Succession (TV Program)

It’s election night in America. Stay away from the bodega sushi.Season 4, Episode 8: ‘America Decides’The day before Logan Roy died, he delivered a fiery call to arms to his ATN staff, letting them know what he expected from the network going forward. The speech was an angrier variation of the populist spiel he had given many times before, in which he insisted that the news should always be frank and unpretentious. He wanted his anchors to tell their viewers “truthful” things they had never heard anyone say before on television. He wanted ATN to be, in a word, “spicy.”Throughout this week’s action-packed, nerve-shredding episode of “Succession,” Logan’s kids argue a lot about what the old man would want them to do, as the presidential race between the Republican Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk) and the Democrat Daniel Jimenez (Elliot Villar) comes down to a couple of battleground states. The big sticking point is Milwaukee, where a fire at a vote-counting facility has destroyed enough ballots to tilt Wisconsin from blue to red.How would Logan have handled this? Would he have maintained the policy of “no brass on the battlefield” and left all of ATN’s messaging to the Decision Desk data-nerds? Or would he have seized the opportunity offered by Mencken to Roman, to shape the narrative such that the Mencken camp (and by extension the Roys) are the night’s big winners?To ask what Logan would do, though, is to miss the real crux of the issue. It was clear from Logan’s defenses of ATN that he didn’t care whether his network broadcast the facts. He preferred “the truth” — which has a more flexible definition, depending on who is doing the telling.On this election night, up in ATN’s executive offices, there are two competing truths, represented by the Jimenez supporter Shiv and the Mencken backer Roman. Every time Shiv tries to turn the conversation to things like Menckenite obstructionists in “victory vans,” Roman shouts, “False flag!” and rebrands the ominous vehicles as “fun buses.” The Roys are at an impasse.Roman has a decided advantage, given that ATN already has what Tom calls a “unique perspective” on the news. While the other networks are suggesting that Mencken goons may have burned the Milwaukee votes, ATN floats theories like “electrical failure.” (Roman would prefer to go with “Antifa fire bombing.”) At one point, ATN’s Tucker Carlson-like anchor Mark Ravenhead (Zack Robidas) delivers a rant during the network’s purportedly neutral coverage, attacking leftists for trying to turn the fire to their political advantage.Roman also has Kendall and Tom on his side, to a degree. Kendall is hesitant because he is no Mencken fan. When he mentions to Roman that he fears what a Mencken administration might mean for his adopted daughter, Sophie, his brother mocks him for caring about the ideals of American pluralism. Roman compares their whole argument to when they were kids, when Kendall would play the sober-minded big brother in order to get chicken for dinner, while the whinier Roman wanted steak.Kendall asks, “Because we had so much chicken when you were a kid, we have to elect a fascist?” And although he is being facetious, those kinds of lingering slights are what guides the decision-making this night.As for Tom, he is under pressure to quiet his critics by delivering big ratings for ATN’s election coverage. To get there, he endures glitchy touch-screens and a steady stream of Roys entering the newsroom’s forbidden areas. Tom remains inclined to side with Roman, perhaps because that puts him at odds with Shiv, whom he has not forgiven for their vicious argument at the tailgate party. Even when she tries to win him back by finally telling him that she is pregnant with his child, he stings her by asking if she is lying, as another “tactic.”Shiv has a rough time overall on election night. As the evening nightmarishly shifts Mencken’s way, she has a heart-to-heart with Kendall — in a reflection of the touching Season 2 scene in which he confided to her that he would never be Logan’s choice to run the company. Here, he listens to Shiv’s argument that ATN could slow the Mencken momentum. Their Decision Desk guru, Darwin (Adam Godley), knows from historical data and exit polling where the Milwaukee votes would have gone. They could put Darwin on camera and let him explain why ATN won’t project a winner in Wisconsin.But two things get in the way. The first is that Kendall really wants the next president to kill the GoJo deal, which Roman insists Mencken will do. So Kendall asks Shiv to take one more shot at persuading her ex-lover Nate to get Jimenez to make that same promise. Instead, she merely pretends to make the call and then lies to Kendall, saying that the Jimenez people are open to considering his proposal. This sets up the second impediment: when Kendall calls Nate to iterate more clearly what Shiv claims to have said.There is some phenomenal staging in this episode, a lot of which involves people passing phones back and forth — and at one point even holding one phone up to another so that the people on the lines can speak to each other. But the best phone sequence is Kendall’s call to Nate, which plays out mostly unheard on the other side of one of ATN’s enormous office windows, as Shiv looks on with dread. After Kendall gets the word from Nate that Shiv never called him, he walks over to talk to Greg, who Shiv knows is aware of her consultations with Matsson.Kendall, feeling betrayed by the sibling