Succession season 3, episode 2 recap: Crippling daddy issues in ‘Mass in the Time of War’
Proving once again they are the worst family on TV, the Roys are manoeuvring to ensure they are the winning-est of the winners.
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SPOILER WARNING for Succession season three, episode two, “Mass in time of war”
Crippling daddy issues come to a head as the other Roy siblings try to pick a side in the ugly war between Logan and Kendall – but how much is loyalty really worth? As usual, everyone has a price.
FINAL SPOILER WARNING
After failing to land Lisa Arthur’s services in the season opener, Shiv knows she better scope out her options, because if there’s one thing Logan doesn’t brook, it’s failure. And he is nothing if not transactional in all his relationships, even with his children. Or maybe especially with his children.
Much like avoiding eye contact with your parents after you’ve been caught with vodka inside a water bottle at the year 11 dance, Shiv is steering clear of her daddy dearest – and letting his calls go to voicemail. And it’s perfect that Logan’s profile on Shiv’s phone is of Saddam Hussein.
So, she’s slinking off to Kendall to see if he’ll offer her a better deal.
Meanwhile, still marooned in that pretty nice albeit dated Sarajevo hotel, Logan is panicking.
“What the f**k is going on, I need to know what everyone’s saying, where everyone is and what everyone is thinking,” Logan shouts down the phone to Roman. He has some control issues.
Number of F bombs before the opening credits? Only two. It’s a light week.
In his ex’s apartment, Kendall is marshalling the troops, asking Greg to set up a meeting with his grandfather, banking on the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” tactic.
Greg doesn’t want to commit. For all of his naivete and weirdly honest approach, the forever squirming Greg may come out on top at the end of all this. Is it too early to predict Gregory Hirsch for final one standing?
Think about it, he sees and hears everything because everyone forgets he’s there or doesn’t see him as a threat. The Greg sprinkles still haven’t been sprinkled, and he always manages to just scrape through, especially with his tendency to fence-sit.
“I’m not a part of this … necessarily,” he protests.
Across town at the Waystar offices, Roman is checking in on the status of his relationship with Gerri. Given that it’s such a serious conversation, naturally he’s lasciviously sticking his tongue out like cobra hunting for prey.
But, he is, surprisingly, sitting in a chair, as in the seat of the chair, not the arms. But, big ups for using the word “interregnum”.
Shiv claims she’s not here to cosy up to Kendall and she’s not lying because Shiv is always only out for Shiv, despite her previous image as a progressive hero in a family of conservative reactionaries. But then, so was Ivanka Trump.
“You tell yourself you’re a good person but you’re not a good person,” Kendall says astutely.
Kendall’s delusions of grandeur really kicks in, ribbing Shiv for not doing what he, Kendall the Great, has done as an ally to women, puppies and rainbows.
Logan is losing his sh*t, or as he puts it, “his juice”, and the only company he has are yes-men with nothing to offer.
Connor suffered through the indignity of flying “scheduled” which must be rich-people talk for how us plebs travel, even though he was undoubtedly in first class with all those movies and heavily refrigerated cheeses.
Logan must be feeling anxious because he even apologises to Connor, needing to shore up support. That’s very unlike dad.
Greg decides he needs some impartial legal advice, so he turns to Leah, a first-semester law school student. When a lawyer shows up courtesy of Waystar, Greg – seriously, not as dumb as all evidence to the contrary – knows just enough to not except it without question.
He takes an Uber – no private car waiting on him – to meet his gramps. James Cromwell manages to spit even more venom than Logan. He doesn’t want dirty laundry washed out in public but is obviously perfectly fine with washing it in private, or at least have hired help to do it.
And Greg mentions being exposed in a loincloth which begs a lot of questions. Is this loincloth made from animal fur and if so, which? I imagine a spotted cheetah pattern. Or maybe it’s just a bit of cut-off hessian, it’s not as if Greg is a top-tier Roy.
