Succession’s penultimate episode offers an array of shocks and cliffhangers
“Chiantishire” delivers one grueling, agonizing, painful scene after another, a true symphony of poisonous ambition.
TV Reviews Succession
“If today you’re left with nothing
Be thankful you’re not left with less
Some of us only lose the dark
To get lost in darkness.”
—“Down the Wrong Road Both Ways,” Magnolia Electric Co.
Goddammit, Kendall.
Maybe I’m silly for this, but I didn’t expect the most tragic character on Succession to potentially actually be the most tragic character on Succession. Yes, we’ve watched nearly three entire seasons of Kendall flailing and failing, exhibiting at every second of every minute of every day how he is a man perpetually at odds with himself. We’ve watched him struggle with addiction, and struggle against his father, and struggle against his siblings, and none of his attempts at connection have worked. We’ve watched him try to step up as leader, and then fall back into second in command, and then try to wage his way forward as an outsider, and then try to find respect as a whistleblower, and none of these identities has really stuck. We’ve seen him disappoint Rava, and be disconnected from his children, and realize that Naomi doesn’t know him very well at all. Do people respect Kendall? Does he respect himself? When I list it all like that, well. I don’t want Kendall Roy to die, but I’m not sure Succession wants Kendall to live.
“Chiantishire,” the penultimate season-three episode, is one grueling, agonizing, painful scene after another, a true symphony of horrendous family dynamics, poisonous ambition, and people using and abusing each other over and over and over. Every trip to Europe on Succession provides moments of crystalline truth about who the Roys are, and “Chiantishire” keeps that tradition going. I took 12 single-spaced pages of notes on this episode because so much damn stuff happens; there is no filler, no fluff, just everyone going full-bore, full-beast, boar-on-the-floor levels of unhinged. What could we possibly have wanted that Jesse Armstrong did not provide? Episodes of television normally have A-plots and B-plots; this hour-plus just had banger after banger after banger, so much so that you could argue any of these interactions was the most important to understanding where these characters are now and where they’re going next, and you would probably be right.
In terms of the past, or the now: A scene between Shiv and Caroline that proves how reactive the lone Roy daughter is, how utterly devoid of her own personality or her own demands or her own desires. She never wanted a child with Tom before her mother tells her she’d be a bad mother, and then lo and behold, Shiv jumps right into wanting a baby. It’s not so different from her relationship with Waystar Royco, is it? Shiv was all the way out until she was all the way in; tell Shiv she can’t do something and she’ll try to prove she can, but where’s her core? Did it ever exist? Meanwhile, in another “women doing it for themselves, or something” storyline, Willa reacts to Connor’s proposal with a real, “Wait, what?” look, and then leaves him hanging for hours as to a genuine answer. This is basically the “It’s complicated” Facebook status made real, and I can genuinely understand Willa’s indecision! On the one hand, Connor has money. On the other hand, just recently Willa suggested moving back to New York so she could be Connor’s secret, sometimes partner, rather than his public, forever partner. Is the wealth and access good enough to be tied to Connor on a permanent basis?
And, oh yeah, Roman finally maneuvers into a firm position of power as Logan’s No. 1 boy, and then he sends his dad a picture of his junk, and now Logan and Shiv both know about Roman and Gerri! So much to unpack here! Roman has been sexually harassing Gerri for what seems like weeks, and Gerri is unable to get him to stop. It seems clear to me that Gerri is no longer into whatever their dalliance was because of her new position and her relationship with Laurie, and she now probably considers those few masturbation sessions as a mistake, but also knows that she can’t go to anyone with complaints about Roman because her initial consent to whatever their whole deal was would be used against her. Tricky, tricky.
Logan has been increasingly loathsome and Shiv increasingly opportunistic in the past few episodes, and both of them switch those attributes into high gear when Roman’s “Eat this” text message drops. Logan calls Gerri, the woman whom he placed into a position of power because of her competence and her expertise and her knowledge, “frozen fucking piss.” Shiv, who just last season was intimidating a woman into not coming forward about her abuse suffered by Waystar Royco, now tries to intimidate Gerri into definitely coming forward: “If you can’t deal with your own sexual harassment, that’s not a good look,” Sarah Snook says with an impressive amount of simpering condescension.
And while all of that is going on, Kendall—exhausted from that horrible meeting with his father, drained from fighting to feel like someone, cut off from his mother and siblings and recreating that same dysfunctional family makeup by ignoring his own children—might be drowning. The way Mark Mylod shoots the passed-out Kendall from underneath, only slightly swaying back and forth as Kendall’s body sways, but otherwise staying fixed on that worrying stream of bubbles? Harrowing, haunting, I can’t stop thinking about it and I wish I could.
This episode mostly takes place in Tuscany, Italy, where the Roy family is attending Caroline’s wedding to Peter Munion, whom Roman distrusts (“three bankruptcies, two marriages, four children, five shell companies”) but toward whom Caroline seems… somewhat affectionate, I guess, but also fairly pitying? Like she’s doing Peter a favor by finally marrying him? (Sounds like Shiv and Tom, right?) Caroline is a strange nut to crack, but at this moment in time, she’s still more connected to the Roy family infrastructure than Kendall is. She retains a board seat, and she still has money and access because of Logan, and so when Logan demands that Kendall not be around for all the events, she says yes. Kendall lost his siblings already, and he lost Naomi last week (note that she isn’t his plus-one for the wedding), and now he’s lost his mother.
It’s that desperation that drives Kendall to demand a meeting with Logan so they can finally hash it out, but I kept thinking of what Tom said at that Virginia diner: Logan has never been fucked once, and Kendall has been fucked over and over. A mini version of that plays out at this dinner, during which Kendall asks to be all the way out and his father toys with him again and again. Logan acts as if Kendall is going to poison him, and makes Iverson—the grandson he physically abused—try the food. He says the offer to buy out his shares was a joke. He refuses to let his son go, and I cannot imagine anything more hurtful than Logan’s refusal to see how desperately Kendall needs to be free: “Maybe I want you close” is basically a death threat. Does it matter whether Kendall really believes that Logan is a bad person for turning “black biles into silver dollars”? I don’t think so. Kendall repeats his insistence that he’s a good person and Logan isn’t, but we all know what Kendall did, and the guilt he’s lived with, and the fact that Logan helped cover it up. They are tied together forever because of so many crimes and so many wrongdoings and so many betrayals, and a good father would let Kendall go. Logan is not a good father.
That becomes pretty clear with everything that happens with Roman this episode. At first, Roman really nails it as the Roy heir apparent: Once Lukas starts sending off tweets making it seem like he’s going to come into a huge amount of money—fueling speculation about an acquisition by Waystar Royco—Roman travels by speedboat (a means of transportation on which everyone is hotter) to meet Lukas at his villa and get him to shut up. While there, Roman reads Lukas easily: The Gojo guy isn’t interested in getting bought out. He wants a more equal partnership with Waystar Royco, and Roman thinks he can get Logan to agree—and he does. At a meeting with Logan, Shiv, Gerri, and the rest of the inner circle, Roman sells the deal hard, and he convinces his father. Then he sends ends the text of doom, and everything goes sideways.
Certain elements of this scene still puzzle me. Logan has never been shy about praising Roman before; why text him a “Good work, kid” message instead of saying it directly to his face? Logan loves to stoke the ire between his children, and publicly compliment Roman instead of Shiv would have gotten a rise out of her. I don’t entirely buy that Logan wouldn’t do that. Also, maybe I am a bad texter, but is it normal for a text you’re sending to one person be superimposed for another person if you open their message? I’m sorry, I’m just trying to understand technology! I don’t quite get it!
But look, the Roman and Gerri news was never going to stay secret, and Roman and Gerri were never actually in a real relationship, and this move is a fantastic reshuffling of the board. Roman was at the top; now Roman tumbles down. Shiv had tumbled down, now she moves up. Connor remains neutral. And Kendall? “We can’t do this bullshit forever,” he told his father, and next week’s season finale “All The Bells Say” will clarify how long “forever” really is. Let me repeat myself: Goddammit, Kendall.
Stray observations
- This New Yorker profile of Strong by Michael Schulman is titled “On ‘Succession,’ Jeremy Strong Doesn’t Get the Joke,” and yeah, it’s worth your time.
- Shaved-head Kendall wanting to “get clean” reminded me very much of Frank Sobotka; make of that what you will.
- Logan really brought Marcia and Kerry both to Caroline’s wedding. Marcia has to know what’s happening, right? I truly cannot believe that she would be so unaware. Give me some more time with Hiam Abbass, damn!
- “Journalists are so fucking friendly, in my experience.” Willa still smarting over those negative reviews of her play, I see!
- Shout out to Arian Moayed’s Stewy Hosseini, who will never, ever refuse a money-making opportunity. Who cares that Waystar Royco pursued Gojo without letting Stewy, Sandy, and Sandi know first? If it can make them more money, Stewy is all about it. I appreciate that ruthlessness always.
- Alexander Skarsgård’s pouty line delivery of “Success doesn’t really interest me anymore” was perfect, and if a Waystar Royco/Gojo partnership actually happens, I look forward to more of his natural Swedish accent classing up my TV.
- Was Shiv watching The Pioneer Woman while home “sick”? That would make so much sense, actually.
- I am desperate to read a costume-analysis piece on Shiv’s blue floral dress. It felt so out of character given all her beige and navy this year, and I think that has to be intentional?
- Final Shiv thought: Her seduction talk toward Tom was 100% revelatory, right? “I’m way out of your fucking league. That’s why you want me. That’s why you love me, even though I don’t love you. But you want me anyway.” Coupled with “I may not love you, but I do love you”? Yikes!
- Is Jess just not around lately because actress Juliana Canfield was filming Y: The Last Man? She is missed!
- Best lines of the episode: Per usual, impossible to decide. My current tie is between Roman’s smirking “Don’t open Pandora’s box. There’s just more dicks in there” and his later sheepish “I’m not a radical feminist, Dad, but I think perhaps we should not fire her for receiving pictures of my dick”; Gerri’s stern “Do not try to fuck Laurie”; and Tom’s gleeful “It’s such a shame Sontag’s not still alive. You could take her to the drive-through!”
- My time recapping Succession for The A.V. Club has come to an end, and the inimitable Ashley Ray-Harris will step in for next week’s finale. Thank you all for reading these recaps, and for reading Ashley’s final thoughts too!
294 Comments
Oh crap. I thought we had 2 more episodes to go? Boo.On another note, boy did Kendall just completely give up quickly.
thats the power of shaving your head
He gave up on his hair, and as being an heir.HAW HAW HAW
That’s the power of suddenly having your manic episode come to an end leaving you mired in depression.
It’s interesting how the deepest cut insults in this family continue to revolve around threats to the “traditional” family structure: I should have had dogs instead of children. Logan’s weird tangent about whether Kendall wanted to fuck the help before he killed him. Whatever the heck is happening between Shiv and Tom. It sort of parallels Kendall’s comment about Logan monetizing Americans’ anxieties.But if the dinner between Logan and Kendall really hammers home the idea that the insistence on traditional family values is what’s keeping everyone trapped in the first place. The threat is coming from inside the house. (Yes, it’s always been clear that this specific family is beyond fucked up. But this episode felt like a shift in terms of interrogating the structure and assumptions of the “traditional” nuclear family unit.)