he trusts most, spits some icy words in Shiv’s direction and then tells Tom to make the call for Mencken. ATN really is about to help elevate an authoritarian to America’s most powerful public office because one spoiled brother is in a snit.Although this episode is incredibly entertaining, it does cut uncomfortably closer to real-world politics than is typical for “Succession.” This show always features characters and ideas inspired by real political figures, but the creator Jesse Armstrong uses these mainly as the backdrop to the Roys’ family drama — and as a way of satirizing generally the blinded arrogance of the powerful. Here though, the way the election plays out is so much like the specific circumstances of 2016 and 2020 that it might stir up bad memories for anyone who sweated and fretted through those nights.That’s ‌OK, though because while Roman may “ironically” make racist comments in the newsroom and may assure Shiv that “nothing happens” when terrible people take power, Armstrong is showing here that the pettiness of the Roys and their ilk does have repercussions. Everything for this family is about banking a win in the moment, regardless of whether it might later turn into a loss. That’s what their father taught them: Take what you can, when you can, and let someone else clean up after.So as the evening ends — with ATN having called Wisconsin and the presidency for Mencken, without having let Darwin explain that this is all just “pending” — Roman sums up what happened in terms Logan Roy would have understood.“We just made a night of good TV.”Due diligenceTom has a bad election night, too, ending with Greg handing him his phone and saying, “A lot of very important people want to scream at you.” This is a great episode though for fans of the sicko Tom-Greg dynamic. Not willing to entrust the “Gregging” he needs to anyone other than Greg, Tom keeps his lanky lackey close at hand, relying on him for everything from a quick bump of cocaine (Tom: “This is not a thing. It’s not going in a book.”) to double-shot coffees. Tom lays out a doomsday scenario in which Greg fails to keep him from getting drowsy, Tom miscalls the results in Colorado, China invades Taiwan, the world blows up and “We’re back to amoeba.”One of Tom’s non-Greg assistants makes the mistake of bringing bodega sushi into the office, which Tom nixes (“Tonight my digestive system is basically part of the Constitution!”) but Greg sloppily eats, ultimately leading to a stray smear of Wasabi ending up in Darwin’s eyes. Greg makes matters worse by pouring lemon La Croix onto the affected area. (“It’s not that lemony!” he insists.) True to Tom’s dire warnings, it is while Darwin is briefly incapacitated by foodstuffs that the Roys start making the decision to call the election for Mencken.Once Connor learns he lost Kentucky (“Alas Kentucky, Willa … alas vanity”), he scrambles to appease Mencken, offering to “concede in his direction.” So we get the wonderful spectacle of Connor delivering a peppery kiss-off speech in front of a sign bearing his campaign slogan: “Enough Already!”Just because ATN declared Mencken the winner doesn’t mean the election is over. The mess in Milwaukee needs to be resolved; and it could all end with Wisconsin flipping to Jimenez. In other words: Once again on “Succession,” a big deal remains unclosed. More

On Sunday night, the Roys pondered whether to sell out democracy in exchange for their father’s kingdom. In the real world, the going rate is usually cheaper.This article includes spoilers for the most recent episode of “Succession.”In Sunday’s episode of “Succession,” a TV network sold out democracy. The most implausible part of the story was how high a price the sellers got for it.In the episode “America Decides,” the heirs to the conservative media empire Waystar Royco helped Jeryd Mencken, a Nazi-curious presidential candidate, claim a violence-tainted election by ordering their cable-news network to call it for him. The multibillion-dollar reward: Mencken would kill Waystar’s pending sale to a Swedish tech bro, handing Kendall and Roman Roy the kingdom after their father’s death.In reality, cable news favors for antidemocratic political forces come much cheaper. But let’s deal with the fake news network first.In the “Succession” episode — which probably should have carried a content warning for anyone who has followed the last couple of presidential elections — the night begins with the Democrat, Daniel Jimenez, ahead in the polls. The results end up tight enough to be decided by a highly convenient, apparently intentional fire in a Milwaukee vote counting station, which incinerates enough pro-Democratic ballots to swing Wisconsin to the Republican Mencken.After watching the previous episode, I sketched out a scenario in which the Roys’ network, ATN, has to take sides in a contested election, with the fate of the deal at stake. This doesn’t make me Nostradamus. “Succession” is predictable in the best way. It simply sets up conditions, gives characters motivations, then lets them act in their interests. It’s only as unpredictable as you fool yourself into believing it is.So there’s chaos and opportunity. There’s a fire and an election call that, while not carrying the force of law, would determine the narrative advantage in a legal (or extralegal) showdown.For America, it’s the choice between remaining a country where elections are won with ballots or becoming one where they’re won with torches. For the Roy siblings (minus Connor, conceding the end