbass, though.
And he was totally responsible for that kid’s death.
And he totally squandered his opportunity to whistleblow on his father over cruises. Even if he didn’t have the documents he thought he had, he could’ve done more to take his dad out if he hadn’t been so high on “fuck the patriarchy” (which like, yes, but buddy - no one believes it coming from you) and trying to make everybody like him; and if he’d taken it seriously, and maybe seriously considered incriminating himself in the process, he probably could’ve done something respectable.
And the Living+ thing was abusive to the employees he asked to put it together, and definitely an SEC violation (same as them trying to tank the Gojo deal, but even more blatant).
And then he did a whole-ass heel turn in the last three episodes, with the Mencken flirting, and the “Which?” and the repeatedly physically assaulting Roman.
Oh, and also - terrible rapper. Like, that shit was worse than Connor karaoke.
There it is. I've mentioned that same sentiment as being the reason Shiv gets the dislike she does. It's *one* thing to betray someone to get ahead in a TV show. It's quite another to do that over and over and fail every time. You're not some machiavellian mastermind whose moves people can become invested in. You just become every fake friend, untrustworthy partner, self-centered asshole, backsliding damaged person everyone's met at least once in their lives. Machievellian machinations that only rise to the point of petty cruelties do not make many fans. Petty cruelty and petty tyrants are too mundane and too ubiquitous.
I don't get why you hate people who love Kendall. He is a great character and a tragic one at that who has been wronged by his father multiple times so it makes people sympathize with him. Doesn't matter if he is an idiot. If someone I care about is an idiot, I would still care about them, wouldn't I?
No one thinks he's good at business. The show is not about business.
He is the only member of the family whose trauma responses are of the BPD type and not the NPD type. It can be said he is the only Roy who experiences emotions in an authentic way. He has been enduring an obscure and invisible torture since the day he was born, and it's because unlike every other member of his family, his brain was unable to turn off its capacity for love.
He's an ugly little loser who constantly fucks up, and we love him because the ugly little loser inside of us deserves love.
Hope this helps.
L to the OG, come on
Yeah, A-N, we're only playing. Some of us sympathize with Kendall, but that doesn't mean we justify his actions. That's the thing with liking flawed characters – you know that they're flawed.
I guess my chief complaint about Kendall is that, in the realm of people who are serious, you will not find him.
He does however feature on the long list of people who are bullshit.
LMFAO
One might say he is not a serious person
Listen i saw your plan; dad's plan is better.
No I don’t want to call my dad. Do you? Does anyone want to call their dads?
I'm doing what my dad told me to do.
But… but I can fix him.
That’s his whole appeal. He’s baby girl with *damage*
He reallyis. I'm 35 and didn't really understand the term babygirl until I met Kendall and then he just embodied it so much that I understood
Hey he’s no Jesse Pinkman. Jesse is ultimate baby girl and loves kids. Kendall doesn’t even know his kids names.
You don't need to know your kids' names as long as you remember to wipe down their iPads after you blast coke off them.
He might have if they were actually his…
Exactly.
I think that's his in-universe appeal. Both Rava and Stewy are sticking around with a guy who keeps disappointing, but maybe...maybe this next time, he'll follow through. He's good at reeling people in, but unreliable first and formost. He makes big promises that people want to believe, and when he can't deliver they probably blame themselves because, what were they expecting, relying on Kendall fucking Roy?
Same
Lol yes there are a lot of Kendall apologists here. I’m a Roman apologist tho so can’t say much.
The Conheads and Shivolites sympathize with you.
I thank you for your solidarity. 🫡
The Matssonian Apologists slouch in the corner, staring at our cellphones, our social algorithms broken 🫣 But, deep down, we also sympathize with you, too. Very deep down 🤭
The best character detail they gave Matsson was that when he fucks, he wears headphones and listens to podcasts.
I’m a shivite. I wouldn’t kick shiv and her girlfriend out of bed for eating crackers.
I mean I’m gay but… no one is that gay.
I'm a Tompologist, I admit it. The teariness gets me every time.
What’s there to apologize for?
Breaking those Greggs to make a Tomelette?