I fucking can’t with Logan. He wants Logan gone until he sees Kendall *wants* to be gone. Fucking belligerent man-child who should have had his custody removed.
Yeah, especially with the forcing his grandson to be a poison taster in front of Ken. Out of all of the awful things he’s said and done this season, that one is up there at the top.
There’s no way he actually believes Ken poisoned it too. He just made a show of it, made Kendall think about it, then showed what he would do if threatened.
He also feeds Iverson mozzarella right after Iverson says he doesn’t really like it.
I don’t think he ever wants Kendall to just be “gone”, he wants Kendall to be broken for his betrayal. Which is what all of his strategies and taunts have been to this point.Right now, the best way of punishing Kendall is to deny him what he wants to leave. Before it was things like telling him to leave and ‘fuck off’ at his birthday party.Honestly, if this season has shown us anything its that Kendall never had any chance of beating Logan. He quit WAY too easily.
On the one hand, it makes for some very compelling television, but on the other hand I have to wonder if the whole rest of the show will be Logan dunking on his children over and over until he keels over of a heart attack. Surely something will have to give.
There were complaints about the holding pattern lasting too long, but I think this episode did a fantastic job at shaking that up. Having Gerri be threatened by Roman’s fuck-up is a fascinating turn of events.
If Kendall had ANY idea of how to manipulate his father, he would have told them there was no way he would ever, ever cash out, and then maybe would have gotten to the point of a binding contract he could sign.But Kendall just isn’t a chess player.
Reverse psychology: doesn’t that also work on children? 😉
I don’t think even Logan knows what he really wants. He wants to hurt Kendall because he feels betrayed; he wants to have Kendall close because he loves him; he wants Kendall to love him so much back that he can kick him and still have him love him; he wants to not love anybody or want anything from anybody because he sees it as week. Logan is just as messed up as the others are, he’s just better at coping with it.[incidentally, Mattson this episode really gave me a ‘young Logan’ impression…]
I don’t get the feeling that Logan wants much of anything from Kendall other than to watch him suffer. I never get the feeling that Logan is all that eager to have Kendall back for any reason other than to beat him and grind him under his shoe for daring to challenge him.Because if he was looking for anything other than to keep the humiliation going (say if he wanted Kendall’s affection) he would have accepted the buyout.
Mattson seems like he’s at that same stage in his life where Logan must have been when he brought Waystar into huge amounts of debt in the 80s. Just so bored by his own success that he wants to shake things up and doesn’t really care about the consequences.
Prediction- Kendall’s last-ditch effort to beat Logan is to burn the house down, with him inside: He’s going to go on that podcast and admit that he was in the car when the caterer died, and his dad covered it up. What Kendall did was an accident, and he made a mistake not reporting it. He’d probably still get a little jail time. But Logan and his minion covering it all up was way worse. Like he says, Kendall isn’t a knight on a horse, but he can still scorch the earth.
Plus, it would be a good parallel to end all three seasons so far going back to the dead caterer. S1 ends with Kendall having to back down in order for his dad to swoop in and rescue him. S2 ends with Logan using that to manipulate him into almost going to prison for the cruise scandal, until Kendall realizes he can’t and won’t implicate Kendall, either because he doesn’t want to burn his son that bad or because he knows it’d implicate him too. And now at the end of S3, Kendall brings it all back around with a new round of “who’s going to prison.” They’re already all in Europe (though not sure how extradition would work, post-Brexit).
“He’s going to go on that podcast and admit that he was in the car when the caterer died, and his dad covered it up.”I’m not so sure—-that seems like a pretty cliched trope to go with, something out of some lesser Showtime drama, doesn’t it?
Maybe it won’t be on that podcast, but at some point in the series, the truth about that will come out. Maybe it’ll be in season 7 when the show is running out of steam and they need some new crises. But I would not be surprised if that’s the cliffhanger at the end of the finale.
I get the feeling that the show won’t last that long—-HBO is generally better than Showtime at wrapping up series before they run out of ideas.Look at Netflix and Ozark—ending the series at the peak of its popularity.Even the much-derided GoT didn’t overrun its story—they just concluded it in the most asinine way possible when the original writer’s source material ran out. But there was still a conclusion to be made.
Hey kicks them, and than watches them come back. Deep insecurity and abusiveness on Logan’s part. The mom and Shiv convo was reveailing.
I didn’t see it that way. I think it’s still tied to the corrupting power of money. Caroline leaves her kids with Logan to protect their shares in the company. Kendall wants out of the mess, but won’t do so without $2 billion and other assets. Tom knows Shiv doesn’t love him, but when she mentions her ideas for taking over he returns to the possibility that she is his ticket to the top. Even Greg gets enamored by the idea of moving up the dating ladder to a woman with royalty. I assume he’s also still suing Greenpeace for his grandpa’s money.
my big cliffhanger is if we’ll see that blue dress again
You call yours Cliffhanger?
if I’m being honest its at best a small ledge hanger
Hey, as long as it hangs.
I chose tiny “hammer” in Cyberpunk 2077.
Jesus, you’d think these comment sections were full of prison inmates
Really enjoying as much of the Brian Cox/Jeremy Strong scenes as I can considering…well, we can’t be getting too many more of those before this thing is over, right?
Unless Kendall was playing Logan in that dinner setup, I don’t see how Kendall is around much longer. Either dead by his own hand or back into meek servitude to Logan, which means we won’t see anything resembling the Kendall we saw tonight, again.
It was playing out exactly as Kendall’s mom said:He kicks them like dogs, just to see if them come back. In the end though, he never lets them actually leave. The abusiveness is so incredibly dark, and realistic.
It was the first scene of extended quiet menace we’ve gotten from Brian Cox in a while, which really put into context just how much of this season Logan has spent scared. Logan’s basically a frilled lizard, his instinct when anything threatens him is to puff up and hiss. He’s only capable of bringing out that soft yet still authoritative tone when he knows he has full control over a situation.
“Getting out” from the family and the firm is clearly Kendall’s only chance at survival, and Logan won’t let him have it.
There was something fascinating in watching two horrible people argue over whether one of them is a horrible person.
Kendall’s insistence on saying he’s a good person; I’m reminded of dramatics 101. Oftentimes you say things to convince yourself more than to convince other people.
Yeah, sadly nearly all of Kendall’s virtues are related to his inability to be as evil as he secretly wishes he could be. He was bad at being evil, bad at being good, even bad at being a hedonist.
That seems to be oversimplifying things. I’d say it’s more like Kendall tried to convince himself that he could redeem the evil parts of himself by leveraging them to accomplish actual good by reforming evil systems (or at least making them less bad). And realized that the evil was a feature of the system, not a bug.
My sense of Kendall has always been that the tragedy of his character is that he almost has a lot of good traits. He’s almost smart. He’s almost tech savvy. He’s almost cunning. He almost has real business sense. I wouldn’t say he’s almost a good person, but I think at a lot of different points he walks right up to the edge of doing the right thing, only to back away at the last moment. All of which is somehow more annoying and more loathsome than if he was just a straightforwardly terrible moron.
“You’re not a killer,” Logan told Kendall at the end of the previous season as a reason why he wouldn’t be good in charge of Weystar. That’s right I think: he’s almost a killer.
I thank you’re selling Kendall short. He would’ve replaced his dad in the first season if Roman hadn’t chickened out. Or there hadn’t been some kind of bomb scare that kept him from getting to the boardroom. Logan was more incapacitated than anyone wanted to admit, but Kendall called it. He’s been right about their investments. He saved the company. He told Mattson that he should buy Waystar Royco and not the other way around. He is smart enough, he is tech savvy enough, he’s just chosen the wrong opponent. His dad is way more cutthroat than he will ever be.
Or there hadn’t been some kind of bomb scare that kept him from getting to the boardroom.He fucked that himself though. The ex-wife(?) was not going to call into the board meeting and vote until he got nervous and called her daughter. Then he went out to see them in person to fix his fuck up, even though Frank warned him there was no time.
Wait, that was someone’s ex wife? I just assumed she was a former business associate of Logan’s and was on the board because she had to step down from an executive position due to her declining health.
Apparently it’s still unclear who Ilona Shinoy is. I remember reading speculation at the time that she was one of Logan’s ex-wives.
I have a far dimmer view of Kendall. He tried to be as evil as his father but could only really achieve being the best flunky. So he tried to chase the high of being exceptional by being good, but wasn’t any good at that either, partially because he could not fully commit to it.He certainly told himself that he was going to use his evil skills for good and to reform the system. A convenient lie for someone incapable of actual sacrifice.
I might agree with that interpretation if we were just talking about this season alone. But for me, both Kendall and Shiv get some small amount of credit for wanting to steer Waystar Royco away from its fear mongering roots—even though they’re pursuing for very selfish reasons and consistently put their own self-image first. Compare that to Roman who is actively throwing democracy under the bus for ratings. Logan and Roman aren’t just watching the world burn, they’re setting it on fire. I can’t believe that distinction doesn’t matter.I wouldn’t say that Kendall is a good person by any stretch of the imagination. But he is right that he is a better person than Logan and that Logan is truly evil.
I didn’t say the distinction “didn’t matter”. I pretty clearly said that Kendall’s main virtue was being unable to be as evil as his father. But no, I’m don’t really give them credit for vaguely wanting to make WR “better” but just so long as it doesn’t cost them anything in the slightest. That’s like believing a politician should get credit for mouthing bromides about wanting “world peace.” Roman is delighted to actively work for his father to burn the world down. Shiv and Kendall are willing to actively work for their father burning the world down while frowning unhappily about it. They’re all horrible, we’re just talking about how much.
I agree. But again, I still think the degrees matter.
The core failure of Kendall, whether for good or ill or anything in between, is that he’s never been able to succeed as his own man. When he tried to usurp his dad at Waystar and become the leader himself, he failed. When he broke with the company and tried to take it down from the outside, he failed. The only thing he has ever been good at is doing what his dad told him to do, something that he has always suspected but he has now basically confirmed, and the reality of that just destroys him.
I thought it was a little revealing that when Kendall asked for the buyout, he asked for some small subsidiary to be included, like billboards. Even when he’s admitting defeat and begging to be let out of the game, he’s still clinging to some desperate need to play out the Successful Business Mogul character he’s tried to be his entire life.
It is possible Kendall could potentially be a good person, or as much of a good person you could be raised in such a situation. Trying to make your dad proud while struggling with your conscience could lead to mental breakdowns and turning to drugs. Hes the only one who seems to be struggling with all of this and sure it could be just because hes a failure/broken man, but it could also be because hes so conflicted.
Oh absolutely. Trying to make your dad proud, when your dad is most decidedly *not* a good man, would certainly lead to some cognitive dissonance. He may indeed *be a good person, but him saying it over and over again certainly weakens his case.
For me was their mother’s comment that she wouldn’t have dogs because she knew Logan would abuse them, but she, of course, left her children with him…
Someone wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal complaining that the birthrate has tanked due to dogs hijacking women’s instinct to nurture a few days ago, so that whole scene felt very timely.
Dogs running a tens of thousands of years’ long-con on the human race? I love it!
It’s the mice we really gotta keep an eye on!
