The Rundown: ‘Succession’ And ‘Ted Lasso’ Had A Wild Little Maternal Connection In Their Finales

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

Succession and Ted Lasso both ended this week. You can be forgiven if you thought that’s the only thing the two shows had in common. They were different in so many other ways. One was a mean little hour-long drama — with touches of comedy — about actual family members trying to destroy each other. The other was a sweet little half-hour comedy — with touches of drama — about a found family trying to build each other up. It turns out they did have one other pretty important thing in common, though: Harriet Walter.

Harriet Walter is a kind of iconic British actress. She has been in everything, especially if it needs a matriarch who scowls a little. Pick a British show then go look at her IMDb page and I bet you’ll find it. She was in Killing Eve, too, which isn’t really the point but still fun to make note of. And an episode of Documentary Now, which is also not the point but I do really like that show and will take any opportunity to bring it up. She is also in both Succession and Ted Lasso. And she appeared in both finales. Harriet Walter is having a pretty great week.

The wild thing here is that I watch both shows — and recap them — and I somehow just put this together this week. This might say something about my professionalism and attention to detail (or, uh, lack thereof), but it also might say something about Harriet Walter’s range. Let’s go with that second thing.

The best part is that she got off some of the best lines in both of the episodes, big-deal productions that wrap up a bunch of stories that had been bubbling throughout the respective shows. Here she is on Succession as Lady Caroline, the absentee mother of the Roy children, elaborating on her utter disgust with human eyes.

“Face eggs” will stick with me for a while.

Here she is in Ted Lasso as Rebecca’s flighty and fortune-teller-obsessed mother, who was out for lunch and drinks with her daughter and said… well, this.

This is cool. It’s cool to me. It might even be cooler than the thing where Stephen Root popped up in an episode of Succession and then appeared in an episode of Barry on the same night, like he was the damn king of HBO Sunday nights. It’s probably not as cool as the thing where I Think You Should Leave exists in the universe of Ted Lasso and that opened up a Sam Richardson-sized wormhole, but, to be fair, very little is cooler than that to me.

My point here is a simple one: Congratulations to Harriet Walter, man. The lady popped up in two of our buzziest shows in the final episodes in the span of about three days and got off killer lines and different looks and really just stole every moment she was on screen. That rules. It does make me a little self-conscious about what I was up to this week, though. I mean, I wasn’t even in one buzzy finale of a beloved television show. I really need to do better. I will work on this.

It would have been funny if Harriet Walter also appeared in the finale of Barry this week. Maybe as another character’s mom. Maybe as NoHo Hank’s mom. I would have liked that. And speaking of Barry and NoHo Hank and really great transitions…

— Evan O’ (@PhasmophobicBoi) May 23, 2023

Check this out. It’s Anthony Carrigan, who played the previously mentioned Chechen mobster NoHo Hank on Barry, standing with his wife while she talks into a microphone. And she sounds a lot like he did when he played NoHo Hank! Almost like, as this tweet suggests, he took inspiration from his own wife for the character. Here, look at this.

This is another one of those Two Things Can Be True situations. The first thing, as I said in the heading of this column, is that, if that is in fact what is happening, it is adorable. I love it. I think I might just refuse to look into this anymore to be sure I don’t learn anything that refutes it and ruins it for me. Let’s all agree to let me have this one.

The other true thing here is that it’s really funny to picture Anthony Carrigan telling his wife that he used her for inspiration on-set as a new character and he wanted to surprise her with it and then they watched the first episode together and she turned to him and said “… that’s how you think I sound”

Okay, to be clear, I have always liked Ryan Gosling. Maybe not “always” like “as long as I’ve been alive,” if only because I was not aware of Ryan Gosling when I was, like, a baby, but definitely always as in “as long as I have been aware that he is a charming and goofy man.” Definitely since I saw him in The Nice Guys, which remains a good and fun movie that you should maybe consider watching again this weekend, maybe with me, maybe with some pizza that you brought over. Sausage and green peppers on it. Maybe some root beer. I can be flexible.