of his libertarian vanity campaign), it’s a golden jump ball, and each one of them reacts in character.Roman, who has always vibed with Mencken’s edgelord energy, sees no reason not to get on the good side of a history-smashing win. Roman knows who Mencken is, better than any of the Roys do; in Season 3, it was to him that Mencken expressed his openness to borrowing ideas from “H,” his pet name for Hitler. But what’s a little fascism between friends?This had to be a rough episode for Team Roman, the “Succession” fans who love his broken-toy impishness and “Clockwork Orange” banter. He is funny, even while electing a white nationalist, telling his sister, Shiv, “It’s only spicy because if my team wins, they’re going to shoot your team.” That’s exactly what has always made him dangerous. Does he endorse Mencken’s worldview sincerely or ironically? Does it matter? Does an ironic arson fire burn any cooler?His siblings respond with different flavors of ineffectiveness. Shiv, once a Democratic operative, is horrified at the “nightmare” of a President Mencken. But not horrified enough to sabotage her own schemes. Given the chance to ask the Jimenez campaign to promise to kill the Waystar sale — a deal she has been secretly working against her brothers to make happen — she fakes a call instead, and gets caught out. It’s a double-or-nothing bet with democracy as her stake, and she loses.Kendall, meanwhile, resists with the force of a wall of Jell-O, telling Roman, “I don’t necessarily feel good about this.” Necessarily: On “Succession,” statements of principle are always hedged.Kendall knows the stakes too. He wants to be good, or to be seen as good, and his daughter recently had an upsetting run-in on the street with an alt-right racist. But he also wants to win his company back. As often happens when he can’t reconcile his self-interest with his self-conception, he shuts down like a glitching robot, until learning of Shiv’s betrayal pushes him to push ATN to call the election.Respecting their viewership: Nicholas Braun, left, and Matthew Macfadyen in “Succession.”Macall Polay/HBOHis anger at Shiv is a reason, but it’s not the reason. As usual on “Succession,” this is about the money, and the dysfunctional family competition in which the money keeps score. As the brothers argue, Roman accuses Kendall of “big brother”-ing the election call, using seniority to get his way, just as Kendall did at dinner time when they were kids.If only little Roman had gotten steak, we might have gotten democracy.In our reality, of course, the ordinary pressures of the cable news business might have sufficed to force the call, deal or no deal, steak or chicken. As we just saw in the Dominion voting machines libel trial, Fox News — the none-too-subtle real-life analogue to ATN — indulged election theft hoaxes simply to try to hang on to its existing audience (at an eventual cost of hundreds of millions of dollars so far and potentially more).“America Decides” plays as if the writers committed the pretrial discovery file to memory. The episode follows Tom Wambsgans, Shiv’s estranged husband and ATN’s head, through an ulcer-making election night. He is sleep deprived and coked up, under pressure to deliver big ratings for the Roys and scary antifa stories for his audience, which is getting raw, uncut propaganda from ATN’s farther-right competitors.This was much the dynamic at work in the internal messages disclosed in the Dominion suit, which showed Fox stars and executives freaking out over competitors like Newsmax, who were gaining traction by embracing the election-fraud lie. (And of course, Fox’s worries stemmed from viewers’ fury over election night, particularly about the network calling Arizona for soon-to-be President Biden.)Asked why ATN isn’t reporting the evidence that the ballots were torched by Menckenite brownshirts, Tom says, “We need to respect our viewership” — phrasing almost verbatim from the Fox messages. “Respecting this audience whether we agree or not is critical,” the host Sean Hannity texted after the 2020 election.So ATN brings out its sneering alt-rightist, Mark Ravenhead, to insinuate that the fire was a false flag, while Tom suggests booking an egghead historian to tell viewers that everything is fine and normal. “Succession” has always had a feel for how the shamelessness of extremists defeats, and is enabled by, the flaccid reasonableness of centrists.Of course, ATN, like Fox, operates in a larger media environment, and the episode is less clear on how election night is playing elsewhere, especially on PGN, the in-world analog to CNN. There’s a brief clip suggesting that PGN, and presumably other mainstream news, is treating the election as undecided while the legal process plays out. (On a story level, this suggests that the election and Waystar Royco’s fate may have a few turns yet to take.)In our reality, mainstream outlets have their own pressures and owners. CNN, which is part of Warner Bros. Discovery, has a new head, Chris Licht, and a reported new corporate mandate to reposition after years of pugilistically covering President Trump.CNN spent the 2020 campaign trying to learn the lessons of 2016 by scaling back on airing live Trump rallies and assertively fact-checking him in detail. Now — knowing full well that the former president tried to overturn a democratic election — it seems determined to spend the 2024 campaign unlearning the lessons of 2020.Thus last week, CNN granted Donald J. Trump an hour of live TV to be as dishonest about the