Succession recap: Season four, episode six, ‘Living+’
When it comes to psychosexual games, Succession knows exactly what it’s doing with Shiv and Tom.
SPOILER WARNING
This recap of Succession season four, episode six, “Living+”, will contain SPOILERS, multitudes of SPOILERS, reams of SPOILERS, a cavalcade of SPOILERS. You get the point. Consider yourself warned.
It’s actually remarkable how frequently rich kids manage to fail upwards. Even when all signs point to disaster – and this superb episode was masterful in ramping up the tensions and expectations of a Kendall breakdown – it somehow comes off.
Not because it was a good idea well executed, but because people love money, and they love the sound of someone telling them they’re going to make more money. Greed wins, even when it shouldn’t. Especially when it shouldn’t.
Chocolate milkshake
Everyone is in Los Angeles for Waystar Royco’s investor day, a hootenanny in which the management has to convince their investors that everything is A-OK. It should be an easy job given the whole enterprise is about to be bought out by Lukas Matsson for a premium price.
They’re in caretaker mode, like a lame duck government who definitely shouldn’t be implementing any great new reform they won’t be around to see through. And that’s certainly Matsson’s view too, as he tries to back-channel through Shiv in pre-killing an initiative he doesn’t want to be saddled with.
That program is Living+, a real estate venture that Logan – in a promo video he recorded before his death – described as bringing “the cruise ship experience to dry land”, which sounds like an absolute nightmare. Because being held hostage on a floating gastro palace for eight days isn’t enough, you want to do it all the time?
Logan had it in train but Matsson wants to kill it. The Swede doesn’t like real estate, it’s not scalable.
But Kendall is absolutely jonesing for it – and I’m specifically using that word because throughout the whole episode, his erratic, twitchy behaviour suggests he might actually be on something besides what one assumes is already a cocktail of prescription drugs.
And he keeps using words like “velocity” in such a wankery way.
Kendall says to Roman that if Living+ resoundingly wins over the investors, if the pitch is so good, then it might push the stock price above what Matsson was offering, thereby making the deal too expensive for him.
It’s another way for Kendall and Roman to kill the deal he outmanoeuvred them on. Kendall doesn’t want to sell, he wants it all for himself.
Kendall and Roman decides to cast aspersions on Matsson as “the human Chernobyl”, questioning the tech billionaire’s stability but Gerri and the old guard argue that Matsson’s bizarre reputation is “priced in”.
Maybe someone should tell Elon Musk that, because his personality doesn’t feel “priced in” given Twitter is worth half what it was when he bought it, and Tesla stock is worth less than 60 per cent of where it was this time last year.
Kendall sees his tactic is not working and backs down and the others are satisfied, but Shiv is having none of it. She knows her brothers, she knows when they’re bullsh*tting – and quite frankly, the others should too because Roman in particular is such a bad liar.
“I know you, I f**king know you. Oh, f**king hell. Boys, you’re not good at this. Hey dad, Shiv spilt chocolate milk in the Range Rover. You’re trying to f**k the deal.”
They apologise to Shiv and Roman suggests they hug it out, but it’s so very clear that she is furious at them. The cracks in their alliance are deepening. It’ll be a Pangaea-splitting chasm by the end of the episode.
Psychosexual games
OK, so the Shiv and Tom dynamic this episode is very interesting. Very, very interesting. And with more than a touch of psychosexual games.
What’s going on here? Is it sincere or is he playing her because he’s all out of allies and options? Tom knows the old guard have cut him out after Karl’s scathing put-down in the wake episode. And Roman and Kendall have basically told him to “f**k off”.
Even Greg has sensed the tides shifting and spends the whole episode passive-aggressively undermining Tom over this shoulder – more Iago from Aladdin than Iago from Othello.
The way he hugs her when he chances upon her scheduled grief session feels authentic but that doesn’t mean he isn’t also playing her. Both truths can be held in the same hand. Same when he apologies to her at the investor drinks, for “f**king you up”.
Their little one-upmanship about who traumatised who more feels like a window into how these two ended up together in the first place. There’s a weird balance to this interaction, in a way that was never very apparent before because Shiv’s status has always trumped everything else.
Whatever game they’re playing with each other, it involves some doona dancing, times at least twice.
Tom tells Shiv he wants her back and she brings up the whole massive betrayal thing. And here’s where it gets real, because in their verbal sparring-cum-weird flirting, here’s the truth of Tom and Shiv’s relationship.