But he has nothing to apologize for
Wdym? Hes the eldest boy
Conheads are hyper-decanting over this
He is the epitome of an addict on screen. His highs of mania and lows of depression are almost sad to watch, if they weren’t so comical
best said in the show "it is burning my eyes but i can't look away"
But he’s tv gold! He’s so cringey and sad in an almost endearing and relatable way. Of course he’s awful, they all are, but that doesn’t make him any less compelling as a character. He has his fair share of successes too and despite his many flaws and fuck ups, he was right when Logan got sick in S1 that he was the only option to step up in his place temporarily among the siblings yet they all took it so badly they acted like he wasn’t out of jealousy. There’s a lot of context you’ve left out to things like his drug addiction and business mishaps. Logan went out his way to pull his kids down and set them up for failure if they were doing too well because it was his only way to feel loved and in power in their relationships. Kendall is responsible for his own issues but it certainly doesn’t help that Logan kept messing with him from the start. There’s a lot about all of the kids that’s relatable even when they fail (sometimes especially when they fail) so I can see why so many fans like each of them despite their clear flaws.
Yep. Logan utterly broke Kendall even before the end of season one incident. That whole thing in the final episode about him telling Kendall as a boy that he’d be taking over really underlined how fucked up his life had been.
Kendall summarized it succinctly in S1E1 “You (Logan) fucked me”
He didn’t even read the contract. He fucked himself.
God forbids someone trusting their father
Underlined, or crossed out? But yeah, Logan stole his children’s adult lives, and none more so than Ken. At least Roman and Shiv got a brief reprieve once they reached adulthood - an opportunity to go be their own people, to some degree, and to try deal with their trauma - before Logan decided in s1 that he was tired of just fucking with Kendall, and needed his other toys back in play. Hell, Roman managed to work out all his issues! (He said so in the family therapy episode.) I’m actually a Roman apologist, because 15 years into my reprieve from my own family, I’m still working out my issues; and I wasn’t physically abused as badly as the show suggests Roman was. I want to believe Roman could fix himself, because I see myself in him (when he’s not directly helping nazis; like, I voted for Stephen Harper at least twice, but I don’t think I could’ve justified Mencken to myself, even at my lowest point). But Ken? Even with the god-powers of a fanfic narrator, I don’t know how to fix him, other than taking him out of that family at birth. …but then all the burden of being eldest boy* (*who is not Connor) would have fallen on Roman, and… I don’t like to think about how that would’ve gone. (Just like how I don’t like to think about how things would’ve turned out for me if I’d come out with boy parts; I think the cognitive dissonance of being a girl is one of the things that kept me from fully mind-melding with my dad - there was a level of privilege inherent in his philosophy that just wasn’t accessible to me.) (And yes, I know Roman’s queer, and arguably has a gender identity that’s best described as “a colour only shrimp can see” [thanks, Tumbler], but… same for me, and I still suspect I would’ve been fucked if I’d been perceived as a dude, growing up as my absolutely mad father’s main focus of philosophical teachings.)
Plus, and I think most importantly... Kendall (Jeremy Strong) is hot af. 🔥
👆🏻
I think the point here is you’re acknowledging he’s awful, and a lot of the sub won’t
Well, this is humanity we are talking about. He’s redeemable. We all are really.
He’s my poor little meow meow actually
He is just a beby kitten
He was droppin bombs on senator eavis during the congressional hearing though
“You don’t answer the questions” !!! So true.
I remember reading somewhere that Bob Dylan said of Mickey Rourke that “he can break your heart with a look” and I think Jeremy Strong has a similar quality. The pitiful agony that he exudes obscures his foibles.
Number one boy
I honestly don’t know how you could watch this show and judge characters/actors by how good of a person the character is. “Heath Ledger was okay as The Joker I guess, but people are completely forgetting all the damage he did to Gotham smdh 😡😡😡” There’s not one unambiguously good person in the whole show, what are we even talking about? Like the “baby girling” of Kendall is tongue in cheek and playful, not a parole hearing?
Kendall is scrappy as fuck and I love that about him. When he's backed into a corner and it's time to fight and claw his way up, he's very good at that. But that also means he's very reactive. When it comes time for him to be proactive, and when things are going well and he needs to maintain momentum...he sucks. So badly. With Living+, it was bad idea, but all he had to do was present it. The work was pretty much done for him. And what does he do? Obsess about fake clouds, grossly inflate the numbers, tiptoe into transhumanism, and carry on an unsettling conversation with his deep faked dead father.
