Succession (TV Program)

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

Connor’s wedding doesn’t go quite as planned. Neither does just about anything else.‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 3: ‘The Wedding’Up until tonight, the succession part of “Succession” has been a lot like the Godot part of Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot.” Over and over, Logan Roy has made plans to step down as the big boss of Waystar, either by appointing one of his children or underlings as his successor or by selling out to another company. But again and again, either Logan has changed his mind or something else has happened to scotch the deal. Godot never comes. The essential does not change.So what happens this week, with no warning? The old man dies. In an instant, everything is different — for a little while anyway.I say “with no warning,” but that is not entirely so. “Succession” has been building up to this moment since the series premiere, when Logan was felled by a stroke. From time to time in the ensuing seasons, Logan has been worryingly incoherent or sickly. Then in the first episode of Season 4, he delivered a morbid little speech to his bodyguard Colin about how when people die, nothing comes after. Clearly, the shadow of death has been chilling him for a while.As this week’s episode begins, Logan is on his way to sweet-talk Lukas Mattson, with Tom, Kerry, Frank (Peter Friedman), Karl (David Rasche) and Karolina (Dagmara Dominczyk) by his side. At the same time, much of the rest of his Waystar power structure — including Logan’s immediate family — is on a yacht in New York Harbor for Connor and Willa’s wedding. Roman, whom we saw Logan recruit once again to his side at the end of last week’s episode, receives a call from Logan on his way to Connor’s wedding. He assumes his father will be there, too, but no: Logan is calling to to test his son’s loyalty by ordering him to fire Gerri.Against his better judgment, Roman does this as soon as he sees her on the boat. (Actually he says, “It’s not official,” adding, “I’m just heads-upping you.” He also notes that, “I am, like, on a human level, obviously sad.”) More on this later.Suddenly phones start buzzing. Shiv’s rings, and it’s Tom, but she ignores it. Kendall’s does, too. Then, while Kendall and Roman are sequestered off from the rest of the guests and Shiv is elsewhere on the boat being social, Tom finally gets through to Roman. Logan is “very, very sick,” Tom says. It is “very, very bad.”The next 10 to 15 minutes of television are absolutely harrowing. All we can see of Logan is his lifeless body, stripped to his waist, as crew members aboard the plane give him CPR — even though his heart and breathing have stopped. The kids fall into a state between panic and denial. Shiv — who has to be retrieved from the party one deck below — is practically catatonic when she finds out why she has been summoned. Her first response when she gets the news is, “No, I can’t have that.”The hero of the day — though he is a complicated hero — is Tom. He maintains a sense of calm while talking with his freaked-out in-laws, reassuring them that, “The plane people are lovely.” And he has the good and humane idea to get the younger Roys to say goodbye to Logan by phone, holding the phone up to Logan’s ear even though the old man is almost certainly already dead.Granted, none of them can summon much to say. Roman starts out by trying to reassure his father — or is it himself — that he was a good dad; then he cuts himself off, says, “I don’t know how to do this,” and passes the phone like a hot potato. Kendall gives a little Logan-esque “yeah,” telling him to “Hang in there” before his complicated resentments take over and he declares, “I can’t forgive you, but it’s OK and I love you.” Shiv is reduced to utter confusion and tears, a little girl suddenly pleading with her “daddy” to, please, “don’t go.”As nerve-racking as the middle section of this episode is, the rest of the hour is often very funny, in that gallows-humor way at which “Succession” excels; the tone even brightens a bit once everybody starts shifting into post-Logan mode. Although the contingent on the jet and the folks at the wedding are in shock, both groups also know that how they react will eventually be judged by the press and the markets. As such, they do not want to make any move that, as Kendall says, “restricts our freedom of movement.” Naturally, they all blunder into further trouble.The chaos that follows is a perfect storm of Roy family greed and pettiness. Logan’s big plan to sell to GoJo and to buy Pierce Global Media might have gone off without a hitch had his children not decided to pursue Pierce themselves and tried to squeeze extra money out of GoJo — largely, whatever they might say, out of revenge, which rarely makes for smart decision-making. (And who knows? Maybe all that aggravation added some extra stress, contributing to Logan’s death.)But then there are all the questions left behind by Logan’s death — unanswered partly because of Logan’s insistence on always keeping even his closest allies in the dark. Is Gerri still fired? Do the kids have any say on what happens next? Logan’s stalwarts and the Rebel Alliance each want to get in front of the press as soon as possible — partly to shape the narrative about who is in charge and partly to protect the stock price. But no one really knows what Logan would have wanted, or what the smart play here is.Perhaps the most devastating casualty of the day is Logan’s oldest son, Connor, whom Logan never even bothered to inform that he was going to miss the wedding. Alan Ruck has been a stealthy M.V.P. of this season, wringing pathos from