Succession season 3, episode 4 recap: Family island therapy and Shiv’s very bad day
There’s no love lost in blood feuds and no one does blood feuds better than the venomous Roys.
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It’s family therapy time again with an unusual mediator as Kendall and Logan face off for the first time since the great betrayal. Welcome to episode four of Succession’s third season.
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR ‘LION IN THE MEADOW”
Despite being publicly reamed by his own sister as a drug addict, a sexist and a bad father — and probably the grassy knoll second shooter at this point — Kendall is riding high on the non-stop media coverage of his father’s offices being raided.
There’s nothing like some schadenfreude to pull you out of a funk. There’s also nothing like Cousin Greg fretting about the “goons, stooges and roughjacks” waiting at Logan’s to administer a beating when he is summoned to the belly of the billion-dollar beast.
Rather than physical violence, at Logan’s Cousin Greg is offered a drink – zut alors, an alcoholic one! – and he asks for a glass of rum and coke. Why wouldn’t you pass up the Macallan 1926 for the nectar of the drunken uni student?
Greg clutches his glass with two hands, and declares, nearly sputerring, “strong for a man,” trying to convince himself he is one.
The squirrelly Greg at least has the mind to ask Logan what his loyalty is worth. He may be shaking like a leaf but he is still shaking down Logan when so many others would have rolled right over for a belly rub. As always, Cousin Greg, dark horse.
Elsewhere, on a conference call with all of his mortal enemies, Kendall or “Little Lord F**kleroy” (truly amazing wordplay right there if you remember the Little Lord Fauntleroy story is about a boy who inherits an earldom and estate) is told that the raid has made some investors nervous.
Specifically, Josh Aaronson who owns 4 per cent of the company and his single-digit holding is enough to cause a hell of bad time for the Roys, all the Roys. Josh is threatening to switch his allegiances to Sandy and Stewie and Logan needs Kendall to pretend to make nice.
What Logan doesn’t know is that Kendall is also trying to woo Sandy and Stewie, but given that’s not a sure thing, for now it’s in everyone’s best interests to keep Josh on side.
Kendall is given a deadline. In four hours, Josh wants to meet with Ken and Logan together, and with the shareholders’ meeting in four days, there’s an urgency to all of it.
Frank convinces Kendall that meeting Josh is the smart play and he reluctantly acquiesces, and now the meeting is “discretely” at Josh’s island because these people have islands. Why wouldn’t they?
Even though Kendall and Logan are leaving from the same heliport to go to the same island, they take two separate choppers and then two separate private jets. Incredible production values – that’s HBO money for you – but you really hope the filmmakers offset those carbon costs.
The question to ask yourself is whether this stirs the green-eyed monster in you or if you see it as a grotesque representation of ludicrous wealth.
Meanwhile Tom is perusing through a folder of prison catalogues. He’s impressed at the kosher vending machines and sturdy bunks at the Jewish prison, but the fear is palpable.
You almost feel sorry for him – and that’s because Matthew Macfadyen is just so, so likeable – but it’s obscene that he gets to “shop” which prison he might like to do time in. There’s no justice in the justice system, which is, of course, not a new revelation but Succession really likes to remind us how everything is rigged.
Poor Terminal Tom, not only does he get little more than a “it’s not going to happen” brush-off from Shiv, she’s really only there to give him orders, which includes “thumbscrewing” Greg.
Whenever Tom is feeling emasculated, his go-to is to take it out on Greg. It’s the consistent power dynamic of the Roys. If you’re undermined, take it out on the person with less power than you. Oh wait, that’s not just the Roys. Hmmmm.
Tom asks Greg what he knows about Nero and Sporus (“This is not IP I’m familiar with”) — Nero, who pushed his wife down the stairs and castrated Sporus who was made to dress up like his dead wife. Tom: “I’d castrate you and marry you in a heartbeat”.
Greg doesn’t quite know what to make of the compliment/threat and neither do we – other than that Tom is clearly having a moment. Tom has a mini-tantrum/bullying episode at Greg, but it’s revealing of Tom’s fear about going to prison while Greg leverages his way to a high-level position.
“Minion-wrangler and sh*teater” Terminal Tom tells Shiv that Ravenshead, the guy running ATN editorial, is refusing to pivot more negatively on its presidential coverage (something Logan wanted Shiv to set in motion), and then admits that putting the screws to Greg is about his level.
He’s still worried about prison and confesses to the one thing he’s going to miss the most if he’s incarcerated – that first glass of cold wine on an empty stomach at the end of the workday.
The prison alternative – toilet wine made from fruit ketchup, but you have to “burp” the wine bag as it ferments – makes him terrified. What a font of knowledge those prison blogs must be!
Shiv has been tasked with handling Connor’s request for more involvement in the company and her offer of a wine tasting show on a lifestyle channel is rejected, and Connor condescendingly weaponises a charming childhood anecdote into commentary about Shiv being merely a figurehead for the real powerbrokers. You know you’re having a bad day when even Connor gets one over you.
To regain her footing, President Shiv saunters into Frank and Karl’s office and flexes her muscles, strongarming their negotiations with Sandy and Stewie.
But Karl has gone crying to Logan who then berates Shiv for how she’s handling it. She, rightly, points out that Logan empowered her to go in there and kick some arse and if she backs down on Karl, then no one will take her seriously.
