#i've been thinking relentlessly about the daddy make work line from last episode too

[pynkhues]

Re: the Roy kids and colleges - I think Logan would obviously want Kendall, Roman, and Shiv to attend elite universities to demonstrate their "seriousness", but we also know he has a complicated relationship with that particular strain of American culture, so I think there'd also be a lot of comments around the dinner table about "pointy-headed Harvard f*cks" or whatever when Kendall comes home wanting to show off what he's learned in his macro-economics class. In other words, the kids' relationship to a college degree/experience and the status it brings would range from "i need to do this because I'm going to take over the empire one day" (Kendall) to totally dismissive (Roman). Another thought is that none of them have any real interest in developing social lives or making real connections beyond the incredibly narrow social circles of the 1%, which would definitely affect their choice of school. ie - my headcanon is that Roman either follows Kendall to Harvard for his undergraduate studies or else attends NYU or Columbia, both elite schools that would allow him to maintain a totally separate social life from his "normo" classmates while still showing up to class very occasionally, something that's harder to do at Dartmouth (in the middle of nowhere New Hampshire where it's snowing six months out of the year) or another bucolic elite liberal arts college.

As for Shiv, I could see her choosing the West Coast as a way of putting some space between her and her brothers--Stanford, or USC for their communications school. She wouldn't need a graduate degree for a career as a political strategist, especially not if she majored in political science or communications (I feel like Logan made a call to hook her up at a PR or communications firm for her first "job", which is how she made the jump to the liberal political world).

I totally agree Connor dropped out of whatever university he started attending, and Logan probably didn't notice or care.

(x)

Oh, I loooove your point about Logan's complicated relationship with that part of American culture and how that likely trickled down to his attitude with the kids. I think you're spot on, particularly in terms of his own degree of education. I hadn't really given all that much thought to whether or not Logan himself was college educated, but I'm inclined to think he's not (I imagine he was working for Noah at the print shop from the time he was pretty young), which is an interesting beat in furthering that divide of Logan having been raised working class vs himself raising upper class children.

It makes me think about Logan's fixation on Roman not knowing the price of milk, and how much the internal company management training meant to him. There's a degree of control in that, of course, but it's an interesting shift when you consider Kendall's canonically pretty educated (likely the most educated of the siblings at least), and that narrative choice timing with Roman's ascension in Logan's eyes and the focus on Roman having something akin to Logan's gut instinct - a sort of masculinised trait - while Kendall's losing rank and temporarily(?) locked into an emasculated / feminised role as Logan's handmaid / nurse / sacrificial lamb.

I like your point about their social circles too, and how that impacted the way they engaged with college. I was least sure about Roman, and I think your theory makes a lot of sense, especially with the way he tends to dismiss things out of what I tend to interpret as a fear of rejection. He can't fail if he never tries, y'know? And I can see Roman doubling down on just passing and not bothering deeper engagement if Logan himself is dismissive or snide of college achievements or even the college environment broadly.

Your Shiv point is definitely making me rethink her path too, because while I do think she's competitive enough with Kendall and (despite herself) enjoys a fishbowl enough to do postgrad too, I think you're right that she might want both distance and to get out there faster. I think I've talked about it before, but I'm a little obsessed with Shiv's impatience, haha. I think it's a really realistic character beat for her to constantly be feeling like she has to catch-up and overtake her brothers, both as the youngest and the only girl, and I can see that making her wanting to power through college and get out into the workforce faster. Depending on what you think the age gap is between her and Kendall too (I think I tend to think it's less than most people? I do think the golden trio are supposed to be relatively close in age), she could be gunning to be out in the workforce at the same time as him to give herself and their father the illusion of them kicking off the same starting line for once.

It's such an interesting period to think about!

#i've been thinking relentlessly about the daddy make work line from last episode too #which is unrelated to this post but also kinda not #i might make a post about it haha #logan roy #roman roy #shiv roy #kendall roy #succession meta #welcome to my ama