Connor’s realization that neither the American voters nor his family really care about him. In an uncommonly touching heart-to-heart with Willa, he admits that he is scared she will leave him — he is pretty sure she agreed to this marriage, he says, only because she wants to be rich. (Willa doesn’t exactly deny this, though her response is charming enough that they end up getting married anyway, after nearly everyone has gone.) When Kendall gives him the news about their dad, all he can mutter is, “He never even liked me.”Perhaps because of some lingering sympathy for and loyalty to Logan’s children, the Waystar execs ultimately allow the Roy kids to draft the statement to the press — with the idea that Frank or someone on the board will sign off. The statement, which Shiv will deliver, is meant to be a simple expression of fact and sorrow, leaving an impression of stability and continuity at the company. The statement should also include mentions of Karl, Frank and Gerri by name, Frank insists, for the sake of “market confidence.”Instead Shiv ignores the executive team’s edits and makes no mention of any of them. And although she said she would not take any questions, she lets it slip on the way out that she and her brothers plan to be involved with Waystar going forward. This, no doubt, will cause trouble in the weeks ahead. The stock plunges immediately.“There he is,” Roman says, pointing to a line graph on his phone that looks like a cliff. “That is Dad.”So this is the Logan Roy legacy: No clear line of succession, a company in trouble, a multi-billion-dollar deal in limbo and none of his loved ones in agreement on what to do next. Nothing is certain. Nothing to be done. Still no Godot.Due diligenceI called Tom “a complicated hero” because while he manages this particular crisis well, in private moments he reveals some of the cunning, evil side that we have seen in the past. Before Logan dies, he mocks Cousin Greg for being left out of the Mattson trip, quipping that, “I’ve got three, four people Gregging for me.” (Greg’s morose reply: “Don’t turn me into a word.”) Then, after the death he admits that he is mainly upset because he just lost his “protector” in the company, then urges Greg to “sing my song” by spreading the word that he was by Logan’s side.After “firing” Gerri — who now appears very much not fired — Roman leaves his father a voice mail message letting him know how much he hated doing it. Then when he finds out Logan died, he worries that his message was responsible. As always, Kieran Culkin is so good at playing Roman’s deep-rooted guilt and self-loathing, which often overwhelms the man so much that he just physically collapses and has to lean against whatever is handy — as though keeping his whole horrible self animated were too taxing.If nothing else, this tragedy may have just rid Waystar and ATN of its Kerry problem. Her reaction to Logan’s death is so wildly inappropriate — saying, with an awkward smirk, that the whole experience of watching Logan die was “nuts” and “weird” — that everyone quickly sidelines her from any of the post-Logan planning. (Tom notes that her grin made it look like she just “caught a foul ball at Yankee Stadium.”)Kendall, calming his siblings when they can’t wrap their heads around planning a memorial for their father: “We’ll get a funeral off the rack. We can do Reagan’s with tweaks.” More

Logan Roy does not care about any of your social norms, and he lacks the patience for apologies.Season 4, Episode 2: ‘Rehearsal’Here’s what you need to know about Logan Roy: He does not care about any of your social norms or niceties. In last week’s “Succession,” while his kids were stealthily trying to outbid him for Pierce Global Media, Logan did not bother to play their little games. He demanded that Tom call Shiv to find out what was what — and he did it in a room full of Waystar executives, so Tom could not say no. Logan never minds coming off as rude or presumptuous. Manners are a waste of time, which is a waste of money.This week, the younger Roys are at it again, weighing a pitch from the maverick Waystar board members Stewy Hosseini (Arian Moayed) and Sandi Furness (Hope Davis) to gum up the works with the impending GoJo sale. So what does Logan do? He does not wait patiently and politely to see what will happen — heavens, no. He crashes a karaoke party.Logan spends a lot of this episode in places no one wants him to be. Apparently, without telling anyone — except for maybe Kerry and Tom — Logan has made a plan for how to spend the rest of his life. Once Waystar is officially sold to GoJo, he is going to dedicate himself to “fixing” ATN, because the only part of his business that he has every really cared about is the news.He shows up unannounced at the ATN offices late one afternoon and starts “terrifyingly moseying” around, according to Greg. (“It’s like ‘Jaws’ if everyone in ‘Jaws’ worked for Jaws.”) Logan complains to Tom about how much everything costs, from the air conditioning bill for ATN’s new hangar-style bullpen to the fresh pizzas being stacked atop the unfinished cold pizzas in the break room. (“There’s a sog factor,” Greg weakly explains.)In a stirring and terrifying speech — delivered to the assembled employees from atop some boxes of printer paper — Logan proclaims his vision for ATN. A state-of-the-art election package with spiffy new graphics? Who cares? What Logan wants is for his team not just to report the news but to make it. He wants them to start giving the audience “something everyone knows but nobody says.” It is time, at last, for brutal honesty.So it is inevitable really that Logan ends his night facing some of that honesty himself from two of the people with the