“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” exclaims Hugo, right at the end of Kendall Roy’s investor speech to launch Living+, Waystar Royco’s not-creepy-at-all “warehouse for the elderly”.
The problem is not Kendall essentially promising, in a public forum, that the company would soon be able to offer eternal life (though it fits in well with Kendall in his extremely playing-God era right now), but Lukas Matsson – soon to be joint owner of the late Logan Roy’s dynasty – and his tweet responding to his lofty ambitions.
“Doderick Macht Frei,” it reads, extremely offensively, and if the words weren’t enough, Matsson has also found the time to mock up a picture of Doderick the dog, holding balloons, in front of Auschwitz.
“That’s a very nasty joke,” Roman says, and Shiv adds, “That’s what, a holocaust joke?”. Correct, and probably about one of the worst things anyone could say on social media.
The tweet is a play on words of the gates outside the World War II Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, which bore the lie “Arbeit macht frei”, or “Work will set you free”. According to Auschwitz’s official site, which explains the history of the phrase: “Prisoners marched out through the gate in rows of five each morning…When they returned to camp, the prisoners carried their fellow prisoners who had collapsed from exhaustion or illness, as well as those who had been worked to death or been murdered during the day.”
Matsson is essentially comparing Living+ – a compound/facility for older people, run by Waystar Royco – to a concentration camp, fronted “the family of Waystar’s cherished movie and TV characters”, like Doderick the dog. Doderick, you’ll remember, is the company’s mascot; star of the fictional kids film (“Doderick and Friends coming this spring!”, promises a poster at Investor Day earlier in this episode) and who Cousin Greg had to dress up as while he was working at the theme park, Brightstar Adventure Park, in the pilot episode.
However the character quickly gets attacked by children when a stoned Greg is out for a stroll in the park (and putting on the dog’s high-pitched voice), and he ends up vomiting through Doderick’s eyeballs.
What were the other tweets about Kendall’s speech saying?
Aside from Matsson’s abhorrent tweet (which, when called out by Shiv later on, he later deleted), otherwise, the general public seemed pretty pumped by the idea of Living+, and, even more so, by the offer of eternal lifem even if it is fronted by a cartoon dog.
On a screenshot of Hugo’s phone, above and under Matsson’s tweet, other comments read:
“Presentation today was totally compelling. I’m going long on KR”; “What would you say to an offer of immortality? I’d say yes fucking please dog. Even if the offer was from a talking dog” and “Who wants to live forever? Me! I’m in! #LivingPlus #Yesplease.”
Succession continues weekly on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV
Laura Martin is a freelance journalist specializing in pop culture.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pr%2FQrqCrnV6YvK571KRmnK2cqcKzsY6trWiZZGiEdIWSb2popKWgrrR5zJqrrKufo8BusdetqZ6llaHGbrvFn5ynq5mrsm7A1p6crWWZo3q0wcKcnKyrmaS7brHXqaOaoZ6asXA%3D