Wait wut
https://www.wsj.com/articles/peggy-noonan-dogs-pets-animals-children-kids-11638487420
Given Noonan’s track record of bizarre and horrid opinions, I had to check to make sure one wasn’t hers.
This show definitely has its finger on conservative media’s pulse. We’re due to move from “echoing real life developments” to “predicting real life developments” any day now.
Yeah, it’s all part of the dodge away from “yeah, people don’t have enough financial stability to grow the population, you fucking chuds.”
I see Pegs is still hitting the vodka full on. What a fucking loon.
Ugh. Is she still alive?
The pope has also said this.
While obviously not being the only reason, this is not a crazy notion. I know a lot of people always thought of pets as family but it has grown next level to me over the years.
Let me guess. Edited because I guessed conservative man, but lo and behold it was our favorite drunk aunt, Peggy “Daddy Reagan Ruvs Me” Noonan. Madison Cawthorn did declare last week that women were “earthen (I think he meant earthly) vessels subject to God’s will”.
No I’m pretty sure he meant all women have a ceramic glaze.
I think it was actually a conservative man writing a letter in response to a Peggy Noonan article.
It makes perfect sense, though. I believe only narcissists and naive or stupid people can look at what’s happening to the world and not think it’s a lousy place to bring a child into. Dogs only live about fifteen years, so if things continue to deteriorate at the current rate, at least it’s not dooming another human to a miserable fate.
I sympathize with that perspective but I’m still outraged by the assumptions that 1) women are inherently nurturing and 2) dogs and children are interchangeable nonetheless.
THAT was the most telling observation of all, I sat and thought about that one for quite awhile, but Shiv knows it to be absolutely true.
They’ve repeatedly shown that Caroline never gave a crap about her kids (Shiv, Roman, and Kendell) and part of me assumes she only had them because Logan wanted more kids/a new family after breaking up with Connor’s mom. Caroline is the type of soulless ice queen bitch that if she saw Logan abusing the kids, she probably took his side and blamed them for making Logan beat them and ordered them locked in their rooms until they stopped crying and threatened more physical abuse if they told anyone about it. She probably was secretly joyful to have Logan take full custody and the kids not making a scene over her abandoning them to Logan like that.Her comment about wishing she never had kids/had pets instead and praising Shiv for not getting pregnant (yet) is one of those all too frequent moments of cruel honesty you have with an adult parent, combined with the bonus bit of black irony that comes from Caroline probably confessing this to Shiv as a way to bond. It’s the closet Caroline could get to tell Shiv she was a horrible mother and that she was proud that Shiv wasn’t becoming just like her. Sadly, Shiv’s “do the opposite of what X says” reaction went away a couple of minutes afterwards as she let Tom know how much she hates him and despises having to settle for him and being trapped in a marriage with him given that the family has tapped Tom as the go-to sacrificial lamb for the cruise scandal and God knows what else down the line. Her stabbing Roman and Gerri in the back makes me wonder if and when Tom gets stabbed in the back and forced to take the fall for company crimes, it will be Shiv who does the stabbing and then adds insult to injury and divorces him and uses the media to paint Tom as a monster husband and makes it so Tom ends up in a max security prison and for a long time.
I was half awake and just saw this one scene from the episode. I heard Caroline say, Logan would be abusive just to see if a person would come back. What a gut punch. She should tell all four kids that’s what he’s done to them, and to cash out and get as far away from that asshole as they can.
She could, but I imagine she’s still scared of his wrath too.
That’s kind of been the point of the show all along, though, hasn’t it? How much abuse are you willing to take from a person that supposedly loves you in order to possibly gain a lot of power, wealth and influence? And to be fair, it’s a LOT (though it’s been diminishing slightly in the recent past according to the show).
The look on Shiv’s face and the way she spoke the line sticks with me, such a great summation of character, but *WOW* gives you a shiver to hear a mother speak those words…
i took this as unnecessary cruelty toward shiv by saying she actually never actually wanted children, but would rather have dogs; in her eyes, shiv is second to an animal. add that logan will always kick you just to see if you will come back, which is what he is doing to his family, and shiv starts to see maybe she falls closer to the tree than she thought. she can be cruel like both her mother and father. immediately following that scene she practices it with tom, and again the next morning about freezing embryos. tom thinks she has really been thinking about this, but she is just throwing the bait out there to reel him back to cool his “afterburn.”
This is exactly how I read that scene as well–even getting a little annoyed with how ‘on the nose’ the description was for what Shiv is currently experiencing (and probably has all her life I suppose) from her father.
Logan didn’t text Roman. Gerri did. Then Roman sent the dick pic to Logan by accident.
Yea that was a very weird mistake on his part. Almost plot armor level mistake. they clearly didnt text eachother becuase the trend was empty.. and its a huge stretch that trying to search Gerri he would get Dad. G is two letters away from D and I doubt Gerri is the only G in his contacts so he would probably have typed out more letters.I know Roman had to fall, and they were foreshadowing his relationship with Gerri as a reason, but this was a wierd way to do it.
If he opened his most recent texts rather than his contacts, and his Dad was his most recent text after Geri, it wouldn’t be hard to make that mistake.
It shows a message from Logan coming in right as he’s in the middle of picking the pic to send to Gerri. So he taps on that, thinking it will take him to the Gerri conversation, and it takes him to a Logan one instead–like a fingers getting ahead of the brain type of situation.
Exactly. It seemed he got two very similarly-worded texts one after the other. Always triple-check when sending dick pics. That’s my motto.
You are correct and, just like the commenter I responded to, I was mistaken when I thought his dad didnt text him. If his dad texted him right after Gerri then yea it makes more sense.
He probably had a group text earlier with Gerri and Logan, and he got the two texts confused.
Yeah. Honestly, I think Geri was asking him to stop less because she had a huge issue with it and more because she could tell that his behavior was escalating and he was becoming reckless and careless.
I agree – I think Gerri’s overall attitude toward Roman is more “not sure I want to move forward with this” than outright “want to close this down fast”. But even when she was actively moving forward with Roman, she was still the one pushing for caution – as a woman, as non-family, and as the more experienced of the two, she understands how badly crossing the streams of sex and business can go for her, in a way that Roman doesn’t. Roman has basically been begging to get caught all season, and finally did.
I wonder if Shiv is as strong against Geri as she seems to think. Geri has two possible routes to take that keep her nose clean:1. Play innocent and dumb: “Well yes, my boss’s son, Roman was sending me off color comments. But I never took them seriously! Goodness me. I’m old enough to be his mother! And, frankly, when he began escalating to the inappropriate photos, I told him to stop!”2. Play innocent and not-dumb: “Unfortunately, I took no steps to stop Roman, because the notoriously scandal-ridden WR (with its spotty history of sexism) was unlikely to support me.”
I think Siobh is fine on this – she was very careful to speak in the sort of language that’s hard to condemn if you weren’t there to hear the tone. WR’s female President supported and encouraged the CEO, asking if she was OK (on first hearing of these terrible things that she knew nothing about until that moment…), and urging her to seek justice by escalating the matter to the highest authority within the company. While the paranoid might hear a slight edge of ‘or else’ to her words, that was only sincere and perhaps unwisely unguarded concern, one woman to another in a man’s world, that a mistake here might lead to (surely sexist and unwarranted) criticism and undermining of her position – there was certainly no intent to pressure the CEO (her superior! who could possibly even have her fired!), and of course she left the decision entirely up to her, supporting her choice to take some time to think about it. Who could criticise Ms. Roy for that? At worst, she might have a grumpy piece written about her on Jezebel, but plenty of other journalists will eagerly write puff-pieces about girls having each other’s backs…In terms of Gerri’s options, I’d rephrase those two and add a third, a fourth, and a fifth:- blame Roman. This is your “innocent and dumb” route, because if she comes out and says that she actively told Roman to stop sending her dickpics and he didn’t, then she’s hanging Roman out to dry not only for insensitive behaviour but for pretty clear illegality. This will alienate Roman, and may or not piss off Logan, it’s not yet clear.- blame the company. This is your “innocent and not dumb” route, in which she torches her own company’s reputation even further. Perhaps this is OK – if there’s a round of firings then it can be wrapped up alongside Cruises as part of the bad culture she’s trying to clean up. Or perhaps after Cruises this is the straw that sinks the ship. Plus, doing this also kind of burns her own credibility a bit – how is she going to clean up the company if she’s done nothing about being harfassed herself while doing the clean-up? And of course this completely pisses off Logan. Though it might give her an in at another company, or politics – “WR was too corrupt for her to clean up overnight so they forced her out, but she’d be great at overseeing change at a company that wasn’t yet unsaveable!”. Particularly if she immediately takes this to those DOJ investigators…
– blame herself. Say that it was consensual. This burns her completely: a CEO conducting an affair with an employee, and encouraging him to take reckless risks to maintain her affection? What an abusive pervert! And worse, a pervert who lets their perversion get in the way of good corporate order! However, like Tom volunteering for prison, this could gain her a lot of credit with Logan, taking the bullet for Roman. It would effectively be cashing her chips in and seeing what Logan would offer for them.- do nothing. So far, the only people who officially know are her, Logan and Roman; beyond that, it’s rumour. This is dangerous, as the rumours open her up to ridicule. However, if Logan wants to shut it down, the rumours will go away soon, and she’ll be able to dismiss them off-the-record as the sort of off-colour misogynist rumours that get started about threatening female CEOs who are cleaning up a company. And keeping quiet prevents escalation. On the other hand, if she keeps quiet and Logan doesn’t, then she’s screwed – the rumous fly, and she looks like she’s protecting Roman and defying Logan.- ask Logan what to do. A sensible move from the point of view of not pissing off Logan, which is her priority. However, Logan probably doesn’t really want to talk to Gerri about his son’s penis, and may become hostile. And if things get escalated, she doesn’t really want it on record that her immediate response was to ask for instructions from Logan.So…. yeah, she has a lot to think about! No wonder she didn’t have a plan right away! There are several ways she maybe comes out of this ahead… but no way that doesn’t seem to have massive risks attached…
Yeah, I don’t think Shiv is in danger, I just think she seems to believe that she has leverage with Geri and I don’t think she has as much as she thinks. Additionally, I don’t think Geri wins in any scenario where she’s relying on Logan. Logan has no loyalty to anyone and especially not to people who aren’t related to him. Any scenario that relies on giving him power is going to end with her out on her ear. Also, on a personal level, Logan (ever the gross sexist) is viscerally disgusted with his son seeing Geri as attracted, so he’d kick her out just for that Honestly, if I were Geri, I’d be prioritizing my graceful exit. But who knows?
I’ve been doing HR for 20+ years and this shit happens just like that ALL THE TIME. Grownups are idiots.
20 years ago the managing partner of the company I (still) work for asked me to help him with an email on his lap top, he opened it up and there was a photo of a woman in a French maid’s costume, on all fours on a bed. He wasn’t trying to show me the picture, but that’s what the man running our company was doing instead of you know running the company. The passive sexual harassment myself and another woman in our company have put up with on the reg, from comments and inappropriate touching to negging on us about being women and not being smart, etc. makes me want to scream on a daily basis.