biggest grudges against him: Kendall and Shiv. (But not Roman. We will get back to that.)The showdown is set up by a couple of typically petty Logan moves. The kids are supposed to helicopter into New York City for Connor and Willa’s wedding rehearsal, but their father cancels their Waystar chopper privileges with no warning. This infuriates Shiv, who is already fuming because he advised Tom to tie up every notable divorce lawyer in New York, so that they are all “conflicted out” from handling her case — a classic Logan breakup move. (“I got Mommed,” Shiv grumbles.)The vibes are even worse in the city, where just as Kendall, Shiv and Roman are walking in late to the rehearsal dinner, Willa is ducking out. Connor explains that when his fiancée rose to give a speech, she said, “I can’t do this,” and then disappeared into the bathroom. Connor is now mopey and anxious, and tracking Willa’s whereabouts via a locator app on his phone. Roman, incapable of letting a prime opportunity to needle a loved one go unheeded, revels in describing what kind of decadent escapades Willa might be up to. (Connor, when the app shows Willa at an aquarium supply retailer: “Is that a drug thing?” Roman: “It is.”)To cheer Connor up, they indulge his longstanding dream to sing karaoke at a “real” bar “away from the Fancy Dans,” just like people do in the movies. But while Connor is in the middle of an impressively miserable version of Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” — an impressively miserable song — the kids get the alert that Logan is on his way.Because Logan knows everything — in this case, thanks to Connor — he knows his children are thinking about squeezing GoJo’s Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) for more money. He is also convinced that deep down, this is personal for them not business. He needs to give them something they want more than money: an apology.But an apology for what? Logan wants to limit his regrets to some of his minor recent obnoxiousness. But Kendall and Shiv, who have had enough of their father’s pretending to atone one day then going back to being awful the next, want him to acknowledge his biggest sins: ignoring Connor, hitting Roman, weaponizing Tom against Shiv, conspiring with the kids’ mother to push them out of Waystar … everything, basically.Logan sees no point to this, so he abruptly ends his family reconciliation time with a gentle but devastating kiss-off: “I love you, but you are not serious people.” Only after he leaves the karaoke bar does Logan start raging, ranting to Kerry about how in New York there are “rats as fat as skunks.” He then pivots back into Logan mode, deciding to cancel the board meeting and to meet with Mattson again, with every major Waystar player there except Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron). He wants to skip the procedural hoo-hah and settle this person to person.Shiv and Kendall seem almost giddy that they got to tell the old man off to his face — though later as they ride home separately, only Kendall is still smiling. And Roman?Well, it turns out Roman has been texting little “hey how are you” messages to his father for weeks. So after the karaoke fiasco, he drops by his dad’s home and immediately gets roped into the big Mattson plan. Logan needs “pirates” like Roman to lead his new ATN. “Smart people know what they are,” he tells his son.This is something Shiv and Kendall have missed, as they have been dragging Roman from one Logan-skewering plan after another and treating him like their mascot. They think their brother is the George Harrison of their band. But when pushed, Roman stares them down and straightens them out, proclaiming — with a confidence that should frighten them — “I’m John.”Due diligenceThe best running gag in this episode — just edging out how Kendall keeps pestering Roman with snackable bits of Buddhist philosophy — involves Kerry’s audition to become an ATN anchor. She has produced a terrible tape. (For some reason she keeps smiling at all times, even when reporting on a child abduction.) Tom, tasked with figuring out what to do about this, gravely tells Greg that the situation is “like Israel-Palestine, except harder and much more important,” before passing the buck and offering a step-by-step guide for how Greg should handle it. But when Greg tries to follow those steps, he botches it. His best attempt to soften the suggestion that her tape is awful is to say, “It can happen that they shoot weird, the cameras.”A serious question for serious people: Why do the Roy children even want to be in the news business? News is Logan’s passion. The children, based on all available evidence, seem baffled by its appeal. While watching some PGM programming and brainstorming about how to improve it, they sound completely lost. Shiv only knows they should “broaden out and stop over-indexing to college professors.” Kendall tosses out jargon like “from global-global to hyperlocal” but when he tries to clarify what he means all he can come up with is, “Every day: What is happening in Africa?” And as a bit of possible foreshadowing, Roman comes closest to imagining something like his dad might want when he proposes info-dumps in the day and “A Clockwork Orange” at night.The younger Roys do a lot in this episode to torpedo any sympathy viewers might be nurturing for them. When they follow Connor into one of his non-Fancy Dan bars (where he sighs, “Ah, America! I’ve missed you.”), Roman mutters, “Do you think they know how to make a vodka tonic?” while Shiv chuckles, “House red? Do I dare?” Later, Roman seems bemused and repulsed by the plastic menus listing basic pub food like wings. The Roys’ contempt oozes … and it stinks. More