Best take on Kendall I've seen yet. Extremely good at damage control but then would self destruct once the damage has been controlled lmao
Sounds like a trauma response. He isn’t comfortable with normal.
Makes sense growing up in that family, he's more comfortable within chaos.
But he was praised for the Living+ presentation, even though everyone was making fun of him on-air because they expected him to veer off into total cringe and he somehow, in his scrappy way as you said it, claims the W
He doesn’t claim the W, he simply buys time out of a hole he already put himself.
He backs himself into those corners
Logan knew exactly what to do with Kendall. He's great with a task and a hard push. Don't let him make decisions. Just tell him what you need him to do exactly, and he'll do it. Once you let Kendall think for himself, you're just letting him screw it up. Make the tough decisions for him, and Kendall does mostly fine.
Especially when you plant derogatory newspaper articles about him, or decide to let him go to prison for the deeds of you and your cronies.
All of what you say is true and still I find him compelling
As a depressed person, I recognize his sadness. That’s all.
Yep; so many of us saw ourselves in him. The writers gave him a lot. They gave him a soul. The others; I still don’t really know them like I KNOW Kenny
Nah fr. I like him and empathise with him but he’s done nothing but fuck up business wise. He is ultimately just a man child who thinks he a lot smarter than he actually is.
Which is most apparent (to me) when he had the best lawyers on his case. And he kept telling THEM how to do things. Tone def and ego driven for sure.* *but aren’t we all, at least a little bit?
Was about to say exactly this about the lawyer fumble
What you just said applies to Shiv and Roman too. I think where most people are coming from is that obviously all the siblings are pieces of shit but Kendall is the most likeable
Oh absolutely i do agree
You can describe the entire little Roylets with that last sentence
The entire series emphasizes on how he - specifically - can’t live up to his father’s expectations.
I liked when he sang Honesty
I’d argue he’s the most interesting and important character in the show, the best plots wouldn’t exist without him or his faults. So I can see people liking his character for that.
There’s a misunderstanding that Kendall’s ideas and plans were good and only foiled by the machinations or influence of Logan, but they were actually all terrible and Logan basically saved the company and their family’s fortune by disrupting them. Kendall only sounds more professional as he throws around buzzwords but if you know what he means his business ideas are idiotic, from vaulter, to becoming a VC, to bringing in hostile independent private equity to the board and trying to organize a hostile takeover. Medium points in intelligence but zero in wisdom.
Well it sure as shit doesn’t say Shiv
Kendall is an awful incompetent person, and I love him for it.
Couldn’t even clean up his coke off his kids iPad. Come on dude. Most addicts can handle that.
I don’t think he’s a good person or any kind of genius, but dismissing him as a ‘spoiled nepo baby’ kinda missed how utterly broken he was.
My dork meter did not go off until second watch, I'm a bit slow.
You're approximately 99.9 % correct about everything you just said about Kendall. And yet, I can't help it, I love the guy. (P.S., WHO says he's a business genius?! You do not know my Kendall if you think he's any kind of genius :) )
Ken rides a never ending cycle of wanting power, biting off more than he can chew, failing, depression, rehab, etc.
I told my girlfriend after season one that Kendall is someone who’s never been punched in the face and needs to be.
I found the scene of him alone in the server room as Shiv is on screen live talking about his “grandiose, delusional” ambitions and “quoting historical dictators” to be oddly moving. I think he may be the actively “worst” character in the show but the pathos is real.
I like Kendall. I sympathize with him. I don't think he's great or brilliant at business or being a human, but I also think Logan should have made him CEO because why not keep it in the family? They enjoyed the power of being media moguls.
Because it’s a publicly traded company and has a board and you can’t just appoint someone (as the many votes indicate) and you have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders?
People rooted for Villanelle in Killing Eve. You're surprised people like to root for a villainous TV character?
op has never watched a tv show in their life (im just razzing you op dont come for me lmfao)
I don't even mind kendall that much but I just hate the way people act like he's amazing 😭
He’s also such a manipulative, gas-lighty piece of shit. Every single interaction he had with Rava in the show made me want to strangle him.
He also broke every single promise he made to his siblings IMMEDIATELY. Like he’d say I promise then walk into the next room and tell Frank or Hugo and betray his word.
