Handing Over The Reins
HBO, er, HBO Max, um, Max wrung a lot of success out of the show Succession, detailing the ups and downs of a Rupert Murdoch-like oligarch as he tried to figure out which of his hapless kids would take over after he retired.
What do you think are some successful examples of passing the torch? Or terrible failures? For example, do you think Van Halen and all of its hits with Sammy Hagar were an example of a good transition? Or did you think David Lee Roth was the king?
The San Francisco 49ers were in good shape when Steve Young took over for Joe Montana, and Jared Goff seems to have picked up the slack for Matt Stafford. But then Cam Newton was not a good replacement for Tom Brady after he went to the Bucs.
There are plenty of film series which have involved passing the torch. I think it’s fair to say that George Lazenby wasn’t a popular James Bond, but while nobody thought Roger Moore was Sean Connery, he had some big fans.
I have no thoughts on whether Lassie was a good replacement for Lassie.
On a more personal level did you have a teacher who left mid year and the sub was either a huge improvement or a total disaster? Did you have a great boss who retired and was replaced by a total stiff?
What torch passings have kept the flame alive, and which ones fell in the mud?
honestly….i dont think i understood a word you just said…
but passing the torch over here….unless you are made of money….isnt a good thing
Hand on the Torch was pretty life changing for me musically
i think i still know how to drum it
is one of two songs what got me endless shit from my parents…
there is no quiet drum practice….(well actually nowadays with the electric kits there is….but there wasnt back then)
the one i really drove my parents mad with was this one tho
to this date its still my favourite beat to play for fun
That whole album had amazing drums, horns & poetry.
When I worked in a camera store my boss was great. I was devastated when he left & they put a frat bro type moron that nobody respected in his place. I always hate change w/ the Daily Show but for the most part it has worked out as people come & go. I wish Colbert stayed on Comedy Central though, his show was so much better than his current one. The Office turned to shit when Michael Scott left though it was going downhill before he left. Don’t get me started on Craft Breweries that sold out, that has only worked out once in our area.
Ed Helms was when I quit The Office. I guess at one point they had Idris Elba which makes absolutely zero sense to me.
Hmm. My most recent “passing the torch” incident resulted in me getting fired, so I’m going to categorize that as “not net positive.” Sometimes the grass is brown on the other side.
Biden’s handoff to Harris was pretty much flawless. And I strongly suspect Uncle Joe had a LOT more to do with that than most people realize.
I have no real opinion on Van Halen other than I was fine with Hagar.
I think we will get a bunch of DC insiders insisting around June 2025 that they knew everything that was going on with Biden and Harris, they just didn’t report any of it because…. reasons?
Yeah, they may have had more hits w/ Roth but mostly because Eddie was still a functional drunk at that point. I liked Van Haggar better just because he could play rhythm guitar, in concert he sang a few of his own songs too & he wasn’t a complete asshole like DLR.
When the producers of Babylon 5 had to change main characters mid stream (because of the Michael O’Hare’s mental illness) they replaced him with Bruce Boxlightner…. Scarecrow or various other unmemorable characters. I thought he was a damn lightweight.
Turned out he wasn’t and did a decent job.
FYI, for the nobody who cares about this stuff, but I find it quite funny that DS9’s Benjamin Sisko followed the same damn path of main characters of B5. Going from haunted veteran of a lost battle to honored soul among the older races on the “other” side. Don’t tell me DS9 wasn’t a fucking copy.
Everything is a copy. You can trace almost anything back to Shakespeare, but then you can trace his stuff back even farther.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiates 1:9
That’s true, but DS9 ran from 1993-1999. B5 ran from 1994-1998. The main plot lines and plot points of DS9 followed those from B5. Funny how it all ended too.
B5 developer Jan Michael Strazinski pitched B5 as a spin off of Star Trek in the late 80s. He surprised by DS9.
On a personal note, I guess it would be a distant ancestor of mine realized that he wasn’t the “crown” prince his dad wanted. The dad wanted the youngest brother to rule because he was smarter and sharper than his two older brothers.
The distant ancestor deliberately (or unconsciously) became a rude asshole in the court then took his family and fled after his father “disowned” him for shaming the family.
The middle brother through he would be crown prince, but was told “Fool, that’s not for you.” He ended up becoming a monk.
The 3rd prince became a famous emperor in Korean history and revered, but his family line died out due to palace intrigue/murder after about 3 generations. The rulers that followed after took on the name, but not the genetics mostly. Meanwhile my ancestor’s family line continues on to this day.
I sometimes wonder if he was smarter than historians gave him credit for.
I know in Europe when inheritance laws got really locked down, the basic pattern was the first son was groomed to take over, the second son was the backup in case a ship sank or a horse kicked the first born in the head, and the third card was free to be a wildcard.
So of course in those cases where both the first and second sons met an untimely demise, the third son turned out to be the one who saved the family estate. Or else destroyed everything.
But basically they would have been better off if they had skipped the first and second sons and went straight to the third. Because most of those estates and countries had a fatal flaw and needed a wildcard to have any hope of surviving.
It’s probably true in all families. I can usually tell who is a first born son (traditional Koreans only) because he’s usually the most arrogant biggest asshole (usually thanks to the parents spoiling/coddling the shit out of him) while the 2nd born is usually a resentful miserable person.
Birth order isn’t enough especially if the first born son is an ignorant self important douchebag.
My parents used to fight over the fact mom wanted to coddle her widdle boy (me) and dad wanting to kick the shit out of his dumbass son (me) mostly because I think he didn’t want me to be a typical “1st.”
I think Sam Walton wouldn’t like what his children have done with Walmart. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Sam Walton was a good dude. I just don’t think he’d be happy with how horrid and ruthless his heirs have been.
They’ve been pretty bad at thinking of something new to add to the business. I figure he’d want them to be the Walmarts of pizza places, or office construction, or IT outsourcing, not just doing what he did only 10% more.
They will follow the traditional path of retail families. The next generation will be so spoiled and ignorant of business (or just not good at it because they’re divorced from the realities of life due to their wealth) and eventually they’ll end up like the Eaton family in Canada, a bunch of self important sort of rich nobodies leaching off the legacy/hard work/crimes of their ancestors (that only end up in the news in the local version of the NYT society pages.)
In the Sicilian detective show Montalbano, they changed the actress for Montalbano’s girlfriend Livia in season 4 or 5. It was a big step down. They later changed the actress again in a later season and it made up for it. The last Livia was best although my wife disagrees.