I’m sorry you’re going through that. It might be worth a conversation at least with HR. ♡
Came here to say the exact same thingResponses to the wrong person based on similar tone of message at similar times is not uncommon and I’ve even witness it on emails on more than one occasion.I think the more salient point is that it was bizarre Logan decided to choose a text to praise him but I’ll allow a little suspension of disbelief for a show that hits such a high bar, so regularly.
Maybe he has him under “God”?
I thought that too after reading the review so went back and watched it while pausing a couple of times. It is a quick edit, but it is receiving a text from Gerri, Roman sticks his camera down his pants, cut to Logan texting “Good job, kid” to Roman, and then Roman hitting send of the photo to the wrong text chain.
I don’t think he actually takes it during the meeting—that would be a whole new level of bad judgment. It shows him looking for the dick pic in his camera roll, and there are several other non dick pics that come up first. (Mostly of the wedding venue, as well as a cat? Interesting window inside Roman’s brain.)Based on the earlier dialogue with Gerri, it sounds like he saves a lot of dick pis to send to her later. He might be reusing an old one.
And his wallpaper is him flipping off Shiv lol. The reviewer said they think it’s out of character for Logan to text Roman instead of making it a show to further pit the siblings against each other, but I don’t think it’s out of character at all. People are allowed to do quiet things like that; it gives him some humanity, and shows that he doesn’t always just neg on people, and can be genuinely proud of his kids. ORRR you could say he’s quietly reinforcing the Roman camp so that he has more ammo against Shiv. Either way not out of character imo
I interpreted him being all squirrelly and hiding the phone under the table as him taking the photo, but searching for one already on the device makes more sense.
Gerri texted him first, but then Logan did with “Good work kid”
The most likely way something like that would happen would be if Roman, Logan, and Gerri had been part of a group text, and Roman got the group text confused with his one-on-one text with Gerri. I know it’s easy to do because I’ve nearly done it. Not a dick pick, because no, but I’ve nearly replied to a group text, “Hey, can you get some more TP?”
You’re incorrect, I just watched it. Roman was composing a text to Gerri (dick pic). Logan texted Roman “good job Kiddo” or some other congratulatory text. Roman clicked on that new text to view it, and it accidentally made Logan the new recipient for the draft text (the dick pic). The dick pic was then sent to Logan.
Watch it again. Logan absolutely DID text Roman.
Gerri texted Roman “Well done, Roman.”Then, as Roman has his phone under the table and he’s looking over his should mischievously, you see Logan using his phone to text.Then, Roman is shown drafting the text to Gerri “Dinner to celebrate Gerri? Eat this” with the photo, but he’s drafting a new message to Gerri (the “To:” line is blank).
As Roman is drafting that message, you see Roman receive a notification on his phone that Logan texted him: “Good work, kid.”Roman swipes the notification up to dismiss it, but doing that also added “Dad” to the “To:” line and then Roman quickly sent it without looking at the “To:” line.Its fast, but its all very clear and on screen.
I’ve sent texts to the wrong person by doing this exact thing, though luckily, none of them have been damning in any way. If someone else is texting while I’m composing a text, and I go to swipe away the notification, sometimes it moves to that text window instead. In fact, as this was happening, I knew exactly what was happening, and I was just cringing at the events in motion. Haha.
I’m watching the series for the first time and just saw this episode. No one will likely see this, but the order of events was:Gerri texts Roman good jobRoman begins composing a new message from scratch (i.e., no recipient tagged yet)Logan texts Roman while Roman is composing, prompting a notification at the top of Roman’s phoneRoman absentmindedly taps on the Logan notification, which causes his phone to bring the draft message into the Logan message threadRoman hits send and puts his phone down without noticing he sent it to the wrong personIn all, it’s a highly unlikely series of events. a) It’s odd Roman would be composing in a new draft, rather than directly in his thread with Gerri, and b) I can’t confirm if iOS would append Roman’s draft to his thread with Logan just from tapping the notification, but it doesn’t seem like it would work like thatA more realistic sequence would be Gerri and Logan text consecutively, so that Roman taps on Logan’s name thinking it was Gerri. He then composes and sends the message with “Dad” visible the whole time in the recipient field. However, this would read strangely on screen and would seem like a continuity error, so I can see why they used the sequence they did.
Well that is an interesting podcast, provided Ken havent drowned and left his dead body and cursed shares to his poor kid to find and inherit
I’m surprised that Roman got the read on Mattson that he’s rocksteady. He didn’t seem that way *at all*. His talk about failure being really interesting to him; I don’t see an airtight personality there. Maybe Roman doesn’t care though; he probably just wants him to sign on the dotted line then he can go hang himself for all Roman cares with what little humanity he has left.
Roman has absolutely no incentive to present Mattson as anything other than a solid win that’s in the bank. Any doubts about Mattson’s reliability would reflect similarly poorly on Roman’s at this point. He’s not exactly an objective observer.
Roman is definitely putting a spin on it. Though I don’t think he’s lying about Mattson being ‘a serious person’. He doesn’t quite understand what Mattson is trying to pull, but he’s convinced that Mattson isn’t some “clown” who’s just messing around.
Yeah, I agree he is technically a “serious person.” Of course he is! He doesn’t strike me as someone with much of a sense of humor. Still doesn’t mean he won’t implode; he could be very precisely deliberate and serious about his implosion; to analyze what it feels like to fail.
i didn’t see roman as being honest, it felt like he was getting off on taking the opposite side as shiv (and winning) more than anything.
Roxana is not wrong: that New Yorker profile of Jeremy Strong is quite…illuminating.I think this is an example of the actor and the character bring very similar – which is why Strong is nailing the role
I never thought I’d say this but I’d almost rather hang out with Kendall Roy than Jeremy Strong.
Yep. That profile was pretty disappointing. I read it earlier today and then felt somewhat reluctant to watch the episode as a result, but seeing Kendall and not Jeremy Strong washed it right away. Somehow.
I listened to Jeremy Strong on the pre season HBO Succession podcast with Roger Bennett. To this day I still have no idea what he was talking about. Every other actor was pleasant and engaging, etc. I don’t know what he’s like in person, but I’ve heard the Method acting drives Brian Cox crazy. To each his own. As long as he’s not abusive to the cast, he’s getting the job done.
Yeah as long as the acting is good I don’t need him to be super lovely and friendly (obviously I do need him not to be a sex offender or abusive asshole etc) Weird people are often really really good at certain things. So long as he’s not an actual bad person I’m ok with the person who creates something I greatly enjoy not also being a person I want to have a beer with.
There was a similar one in a British newspaper (The Guardian?) earlier this year. The quotes were similarly self-important but portrayed Strong as more thoughtful and less ridiculous. Gotta say, all of the focus on Strong has made me think Kendall’s death is more likely.Kind of funny that there’s a conversation about Kendall’s inability to fully commit to anything going on in one thread while over committing is apparently Strong’s issue, even if the results are similar.
“If we’re holding a mirror up to nature, then let’s not contrive things,” he says after Armstrong suggested he take his sunglasses off halfway through a conversation. I realized that sounds exactly like something Kendall would say lol
the person doing that profile clearly didn’t mesh well with him at all lol but i have read other interviews with him with interviewers who clearly was on the same wavelength with him that i enjoyed. he’s clearly an Insufferable Actor type but i’m weirdly endeared by it because watching and reading interviews you can tell he is 100% incredibly sincere about all of it. as long as he’s not actively abusing or hurting his costars or harming anyone on-set i’m not too bothered about him being a pretentious actor who takes himself too seriously and does Too Much. would never want to work with the guy though. brian cox has said in an interview before that he would have more issues with him if he doesn’t bring it acting-wise and if he was a jerk to everyone but most of his concern is for jeremy’s own well-being (and i don’t blame him lol). but i do think him and brian cox having such different styles really work out in the shows favour. it works so well for both characters somehow! their scene this episode was masterful.
I do think earnestness and sincerity is underrated, so I appreciated the interview even if I was rolling my eyes a little. I used to be like him; seeing the literary connections in everything, and life was a stage, etc. and I kind of cringe at that perspective, but also admire that he’s stuck with it.
blink twice if you need help. lmao but for real tho this comment reads as if Jeremy Strong is paying you or something. very weird
It’s the classic journalist thing to do when you’re writing a profile on someone you don’t like: let the subject yammer on with minimal redirection/feedback (ask follow up questions only), and then include all of the ridiculous things they said instead of being more selective. (Like the famously passive aggressive NYT Vows column, which I can’t find at the moment.)We would have gotten a clear sense of Strong’s approach/personality with half those quotes. There also seemed to be a bit of a weird classist edge, too? Like, “Look at this working class schmuck who picked a completely ridiculous career and refused to give up when he should have. Of course he’s an over-the-top striver who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
I loved how the reporter was able to get these huge names on the record talking about how weird Strong was. Cox and Culkin? Sure, they work with him, they’re on the same show, it makes sense you’d talk to them about this guy. But they managed to get Aaron Sorkin and Robert Downey Jr. for one sentence each, apparently because Strong helped the reporter bypass the various handlers and get to them directly.
I was sure they’d never kill Kendall off the show…until I read that piece, lol.
Same…..Now when I think about, his behavior and the fact that where could Kendall go from here…Isn’t next season supposed to be the last too?
Nope. Everyone’s been pretty clear about five planned seasons, which is the HBO precedent. (See The Wire, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, etc. AMC is so afraid to break with precedent that they keep trying to convince us that their shows’ sixth seasons are really just a split season 5.)
Oh! Well okay. Well that makes me happier 🙂
Whereas similar chatter about the plan for Yellowjackets is making its A.V. Club fans very sad. 🙁
Haha, yeah I love Yellowjackets but I can’t see how that’s a “five season” show. Like five years of flashbacks to the crash seems…poorly though out. But maybe they have a different plan then that? A season after coming home(season 4), a season just in the present(season 5). Still three seasons in crash past is a lot
An anthology thing could have been fun. Different disasters, different sports teams, different eras? I see a lot of possibilities in terms of fun ways to shake up the formula. But I see two seasons most with the current plot points—especially since they’ve already established they were only on the island for 19 weeks, ruling out a Lost-type scenario.
the greatest irony is that there was a pretentious actor type in the new episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm right after the new Succession. almost like an unintentional salting of the wound.
I think there’s another way to get Kendall off the show, and maybe give him some redemption. Ken could confess to the death of the waiter, and throw Logan under the bus for covering it up. Ken goes to prison, and Logan finally “gets fucked”. That death has been weighing on him since it happened, and if Kendall just dies, the truth of what happened dies. They also keep bringing it up, so there has to be a reason.
Possibly. Though, I suspect a far more likely outcome would be a confession via suicide note that they then have to work to cover up.
Former AV Clubber Emily VanDerWerff has a great theory along these lines laid out on her Twitter feed if anybody wants to check it out.
Too easy. Remember the letter Roman and Connor refused to co-sign? “Kendall’s on drugs, he’s delusional. We tried to get him help and he burned every relationship”. It gets buried with Kendall.
I’m wondering if the Roys, mirroring the Trumps/Murdochs, would end up suffering consequences even for manslaughter and cover-up. Ultimately they sailed through the cruise scandal. We seem to have arrived at the stage of no consequences for the wealthy.
I would think that the every interaction with Logan and/or the siblings in this episode is repeated from their childhood. No wonder Kendall, Shiv and Roman are so damaged. This is just another day with the Roy family.