But one thing that’s definitely Roy-ian is gramps swatting away Greg’s attempt at physical affection, doing his best Melania Trump impression. And “I love you” gets no reciprocation.
Kendall wants lawyer Lisa to prepare for all eventualities, including potentially calling the state police to arrest the FBI and an escape plan involving a plane without a tail number to “either Frankfurt or Venezuela”. Paranoid and grandiose – this is the result of Logan’s parenting.
Kendall obviously means Venezuela because Ramstein, the US air force’s enormous base in Germany is only 130km from Frankfurt and it would be all too easy for a snatch-and-grab.
Shiv and Tom’s little exchange about love – “do you love me?” – is a nice little carryover from the previous season, a reminder that even in the midst of all the turmoil, they still have their issues. And one of those issues may be Tom’s terrible love portfolio metaphor.
Roman is surprised but not surprised to see Shiv at Kendall’s and both of them are claiming to have no agendas. Yeah, OK, sure.
“What’s your f**king game?” Has anyone ever answered that question honestly?
Kendall’s upright stance is never more apparent than when he’s in a scene with Roman, whose lithe draping of any and all furniture is a continued delight. Here, he’s wrapped on a spiral staircase.
Kendall makes his pitch while his sibs still insist they’re only there for their father. Again, yeah, OK, sure.
Connor is basically there for show. Kendall starts talking about symptoms of “foundational sickness” and how the “great whites, from politics to culture are all rolling off the stage, it’s our time”. The worst part is, Kendall actually believes his own spin.
A couple of things here. First, the great whites are not rolling off the stage. They’re clinging on to every scrap of power they’ve amassed, rooted in the idea that power can’t ever be shared – and the world will only ever be made in their image.
Secondly, at least Roman, in his infinite prejudice, points out the glaringly obvious, “Us, this multi-ethnic, transgender alliance of 20-something dreamers”, but it’s also super revealing that of course those who grew up with inherited privilege and wealth feel entitled to the world.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Kendall then co-opts the language of a politics lecturer, chattering on about declining empires, before pivoting back to the usual corporate jargon of nonsense words that don’t really mean anything, “detoxifying the brand” to go “supersonic”. No, shut up, that has no meaning. And, seriously, what the hell is “omninational”?
I googled it and the only things that came up were a resort in Arizona and a 1918 JStor article about the potential formation of the League of Nations in a post-WWI geopolitical landscape. Riveting stuff.
Shiv’s “unsubscribe” reaction to Kendall’s bullsh*ttery is an instant classic which means it’ll be an instant meme deployed in response to every promotional email, every corporate webinar, every grandstanding politician - actually, probably just every politician.
Kendall’s grandiosity in thinking that he’s the saviour who will make a difference, rather than being part of the problem points back to his season one hubris. He’s always had this belief that he’s going to matter.
Connor steps in to run after Roman when Shiv insults Roman’s sexual flaccidity and you get the feeling that the oldest Roy has had to adjudicate these scuffles before, a pseudo-parent for when Logan and Caroline weren’t there or didn’t care, which would be 97 per cent of the time. It’s about the only decent thing anyone does this episode.
There’s such an interesting dynamic in how the power alliances shift between the sibs. For a moment Shiv and Kendall are on the same side, but only because they’re collectively making fun of Roman.
Who knew what when? Shiv and Roman are claiming they didn’t know about the pay-offs and the immigrant workers being thrown overboard, trying to dodge accountability like they’re a member of Scott Morrison’s government.
Kendall uses his kids as cover to run downstairs to meet with Stewie and Sandi – daughter of Sandy, one of Logan’s nemeses. Daughters named after their fathers (ahem, JonBenet) tend to meet a grisly end, so it’s a good thing Sandi can afford private security.
Back in Europe, Marcia has returned! But she’s not here for free so let the negotiations begin. There will be no reconciliation, or the public pretence of one, unless the terms are favourable. Everything is a transaction.