Logan gives his only daughter some brutal advice, that everything is always moving, and she better get used to it. In other words, tough titties.
Reduced by her dad in the same way Connor did earlier in the episode, Shiv does the only thing she can to reassert herself – she goes to Ravenshead to insist on the editorial pivot but directly invokes her dad’s power to get her way.
It’s an empty victory that illustrates that Shiv really has no power of her own in this structure, everything is borrowed from her father.
When Ravenshead threatens to go public with her demands, she points out, “The thing about us Mark, and you should know this by now, is we don’t get embarrassed.” A great line, but not true if you remember how furious she was last week during her speech when Kendall’s Nirvana stunt sent it and her off the rails.
The whole thing has the desired effect because later, the President rings Logan in a tizzy.
So, what’s Roman’s play this episode? Turns out, 15 years ago, the brothers did an “ironic bar crawl” in New Orleans in which they exploited a homeless man in convincing him to tattoo Kendall’s initials on his forehead.
Once again, reminding everyone that for the Roys, other people are “no real person involved”, the acronym used by the family and the company to reduce the humanity of anyone not them.
Roman wants to expose Kendall as a privileged billionaire frat boy, as if anyone really forgot.
When tattoo man shows up with his lawyer and his forehead is looking more bare than branded, Roman offers a million dollars for photos, despite his disclaimer of “not wishing to make this too transactional”.
Geri tells Roman to not use the photos because, she astutely points out, while it’s good for Logan and bad for Kendall, it’s also bad for Roman.
Over on Josh’s private island, the luscious Adrien Brody is lounging in a cavernous room with floor to high-high-ceilings glass windows overlooking grassland and the ocean. It’s gorgeous – OK, maybe being rich does have its trappings besides the clarity of moral turpitude.
After Josh greets Logan with “Oh captain, my captain” (do we think he’s quoting Whitman or Williams quoting Williams?), it’s the big reunion, the face-to-face between Kendall and Logan, the first time the pair have been in the same space since daddy dearest sent his second-born to the firing squad.
Josh isn’t convinced by Logan’s vague sweet nothings and insists on taking a walk around his kingdom, a smart move to throw the old man off-balance.
We also get an interesting titbit in Josh’s moaning about the losses he’s taken as a result of Waystar’s turmoil – 10 per cent of his 4 per cent holding. If Josh has lost $350 million, as he claims, that makes Waystar’s market capitalisation $87.5 billion.
That’s quite a bit of change. For comparison’s sake with some real-life media conglomerates, that makes Waystar more valuable than CBS Viacom ($23.6 billion), but only about a quarter of the value of Disney ($319 billion) and a third of Netflix ($286 billion).
AT&T (which owns Warnermedia, which owns HBO, which makes Succession) has a market capitalisation of about $122 billion. Of course, that’s all nickels and dimes compared to Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which is worth $1.98 trillion.
Josh outlines the conundrum Kendall is in – if what Kendall has on his dad is nothing, then this whole thing has been a charade and the younger Roy looks like a “fake”, but if it’s really, really damaging, then Josh says it’s enough to make him bail.
In other words, Kendall has a really fine needle to thread and he’s not exactly known for his precision and discipline.
Josh weirdly plays family therapist to Kendall and Logan, but his agenda is to come out on top and he’ll manipulate them as needed, and doesn’t give a toss about their relationship.
Logan gives a speech to Josh, which also comes off as a message to Kendall that the son desperately wants to believe – which means it’s a double performance for Josh
It’s worth writing the whole thing here because it’s a masterpiece in what it reveals about how Logan works.
“He’s a good kid, he did what he thought was best, I thought he went too far, but he’s a good kid. He’s a good kid and I love him. They’ll be a big number, we’ll pay, he’ll mew and cry, and I’ll get it and it’ll all be OK and maybe it’ll be him one day, it’s in his blood, he learnt it all from me and maybe he’s the best one of all of them, so yeah, it’ll be OK.”
But if Kendall was wondering whether Logan means any of what he just said, he crashing back down only moments later.
On the walk back, Kendall says to his dad “nice speeches” to which Logan replies, “well, you’ll say anything to get f**ked on a date” and then rubs it in that Greg has become a turncoat.
And the bile keeps coming. Logan says he’d sooner “get f**ked by [a derogatory term for Spanish-speakers] in a shower block than see you have it”, which coupled with his coded anti-Semitic crack at Josh earlier (“city boy, you’re a little far from your coffee and bagels”), and Logan is just on form as a prejudiced old man.
Pressured into walking back, instead of waiting for the golf carts, because obviously real men don’t wait or take carts (urgh), Logan is now visibly limping and breathing heavily as he struggles.
Kendall serves it back to his dad and they’re both spitting venom at this point – it’s the emotionally damaging showdown they were gearing towards and nobody wins in a blood feud.
Logan has a health episode on the track, his mortality and weakness on show in the glaring sun, and it’s a bad look in front of a billionaire investor they need to keep on side.
It’s enough to send Josh scurrying to Stewie and now all the Roys have one less ally in the looming shareholder battle. Ooops.
But if the worst comes to the worst, at least they have the recipe for toilet wine.
Succession season three episodes drop on Foxtel On Demand on Mondays at 12pm AEDT
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Originally published as Succession season 3, episode 4 recap: Family island therapy and Shiv’s very bad day
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