“All the bells say: too late.”Gulp.
So Kendall is for sure gone-zo, no? I’d hate to see Jeremy Strong go, but the string has played out for Kendall narratively, and his death would be a nuclear bomb for the show.
My guess, narratively, it makes sense that Kendall survives and Roman ends up going to him for an alliance after Shiv gets him and/or Gerri fired. They’ve been amping up Shiv’s unlikability for a while as they also make Roman less of an asshole and it makes sense, in a way, for Shive to be the end boss as far as S4 being Shiv causing Logan’s ultimate downfall and Kendell/Roman bringing her down as the fall guy, complete with Tom beating Shiv to the punch and betraying her to save his own ass as the payoff for her nasty treatment of the guy as far as Shiv not even getting the chance to frame Tom for everything bad she did to save herself.
How have they been framing Roman as “less” of an asshole? Roman was instrumental in backing the Nazi candidate over Shiv’s vociferous objections two episodes ago. This doesn’t seem like a show where anyone will get much success by being less of an asshole.
This mystifies me too. He’s tried to sell America to Nazis, he spent last episode sadistically turning the knife into his siblings, and this episode he’s bombarding a woman with unwanted photos of his genitals. And yet the fan response seems to be that he’s becoming more and more appealing. Over on Jezebel last week, they described his blossoming into full serial-killer-mode as “really endearing”, and this week they’re mourning the fact that “our kinky baby” may face some consequences for his sexual harrassment.
Reminds me of the old comment about fan favourites: the more a writer tries to make absolutely, unequivocally clear that you should not have a crush on a certain character, the more a large segment of the audience will take it as a challenge…
I don’t think that has to be the case. But I’m also over trying to predict what comes next.
What is there left for him plotwise? Betray Logan AGAIN? Yea, he’s gon-zo.
And yet Greg is still around, Gregging up the place.
The last frontier for Kendall is success and to have a big win. Probably ending in failure or going to jail for the drowning incident but as Jesse Baker said it’s likely Gerri and possibly Roman will be on the outs and suddenly on his side. The case against Waystar isn’t over and could strengthen if more insiders agree to testify. Which could mean Tom is headed to prison after all (I have the feeling that’s not over either). Which could mean Tom ends up on the other side too to avoid that. I mean I have no idea where any of this is heading but as brutal as the show it’s not nihilistic or melodramatic and I don’t think Kendall would actually die by suicide.This may be his end but it doesn’t feel like that to be, not yet, I think there’s more to the plan than that. I also don’t think this show takes every character down the narrative path of least resistance, it’s all about the end game not what would make sense in a typical drama or soap opera that survives season to season.
I wonder if this is all leading up to a final season where all the Roy kids find themselves alienated from Logan and on the same side, trying to take down their dad. It would be pretty thematically appropriate for this show to end with Logan utterly victorious but completely alone, having completely destroyed his children. And probably being fairly happy about it, to put the cherry on the sundae. Though this episode really does seem to signaling pretty hard toward the “Kendall kills himself” fan theory.
Give me Citizen Kane for a hundred Alex.
“A toast, Jedidiah, to love on my own terms – those are the only terms anybody ever knows”.
I think Caroline’s observation about her ex is important. Logan has self-loathing so he kicks his children to see if they’ll come back. I initially thought Logan asking Iverson to taste his food was a bit of dark mischief at Kendall’s expense, but in the context of what Caroline said, maybe Logan is again testing how much abuse Kendall can stand so he would come back. Why Logan doesn’t really want Kendall to take the offer. His line about life being searching for a knife in mud was tragic and something out of film noir.I saw the end of this episode again because I read Alan Sepinwall’s review mentioning Kendall putting his head in the water like he was going to commit suicide, which I missed the first viewing. Second time—eh, it’s still not apparent and a stretch Kendall would off himself offscreen. But who knows what happens next week.It’s probably me projecting but I noticed the camera much on Sarah Snook’s torso this ep. She admittedly looked great, but male gaze and all.Beginning of the episode I fantasized the end of the series being Roman, wearing a winter jacket and scarf, completely altered into a serious, decent person looking back with dismay at the awful, immature bloke he used to be. Yes, this was clearly a fantasy, as demonstrated as soon as Roman started speaking. Will he destroy his crush? He could step up and do the moral thing for the first time in his life. That would be a plot twist.
I didn’t notice the Snook torso focus but either way is that male gaze or is it a narrative touch due to the pregnancy drama?
I’ve almost been wondering if Sarah was pregnant IRL. She just looked a little different this season. I’m just glad that boring bob is growing out and she’s wearing jewel tones instead of those blah pastels.
You are projecting in regards to Snook. That seems to happen a lot these days with people hyper focused on such things. Snook’s curves always comes out in full force in non business attire. There is nothing that can hide it. She is still often filmed from top half up and the camera doesn’t often follow her from behind.
I like how it’s ambiguous re: Kendall in the pool. He seems comatose; possibly overdosing on something. So slipping into the pool and drowning would be an unintentional suicide. Quite tragic of course, but not out of line with where he’s headed.
i would gladly give jesse armstrong the writing emmy simply for giving that caroline and shiv scene, the kendall and logan scene and the roman dick pic scene all in one episode. on one hand, if this is it for kendall then i can’t say the writers haven’t foreshadowed it all along and it’s an ending that tragically does make sense for kendall BUT i am hoping against hope that it’s more of a metaphorical death. logan mentioning the waiter’s death again and specifically mentioning how long he lasted in the water. kendall trying to get in the waiter’s shoes. i think he lives but confesses to the manslaughter in the finale thus taking himself and logan down. he has spent this entire season wanting desperately to believe that he can take logan down and still maintain status quo, still be in power, etc. i think he has realized that that dream is over. anyway, as someone who main investment in this show is the family dynamics and the way it portrays the cycles of abuse i will think about that scene with caroline and shiv followed by that logan and kendall scene for a long time. kendall saying to logan “i’ll be broken when you die” i just found especially gutting. jeremy and brian do magnificient work together. if that was their final scene then it was wonderful but i really hope it isn’t.
“You’re my onion,” “yeah, well you’re *my onion” fuck you writers take my Emmy. That adage about the least eloquent dialogue being the most profound is so true for this show.
Just wanted to clear something up for you: Geri sent Roman the congratulatory text, not Logan, and he accidentally sent his reply to Logan. Which is a very television type device (we’ve all sent wrong things to the wrong person, but not when we can reply directly from the home screen!) but they made it pretty clear that’s what was happening what with her name being on the text bubble on Roman’s phone and him giddily looking across the table at her for her reaction until realizing his dad got the message.
Geri and Logan sent Roman congratulatory texts. He responded to the 2nd one (Logan’s) when meaning to respond to the first.
I’ve sait it before, but Kendall’s story arc is over. He got no purpose, and I assume his death will trigger several things and season 4 will be the finale season of the series.
I may be fairly accused of beating a dead horse, but if Greg is still getting storylines, there’s no reason Kendall can’t also still get storylines.
Greg’s storylines are almost wholly tertiary and exist primarily to position him as a foil to other characters and provide comic relief. Kendall’s character exists almost entirely to drive the main plot. If he’s not doing that anymore, then you’d have to rework his character so thoroughly that you might as well just replace him with someone else to get a fresh start.
It’s certainly possible but this show doesn’t always take the most obvious path nor are its characters on conventional arcs.
This is nit picking but… no one in history has ever included the first name of the person they’re texting in the text! Hey Gerri, eat this… you’d just say eat this!
Once again, the impossible beauty that the uber-wealthy enjoy, in this case the sumptuous playground of the European elite (was this Lake Como?) is the backdrop of so much venom: a conceit utilized before on episodes of SUCCESSION but reached a high point tonight.What is spoken and what is seen is so at odds, so incongruous that the effect elevates the toxicity. Logan says not everyone can live the life they do. Which then raises the question, why destroy family and one’s morality to be so miserable only to say you can? What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?…………………………… power
I could be wrong, but I recognized some streets in Sienna. I’m pretty sure they were in central Tuscany.
Yes, they repeatedly said Tuscany (sorry, Tuscana…). Later they go up north to Lombardy for the meeting with the lawyers/bankers. Mattsen is said to have a place in Switzerland, so that’s a Swiss lake… although actually I suspect it may be the north (Swiss) end of Lake Maggiore (most of the rest of the lake is in Italy), which would kind of fit with the Italian emphasis this week, and be conveniently close enough for Roman to pop up to see him (it’s near Milan, where the business meeting is then held, whereas the other Swiss lakes would be a bit of a trek to the far side of the alps). Lake Lugano would be the other obvious option there.
OK, so, apparently the real location for Mattson’s villa is on Lake Como; however, Como is entirely in Italy, and the dialogue seemed to establish that Mattson was in Switzerland, so I assume Como was standing in for Maggiore or Lugano.
I think you’ll find that Mattsen’s lakeside villa is in Varykino on the planet Naboo.
So much for “no more private jets,” I guess!
Matthew Macfadyen and Sarah Snook were just gutwrenchingly superb in this episode. That scene between them was almost impossible to watch, but the intimacy and the reality in the performances meant you had to follow through. This was what the Scenes from a Marriage remake kept telling us it was going to do, but never did.Even as I feel like the storylining this season has been a mess, the character dynamics and ambiguities and how they affect us as viewers were in top form here. We see Shiv’s mother being absolutely heinous toward her, which then triggers Shiv (who had been crippled in her marriage this season by things she couldn’t muster up the clarity/cruelty to say) to want a baby so that she won’t be her parents. Yet she ends up behaving exactly like them as she finally tells Tom she will never truly love him and that his knowing he is not good enough for her is what keeps him interested. We see how crushed Tom is to hear this, yet the truth finally being said, his marriage having ANY truth left, creates some kind of arousal-through-disgust after he’d been pulling away most of the season. Tom, who has shared most of his feelings with Greg this season, rather than his wife, leans in with Shiv to treat Greg as a joke rather than have genuine conversation with him after he got way too vulnerable last week and felt abandoned by Greg. We see Greg, who is (or was) often painted by some as the innocent waiting to get out of Tom’s clutches, unable to even make an effort at a normal relationship, because his exposure to the Roys and screwed up bond with Tom means a potential girlfriend who is normal is a reason to bail (she won’t know “the real you.”) He repeats Tom’s patterns with Shiv, yet also seems to repeat the patterns of his own relationship with Tom. We’re on all sides of this, and (other than the Greg material, which, aside from his interactions with Tom, has felt bittier than ever this year to me) it’s very enthralling. There was criticism of this season from some quarters for caring too much about “ships” or “pandering to fans” and how people need to remember that all the characters are horrible and should be miserable. I think one of the show’s main strengths this season has been how they have embraced the pull and false hope these dynamics can bring rather than trying to bypass them. The dynamics between Roman and Gerri and between Tom and Greg are very fucked up, and, similar to waiting and waiting for Kendall to “win,” you know nothing is going to end well. But the actors play with the writing so beautifully, and the show uses that playing to make you wonder about possibilities, in a way you can’t with Logan and his relationships, well-acted as they are. In that sense, the show is toying with viewers, and their weak spots, as effectively as Logan toys with his kids.