Tom basically admits he married Shiv for her money and all the accoutrements that comes with insane wealth. He likes the suits, the watches, the high-powered career. And he says she never really let him in so when he had to choose between her and Logan, he went with the house. The house always wins – until it dies. Which is how he found himself in the situation he’s in now.
In case she’s going to judge him or become indignant about his choice, he pre-emptively challenges her to throw out all her finery and live in poverty with him for love. Love doesn’t conquer all, love is secondary.
It’s an extraordinarily honest moment for both of them. He’s totally upfront with her and she kind of doesn’t hate it. There’s a ruthlessness to his confession that, in a twisted way, is sexy to her. He’s not being wishy-washy, he’s not trying to appease or be a hanger-on.
This is the unadulterated Tom, and there’s a strength to him that he’s not shown to her before.
All cards are on the table and there is an arrangement here that works for both of them. Shiv knows that Tom needs the Matsson deal to go through, and she wants the Matsson deal to go through. Their interests are aligned, and now that she knows exactly what drives Tom, it’s something she can manage.
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Roman conquest
This is not a great episode for Roman. Maybe the ignominy of being back in LA and in the bosom of Waystar Studios is triggering memories of his past failures. If you remember, Roman was earlier involved with the movies division, but didn’t get anywhere with the Hollywood crowd.
Maybe he sees this as settling an old score?
He summons Joy (yay, Annabeth Gish!), the Waystar Studios boss, for lunch. She makes an inside Hollywood joke which totally goes over his head, and then he demands to know who’s getting fired for the debacle surrounding the Waystar’s big-budget franchise Kalispitron.
Joy manages to skate around that with assurances that “the hit machine” can once again be pumping – and by that, pumping money. But she takes the opportunity to raise a concern of her own, and that’s the toxicity of ATN’s ultra-right-wing politics and support for Jeryd Mencken, the not-a-Nazi-but-not-quite-not-a-Nazi presidential candidate.
ATN’s brand is repelling people in the business, which makes it harder to run a studio. Roman dismisses it, and tells Joy that “Mencken is IP, just like anything else,” which is a terrifying statement to make. And confirmation that in the purest form of capitalism, values don’t matter, that everything – and everyone – is transactional.
Roman senses that Joy isn’t giving him the respect he thinks he deserves, but what it really reveals is that Roman senses that Joy is giving him exactly the respect he deserves, and that’s not a whole lot.
When he says to her, “I get it, you’re thinking, what does this guy know about anything, he’s not his dad, he can’t do it, Roman’s track record is bullsh*t,” it’s what he believes about himself. When she says back, “I’m sure you are where you are for a very good reason,” the implication is clear. Nepo baby.
When Roman floats that he could just fire her, and she laughs, it’s enough to set him off. And he does it – because that is within his power, and he needs to do something to prove to himself he’s not the worst he believes about himself. Roman doesn’t need an Iago, he’s his own Iago.
Gerri, when she finds out, is pissed because, well, Roman did a bad thing. He did the thing that’s going to open the company to a massive unfair dismissal lawsuit. Not to mention he sacked someone influential in an industry where he has no juice.
So, yeah, Gerri is pissed. She calls him a “weak monarch in a dangerous interregnum” and reaffirms to him the one thing that’s really chipping at him, which is that he’s not his dad.
First of all, credit for use of the word “interregnum”. And secondly, Roman immediately reacts like a wounded child. Roman can demand respect from everyone all he wants but the real problem has always been that he doesn’t respect himself.
That’s why he’ll never command respect from others because he’s screaming “inferiority complex” from every pore.
Gerri gives him some home truths when she realises what he’s thinking – “You cannot win against the money, the money will wash you away. Your dad knew. Tech is coming. We are over.”
Hmmm, as someone who works for a legacy media company, I’d rather not think about that too deeply.
Roman lashes out and fires Gerri, because his feelings were hurt.
And Kendall supports Roman’s decision to fire Joy and Gerri because Kendall is, let’s say it loudly so that everyone in the back can hear, bad at this. So bad at this. He’s as bad at this as Roman is bad at self-esteem.
Unbelievable growth
Kendall is going overboard with the Living+ announcement, his entire focus is on it. Kendall is always about the spectacle, to make up for the fact he has little substance. It’s easier for him to pour his energy into asking for pizzazz than to grapple with anything real.
