The world is upside down as we finally return to Succession Land tonight. The Roy kids move harmoniously. Tom Wambsgans is being bullied by Greg The Egg. Roman Roy is suddenly the cautious voice of reason. And Logan Roy?
Logan Roy loses tonight.
Succession – and yes, hello, we’re back! Succession! season four! It feels so good! – was always careful to contrast Logan’s power, his wits, his ability to shape the world against his weaknesses. A long time ago, before we got a single almighty “Fuck off!” it was clear from Brian Cox’s mouth in the first two minutes of the show: the tall man is groping around, confused in the dark, barely controlling his own body. And we’ve kept coming back to this idea for the past five years: The King in Decline. The flesh is weak… and the spirit seems a little less than willing.
POUR
Nicholas Brown
Gregory Hirsch
Peter Friedman
Frank Verona
Matthew Macfadyen
Tom Wambsgans
And yet, somehow, Logan never seemed smaller — or maybe just smaller — than he did tonight, sitting incognito in a crowded restaurant on his birthday and telling his bodyman, Colin, with obvious and horrifying sincerity, that he was his “best pal.” (It’s amazing to see Scott Nicholson, who has played Colin for four seasons with the practiced dead eyes of a predator, exude genuine panic when Logan tries to come to terms with him as a person.) Logan isn’t really looking for a real friendship, of course – wouldn’t know what to do with it if offered, and crushed Colin’s only attempt at following orders and quickly telling his boss about his life. But who else can he turn to? No children*. No Marcia. After last season’s devastating finale, Logan has finally kicked every dog he doesn’t own hard enough to send them out of orbit forever. And now there’s no real person left, in Waystar Royco terminology, and The Munsters are approaching.
*(Except for Connor.)
Things are both literally and figuratively a lot sunnier in Los Angeles, where Kendall, Shiv and Roman — against all odds and despite their various raging bonding disorders — are seriously tackling the alliance they forged with the Tuscan Sand (and her father’s boot) on their asses, all the way back in December 2021. (Which now appears to be a few months ago in the show’s timeline.) It wouldn’t be a Roy family reunion without some light-hearted allegations of betrayal, of Betrayal and double entender, but all factors considered, the kids work unnervingly well together as they try to chart a course forward without Logan. Though that path inevitably puts her back at odds with the old bear, once the troubled estrangement between Shiv and a still-Logan-loyal Tom reveals Pops is once again bent on buying up his old rivals at Pierce Global Media – in hoping to take the news giant with it once Waystar’s sale to GoJo closes in 48 hours. The kids might not call their dad on his birthday, but is that putting a brake on his decades-old obsession with buying Pierce? That’s the kind of intra-family communication they can stand behind.
Jeremy StrongPhoto: Claudette Barius/HBO
So let’s take each kid in turn, starting with Kendall – who, for once, is the least upset of all his siblings. Not that he doesn’t keep getting manic and casually alluding to heroin use. But for the first time since Shiv’s wedding, we see a Kendall who isn’t alone. We see him shake a bit when forced to talk to his now-ex Naomi, and he’s mostly transparent when he sees the kids’ own sting at a Pierce acquisition as (insanely expensive) kind, their dad to fool. But after Tuscany and the final exposure of the details of Andrew Dodds’ death to people who didn’t immediately use it as leverage against him at the time, Jeremy Strong no longer plays Kendall as a man being burned from the inside out by a poison. No idea how long it’ll last – there’s no way the Kids Alliance will stay solid all season, and god, but how ugly it could get once it starts cracking. But right now, Kendall is in the best shape we’ve seen in years.
Ditto Roman, albeit in a more subdued direction. Rome has always been the Roy kid most involved in Logan’s Persistent Disrespect Field – and now it’s even clearer, the one most consistently damaged by it. Tonight is pretty much the first time we’re seeing a Roman Roy who doesn’t spend 40 percent of his mental resources worrying about what Daddy’s thinking, and it’s looking good: Kieran Culkin is dumping a lot of the sweaty energy that characterizes so much of his performance over the past few seasons, presenting a Roman who is calmer, more focused and, God help us, more mature. Not that he’s still a snappy little piece of shit who can’t take the potential Pierce deal and annoys the kids’ new money man (Kevin Changaris) at every turn. But after years of different people (with varying degrees of self-interest/manipulation) claiming that Roman has instincts to play in the big leagues, buried beneath those mountains of fatherly insecurities and cum jokes, it’s heartening to finally see this guy starting to play to show up.