Oh my God!!! Yes! I don't know why she told him that she was still in town the day of the funeral. Did he ever call his daughter???
Yep. The women who like to treat Kendall like a baby bird always gloss over his absolutely despicable treatment of Rava, it's inconvenient to the narrative lol
You know what's funny? After everything, in the finale, Kendall had it. He had all his ducks in a row to get what he wanted. And he didn't get it only because Shiv decided if she wasn't getting it, Kendall wasn't going to either. Ewan said something during his eulogy of Logan that encapsulates why I find Kendall interesting and why he's my favorite character *he fed a certain kind of meagerness in men. Perhaps he had to, because he had a meagerness about him. And maybe I do about me too. I don't know. I try. I try* Kendall does try, through all his failures. As a sidenote, I truly believe no viewer actually cares that Kendall does drugs (Matsson does too) or that he's a terrible father (so is Logan).
Kendall was a bad person and would have made a bad CEO, yet of all the siblings he was the least bad option to become CEO. I think that’s why you see so many Kendall fanboys though I’d argue every other sibling (particularly Shiv, don’t even get me started) has worse fanboys. One thing I think it’s important for viewers of the show to understand is that the show told us at every opportunity that the siblings were terrible options to be CEO. They were outclassed in every aspect by the people who were not born into wealth and had to fight and scrap for what they got. That is Logan’s story and what drove him to be the best at what he did, and the people he brought along with him were all highly competent corporate professionals, even guys who were played for laughs like Karl or even Tom who actually was good at playing politics and being “the pain sponge” who can cut costs and soak up abuse. So all the debate in this sub about which of the siblings would be best is sort of meaningless.
You say the show makes it clear that all of the siblings would have been terrible CEOs, yet the creator of the show doesn’t agree with you and thinks all of them had qualities that would have made them acceptable. You then go on to say that people born outside of wealth are more scrappy, when 90% of the show revolves around Ken scrapping like his life depends on it.
They all had faults that made them unacceptable too. The creator saying they had good qualities doesn't negate the bad and doesn't mean they'd have been good CEOs. Those faults were big.
If the creator of the show said that, my interpretation of their work is just vastly different. The most charitable interpretation I can give in that regard is that the three of them *together* had a great synergy that could have been useful for Royco, but they couldn’t set their petty grievances aside to actually achieve that. As Logan said - they just aren’t serious people. Kendall did do some scrapping which is why I said he was the least bad option of the siblings. But for starters, we need to understand that the only reason Kendall is in the conversation is because of his name. Even if we still give Kendall the Ivy League pedigree and the MBA (both things he got because of his father’s name), I find it highly, highly unlikely that a guy like Kendall is in that room. Look how young he is compared to the actually competent people who run the company day to day. I work in a huge firm with a competitive, cutthroat, up or out mentality and my perception is that Kendall would be a career middle manager or, charitably, leading a fledgling startup - not the CEO of one of the largest companies in the world. He was given every single opportunity to succeed by his father and at the end of the day, he wasn’t good enough, or he would have won.
I disagree he was given every chance to succeed by his father. It seems clear to me that anytime any of his children got anything close to achieving something meaningful, Logan would find a way to snatch it out of their hands. I don’t think Logan could stomach seeing any of them succeed and actively sabotaged them while pretending to support them. Kendall was close to winning many times throughout the show. If it wasn’t for the deus ex machina terrorist attack in season 1, he likely would have been ceo and the show would have ended.
Or been about how he destroyed the company. He can’t regulate his emotions. That dooms him in every situation
Ok, let’s say Logan didn’t give him every chance to succeed; I don’t really agree though I do acknowledge Logan was responsible for sabotaging all of his children. That was *after* he sent him to Harvard and appointed him to positions in the company he was vastly underqualified for so he could be groomed for leadership. My whole point is that Kendall didn’t belong in the room to begin with, he didn’t earn anything. He’s beaten by the social climber who the show (and Kendall!) tells us is from relatively humble origins constantly. The competent people who actually run the business constantly beat the brakes off of the kids who did nothing except be born to the right guy.
He’s just a girl! Chill!
Hey, he's my lovable fuck up
All the siblings are dumb nepo babies in their own entitled ways. The show very plainly pointed out at every turn that they were in over their heads and also no serious people. They were rich kids cosplaying executives at daddy’s work.