Who was complaining that the show ways doing ‘ships’ or pandering to fans? If anything it’s been the opposite–not getting Gerri and Roman together, for instance
There were complaints about this earlier in the season – one that went semi-viral claiming that the show had become too focused on creating fodder for the “no context Succession” (or whatever it’s called) Twitter account, people that claimed Tom and Greg scenes this season were just fan service, etc.
Yeah I would say that any Twitter-based criticisms of popular culture can be dismissed with prejudice
I agree on Siobhan and Tom; I actually thought that their marriage was on stronger ground here than ever before, because they’ve achieved that intimacy and honesty. Siobh doesn’t love Tom; Tom loves Siobh anyway. But also, I don’t read “I may not love you, but I do love you” as twisting the knife – I think it’s Siobh being honest and vulnerable. She knows he knows she may not “love” him the way she’s ‘meant’ to – all gushy and feminine – but she want to make sure he knows that, in her own way, she does love her. And she does – he’s her confidant, her emotional support, her source of amusement; making sure he’s “hers” has been consistently important to her. She’s just been bad about showing him that she’s his too – but she has tried, and I don’t think she’s done it just in a self-serving way; I think her problem is that she’s just not that sort of traditional, lovey-dovey person. And remember, it’s been Tom who’s refused to tell his wife that he loves her…More generally, I think the show is really interested in unconventional partnerships: Siobh/Tom, Roman/Gerri, platonically Tom/Greg, but also Connor/Willa and Logan/Marcia. One way to read all these relationships is as nightmarish deviations from ‘correct’, ‘real’ relationships – and there’s truth in that. But I think the show is also interested in showing how these relationships can still be true, and have value, and be better than being alone.
That’s true about Shiv and Tom, yes. I also agree that she was not trying to hurt him by saying she loves him but dose not love him – I do think she was trying to clarify to him what she has never felt able to say. I think if they were stronger people (especially Tom…), the arrangement could work.I think the unconventional relationships and the relative freedom in exploring them, leaving a lot for us to make our own, is the most compelling part of the show for me, along with the performances. The scene in the first season with Willa, Tom and Marcia, where Marcia’s reaction to Willa being a prostitute was not what you’d usually get, but instead simply an oblique warning to Willa to get away from the family while she could, kind of set the tone for the Roys and those around them – the relationships and the characters are ambiguous, but the world that allows theme to be ambiguous will slowly suffocate them.
As supporting characters go, I continue to be fascinated by Willa. She’s clearly genuinely fond of Connor (her defensiveness of him at Kendall’s birthday party was fantastic) but also clearly wants out of the Roy family drama.And goddamit, Greg. People want him to be some audience stand in secret decent person but then he pulls shit like this episode. I even rooted for him last week! That’ll teach me to not fucking hate his stumblebum ass.
Wait, what? Greg is dating a woman who doesn’t give a shit about him. What’s he supposed to do?
The overworked personal assistant of a bipolar drug addict financebro who has to continue monitoring her phone for disasters “doesn’t give a shit about him”? He knew what he was getting into when he asked her out. The lady is a busy bee. And then the grasping shitbird moves in on another gorgeous woman?Why? To play Shiv and Tom’s little psychodrama game?Nah. Fuck Greg.
Greg’s whole arc this season has been that he is no better than his family, regardless of expectation, and is generally petulant/incompetent on top of that. He wanted a date with Comfry because it was what he was supposed to want, to make him happy. It didn’t, because like his family, he is narcissistic to the core and is likely going to keep cycling through people who will not “understand” him. I think Greg, like Kendall, suffered from being on a loop most of the season. The turn his story has taken was already told well enough back when his grandfather disinherited him. His strongest scenes this season have been as a key part of Tom’s extended mental collapse, which is a dilemma if they are now going to try to move the character in a new direction, because they rendered Greg a cipher as the writing leaned in very heavily on Tom and Matthew. If the idea is to move Greg along, I think they waited a season too late. Another problem is the story (if you can call it that) about Greg being so weak and shallow has felt like something you could get on a CW drama, at a point where many of the other actors are blowing the roof off. Greg has felt very squeezed out as a result, even though I am sure Nicholas Braun could do more if given the chance.
I’m sure part of the problem is that Greg was introduced as the audience surrogate but we’re long past the need for that function. We were past that need by the middle of Season 1. I liked the shift for the character into showing how the family corrupts, but that was also accomplished pretty quickly. I agree with you: Greg’s story has kind of run its course. I thought *maybe* there was a chance that he would get caught up in the legal probe and have to take heat, showing how these rich shitbirds are great at finding a patsy. But the show seems to be implying at this point that the rich don’t even need a patsy most of the time, that they buy their way out of trouble with money and/or influence. Which is just as valid an argument I suppose. But it does leave Greg twisting in the wind a bit as a story generator. As aggravating as I find the character, I never want to see characters underserved by their shows.
I know Braun has teased several times that Greg is ruthless enough to betray Tom, so I won’t be surprised if that happens, but I think that would have had more dramatic impact last season. I could also see him just continuing to bumble his way up the ladder, especially if a big name like Kendall or Tom goes this season, but again I don’t feel it’s that compelling at this point. The two choices I’d make are to either double down on his twisted relationship with Tom, a Greg/Tom/Shiv triangle from hell (or a quad if Shiv finds another partner again) and with exploration of Greg’s daddy issues (the gay father Caroline mentioned a while back), or to have Greg immediately come into a massive amount of money he is in no way capable of overseeing, get his own nucleus of people (some characters we know, others who are new to the canvas), and basically become a Godzilla-esque mutation of the fauxgressive posturing we got from Kendall early this season, one who slowly becomes more successful at this toxic blend than Kendall managed.
I see a situation where next season, he finally gets what he’s always wanted: head of the theme parks, (which Logan would be okay with since that the division he can do the least amount of harm to the company), gets his own nucleus of people (some characters we know, others who are new to the canvas), and basically become a Godzilla-esque mutation of Kendall and ultimately crashes and burns harder than Kendall does and winds up getting pushed out on his ass from the family and Royco forever.
I can see that happening, especially if the show only runs 4-5 seasons.
Greg screwed Tom in season one. He told Gerri that Tom was going public with the “cruises controversy.” Tom then thought Shiv had ratted him out.
At the time I think it was framed as more of fair game because the power dynamics were so lopsided compared to more recent episodes. I think that may be why Braun still brings up in interviews that Greg could betray Tom now, rather than saying he already did.
I’d kind of like to see a return of Mary Birdsong as Greg’s mom, showing up to sponge off of him. It could keep the whole “toxic family dynamic” theme of the show going and complicate any relationship the doofus ends up in.
You could also see Greg turning into an asshole is season 2. One moment that really stands out to me was in the season 2 finale where he’s lying on the yacht drinking a sparkling rose and I forget who he’s talking to, but he says something like, “This isn’t my favorite, but it’s okay, I guess. I’ll drink it.” This coming from the guy a season earlier who was excited over the prospect of eating at the California Pizza Kitchen. He’s not being a dick to anyone in particular, but you can see that the life of luxury and snobbishness is rubbing off on him.
Yeah, the “doesn’t give a shit about him” thing feels like weird judgmental conjecture. They just started dating! They’ve been together for, what, at most a few weeks at this point? And honestly we’ve seen almost nothing about how their relationship post -Kendall party has played out, but what’s there seems to indicate Comfrey is approaching this from an entirely reasonable angle. A guy showed interest in her, she doesn’t know if she’s fully into him but she’s giving him a chance and letting the relationship play out.
That was a very George Costanza move. But hell yeah, he’s a young guy, he’s made no commitments to Comfrey, and she’s obviously only going out with him to get back at Kendall, so why not see if he can move up the dating ladder?
While I agree that there’s *some* amount of needling Kendall in her agreeing to date Greg, I also think that’s an overly cynical reading of her motives. Despite the shit he eats from the family, Greg is a decent looking dude and *some* women might find that whole bumbling shtick charming (see also: early Hugh Grant). And she shares a certain amount of radiation absorption as Greg, which makes them decent compatriots. I find it hard to believe that she never noticed the way Kendall has fucked with Greg and felt some sympathy/empathy.And phrasing it as “move up the dating ladder” only feeds into the toxic assholery of Shiv and Tom. That’s not an argument in favor of the reasonableness of Greg’s actions, that’s an argument in favor of the show’s generally sociopathic character tendencies, particularly as it concerns romantic relationships. (Those tendencies are fun to watch but not something to be encouraged or supported as reasonable.)
Greg’s a fixer upper with almost unlimited potential. He’s a family insider at a megacorporation run on nepotism after all. He’s also decent looking and tall (which anywhere but here and Veep is a major asset.) His biggest drawbacks are the social awkwardness that comes with terrible parenting and a complete lack of confidence, neither of which have to be his permanent condition. Someone is going to see that, the question is whether it’s a more or less benevolent partner who might genuinely like him and see his potential (as well as potential to elevate her own status) or it’s some Lady Macbeth who’ll use him to get inside
For as much great acting as there was in this episode, I don’t know if there was a better moment than Justine Lupe’s shocked/appalled high-pitched “Ooh” when Connor dropped to one knee.
Her reaction to the proposal was just perfectly played. Justine Lupe’s performance as Willa has really been one of the highlights of Season 3 for me.
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One of the greatest things about succession imo is that when you watch it the first time, you laugh. People say outlandish shit, make crude jokes it’s funny, it’s so fucking funny, right? And then you start thinking about what was actually being said, what is actually happening and it all becomes so so bitter. Even though this show can be outrageously funny, it is not a comedy and these last few episodes re-established that for me.A mother accusing her 13 year old daughter of being emotionally manipulative and following it up with “wish i didn’t have children”? Man, oh man… broken people all around.
That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t really disagree with Jeremy Strong not taking the show as a comedy. It is basically a tragedy with good one-liners.
Funny enough, Hamlet is also what keeps popping up in my mind when watching. The guy is burdened by his father’s ghost (and how great was that father anyways? was he as great as Hamlet makes him out to be or…?) to avenge his death and no matter what he does, it amounts to nothing. Always disappointment. Too much overthinking.The Roy children are haunted by a living ghost in the form of Logan and they’ll be haunted long after he is physically gone.
And Stewy is Fortinbras
Last week’s comment by Roman re the birthday card “it’s your baby teeth and an iTunes gift card” had me LOL.
Exactly, which is wierd that so many people seem to be thinking Strong doesnt get the joke. This isn’t even a Shakespearean comedy because I don’t see how this has a happy ending for most of the characters. Yea they make funny comments but is the bar that low? Whole episodes go by without anything funny happening beyond Roman making rape jokes or Tom making fun of Greg.
I’m surprised by this take. I’d say that hardly a scene goes by without a punchline. Everything seems crafted from the point of view of comedy. Even take that last, rather dark scene: the joke is that Kendall has spent so much time looking for his kids, but now that he has them with him, he just gets drunk and falls asleep while they wander off (and that because of his wealth, they can laze around by a pool in the beautiful Tuscan sunlight… but they’d actually rather be inside on their screens, their food uneaten). The scene before that: Roman’s fucked up, and as a result Gerri realises that her life might be over; meanwhile, Siobhan exploits the harassment survivor by pretending to be concerned for her wellbeing; and so on.It’s comedy based on irony rather than puns and standing on rakes (for the most part), but it’s still comedy!