attempts to overturn the last election as you knew he would be if, at any point in the last few years, you watched CNN. While the town hall moderator, Kaitlan Collins, interjected corrections, he boisterously played his “rigged election” hits to a cheering crowd.CNN got a spectacle; the former president got a live platform for another dominance-politics performance. The morning after the town hall, Licht reportedly told the CNN staff: “Kaitlan pressed him again and again and again and made news. Made a lot of news.” And, he said, “that is our job.”Here, life echoes “Succession” once more. At the end of election night, with ballots burning and Mencken delivering a dog-whistley speech about making America “clean,” Roman insists that nothing he or ATN did that night was that bad or consequential. “We just made a night of good TV,” he says. When the smoke clears, you can always tell yourself that you didn’t start the fire. More

This week, the Roys throw the election eve party they inherited from Logan and as always, they arrive with their own discrete agendas.Season 4, Episode 7: ‘Tailgate Party’This “Succession” season’s premiere episode ended with Tom and Shiv lying together in bed, bitterly angry but still holding hands. In the weeks since, the couple has been flirting more openly (and bizarrely), trying to figure out if perhaps they are each broken in just the right way that their jagged pieces can fit back together.Their weird romantic renaissance peaks with this week’s episode, which sees them sexting each other incessantly — and sees Tom confusingly gifting Shiv with a glass-encased scorpion, in an apparent reference to “the scorpion and the frog” parable. (Tom, sheepishly explaining: “I love you but you kill me and I kill you?”)The couple means to cement their comeback by co-hosting an election eve “tailgate party” in their swanky triplex apartment, with a guest list drawn from a who’s-who of media, political and business bigwigs. They inherited this shindig from Logan, who regularly used it as a way to make nice with his ideological enemies, allowing them all to meet as friends for at least one night and pretend they don’t despise each other. It’s like a cocktail party version of Tom and Shiv’s marriage.As always with “Succession,” the Roys arrive at this party with discrete agendas. Shiv intends to continue in her secret role as the Matsson-whisperer. Unbeknown to Kendall and Roman, their father had already invited Matsson to the party; but the Swede declined, because legacy media backslapping and chest-puffing bores him. It’s only after Shiv warns him that the Roy boys are making moves that Matsson mobilizes. His strutting GoJo band barges into the triplex right when Kendall is leading a moment of silence for Logan.Shiv pretends to be appalled by the rudeness, but after Kendall insists he wants to avoid any direct confrontation with Matsson —“There’s too much peanut butter between us,” he says — she takes the assignment to stay by Matsson’s side, introducing him to the power-brokers while also subtly promoting GoJo’s plans for Waystar and ATN. She makes sure everyone knows she will be involved in whatever comes next — or as she demands of Matsson, have “a very, very, very significant role.”Roman, meanwhile, is still kicking himself after skipping the Living+ presentation that made Kendall the new Waystar star, so he makes his own big move. The polling is showing a tight presidential race, with the Republican candidate Jeryd Mencken falling just short in a few key states. If Roman can talk Connor into dropping out and backing Mencken, that might be enough to make a difference, which would mean that the new president of the United States would owe Roman Roy all the favors.On the whole this is a very heavy episode, but nearly everything to do with Roman wooing Connor is hilarious. After his older brother laughs off the idea that he would concede for “the good of the republic,” Roman becomes the go-between for ambassadorial offers. Somalia? “Little bit car bomb-y.” Work up to a big European post through Slovenia or Slovakia? “It’s a no on the Slos.”Eventually they settle on Oman (“rich man’s Yemen!”), but Willa is concerned when she looks the country up and reads, “The sultan’s word has the force of the law.” She is also not swayed by the prospect of helping Mencken, telling her husband, “All my family and friends hate Mencken.” (Connor just smiles big and says,“Diplomatic plates!”)The subplot takes a sour turn when Willa persuades Connor to reject Oman and stay in the race, which angers Roman so intensely that he refers to Willa as Connor’s “wife” (in quotation marks) and calls his brother “a joke.” This happens immediately after Roman has a crushing encounter with Gerri, who lets him know of her plan to extract “eye-watering sums” from Waystar thanks to his entitled arrogance, sloppiness and sexual harassment.She then adds, as the hardest slap in her former protégé’s face, “I could’ve got you there.” It’s no wonder Roman is fuming when he confronts Connor — though that does not excuse how mean he is.Kendall also makes some missteps while coasting on his Living+ triumph. He invites Shiv’s ex-lover and top Democratic operative Nate Sofrelli (Ashley Zukerman) to the party, to see if the Dems might consider squashing the GoJo deal from a regulatory standpoint. In return, Kendall promises that ATN will give the potential new administration “a better ride on the first 100 days.”All this favor-trading makes Nate uncomfortable, as does Kendall’s