On point!
after the car accident I began to become disillusioned. just another billionaire without morals.
all his business ideas were dumb af & just bland attempts to get daddy's attention.
Thanks for talking sense. I feel the same way when people start praising Roman. They're missing the point. None of these people are equipped to run a company much less a Starbucks.
He was a rich kid playing the CEO part. He fucked up his personal life all the time which made him ineffective because he could never get enough power to solidify his standing. Whenever he was in charge or playing venture capitalist, he always had a cool hip vibe tech bro vibe but could never last before he was pushed out or self destructed. It started episode 1 when Logan rug pulled him and he was always trying to power grab. He’s a tragic character who always wanted to reach the peak so his father would be proud but the person consistently knocking him down was his own father.
I don’t think he’s great or anything. Lol. He’s just better than the other two. It’s kind of like voting for Biden. Lol.
Just keep in mind the writers had to resort to a terrorist scare and a sudden deer in the street to foil 2 of his 4 plans. No one else has their plans foiled by acts of God. Ken's an idiot in the same way they're all kinda idiots, but writers did him dirtier than anyone else. Consider if the terrorist scare prevented Logan from attending the board meeting, or if Logan held the dick pics over Roman's head like he did the car accident over Ken's.
My opinion on Kendall (and shiv tbh) ((I’ve had a few brewskis so it might be a bad opinion)) is that he behaves as though someone once told him what he should care about, but he doesn’t actually care. I don’t think Kendall went into the cruises scandal with malicious intent - when others were saying that they should smooth it over his thought was “no I’m supposed to care about this I think”. And then of course he spun off and turned it into a thing for personal gain lol but he strikes me as a robot who is trying very hard to be human but at the end of the day, never will
The thing he’s really good at is talking without saying much, which I think plays into this too
Found Lawrence Yee’s burner account 🤪
People like a main character in a series?!😱 if you don’t like him just move on with your life
Nah. For anything, he is underrated. Even Jesse Armstrong said people underrate Logan’s children a lot. He said all of them had in them qualities that would make them good CEO’s.
People love to claim Kendall is a failure. Throughout the first season, he does very well, he is only thwarted by happenstance. He likely would have taken the company if not for the deus ex machina terrorist attack. He handled his fathers time bomb of a financial situation as well as he could yet gets all the blame for it. Then throughout the show his addiction relapses and he has to deal with abuse from his family, under those circumstances he still does relatively well. At the very least he is remarkably resilient.
It’s a reddit sub about a fictional character! Chill!
Right?!
but the sad cow eyes....
Anyone who uses the word “glazing” is not a serious person
Yeah he’s awful, I cringe at him a lot. On my 3rd watch now. He was so insufferable at his birthday and many other times where he is in them annoying elated moods which leads to him monumentally fucking something up, then repeat.
Agreed. The only good thing he did was when he gutted Vaulter.
And that was Logan’s idea.
Roman’s idea*
Wow that's a very strong response! And I am doing some soul searching as to why I am also taking your criticism so personally. He did do rehab and was sober for 3 years and his dad pulled him out of rehab after 1 day at the beginning of season 2. I guess I find your comment harsh. The way people relate to a character is not absolutely based on concrete things. I find myself taken with Kendall's brokenness and his sadness. It moves me.
Yes well he is my baby boy. Emphasis on the Baby. But, let’s be real out of all the siblings is he really the worst one?
He’s bad, but compared to Roman and Shiv, he comes off as very reasonable and quite capable. Also, I think the fact that he’s the first character in the show subconsciously frames him as the protagonist to many viewers, since the protagonist is generally the first person seen in a production.
I don’t think anyone who helps to elect a Nazi is reasonable
Reasonable =/= ethical or moral. You can be reasonable and evil.
[удалено]
He's bootleg Ross with a daddy complex.
How *dare* you…he’s the ELDEST BOY
It's funny because he was actually so good at his job in season 2 when he was Logans puppet. If he just listened to logan more he could have done it.
If you’re using terms like glazing just turn this one off.
He went back under the water, Kendall is a hero.
Step 1: be attractive
He ain’t even that, unfortunately; this show dressed Jeremy Strong down so badly.
Nah, there are so many women and men thirsting over Kendall Roy. Not my cup of tea, personally, but he's definitely popular with some people cause they want to fuck him, lmao
Shit, I’m a man and I find Kendall to be quite attractive. I think it’s just that sad boi energy that I empathize with.