But I’m off-topic already. Let’s focus. There is a big profile of Ryan Gosling over at GQ this week, one tied to his role as Ken in the upcoming Barbie movie, which looks like a wild ride. It’s a good profile. And fun to read. I recommend carving out some time this weekend to read it all. But for now, let’s focus on these two paragraphs…

From Cornwall, Ontario, where Gosling grew up, to Toronto, where he began attending auditions as a child actor, was “like, a five-hour train ride,” Gosling says. He shares this, in part, because the two of us are on a train right now. The Pacific Surfliner, winding out of Los Angeles and along the coast. Just something he had never done and wanted to do. We’d walked through Union Station to the platform together and I’d watched a bunch of afternoon commuters, families surrounded by luggage, people with nowhere else to go just killing time, and kids in jaunty outfits like La La Land extras doing cartoon double takes, despite the white hat Gosling wore pulled down low.

Actually: “Let me make sure it’s five hours from Cornwall,” Gosling says, putting down the Starbucks cup that says “Freddie” on it and pulling out his phone. “Don’t wanna start self-mythologizing. It was a hundred hours on a train.” He puts the phone away: “Four hours and 15 minutes.” Margot Robbie, who produced and stars in Barbie opposite Gosling, calls him “an overthinker.” Gosling, she says, will say something, “and then 40 minutes later, he’ll come up to me and be like, ‘You know when I said that I’m just clarifying that what I meant was, blah blah.’ And I’m like, ‘Why are you still thinking about that’ ”

Three things here, all of them important:

Let’s watch a clip from The Nice Guys.

This was a great chat.

Welllllllll here’s the full-length trailer for the upcoming FX series Justified: City Primeval. Yes, I know, we did just talk about this show a few weeks ago when they released a little hat-based teaser, but we are gonna talk about it again for two important reasons: One, I want to, and; two, this is my column so shut up.

It looks so good. I think. I am still trying to decide if I like it because it’s actually a promising program or if I just missed seeing Timothy Olyphant wear a hat and tangle with some bad guys. It’s probably a little of both. I hope Jere Burns shows up as Wynn Duffy, in Detroit for some unspecified reason, double-parked in the Wynnebago right downtown. I really miss Justified.

Anyway, here’s the official summary of the show again…

Having left the hollers of Kentucky 15 years ago, Raylan Givens now lives in Miami, a walking anachronism balancing his life as a U.S. Marshal and part-time father of a 15-year-old girl. He crosses paths with Clement Mansell, a violent, sociopathic desperado who has already slipped through the fingers of Detroit’s finest once before. Mansell’s attorney has every intention of representing her client, finding herself caught in between cop and criminal, with her own game afoot as well.

… and here’s the exact moment of this new trailer where I rocketed off the floor and attached myself to the ceiling like a demon.

It’s weird. Raylan’s entire thing — shoot-first lawman who plays by his own rules and is rarely concerned with trivial things like “the Fourth Amendment” — would be horrifying to me in real life. I could read an article about some actual cop or law enforcement figure doing exactly the things Raylan does that make me cheer/whoop a little in the show and I would come away horrified. I don’t know. It’s a little troubling to think about, really.

So…

Let’s not!

Moving on!

Here’s what’s happened, short version:

Which brings us to the news from this week: The Rock will star in an as-yet-untitled standalone spinoff as Luke Hobbs. At some point. The details are all still fuzzy. But it’s happening. Here, look.

Universal Pictures announced the project on Thursday. Longtime “Fast and Furious” collaborator Chris Morgan wrote the untitled film’s script. Plot details were not available, though individuals familiar with the deal said the new movie will bridge between the events of the just-released “Fast X” and the upcoming “Fast X: Part II,” which is expected in 2025. Johnson just appeared as Hobbs, a diplomatic security service agent, in a credits scene for “Fast X.”

Yes, sure, fine. The Rock also announced it himself in a very long tweet with a four-minute video attached. Or at least I assume he announced it himself. I have very few hard and fast rules in my life but one is that — barring crazy circumstances — I will not watch a four-minute video on Twitter.

Good for him, though.