It’s just like his 40th birthday party the previous season, where he ended the night in a foetal position. No recreation of a birthing tunnel – or a Living+ house – is going to make up for his crippling loneliness or feelings of inadequacy.
And given how that night ended for him, there’s an air of impending breakdown about this episode.
The Succession writers are so skilled at creating a sense of doom, dialling up the tension and pending catastrophe.
Because when Kendall goes on about how they could get a tech valuation for a real estate initiative, it sounds insane. He couldn’t possibly pull it off, right? Because if people with a lot of money and power can be talked into believing something that isn’t worth that much is worth much more, then that would surely be scam, right?
That would undermine the economic system and lead to a financial crisis, right? That could never happen, right? Right?!
Even Greg voiced something that resembles sense: “I think it’s hard to make houses seem like tech, because we’ve had houses for a while.” Until he falls into line because the sycophant will always be a sycophant.
So, Kendall gets the finance wonks to massage the numbers of projected revenue and profits to spin a yarn about doubling the parks division, instead of just a “significant boost”.
Kendall even manages to get the video guys to deepfake Logan on the promo vid so that he confirms it will be double.
Living+, by the way, sounds like it could be a Black Mirror-esque dystopian nightmare.
The pitch isn’t just some branded planned communities where the residents will have early access to Waystar content such as movie previews or talks from filmmakers. By the by, if you’ve never heard of a Florida town called Celebration, look it up. It was designed and built by Disney and it’s weird AF.
Living+ isn’t even just something which resembles the kind of suburbs that popped up during the “White Flight” scare of 1950s America – that’s when “urban” became code to demonise black communities in the inner city.
The language around Living+ of being “safe” and “secure” is very deliberate, and the brochure images paints a very specific demographic.
There probably is a version of Living+, if it actually was scalable, that traps its customers into not just the physical communities but forever. The name does suggest immortality.
Think about it, if you have your clients cornered in some kind of wholistic community where you provide them everything from supermarkets to healthcare, you’re holding a lot of data on them. And we all know data is valuable, because tech companies keep telling us it is.
It wouldn’t be massive leap to think that Living+, with its life extension ambitions, extends that life into a post-life metaverse, like Upload or the Black Mirror episode, “San Junipero”. Mark Zuckerberg may not be selling his metaverse idea very well, but someone is going to come along and do it.
Everyone’s an idiot
Kendall looks like he’s spinning out and his presentation with the fake clouds and the facade of a Living+ house is going to crash and burn. It doesn’t take a lot of nudging from Shiv to move Roman to distance himself from Kendall’s presentation.
Much like the Shakespearean Iago, not the Disney one, Shiv’s words only work on him because Roman was already thinking it.
Even though Kendall got Roman a matching bomber jacket (“ready to launch” was perhaps the wrong expression given Roman oversaw a disastrous rocket launch) but the younger bro tells Kendall that he’s not going out there with him.
Roman suggests a postponement or cancellation and Kendall knows exactly what’s going on, and he’s crushed. Just to really smash his spirit, Karl bails him up right before Kendall goes on.
The stage is set for another epic Kendall catastrophe, and we’re pretty used to them now so when he triumphs it’s weird. Despite a very awkward start, they’re actually buying what he’s selling.
Even Matsson’s attempt to derail everything with a tweet evoking the words that appear at the gates of Nazi concentration camps backfire and he’s forced to delete it.
That Kendall is victorious is damning. His pitch is fanciful and dystopian. In what world does anyone think what he’s selling is a good thing?
But everyone in the green room who was cringing and snarking moments earlier is now clapping Kendall on the back. The echo chamber returns.
No amount of cheering him on now will make Kendall forget that Roman snaked him before the presentation and he retaliates by having another Logan deepfake video being made and sent to his turncoat brother.
“I want to make what I think is a fairly historic announcement. Roman Roy has a microdick and always gets it wrong,” Deepfake Logan intones.
Trapped in a world of self-flagellation and self-loathing, Roman replays it over and over again. The words his father has probably said to him in real life rings through the car as an anguished Roman continues to punish himself, and continues to believe, always, that he’s not worth anything.
Meanwhile, Kendall is out for a stroll by the ocean and he goes for a swim. But this time, there’s no threat of a Kendall-as-Ophelia moment. Here, he floats while looking upwards towards the sky. For now, he’s on top. But whatever alliance that existed between the three sibs has been decimated.
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