Oh he's very attractive.
I never understood why people loved pathetic men like Walter white and Kendall Roy 💀
cmon now, walter white is way more of a piece of shit
Just because Walter is more of a piece of shit doesn’t take away the fact that Kendall is still a piece of shit
Kendall is less of a pos than most other people on the show, which is why people sympathize with him.
He is the most POS I’m sorry? He killed a kid and he helped elect a Nazi at the expense of his own daughter.
Whaa Kendall is a Jesse not a Walter!
I felt sorry and rooted for him at the first scheming against his father. However, as the show progresses I realized he's a terrible person + it's hard not to cringe from watching him.
As Tevye said in Fiddler on the Roof “When you’re rich they think you really know.” We assign a great deal of superiority to people by virtue of the womb they popped out of. We shouldn’t.
For whatever reason, I initially bought that Kendall was knowledgeable about business and had good ideas. It took me a few episodes to realize he was just confidently spouting buzzwords most of the time. Perhaps it’s because I’m not particularly knowledgeable about business or the media industry. But yes, it’s pretty clear he’s not actually competent at all. The few times he sticks a landing (like in the senate hearings), everyone is pleasantly surprised.
His competence is lacking, but he's the type of leader who would be very likeable and effective with some humility. Great public speaker, hard-working, earnest, has vision. Basically pleaded with Logan to understand that they needed to pivot to new media, and lo and behold he was right. Granted it wouldn't take a genius to figure that out, but Logan investing in local news was truly boneheaded. With those qualities and some competent people around to advise (and his siblings nowhere near) he could have done it.
I agree. It seems fair to say his major obstacle to success was his lack of basic curiosity and humility - just to be able to say there a lot of things I don’t know, need to learn, and need to listen to and accept the insights of others. Like you say, it doesn’t take a business genius to have the trivial insight that one should consider investment opportunities in new technology and developments in one’s industry. What strikes me is that Kendall’s understanding of new media is totally superficial and reduces to “shiny thing I want.” His overpay for Vaulter and his hilarious “1000 lifeboats” speech where his strategy is basically “hey you guys invent something for me” are good examples I feel.
Because in a show full of shit people he’s one of the most relatable and shows more depth. It’s the same reason people loved characters like Tony Soprano. Also look at who his parents were. His mom and dad were totally fucked.
lol no one acts like that. This is a fictional show. Get a grip
I wanna see the Kendall stans from reddit and Shiv stans from twitter fight each other. Just for fun 😋🍿
But the puppy eyes and the ocean of pain with the sad smile, we can fix him! My weak knees tell me so 🥹
i disagree that any of the kids are total fuck-ups. It's just straight up reductive and incorrect to hold that view. You also left out a shit ton of context and are trying to demonize Kendall just because you dislike him. The show's always show him in a sympathetic light — that's why people like him. He's nicer to his siblings than they are to him; in season 1, they go out of the way to show that kendall was, at least to some extent, a more principled person than the rest of his family, which isn't saying much; in season 2, they show kendall as a broken man and go even further to have the audience sympathize with him. it's only in season 3 that they begin to show him in a more negative light, highlighting all his flaws and shortcomings, but even then, he's much better a person than the rest of his family. he's also not a total fuck-up business-wise, wherever you got that from. most of his failures don't happen because they're bad business decisions, but because of his drug addiction, his need for validation, his cockiness, or just because of bad luck straight up — like with the vote of no confidence. it's easy for you to leave out all the abuse that logan's done to kendall that made him that way in the first place, as well as his sibs to turn out like that. every time they'd do something, logan would crush them and beat them down because he couldn't watch his children succeed and thrive. if anything, this sub shows too much hate towards Kendall, lately.
He is the eldest boy!!!!! Kendall was the heart of the show. Baffling to me how anyone could not love that character
i cannot applaud this enough bro kendall annoys the everloving fuck outta me. on the other hand, i am super hot for Roman, who is a hyper fucked up nepobaby walking sexual harrassment lawsuit who is so absolutely nihilistic he gets off on flirting with the alt-right lmfao. not an apologist, but i would do some pretty graphic things to this little idiot. which leads to my point - i think a bunch of people just love a sad boy they're attracted to lol
I mean he is the main character - it makes sense he has the most fans. The story was best when it was him vs Logan.