The negotiations are being handled by the communications team, which really highlights how much this is about image. Marcia says she was humiliated and that “things must be made right” so you know what that means – kaching!
She’s a pro at this game and lets her team hash out the details, who immediately opens with “the numbers I’m going to propose will sound like very, very large numbers but if you consider them in terms of the difficulties it will present Mr Roy to have an acrimonious divorce announced ahead of a contested shareholder meeting, then it starts to seem like very reasonable numbers”.
Not one “very" but two. Who else is curious about what the actual numbers are? I’m going to guess that there are at least nine zeros on that figure.
In New York, Connor, the libertarian man of the people courting the vote of the aggrieved, is on the phone about a worrisome geological survey at his fine wine storage facility. He really gets it, you know.
Shiv and Connor are convinced if all three of them backed Kendall, then it’s fatal for Logan. Everyone wants to be on the winning team, but only if they get to be the winning-est of the winners, which means, chief executive.
Shiv calls Tom and Roman calls Gerri. Shiv is really mulling it over and starts smiling at the prospect of being made Queen Bee down the track. Remember, she’s grossly unqualified to be in charge of a multinational media and entertainment conglomerate. But in this world, the luck of DNA is all you need to really believe that not are you up to it, but it’s yours by destiny and right.
Gerri tells Roman that if they all came out against Logan, then Moby Dick goes down, but that none of them would come out of it either.
When they return, Connor points to the maybe-poisoned-maybe-not-poisoned doughnuts from Logan. Mind games? Or do they legitimately think there’s even a two per cent chance that doughnut is compromised?
Maybe not with arsenic but with eye drops, which one former colleague chillingly told me would give the intended target the runs. I always watched my food around him after that.
Connor is the first to pull out and Kendall reacts badly, telling his older brother that he’s not wanted. When Roman and Shiv both decide to stick with Logan, Kendall’s insults become juvenile, calling Roman a moron and debasing Shiv’s value down to her breasts before launching into how these decisions are going to ultimately doom the planet.
Watch out, “f**king pricks” are flying everywhere.
It’s done, the lines are drawn, for now. They say it’s loyalty to their dad but we all know it’s because they didn’t get to be CEO.
Logan has so successfully pitted his children against each other they can’t ever trust their own blood. Not that you’d ever want to feel too sorry for any of the Roys, but it must have been so lonely growing up in those echoey, empty houses.
Back in Sarajevo, Logan decides it’s time to go back to NYC and Marcia reminds the crusty patriarch he still has a card to play against his errant son. Referring, of course, to Kendall’s season one “mishap”, ie. the time he killed someone Ted Kennedy-style, Logan correctly says that some bombs burn the person throwing it. It’s a non-starter.
Gramps intros Greg to his lawyer, a man with a questionable filing system, who tells Greg that while the first priority is to protect him, the second is to “expose the structural contradictions of capitalism as reified in the architecture of corporate America”.
Well, of course, that’s what I was going to say. Just like a true Roy, gramps wants to use Greg as a Trojan horse to take down his brother. Greg, ever the truth-teller, nods along and agrees but also clarifies that he’s focused on his “position and me in particular not getting fired or going to jail, if that isn’t too selfish”.
Never before has a man repeated “I like it, I like it” and looked so constipated at the same time.
Logan and his cabal lands back in the states, disembarks and immediately restarts his power games and emotional manipulation.
In full view of the paps, he plays with Roman, ignores Gerri and gets in Shiv’s car, leaving the others to look on and wonder where they’re ranked in the Logan stakes as he continues to get off on being withholding. Lucille Bluth has nothing on Logan Roy.
Shiv is promoted to president, and he assures her that she will be his eyes and ears with Gerri as a shield.
Shiv is on top. For now.
Succession is available weekly on Mondays at 12pm AEDT on Foxtel On Demand
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Originally published as Succession season 3, episode 2 recap: Crippling daddy issues in ‘Mass in the Time of War’
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