The plot is also wildly comedic. The fact that these horrible people are revealed to be more and more horrible, and they somehow experience less and less consequences over time, is very funny!
Is that funny? Or just fucking depressing?I love the show but you chuckle buckets could take it down a notch. “HAHAHA IT’S SO FUNNY WHEN AWFUL SOCIOPATHS DON’T GET COMEUPPANCE”
“You’re my onion,” her mother says, “yeah, well, you’re *my onion,” Shiv says. Fuck, why didn’t the reviewer point that line out lol, it was absolutely the best of the episode. The almost-loving glance they give each other after, almost like they can finally agree on something, even if it’s such a painful truth.
My take on that was that Shiv neither understood what her mom meant nor did she know how to respond, so she lamely echoed the line back.
Ooo that’s one way to read it.
They make each other cry… probably each one’s most painful, unresolved relationship. Shiv wasn’t parroting. She was being honest.
“That’s not a good retort!”
I’m a massive Harriet Walter fan so was very happy to see her back. Loved the conversation between her and Shiv. While society still is appalled at any mother who gives up her children, would YOU want to go up against Logan Roy?What was her line about Logan not having anything he can’t kick away to see if it comes back? Sums up Logan’s attitude to people pretty well.
“The Skunk, the Porcupine and the Concubine” as her best wedding gift! The interactions are very clever but you wouldn’t want to experience any of it IRL.. I do love the dialogue; Aaron Sorkin, minus the preachy tone, with focus and an editor (still thinking why I didn’t like The Newsroom).
It’s 100% a comedy, its a black comedy (aka a comedy that deals with dark/tragic/distressing topics).
I thought it was weird when they pissed on Roman’s phone and left it in the urinal in last week’s party episode. I assumed that might be coming back to haunt Roman. Maybe to rich people all phones are burners?
That’s the best episode of this show yet. Not this season, the whole show.It might be the best episode of TV I’ve seen in the past oh four years or so. It was really great.
Was anyone else a little surprised at the degree of Logan’s consternation and shock over a dick pic, which he later acknowledges is a term his company may have invented? I get that the double standard runs strong in Logan, to the point where he finds a May-Dec. between Gerry and his son disgusting, but not his own constant dalliances with assistants one-third his age. But a dick pic as the mechanism for Roman’s fall feels false, especially since it happens when Roman is showing some real skill in business.Also, Shiv’s cruelty to Tom reached new levels in this episode with her whole “joking/not joking” spiel in which she accurately characterizes his slavish fascination with her. She is a sociopath. The observations in this piece about her empty core are dead on. I keep waiting for Tom to dump her hard.
Yeah, a little bit. My recollection is that Logan seemed annoyed at the idea of Roman sending a dick pic but was having a “boys will be boys” reaction until he found out Gerry was the intended recipient. I think that disgusted Logan, who wants his son(s) to live up to his imagined, very traditional ideal of “manhood.” If Roman had meant to send that pic to some 18-year-old girl, I doubt Logan would have been that upset.
On a deeper level though, Roman (and all of Logan’s children) are set up for failure. I think Logan is so obsessed with the myth of his essential nature that he’s always looking for an excuse to temporarily banish whichever of his children are receiving too many accolades—even if that praise is coming from Logan himself.
Yep this is the real answer. He’s way too insecure to ever give up power.
That last point has been made very clear throughout the history of the show.
Logan only cares for strength, and sending that pick was a sign of weakness for him. Also, a confirmation of what he already believes: that Romulus is a degenerate to be ashamed of.
“Logan only cares for strength, and sending that pick was a sign of weakness for him. Also, a confirmation of what he already believes: that Romulus is a degenerate to be ashamed of.”THIS. ALL. DAY. It seems this scene is being oddly misread, including by Roxana here. Logan isn’t concerned that Gerri might sue them for sexual harassment! Why the hell would the Logan Roy we know care about that?! He’s concerned because the child he thought was finally showing the ability to be his heir apparent is STILL a fucking weirdo. He was hoping that had changed but Roman once again reminded him by attempting to send a dick pic to an old lady.
I suppose it would just reinforce for Logan that Roman is still too unreliable, especially with involving Gerri, who knows where all the bodies are buried. I have seen a lot of fan speculation about whether any of this ties to a possible reveal that Roman was sexually abused as a child. I am not sure the show would ever go there but the speculation adds a certain unintended context to Roman’s interactions in several episodes this season.
Cross Roman off the “child I trust my empire to”.So we’re back to Connor or Shiv.
I wasn’t surprised at all. Logan is a sexist, homophobe. His son deviating at all from the toxic masculine ideal, even by accident (sending his father/a man a dick pic, intending to send it to an older woman) would disgust him.
Exactly. He also asked Roman about Tabitha and called her “a hot piece” or something like that, looking to confirm that Roman is actually still into a conventionally attractive younger woman.
I was a little surprised. I mean, I’m thrilled it’s happening because fuck Roman, but yes, the degree to which Logan reacted was more than I expected. And to be fair, he did ask if this was just Roman being Roman- essentially asking “How should I react to this?”- and Shiv gave him the bigger picture, laying out a precarious scenario that escalated everything. So I think the mechanism of Roman’s downfall isn’t the pic itself so much as Shiv’s growing spite (He had been increasingly condescending towards her).
And frankly, I think Roman’s behavior coming back to bite him is the most believable the show just got. Despite his instincts for business, the point Logan may see is that it might be a dic pic today, and then it might be something else tomorrow. Roman’s still too immature, he can’t help himself, and he’s a liability.
Yeah having just gotten out of a sexual harassment scandal only to have another one waiting in the wings for your son is not something I would be okay with. Another commenter said that if it was a random 18-year old he wouldn’t care, but certainly not with a higher-level executive like Gerri.
Logan despises weakness, and he’s contemptuous (and scared) of mental illness in particular. That’s why he focused on the ‘why’ with Roman, and ‘do you have a problem?’ – it’s not just the pragmatic awareness that this is dangerous behaviour, it’s also the fear that Roman is “screwy”. He’d be OK if it were just Roman ‘being Roman’ – if he’d been able to come out and say “yeah, I sent her that to take her down a peg or two” or whatever, Logan wouldn’t have been happy about it (because it’s stupid), but he could work with it. But Roman just having a perverted, obsessive need to send unsolicited pictures of his penis to old women… that’s something Logan can’t see as anything other than evidence of having a screw loose. And he can’t trust anyone ‘screwy’.
Logan despises weakness, and he’s contemptuous (and scared) of mental illness in particular. Which reminds me of Connor’s mother and how she was apparently sent to “the booby hatch” (according to one of Roman’s taunts). Makes me wonder if the reason Logan sidelined Connor at a certain age (or “wasn’t encouraged” as Connor put it in a recent episode) was because of his weird fixation on mental illness and “toughness.”
He probably doesn’t like Connor because he’s so tight. I mean, I heard once that if you shoved a lump of coal up his ass you’d have a diamond two weeks later….
Yeah, I think Logan is mostly upset at Roman for making a mess he has to clean up and another potential PR disaster on the heels of the carnivals scandal, not necessarily in a “I care about the fact that you’re abusing a woman” way. He also doesn’t like that it seems compulsive and that Roman is not in control of it.
I’ve come to the conclusion that, other than Logan, Shiv really is the worst Roy. She is a total sociopath and seems to lack any kind of soul. As wretched as Roman can be, I at least get the sense that he has some core of morality or feeling in there somewhere, which he hides behind a wall of amoral smartassedness.
Which of the Roys have a soul at all? They are all repulsive with “scruples” entirely linked to personal convenience. Connor is the only one who is even vaguely human, ironically because he’s too incompetent to even want to be evil.
She has a real Lindsay Bluth Funke vibe going, where her interests and emotions seem largely performative.
I do think it’s really funny that the fan theories for what Roman would do to scandalize people/tank the deal were way, way wilder than this. A few people suggested that maybe he’d accidentally sext the wrong person and his dad would find out and I honestly threw that theory out thinking come on, his dad would really care that much? But I guess Gerri really makes it “worse” or something.
And yeah, I mean, they are all awful to basically the same degree – it’s just that great writing and acting throws you off the scent sometimes – but Shiv is just beyond at this point.
i read it more as logan was finally feeling like roman was reliable and cutthroat…actually believing the roman could possibly, someday, maybe, take over and logans legacy and company would live on. basically, logan wouldnt be viewed as a powerful businessman but failure as a father.
but while he was in the shower, roman flushed the toilet and burned him with that pic slip. roman proved logan wrong, and that is the worst thing you can do to logan roy. yeah, you may be able to out maneuver him on a deal now, but he will get you in the long game. and when he does, he will not just twist the knife, but piss in the wound, too. but proving that logan was *wrong* about something? whoa.
Spot on. Just made the exact same point and then read yours. Logan is DEFINITELY not concerned about a potential sexual harassment issue. For god sake, did anyone watch last season (and this season)?!
I think Tom should have an affair and she catches him, and he’s like “Shiv, you don’t love me, you were willing to let me go to jail. WTF did you think would happen??”
I think Tom leaving Shiv is an absolute lock. It may be one of the only thing us fans want, that we will actually get. You heard it here first.
Sure, Logan was revolted but he was angry primarily because he didn’t know. Shiv tells him ‘everyone’ knew Roman and Gerri had some sort of sub rosa relationship but Logan, who prides himself on being the knower of all secrets hadn’t suspected anything. Gerri is *his* person and the realization that Roman, who has shown a modicum of success at deal making, and Gerri who is his most intelligent and capable employee could be conspiring behind his back enraged him because on another level, it frightened him. Logan WILL NEVER name a successor. Why would he? As soon as he does, he is finished. All the power diverts to the new guy. We’ve already seen him nominate a temporary CEO whom he proceeds to undercut and ruin deals that proto-successor Kendall put together. No qualified candidate would agree to work as long as Logan is still active.
I wondered if it was because Logan was rumored to have slept with Gerri and maybe he felt like that was violating his property. Logan did have an affair with Holly Hunter’s character and she’s closer in age to him.
Presuming Kendall is still alive, might Gerri be his last hope to knock his dad down a peg or two?Also, Connor regains the lead among Roy children in terms of having their shit together, against the odds.
Gerri cannot dig up any dirt without implicating herself and ruining her career and reputation. That’s why Shiv took such pleasure in cornering her, she will have to step down, leaving the interim CEO position wide open, and with Roman now seen as a sicko in Logan’s eyes (and with Kendall maybe gone for good?) Shiv might be the only choice.
I don’t know. Geri can easily saying, “Goodness me! I never took Roman seriously! He’s young enough to be my son! Clearly this disturbed young man needs help.”
She’s in her 60s and this could be the end of her career in Corporate America no matter what she does. It might be better for her to take them down and write a book or something.
Logan didnt text Roman “good job”, Gerri did. This is the PIVOTAL moment of the episode, how could you miss that.
Logan did as well, right after Gerri. That’s how he accidentally replied to the wrong one!
Didn’t Mattson admit that his streaming service is a piece of shit by pissing on it? I think there’s a contradiction about how the acquisition of a subpar streaming service is going to help Roman.
He pissed on StarGO which is Waystar’s streaming platform.