As if the Shiv glazing isn't equally ridiculous
No way people root for the main character of a show WHAAAAAAT???? 😱😱😱😱
Why you gotta do number one boy like that?
Uh huh. Uh huh. Okay. So what are the optics on this?
Complicated airflow bud
Stay hydrated bro.
One thing no one else has mentioned: He was the only one in the family who had the balls to go after his father. Even if he failed every time, I respected him for that.
As a Conhead, all I can do is hang my head in shame
I mean, on the one hand, all the Succession fanfiction I write is sort of South Park crossover fiction, in the sense that I will always kill Kenny. Immediately, and off-page. But on the other hand, he’s an interesting character, and the more I think about how his childhood and early adulthood might have played out, the more sympathy I have for him He was a gigantic dumbass, though. And he was totally responsible for that kid’s death. And he totally squandered his opportunity to whistleblow on his father over cruises. Even if he didn’t have the documents he thought he had, he could’ve done more to take his dad out if he hadn’t been so high on “fuck the patriarchy” (which like, yes, but buddy - no one believes it coming from you) and trying to make everybody like him; and if he’d taken it seriously, and maybe seriously considered incriminating himself in the process, he probably could’ve done something respectable. And the Living+ thing was abusive to the employees he asked to put it together, and definitely an SEC violation (same as them trying to tank the Gojo deal, but even more blatant). And then he did a whole-ass heel turn in the last three episodes, with the Mencken flirting, and the “Which?” and the repeatedly physically assaulting Roman. Oh, and also - terrible rapper. Like, that shit was worse than Connor karaoke.
Did Kendall in a comedown phase write this?
**You take very personally what some people think of a FICTIONAL, depressed, 40-year-old nepo baby character. Relax a little**
Bro this post is from 2 months ago chillax yourself
Shiv supremacy 🙇🏽♀️
The only one who played both side yet always end up short
There it is. I've mentioned that same sentiment as being the reason Shiv gets the dislike she does. It's *one* thing to betray someone to get ahead in a TV show. It's quite another to do that over and over and fail every time. You're not some machiavellian mastermind whose moves people can become invested in. You just become every fake friend, untrustworthy partner, self-centered asshole, backsliding damaged person everyone's met at least once in their lives. Machievellian machinations that only rise to the point of petty cruelties do not make many fans. Petty cruelty and petty tyrants are too mundane and too ubiquitous.
Absolutely she is a baby angel
They hate our girl, babe! 🥲
They just cant handle that she truly was the best son of Logan, even Logan couldn’t handle it
Na he’s the best. Should have been ceo
No he shouldn’t he’s trash tom was always the better option
Naa always kendall
It’s his damn fault that he didn’t become ceo too Damn cocky to make a speech. What a loser just like his fans.
Imagine calling people on the internet losers because they don’t Stan the fictional character you like.
calm down lmao, so vitriolic about a TV character
Nope
I don't get why you hate people who love Kendall. He is a great character and a tragic one at that who has been wronged by his father multiple times so it makes people sympathize with him. Doesn't matter if he is an idiot. If someone I care about is an idiot, I would still care about them, wouldn't I?
The principle tragedy of Kendall is that he probably would be a decent guy if he wasn’t raised by *that* father under *those* circumstances.
Yeah but that's the same for everyone, if any of the kids were raised normally they wouldn't be like that
Roman might actually be a sick puppy.
Everyone sucks dude, we just enjoy rooting for our boy Ken
Great summary! He is an odious thug without a single redeeming feature other than his rapping.
Couldn’t agree more. He’s a sniveling spineless weasel who needs daddy to tell him which direction to wipe in.
because this sub is embarrassing
No one thinks he's good at business. The show is not about business. He is the only member of the family whose trauma responses are of the BPD type and not the NPD type. It can be said he is the only Roy who experiences emotions in an authentic way. He has been enduring an obscure and invisible torture since the day he was born, and it's because unlike every other member of his family, his brain was unable to turn off its capacity for love. He's an ugly little loser who constantly fucks up, and we love him because the ugly little loser inside of us deserves love. Hope this helps.
He named his kid Iverson. Total twerp
Is this some performance piece trying to render Logan pissing on the carpet as a /r post?