insistence that old acquaintances should not have to worry about ethics and legal formalities. (“You’re not Logan,” Nate warns him. “And that’s a good thing.”)Kendall rebounds though when he gets some useful intel about Matsson. GoJo’s long-suffering head of communications, Ebba (Eili Harboe), lets slip that the company’s metrics are erroneously doubling their subscriber numbers in India. (“New money,” Kendall later says to Shiv, shaking his head. “You gotta hold those bills up to the light.”)Kendall comes to Frank and suggests a new tactic: “Reverse Viking.” Acquire GoJo and make Waystar bigger than anything Logan ever achieved. And if Roman and Shiv object? Kendall shrugs. “I love ‘em but not in love with ‘em, y’know” he says. “One head, one crown.”The whole premise of Logan’s tailgate parties are that the attendees are all, to some extent, putting on an act. Loony lefty? Neo-fascist? These are just performative personas. At this party everyone can take off those masks and put on another. But while it’s all well and good — sort of — to play those kinds of games in public, emotionally healthy people do not keep playing them in private. The Roys, damaged by their manipulative and withholding father, repeatedly fail to grasp this. That is how Kendall and Shiv can pretend to have each other’s backs while secretly planning to stab each other.Which brings us back to poor Tom, who realizes as the night rolls on that Shiv will not protect him from the people who want to change ATN. Even while standing right next to Tom, she calls him “Mr. Mild” and “a one-pepper menu item.” While circulating with Matsson, she never balks at any suggestion that her husband has no future with the company. Those rumblings eventually reach Tom, who is already exhausted from being bombarded with questions from the party’s more liberal guests about whether ATN is fostering a climate of political violence.It all ends in tears. In last week’s episode, Shiv and Tom enjoyed a moment of truth-telling they each found refreshing — and even a little kinky. This week though, in a private moment on their balcony, they lob honesty-bombs at each other until they do real damage.In a nightmarish scene, they keep saying the worst things they can imagine about one another. Shiv calls Tom a “hick.” He tells her she is “maybe not a good person to have children.” She blames him for separating her from her father in his final months. He counters, “It’s not my fault that you didn’t get his approval.” The argument is brutal, and may mark a turning point for this show as it pivots toward the finale.Because unlike the tentative togetherness that ended the Season 4 premiere, this episode ends with Tom and Shiv in separate rooms, in deep pain. That’s a strong visual metaphor for where the “Succession” story stands right now. The tailgate party has broken up. Everyone has moved back to their respective sidelines. Welcome to rivalry week.Due diligenceLest you feel too much sympathy for Tom, remember that in this episode he makes goofy faces while Greg is firing dozens of ATN employees simultaneously via a group video call. Later at the party, Greg tries to impress the GoJo crew with his willingness to be heartless. (“You gotta do what you gotta do, right?” he says to Matsson, who replies, “Do you, though?”)Greg is “Team KenRo,” even though Kendall — like Tom — mainly expects him to perform morally objectionable tasks, such as finding some drugs that might make Matsson do something embarrassing. Greg agrees to try his best, despite warning Kendall that Matsson “has expressed a distaste in the past for my particular flavor of me.”The cases of terrible “biodynamic” German wine that Tom was stuck with last season return at the tailgate party, where he tries to fob it off on the guests. (Tom, pressuring Nate into drinking it: “It’s the kind of wine that separates the connoisseurs from the weekend Malbec morons.”)So when will Logan’s funeral be? The series finale, maybe? The past few episodes have been preparing us for a real humdinger of a ceremony, which is currently either going to be Marcia’s “three-day grief-a-thon” or Connor’s “tight 90.” One thing we do know: Roman will be delivering the eulogy, in what could be his last chance to convince the nation’s tastemakers that he is, contrary to his father’s opinion, a serious person.Connor, on spending time with Logan’s corpse: “The weird thing is how much he’s not there. I find that consoling.” More

This week, Kendall, Roman and Shiv are on a mission to impress the grown-ups watching them in what amounts to their public debut as the stewards of Logan’s legacy.Season 4, Episode 6: ‘Living+’The “Succession” world tour stops in Los Angeles this week, where the Waystar power-players are gathering at their Hollywood studio for Investor Day. The plan is to show off a line of state-of-the-art retirement communities called “Living+,” which Logan signed off on before he died. But secretly, Kendall and Roman are hoping their pitch will bump the stock price up so high before the GoJo acquisition that Lukas Matsson backs out of the deal.Less secretly, the brothers plus Shiv are on a mission to impress the grown-ups watching them, in what amounts to their public debut as the stewards of Logan’s legacy — which they each, in their own inadequate way, try to uphold.Let’s start with Shiv, and her ongoing covert communication with Matsson. Last week I speculated that the two of them may have them had conversations in Norway we were not privy to, about his negotiations with the Roy