A not-so subtle commentary on the pile of shite that is HBOGo/Max
Not to pull some whataboutism on this comment, but my parents recently signed up for Paramount+ (they are both CBS procedural addicts) and whoo boy is that app an even bigger pile of dogshit than HBO Max. Max ain’t great, don’t get me wrong, but it crashes about 1/8th as often as Paramount.
He has a great streaming service and shitty content. Waystar has a shitty streaming service and great content. That was what Kendall told Aaronson in Episode 4.
Power Rankings:4. Roman. Cock-blocking Greg, and playing Logan’s guard dog, he’s riding high for a lot of this. Which made the ending of this so much sweeter.3. Logan. His sitdown with Kendall should go in the Villain Hall of Fame. He was willing to poison his own grandson just as a test. Even now I’m not entirely sure how to read the way he won’t let Kendall go. It’s immeasurably cruel, but the way Brian Cox plays it, I dunno. There’s something in his eyes that seems like he genuinely doesn’t want to lose Kendall and Rhea’s line from last season is still in my head (“It’s you. It was always going to be you.”)
2. Shiv’s dress.
1. Tuscany or wherever they shot this. Wow. Just wow. This was travelogue good and that’s saying something because this series has had some beautiful locations before. Succession allows us to live vicariously through the disgustingly rich, so a lot of the show is a collection of these socialite gatherings, but this really took the cake for me. Wow.
He was willing to poison his own grandson just as a test.I don’t think anyone in that scene ever believed anyone was being poisoned. It was a competition to see who could get under the other’s skin with twisted little “jokes.”
Yea, that’s sort of what I was meaning, but I didn’t know how to word it. Funnily enough, I found it similar in theme to Shiv’s “I don’t love you. But I do love you,” and the mind game of what to make of it
Oh yeah, that’s definitely something Shiv learned from her dad.It recalled Caroline’s line from the previous scene about Logan kicking anything that loves him just to see if it’ll come back. That’s exactly what Shiv has been doing to Tom for their entire relationship.
Line of the night for me was Caroline saying “I have to run around and tell everyone to be very discreet!” When Logan showed up with his wife and mistress in tow.
Omg yes, delivered with perfect glee
What a fantastic episode—definitely the best of this season. I think the mother’s line about how Peter has more than the five known kids out there is going to make an appearance in the finale. Shiv makes it very hard to like her or relate to her, but you see how she was shaped by her parents. Logan’s “dinner” with Kendall was devastating, but so was Shiv’s barely disguised “dirty talk” truth bombs she lobbed at Tom, and then immediately throwing Gerri under the bus to get at Roman. And, woof, that New Yorker article. Strong seems like a real peach to work with and be around…
Ok, I thought I heard the season was definitely only going to be 8 episodes, and so I watched Sunday night kind of thinking it an odd way to END a season. Now I know we’ve got one more to enjoy and am soooooo happy!!
Logan wasn’t going to poison his own grandson, people. It was a cruel joke. Logan didn’t think Kendall would try to kill him; why would he, and Logan knows it’s way out of character for his son, whom he still loves and he knows Kendall loves him back. Plus Logan wouldn’t kill a kid, much less his own grandson (or really anyone; Logan’s not a murderer, in the same league as Walter White). Putting aside he’s not that as great a monster to do such a thing, practically it would be quite the definite empire ending scandal.Good luck in your next gig, Roxana. I don’t get why they wouldn’t let you finish your coverage here—it’s only one more episode review—but whatever. The AV Club, not unlike Kendall, has sadly declined from what it once was.
I think Roxana might have only been freelancing here and her new job is a full-time gig. Whatever the situation I believe she left on her own terms and is off to bigger and better things.
Yeah, I read Kendall’s direction to the waiter “Oh, that one’s for him” to be his attempt at a sick little joke to get inside Logan’s head.Logan’s response was basically “Ohh, you think you can do sick little jokes to get inside my head? I’ll show you how it’s done.”No one actually thought anyone was getting poisoned at any point.
Was it a joke or was it a continuation of the genuine health concern? They had that little back and forth about Kendall’s chef and whether or not he took Logan’s dietary restrictions into account. Maybe that was more bickering/bantering but I took it at face value that Logan’s diet is being watched.
Oh, I think it’s true that Logan’s doctors are recommending a healthier diet for him. But I also think both he and Kendall were trying to use all of the food business to needle each other. “I brought my own food” “No, we called ahead and got the info from your doctor” “That one’s his” “Come here and try this kid”It’s all about finding petty little ways to control the situation, and get into each other’s heads.
I think people know it was a cruel joke. Using your grandson to make cruel jokes is … cruel.
That last comment is so true. The Kinja thing was the death knell for AV Club and its never recovered.
Would give anything for a bottle episode where Tom, Rava, Willa and Tabitha have a long, boozy, gossipy dinner. That’s all. Just 1 hour straight of just letting them all dish — they are like a fraternity and we never see them really interact. Maybe Gerri could stop by?
This would indeed be wonderful to see, but I imagine the way this would actually play out would be a mostly silent dinner with small interjections of meaningless small talk.
Sorry, but Tom would ruin the gossip. He’s too deep in with the Roys and Waystar.Caroline would be a lot more fun at that dinner than Tom.
Watching Logan talk about how disgusting the Roman-Gerri age difference was was just next-level pot/kettle insanity. I was honestly surprised Logan wasn’t more boys-will-be-boys about it. In some moments he seemed relatively unconcerned. And Roman is by far the most talented kid in the mix. Not that there’s much competition.Logan really likes Lukas. You can see he recognizes himself in the tech entrepreneur. But he’s also a real threat, compared to the kids.Finally: Tom is definitely leaving Shiv, right? Something is percolating.
Logan’s obviously a hypocrite, but what Logan hate’s isn’t so much the age difference, but the fact that Roman’s pursuits fall outside of Logan’s traditional masculine ideal. I doubt Logan really contemplates the full sub/dom component of Roman and Gerri’s relationship, but in a way that’s really Logan’s core objection here. He’d be fine with Roman dating some college sophomore half his age, because Roman would be outwardly viewed as being “in charge” in that relationship. That’s not the case with Gerri, who is older than Roman, is (at least on paper) Roman’s boss, and doesn’t have the youthful good looks for a man to oggle over.
I think part of it is also that Logan is always looking for reasons to knock his kids back, keep them in line. Roman just handed him a really good reason.
“I think part of it is also that Logan is always looking for reasons to knock his kids back, keep them in line. Roman just handed him a really good reason.”I love this angle too. It’s both things, right? On one hand, Logan is pissed because just as he’s maybe seeing one of his kids emerge as a genuine heir apparent, Roman reminds him that he’s still a weirdo (in Logan’s eyes, at least) who sends dick pics to old ladies. AND, at the same time, this weird behavior gives him yet another out, because does he REALLY want to ever believe that anyone can be his heir apparent? No one is good enough in Logan’s eyes, except Logan.
Yeah, but if Logan’s really boinking his assistant, it makes total sense he’d be horrified by Roman’s relationship with Gerri. It’s almost the complete opposite of his preferred age/power dynamic, so it complicates any desire to see Roman as the son who is most like him.
You really couldn’t see why Logan-the-sexist would be happy for Roman to have a pretty young girlfriend but would despise him for lusting after an older woman?
I’d be surprised if Tom left Shiv. She holds all the power in the relationship; he adores her and she may not care much for him at all.
I don’t think he adores her. He clearly knows that she is his entree into a world of wealth that he wouldn’t sniff otherwise. He’s been fairly pragmatic about the relationship, and increasingly frustrated with her commitment and willingness to meet him in the middle.It truly is a relationship that is transactional in nature.
I have a question about Kendall’s kids.The last time we saw them, I believe, was at Shiv’s wedding. They seemed pretty little. They appear to have gone from little kids to teenagers in just a couple of years? Am I confused?Also, I want to say that the one thing I cannot forgive Kendall for is instructing someone to feed a bagel to a rabbit.
I have a question about Kendall’s kids.The last time we saw them, I believe, was at Shiv’s wedding. They seemed pretty little. They appear to have gone from little kids to teenagers in just a couple of years? Am I confused?Also, I want to say that the one thing I cannot forgive Kendall for is instructing someone to feed a bagel to a rabbit.
It was either that or recast the roles; there’s been a lot of speculation that the original Sophia and Iverson going through puberty is the reason they were kept off screen for most of the season. Time moves more slowly in the show than it does IRL.
Even so, it could not have been more than three years ago that those kids were little? It seems like they aged faster than they would in real life, unless they filmed the first season way way before the next one.
The actress who plays Sophia was 9 when the first season of Succession came out (so probably 8 when they started filming). She’s 12 now. Can’t find age info for the actor who plays Iverson, but assuming he’s a little bit younger, we’re talking maybe 8 to 11? Puberty typically starts between 10 and 11 for girls and 11-12 for boys, so significant changes in appearance are to be expected.
Thank you for the clarification. I really appreciate it.
Season 1 aired in 2018… Season 3 in 2021. You do the math bud.
that “dirty talk” scene was so depressing, lol.
Now is the time for you to know the meaning of Project Zeus.
Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
I think Ken lives, he confesses, and he implicates his father and the company for covering up the death as a suicide. All Logan has on Ken is his grief about the car accident and the waiter’s death. If Ken no longer runs from it, he will take Logan and the entire company down with himself.
The problem for me with the text is that Roman wouldn’t have used Gerri’s name. He would have just said, “Dinner to celebrate?” That was too obviously a plot device.And imagine if Logan had gotten the message without Gerri’s name in it! He would REALLY have had cause for concern then…
I don’t think Kendall died, as the trailer for next week shows they are are still at Caroline’s wedding. That would not be happening if Kendall drowned the day before. I presume he might have a near-death/drowning/overdose experience that will send him back to rehab. That would leave the writers postured to give us a new Kendall next season, and a new dynamic between him and his father/family.My other prediction, and it’s a long shot, is that Marcia outs Logan and Kendall about the cover up of the death of the cater-waiter when she finds out about Kerri. She apparently didn’t ask Logan to be faithful when she returned to him, but only not to humiliate her publicly. If she figures out what’s going on with Kerri (from Lady Caroline perhaps?), I would expect her to go knives out and she’s the one without anything to lose in that situation. As she told Rhea, sometimes she fights and wins, and sometimes she fights and loses, but when she loses, the other generally loses an eye.
So the Private Jets are back?
Who knows where he’s headed, but Kendall almost certainly doesn’t die in that pool. There’s a promo for season 3 somewhere where Connor, in what appears to be Italy, poolside, tells Kendall “Your spoon wasn’t shiny enough, huh?” We didn’t see that scene yet so, unless it was cut from the show, it’s coming next week. And I’m very happy about that.
I’m regretting typing this already, but that boat Roman was in was a wooden Chris Craft, and wouldn’t be considered a speedboat. I’ll go fuck myself now.
I lol’d a good five minutes after the dick pic moment. Culkin did a great job. As for the Kendall moment with the bottle in the pool, it seemed to mimic the car in the river, no? (I can’t exactly visualize it but that’s what came to mind.) Finally, I loved everyone’s indifference to one of the most beautiful places on Earth…Lukas saying he’s unhappy, or words to that effect, as they stroll through his villa, and Connor locked into his phone as they exit the car and walk through the hotel. (“I met one of the Popes…”) This was an excellent episode.