"Succession" Season-Premiere Recap: Rival Bidders
In the fourth season premiere, the Roy siblings reignite a war against their father under a newly unified front.
There’s a feeling of aimless, wayward doom that ripples throughout “The Munsters,” the first episode of Succession’s fourth and final season. It picks up some months after the previous season’s finale, when Logan agreed to sell Waystar RoyCo to GoJo, an upstart streaming company owned by an Elon Musk-esque tech mogul. The sale went against everything Logan stood for up to that point, and left his three children (sorry, Connor) devastated at the prospect of not being able to succeed their father’s media empire. Now, without anything tying them to their father’s abuse, the Roy siblings have moved on, and are actually—get this—getting along. Out in Los Angeles, they’re the New Roys on the Block, with a get-rich-quick entrepeneurial dream called “The Hundred” (“Substack meets Masterclass meets The Economist meets The New Yorker,” describes Kendall.) It’s a magnificently stupid new-media pitch that fits perfectly within the Succession business-verse of repackaged “disruptor” buzzwords.
With the kids getting along and playing startup, it seems that succession is now off the table. So what’s there for a show called Succession to do? The debate over who will take over Logan’s position as head of the company has been the overriding question of the show’s first three seasons, and with the kids actively distanced from family politics, we’re left floating. Logan himself is just as aimless, wandering through his birthday party in New York like a disgruntled lizard, ready to bite at anything that steps in his path. He is surrounded by his regular group of sycophants—including ol’ reliable Tom and Greg, who have now taken their preteen humor to new levels by calling themselves “The Disgusting Brothers.” But Logan, tyrant that he is, is unfathomably bored. There’s just no one to abuse! At one point, he asks his room of senators to make fun of him, just so he can feel something. Greg makes a valiant effort—“Where are your kids, Uncle Logan?”—but he’s no match. Logan just too vicious.
It didn’t used to be like this, and Logan knows it. “Nothing tastes like it used to, does it? Nothing’s the same as it was,” he muses to his bodyguard Colin, who Logan here calls his “best pal.” (Colin has been at Logan’s side ever since Kendall pulled a Chappaquiddick back at the end of season one. You can’t say that Logan doesn’t value loyalty.) Without his kids, all Logan has left to do now is philosophize about the meaninglessness of it all to his too-loyal cronies, giving Brian Cox the opportunity to deliver some truly superb dialogue. “What are people?” he soliloquizes. “They’re economic units. I’m a hundred feet tall. These people are pygmies. But together, they form a market.” It’s a magnificent, Shakespearean speech that taps into the essence of his free-market cynicism and hatred for humanity.
For whatever pretenses they may have about their make-believe business venture, the Roy siblings are just as aimless, and the moment that an opportunity to fuck Logan over becomea available, we feel the episode snap into focus. As it turns out, PGM—the Condé Nast-like media conglomerate owned by the Pierce family, Logan’s foremost business rivals—is up for sale, and Logan is trying to secure a purchase. Kendall and Shiv, slathering at the thought of ruining their father’s empire, begin making a a pivot away from The Hundred and towards PGM. What if the New Roys started off their new career phase in Old Media? Roman is more skeptical: If they go for Pierce, they’d be pivoting away from months of hard work and a digital brand that would keep them “fast on our feet.” But the truth is deeper than that: Roman, forever the timid son, is scared of fighting their father, and would rather scurry off to safety.
Kendall and Shiv still manage to convince him, after offering up the simple case of “how fucking funny it would be if we screw Dad over his decades-long obsession.” As with many moments in the episode, it’s a reminder that Succession has never once lost focus over what the show was always about: three abused children and their need to prove themselves before their father. The same goes for the moment the three of them jet out to Santa Barbara to begin their bidding war for PGM—the more things change, the more they stay the same. They are still the children of a tyrannical patriarch, and they’re out for revenge.
The three siblings market themselves to Nan Pierce, owner of PGM, as the anti-Logan coalition. They would retain PGM’s liberal values if they were to take over, unlike Logan, who would tarnish them. It’s an effective strategy—one that plays to Nan’s personal sympathies—but at the end of the day, Nan is Just Another Billionaire, one dressed in a coat of New England liberalism that can’t mask her overwhelming appreciation of multi-billion-dollar deals. (“This makes me feel like I’m in the middle of a bidding war,” she laments in the middle of a bidding war.) The Roy children know it, too, continuing to ratchet up their offer until they reach a “conversation-ending” $10 billion.
Watching Kendall, Roman, and Shiv succeed through genuine cooperation is an exciting new flavor for the show, mired in the show’s typical internecine family politics while remaining fresh. After the deal is complete, their father gives them a call that almost—almost—seems like an acceptance of his failure: “Congratulations on saying the biggest number, you fucking morons.” The siblings respond with glee and self-gratification, but I couldn’t help but read this as a sign of coming doom. This is Succession, after all—Logan always wins.
We get an inkling of real consequence in the final scene of the episode. Shiv returns home to her and Tom’s Manhattan penthouse, and we see the result of her husband’s betrayal at the end of last season. They’ve been separated for months, with Shiv living out of hotels to avoid contact. Tom is interested in talking things through, though that won’t be going anywhere with Shiv, who defends herself using free-market language learned from her father: “I don’t want to rake up a whole lot of bullshit for no profit, Tom.” She insists on getting a divorce, putting an end to one of the show’s most turbulent relationships. Even then, there is a hint of tenderness, with the two of them holding hands and reminiscing about how they “gave it a go.” It’s another sign that, behind all the Roy family tragedy and self-destruction, there are genuine human emotions to be found. Within the Roy family dynasty, it doesn’t look like they’ll ever get out.
Notes and Quotes
I didn’t get a chance to mention the ongoing adventures of Presidential Candidate Connor Roy, stalwart legend of the Republican Party. He has a solid 1% polling lead in the primaries, but in order to keep that lead he may have to inject another cool $100 million(!!!) into an aggressive marketing campaign. Is it worth keeping that 1%? It is if you want to have a place in the conversation—and as Greg notes, “Conversations are important to be a part of.” Wise words from a wise man.
Speaking of Mr. Hirsch, good old Cousin Greg is back and still too tall for everyone around him. The sequence in which Tom gaslights him into thinking that Logan has cameras set up around his apartment—and thus caught him in the act of illicitly “having a rummage” down the pants of his date—is hilarious in every single line of dialogue.
The scene in which Colin kicks out Greg’s date is just as funny: “I think it is best if you go do what you have to do. I don’t want to see what happens in Guantanamo.” Seriously, how is it that every single thing Nicholas Braun says is funny? How is that possible?
Tom is starting off the season in a rather precarious position. He’s definitively allied himself with Logan, which has caused his divorce, but Logan doesn’t care about Tom except he can get to Shiv. That’s a tough place to be for our Minnesotan boy.
“There are rival bidders? Oh, butter my beanpole!”
“I know, it’s so confusing. What comes after nine? Nine B?”
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