Succession season 3, episode 6 recap: Everyone is a ‘no real person involved’

Between the fast-paced insults and the perfect plotting, what Succession really reveals is the darkness at the heart of the most important institutions.

BE WARNED, SPOILERS AHEAD FOR SEASON THREE, EPISODE SIX, “WHAT IT TAKES”.

Welcome to the Succession house of horrors.

After last week’s urinary tract infection-related mental detour, the Roy patriarch is back in fine form – and by fine, we mean terrifying.

And we didn’t even know just how terrifying he is until this week.

Yes, we’ve heard Logan bellow and shout, play his kids against each other and just generally act like an dickhead – in other words, how the world has decided obscenely wealthy, old white men are allowed to behave with little consequence.

But it’s only this week that you realise Logan Roy is an uber-villain. Or, at the very least, as if he’s the CIA, and American democracy is a banana republic which he can manipulate for his own profit and ideological ends.

The Roys are off to a conservative political hobnob, the kind where, if this was real life, you would expect Ted Cruz and Candace Owen to be sniggering about how Dean Cain wasn’t invited.

Everyone is trying to court Logan’s support. Picture: HBO/Foxtel

After Waystar – but especially Roman – overplayed their hand with the current unnamed president, causing “the raisin” to announce he’s not going to recontest the election, this conference is essentially to pick the next president. Specifically, it’s for Logan to pick the next president.

That democracy thing, where citizens – or in this party-specific case, the wider party membership – choose? That’s an illusion. Or at least that’s what Succession writers including creator Jesse Armstrong is contending.

We all know this to be part of the equation. No one is so naïve as to believe democracy is pure. It’s easily corrupted and bent to the will of those with more money, status and resources.

From election spending, corporate and individual donations, pork-barrelling, media spin and influence peddling, democracy has never been one person equals one vote.

This was hammered home when Cousin Greg asks when he gets to vote for who the Roys should pick for presidential candidate and Roman snarkily tells him at the ballot box.

It’s pretty clear from Roman’s dismissal that the average voter’s one vote is inconsequential – but also just every line of dialogue uttered this entire episode reduces the citizenry to mindless drones with no real say in anything.

The real power to decide comes from the oligarchs.

An absolute F-you to democracy. Picture: HBO/Foxtel

In this case, the oligarch king (yeah, yeah, I’m combining two positions, neither of which should actually exist in the 21st century) is Logan Roy and everyone is courting his favour, including the current vice-president who may secretly be a vegetarian.

Fun fact, Reed Birney, who plays the VP also played a VP in House of Cards.

But it’s not just establishment figures who want the cloak of Logan’s influence, it’s also those who grandstand to their lackeys that old media is irrelevant.

Because when it comes down to it, maverick political wannabes with strong YouTube and social media followings – and by maverick, I mean fascists who peddle prejudice, hate and white supremacy – still recognise that Logan can make or break them with the captive audience of his cable viewers.

Justin Kirk’s Mencken (an amalgam of Alex Jones, Jordan Petersen, Stefan Molyneux, Marjorie Taylor-Green and the like) is a repellent racist, who says he has no issues borrowing from Plato and St Thomas of Aquinas or Franco and “H”. What a champ.

Logan likes his contrarian approach – and Mencken will be good for business. He’ll draw the ratings to ATN and he’ll run Logan’s anti-tech line.

Kirk is a great bit of casting because he’s primarily played likeable if immature guys – most notably Andy Botwin in Weeds. It’s hard to hate his face, which makes his character all the more dangerous.

Mencken is a particularly interesting foil for Shiv because she’s supposed to be the progressive in the family – or at least before Kendall tried to publicly stake his claim as an ally to every marginalised community in his grandiose play for relevance and revenge, but we’ll come back to him later.

An episode of compromise for Shiv. Picture: HBO/Foxtel

When Succession first started, Shiv was a political operator on the other side of the aisle as an adviser to Gil Eavis, and her credentials there was a key part of the second season’s machinations with the Pierce deal, a progressive media company.