boys. This latest episode begins with a rejection of that theory, as Shiv and Matsson meet on her private jet and he surprises her with his description of how the meeting on the mountaintop went. Throughout the day she will keeps him posted on how things are going with Living+ — a Waystar initiative he plans to kill as soon as he takes over.Matsson’s words are still ringing in Shiv’s ears when she reaches Los Angeles and hears her brothers tell the Waystar executives that Matsson melted down at that last meeting — and that maybe they should think twice about recommending a deal to the board with “a person of this character.” Shiv knows they are lying to tank the deal, and that they are cutting her out of their play. Roman, genuinely sorry after she calls them out, asks her, “Can we do the huggy thing?” But she does not seem to be in a forgiving mood.As for Roman, he is struggling with the interpersonal part of being in charge. Because he has favors to bestow and firing power, he thinks everyone he deals with at Waystar should just take his money and do as he asks. But at a meeting with a studio executive, he first suffers through her offer of condolences — “Refused!” he jokes — and then groans when she complains about ATN’s far-right lean. Roman’s initial response is to troll, by making a snide comment about the “incredibly evolved, ruthlessly segregated” community of Los Angeles. Then he decides it would be easier just to terminate her.When Gerri finds out what Roman did, she tries to play the mentor again, warning that he is “a weak monarch in a dangerous interregnum” and noting, “You cannot win against the money.” He snaps back, saying she is being disrespectful and adding, “I need you to believe that I am as good as my dad.” She replies, “Say it or believe it?” So he fires her too. (“Shall we get started on the paperwork? Do you want to do it yourself or do you want me to get someone a bit sharper?”)Knowing he overstepped, Roman turns to Kendall, hoping his brother will play the Good Cop and clean up the Bad Cop’s mess. But Kendall is excited about them putting their own stamp on Waystar, and thinks these two firings may impress the markets. (“Some are saying these Young Turks might just have what it takes to turn things around,” he says, imagining what the business pundits might write.) Distraught, Roman excuses himself from the Investor Day pitch, figuring a solo Kendall will flame out and then the adults will finally step in and fix everything.It’s a reasonable assumption too, because Kendall is in full Icarus mode throughout this episode. There are few things more entertaining in “Succession” than Kendall in a boss groove, tossing out big ideas and buzzy business jargon at a rapid clip. While Shiv is the kind of boss who hates making decisions and makes fun of everyone else’s ideas, and Roman is the kind of boss who hates interacting with anybody who is not saying “yes sir,” Kendall is a hands-on boss, urging his team to be as excited as he is about taking huge swings.On this day, Kendall is trying to pump up the market potential of Living+, dubbing it a “price-rocket.” Talking rings around the Waystar accountant Pete (John Quilty), Kendall tries to get him to work some mojo with the spreadsheets, to see what would happen if they just, y’know, plugged in bigger numbers. (“Numbers aren’t just numbers, they’re numbers,” Pete sputters.) The gambit results in a prospectus promising such a high rate of return that Kendall, in a moment of clarity, chuckles, “It’s enough to make you lose your faith in capitalism.” He is then brought back down to earth by Frank, who threatens to blow the whistle if Kendall asks him to support a fraud.Frank’s complaint comes on the heels of Kendall’s dumbest setback of the day. Eager to get his Hollywood studio to make some magic on his behalf, Kendall asks for a scale replica of a Living+ house, with clouds rolling overhead. (He saw something like that in Berlin once, he explains.) In the episode’s funniest moment, Kendall arrives at the auditorium to see a slapped-together, half-finished house and “clouds” that are essentially a rapidly dissipating mist. The look of disappointment on his face is a work of actorly art from Jeremy Strong, who has a gift for playing those moments when Kendall’s over-the-top enthusiasm suddenly craters.Strong is even better in Kendall’s make-or-break speech for the investors. This is a tricky thing to perform, because the presentation has to be both corny enough to make the people who know Kendall wince in embarrassment, yet credible enough that a general audience could buy him as someone who knows what he is doing. The cringe moments are sprinkled throughout, like in the way Kendall repeats the phrase “big, big shoes” multiple times and in his tacky interaction with a video-screen showing his father, taken from a video Logan made to promote Living+. (Kendall also makes the dubious decision to have a sound effects engineer manipulate the video so that Logan says Living+ will “double the earnings” of the cruise business.)Yet at no point in the speech does Kendall lose control. He makes self-deprecating jokes. He builds a persuasive case for how personally enriching a Living+ facility could be. In touting the potential for this new business to extend its customers’ lives, he muses, “Would I take an extra year with my dad?” and says he absolutely would. (Shameless? Sure. But effective.) Even when he gets asked about a cruel tweet posted by Matsson during the presentation, Kendall is