For once, the wild card is Shiv, who is still scared and nervous at the idea of putting her future entirely in the hands of her two brothers. That’s understandable in that you’ve met these guys? But also as a reflection of her relationship with Tom, which has now completely splintered following his betrayal at the end of last season. And so she does the Shiv thing — keeping options open (in this case, taking calls from the Democratic candidate’s transition team in the apparently incredibly evil presidential election taking place in the background of tonight’s premiere) and impulsively speaking reality into existence, Telling Nan Pierce that she and Tom are getting a divorce before anyone, including maybe herself, even knows.
And Tom? Tom is sad, y’all. Not the sad “woe is me” when he thought he was going to jail last season; There’s something deeper and more human about this, which paradoxically makes the character more appealingly vulnerable than ever, despite coming right after perhaps the worst thing he’s ever done. We get a few flashes of old Tom twisting a position while trying to coax a promise from Logan that their alliance will hold even if he’s no longer his son-in-law, and after the final faux a classic Greg- Bashing develops (possibly) spends himself and his new girlfriend in one of Logan’s guest beds until completion. But the joy of finally being in the inner circle, or getting a “Tommy” out of the old man, is no joy left here. And the less talked about his new status as junior partner in The Disgusting Brothers – Greg’s nickname for the pair as two swinging singles in town – the better.
Brian Cox, Matthew MacfadyenPhoto: Macall B. Polay/HBO
Except not since that little moniker is Shiv’s opening salvo once the two finally end up in the same room together after the dust settles on the Pierce acquisition. (The kids win, although the win sounds pretty goddamn Pyrrhic at $10 billion.) The resulting conversation is about as raw as we’ve ever encountered between these two, though Shiv refuses to listen to Tom, how he explains his behavior regarding last season’s Climatic Drama. It’s an amazing scene from Sarah Snook and Matthew Macfadyen; Shiv tries to keep it in that slick space of comedy writers’ dream dialogue that the Roy kids are always trying to channel their most hurt feelings into. But Tom’s pain is just too great: “Are you sure you want to list all the pain in our marriage, Shiv?” he asks, Macfadyen resisting the urge to get big or cruel.
As the two roam the beige and brown hell of their shared apartment, it’s clear that Shiv is there to formalize the divorce she brought about just hours earlier. Snook, who as always works within the 8,000 layers of Shiv’s emotional armor, shows the cracks even as she tries to keep the conversation within the realm of what is emotionally “profitable.” Her face is at its most heartbreaking in these images when she knows Tom can’t see it, and repeatedly winces when he decides to finally take her numerous “nos” for an answer. The final shot of the scene is almost frighteningly tender: two survivors of something big and tumult and, above all, terrible, holding hands as they contemplate the weight of what comes next.
But of course we don’t end there. We end up with Logan Roy, who – for all his wealth and power and anger and all that other bullshit – is somehow still reduced to being just another senior who can’t sleep and stays up to watch crappy cable news . Although there was one of the biggest laughs of the whole premiere – i.e. the cut from Logan complaining about “that bloody jerk” on his network to the image of the poor host in question not like “a scrotum in a toupee” – this whole final sequence is also just brutally sad. “People watch at night,” Logan plaintively reminds ATN boss Cyd, whom he roused from a deep sleep to work through his grievances. “I watch at night.” And when he asks her if she’s “losing her f*cking nerves,” it’s clear she’s not really who he’s asking about.