In theory, Shiv still retains some of those ideals, it’s just whether she’s willing to back them. She spends a good part of the episode pushing Salgado, a more palatable economic conservative rather than a loose cannon. He’s also offering Shiv a quid pro quo to make her chief executive of Waystar.

Shiv finds Mencken entirely unacceptable, and she makes the case at every turn in their opulent suite while Logan sits on his plush throne (and watch his body language here, unmoving like a king) and waits for everyone to come calling. But when it really comes to crunch time, Shiv caves.

Logan anoints Mencken, posing with him for a portrait. It’s to be a family portrait and Shiv’s presence is required. She resists, refusing to be pictured with someone she labelled a Nazi.

But in the end, it’s futile, because Shiv will do what her father wants, even if it’s against her own so-called principles. What good are those principles if there are multibillion-dollar empires and daddy’s approval at stake?

Shiv and Ivanka Trump should have a good catch-up – so many notes to compare!

The king speaks. Picture: HBO/Foxtel

Shiv’s opposition also had the effect of putting her more on the outs with Logan, allowing Roman to further cement his favourable position with his father with his episode-long mini-me act.

Roman, perhaps more than the other Roy kids, or at least differently to the other Roy kids, has an even needier dynamic to his father. He’s less likely to voice his resistance to anything. Even Kendall at least stood up for Roman when their dad struck his youngest son in the previous season.

Elsewhere in the episode, Cousin Greg considers suing his grandfather and Greenpeace, which naturally means he’s foisted up as a hero by the seal-clubbing, Hamilton-hating conference attendees. It really perked him up after his fretting about prison.

Connor keeps trying to position himself as a viable pick for president – and while the fam are mocking the idea, but he’s actually admired by a lot of these conference people, which should tell you a lot about these people. Even Greg doesn’t think Connor should be “crowned” president – for the sake of “his country”.

Note that Logan’s assistant is becoming a player after she confidently offers her opinion on the political games, much to Shiv’s confusion and chagrin, and even directly speaks to the VP.

The camera has been centring Kerry more and more this season, and Logan is sharing memes with her, and none of that is an accident.

Kerry’s influence is building. Picture: HBO/Foxtel

Roman also finds out that their mother Caroline is getting married to some dude named Peter Munnion and didn’t bother telling her children but did invite “Glyn, the Brexit pervert”. I mean, of course.

External to the conference, Kendall is on shaky ground after it emerges that the Justice Department finds little to directly incriminate Logan in the cruise documents. Greg obviously didn’t save the right ones from shredding.

He seemed way out of his depth during the practice deposition, and deflects with inappropriate, glib remarks.

He also parts ways with Lisa, his lawyer, when she tries to reason with him and lays it out for him that the papers are not as explosive as he hopes. Hopefully Lisa returns in some capacity because otherwise that was a waste of Sanaa Lathan.

He’s having a very bad episode, especially after Tom says to him, and actually without menace, “my hunch is you’re going to get f**ked because I’ve seen you get f**ked a lot, and I’ve never seen Logan get f**ked once”.

Oooph, but true.

Fare thee well, Sanaa Lathan, largely wasted this season. Picture: HBO/Foxtel

While the Kendall stuff is significant in the longer arc of the season in that he’s essentially lost his leverage, the fire in this episode is what Succession is saying about the rot at the heart of the world’s most important institutions.

The conference is opened with a toast to the “health of the republic”, but the person shouting back “and the health of my portfolio” is the only one telling the truth in that moment.

Money, privilege and power are the only things that matter here, not constitutional principles or the rights of the masses.

It’s something Succession has always understood about this insane world it’s portraying, that there is no fairness and there is no equality. There is only power and “no real person involved”.

In this episode, every voter is a “no real person involved”.

Succession is available on Fox Showcase and Foxtel On Demand with new episodes on Mondays at 1pm AEDT

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