flustered for just a couple of seconds before saying, “I’m not gonna fave it.” The crowd laughs. The markets are kind. Matsson deletes the tweet. A stunned Shiv and Roman seethe.Look, this is “Succession,” so there is no reason to believe that Kendall’s triumph will be long-lived. Still, throughout the series, one of the recurring visual motifs for this character has been water: Kendall sinking morosely into a bathtub; Kendall falling face down into a pool; and so on. So it is telling that at the end of this episode, Kendall plunges into the ocean and emerges floating face up. On this day at least, he swims.Due diligencePity the poor director who had to ask Logan Roy to make his lines in a Living+ promotional video “a touch more upbeat.”So what is Living+, exactly? According to Logan’s video, it is an attempt to “bring the cruise ship experience to dry land” with exclusive Waystar content piped into a home with state-of-the-art security. Or, as Shiv describes it to Matsson, “Prison camps for grannies.”Does anyone give worse Waystar presentations than Tom? After Kendall leaves the stage, Tom steps into the spotlight and looks like a wild-eyed maniac, pointing into different parts of crowd and shouting, “You are an ATN citizen!”Because Roman bailed on the presentation, Kendall gets his sound-manipulation guy to make a video of Logan calling Roman pathetic and clueless (among other things). Roman, a masochist, plays the video over and over, forcing himself to take the same kind of punishment he used to get from his father.Shiv and Tom resume their weird flirtation/foreplay this week, which includes playing “bitey,” a game that involves biting each other on the arm until one person stops. (Shiv, after losing: “Tom Wambsgans! Finally made me feel something.”) Later they have sex, after which Tom takes accountability for betraying her by admitting he partly married her for her money. “If you think that’s shallow, why don’t you throw out all your stuff for love?” he says, with a bitter undertone and a sickeningly sweet smile. These two are made for each other. More

Just when Logan’s inner circle thinks that it might finally be free of his mercurial nature, he springs one more annoying surprise.‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 4: ‘Honeymoon States’How do you sum up a media giant and a political visionary like Logan Roy? The day after his death, the newspapers call him “a complicated man.” (Kendall’s translation: “Threw phones at staff.”) He was a “sharp reader of the national mood.” (Roman: “He’s a bit racist.”) He was “very much a man of his era.” (Kendall: “Again, racist. Also, relaxed about sexual assault.”) As Logan’s family, friends, employees and admirers gather at his home to mourn — and to plot — no one can seem to agree on who he really was. After reading yet another glowing tribute, Shiv jokes: “Dad sounds amazing. I’d like to have met Dad.”Yet just when Logan’s inner circle thinks that it might finally be free of his mercurial approach to business and family matters, he springs one more annoying surprise from beyond the grave. In Logan’s safe, the estate’s executor, Frank, finds a piece of paper from four (or more) years ago, naming Kendall as Logan’s preferred successor.But there are a handwritten notes and markings on the page — including a line partially under Kendall’s name and partially through it. Was Logan emphasizing that he wanted his son to take over? Or was he indicating that he definitely did not?After last week’s emotionally wrenching episode, “Succession” comes back with one of the funniest of the series, filled with quotable lines and sick burns. Any feelings of sadness or sentimentality among the Roy children fades as soon as they realize Waystar’s top executives — Frank, Gerri, Karl and Tom — are disappearing behind closed doors to begin what Shiv calls a “a coronation demolition derby.” The ensuing bumps and scrapes are perversely entertaining.On the old-timers’ side, everyone speaks with a brittle politeness masking deep hostility. Gerri puts herself forward as the logical choice to be chief executive, having already done it on an interim basis. When Karl balks, she delivers a wicked backhanded compliment, saying: “I think you’re a corporate legend. What you did in the ’90s, with cable? Huge.”Tom, meanwhile, insists that all he wants to do is serve, adding: “If there’s a ring, my hat is in. Respectfully.” To that, Karl suggests that the board might have questions about Tom, and he frames those “as a friend,” saying, “You’re a clumsy interloper and no one trusts you.”As for the Rebel Alliance — now possibly interested in rejoining the Empire, if the pay is competitive and management positions are available — they seem initially more united. They all jump on a call to one of Lukas Mattson’s lackeys, where Shiv waves away a question about which one of them is the leader, saying, “We’re a pretty fluid group.” But it is perhaps an ominous sign that she physically recoils after saying that. It is also not good that Mattson demands that one of the three fly out to GoJo’s strategy retreat within the next 24 hours. (Shiv: “You obviously know what happened here yesterday, right?” Lackey: “Oh sure, yeah, we really feel for you guys. Bad one.”)This is when Frank comes across the “rather worrying piece of paper.” (It is so worrying that he wonders if maybe it could be flushed down a toilet. He and Karl then clarify that they are merely “speculating in a comic mode.”) Both the old and young factions gather in an upstairs