The Munsters isn’t one of those big, seismic episodes of Succession that pops up every now and then; We set tables here, don’t smash them. Despite the Pierce maneuvers — and a great return from Cherry Jones as family matriarch Nan, who gets terribly involved in a hugely lucrative bidding war that makes the Pierces the true “winners” of the episode — it functions mostly as a character study of what terrible people ours are terrible people currently are. The status quo it establishes is menacing despite the bright surroundings: the children who cannot resist the urge to define themselves against their father; Shiv and Tom shattered; Logan, desperate for any meaning to his sprawling life. Kendall, in his new state of semi-lucidity, is perhaps putting it best: “I need something freakin’ compelling in my life,” he says to his brother and sister … just before blatantly taking a step that will bring him back to the seasons could bind. long blood feud that has completely determined his life so far. What do the Roys even look like when they’re not using their considerable energy and resources to destroy each other? It’s not clear if we’ll ever really find out.
Sarah Snook Photo: Claudette Barius/HBO
Crazy observations
- Welcome to our coverage of Succession Season 4 here at AV Club! This might be the most nervous I’ve had about accepting a show for review; The follow up is so tight and so well executed that I know I’ll drop a few balls here or there. (It doesn’t help that I’m operating in the shadow of some great writers who have previously worked on this beat.) But I’m also incredibly excited to dive into the show’s final season with you all as the show lays the breadcrumbs for its apparent endgame : Greg Hirsch as the last survivor, king of the known universe.
- Speaking of Greg, he continues to be the master of failure upwards, earning some perverted credit from Logan for coming to third base with his new girlfriend. For half a second, it feels like he’s crossed a line as he meets Logan’s pathetic, insistent demands that one of his cronies “roast” him by aiming for something real, with “Where are your kids, Uncle Logan?” But Logan is just happy to have something to hit, immediately firing a jab at Greg’s never seen father and looking as happy as he did all night.
- Great news, Conheads: Connor still holds just under 1 percent of the vote in the upcoming election where he appears to be running as an independent. (Also, his and Willa’s President and First Lady cosplays are both spot on.) But he worries about being “squashed,” leading him to ask her if she’ll have some “at her upcoming nuptials.” Penk Fights” can schedule to catch some viral heat. It’s always fascinating to see her realize there’s a new part of her – in this case her wedding dreams – that he eventually decides to sell.
- I’m not sure if the whole thing about Greg’s weird date – she asks Logan for a selfie, which amazingly isn’t the point where she gets kicked out of the birthday party – is designed for future company banter, or just follow-up- cringe comedy; Either way, it’s one of the less successful runners of the episode.
- Can I put my conspiracy hat on here for a moment? The way the kids get wind of Logan’s attempted takeover of Pierce is incredibly sketchy — first when Tom Shiv blurted out about his no-date with Naomi, and then when Greg’s date tagged one of Pierce’s at Logan’s party. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out later that Nan pulled the strings even harder to start the bidding war.
- New Season, New Intro: The biggest change from Season 3 is the inclusion of Waystar’s hated, literally pissed off StarGo streaming app.
- No mention of the pregnancy conspiracy that took place in last year’s finale, although Kerry (Zoe Winters) is still right by Logan’s side as his “friend-assistant-adviser” and picking up the usual nasty jokes from the kids. Aside from that, she gets a few of the best lines of the night, all directed at Greg: “We ain’t a fuckin’ Shake Shack, Greg. This isn’t a pre fuck party. It’s a birthday party.”
- Where is Marcia? ‘Marcia is in Milan shopping. Forever.”
- As always, every actual business idea the Roy kids come up with is the worst business idea you’ve ever heard: their quickly abandoned The Hundred is “Substack meets Masterclass meets The Economist meets The New Yorker”; later, one of their slides suggests it might also be a dating site. Kendall says it will provide “quality info snacks.” Those damn kids.
- Roman after Kendall opens up about ‘smoking horse’: ‘He’s scared of needles. He’s not a real junkie.”
- Jess clock: Jess is in this! Always nice to see Jess.
- I only had to turn the episode off once due to overwhelming twitching when Logan asked poor Colin if he believed there was life after death. Colin is an incredibly horrible person as far as we know, but nobody deserves to face that.
- Nice use of the time difference between New York and the Pierce mansion to alternate between soft sunlight and Logan’s increasingly cramped and horrific nighttime bunker. We don’t get much from Gerri, Frank, and Karl tonight (although we do get a quick check-in with old piss-bucket Ray), but even they seem troubled by the goddamn vibe Logan creates without his kids around.
- But seriously, Greg will kill them all.