room, where Roman diminishes the document’s meaning, saying to Kendall, “This thing is old, and you’ve tried to put him in jail, like, 12 times since then.”One thing seems clear: Both the children and the Waystar executives want the GoJo sale to go through. After that, there will be no more Waystar to control and the siblings can proceed with their original plan to run Pierce Global Media together, perhaps now merged with ATN. Since the chief executive position would be temporary anyway, Kendall pounces, saying: “Anyone can do that. And since he said. …”Something about Kendall’s eagerness does not sit right with Roman and Shiv, although they have trouble articulating why. Maybe it is the gleefully vicious tone he takes when he snaps that Logan’s document “doesn’t say Shiv.” Or maybe it is the way he keeps trying to corner both of them, warning that they should not give the company away to Gerri or anybody else “just because we didn’t talk.”Ultimately, Roman buys the idea that the board and the markets might see Kendall’s pitch for himself as “same-old but with a vibe-y new banner.” And the executives come around when they realize they can package Kendall as a co-leader with Roman, who still has an official title as Waystar’s chief operating officer. Shiv is cut out of this leadership group. Her brothers insist that she is still a part of an unofficial triumvirate, but while she has them make “a Dad promise, on yesterday” (referring to how they all bonded in their shock and grief), she is so upset by the mini-coup that she falls down a small set of stairs while fleeing the house.There are other power-plays afoot this week. Logan’s estranged wife Marcia (Hiam Abbass) is no longer — as Kerry once said — “shopping in Milan, forever.” She conspicuously positions herself as a greeter at the wake, asserting that she still spoke to her husband every day. She also refuses Kerry entry to the upstairs and has her removed from the premises, right as Kerry is gathering her personal effects and nervously babbling to Roman about Logan’s big plans for her.And then there is Tom, as always treading the line between “sweetly helpful” and “snaking around.” He tries to show Shiv some kindness, reminding her of when they first got together and how he flew to France to be with her. Shiv, as uncertain as the rest of us as to whether Tom is merely making a play, replies coolly, “That was a while back.”It is Kendall, though, who ends the day in the lead. He and Roman entertain a pitch from Hugo and Karolina about strengthening their executive bona fides by getting it out into the press that Logan was a mentally unstable abuser who had not really been in charge of Waystar in years. Roman nixes this unequivocally. But Kendall — who knows that Hugo has some potential insider-trading trouble to bury — comes to him privately about the “Bad Dad” plan and says, “Action that, but soft … no prints.”Before he meets with Hugo, Kendall is staring at a picture on his phone of Logan’s sloppy succession plan — and his own crossed-out or underlined name. The old man remained inscrutable to the end, for sure. But the sickening smile on Kendall’s face right before the credits roll raises questions, too. Is he smearing Logan because, as he claims, that is exactly the kind of nasty maneuver his father would pull? Or is Kendall still bent on revenge?Either way, one thing is sure: Kendall is his father’s son.Due DiligenceThe title of this episode, “Honeymoon States,” refers to the itinerary Connor has set for his post-wedding travels with Willa: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania … all swing states in his presidential campaign. Connor also moves without Willa’s permission to buy Logan’s home from Marcia for $63 million. When Willa reminds him of the old advice not to make big decisions while still in mourning, he counters with, “They also say it’s pretty smart not to pay Realtors’ fees.”As the nation’s conservative thought leaders — who call Logan “L.R.” — raise a toast to “a man of humility, grace, dignity,” Tom can’t resist leaning over to Greg to whisper, “who died fishing his iPhone from a clogged toilet.” (Rumor has it Karl clogged it.)Greg is briefly allowed into the meeting about Logan’s estate, where it is noted that Greg is “an addendum of miscellaneous matters, in pencil, with a question mark” on the controversial piece of paper. When he asks hopefully whether Logan meant for him to be Kendall’s second-in-command, the ensuing riotous laughter is probably about as joyous as anybody in that room feels all day.We need to talk about Shiv’s big news, which she does not share with anyone in this episode. In the opening, she gets a phone call from a doctor about a test that shows “everything looks healthy,” and she hears that she will have to come back for “the 20-week scan.” It is strongly implied that Shiv is pregnant — which makes her tumble later in the episode more alarming.Speculation corner! If Kendall keeps playing hardball, how long until his siblings make use of what he confessed to them last season about accidentally killing a cater waiter? (Also: Shiv is definitely going to fly off to see Mattson within the next 24 hours, right?)This whole episode is about how nobody really knew Logan. (Was he a neocon? A paleo-libertarian? An anarcho-capitalist?) This point is driven home further when Waystar’s new co-chiefs, Kendall and Roman, step into Logan’s office at the end of the episode and are surprised to discover that their father liked to do Sudoku puzzles. More