Did Succession just hit some mid-season turbulence?

This story contains spoilers for the season four episode of Succession, Living+. Every week The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald will be recapping the latest episode of Succession. You can listen to our recap podcast here.

It’s always going to be a tough ask for a show as impressively consistent as Succession to keep hitting the benchmark it sets for itself.

So far, this season has been a masterclass in handling both a swan song and a greatest hits mix of reasons we love the show. There was The Big Moment in episode three, classic corporate satire in episode four, and Succession on Tour in episode five.

Did Succession just slip up?The problem with consistently being the best show on TV is that even the slightest dip in form feels like a failure.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

This makes it all the more disappointing that episode six, Living+, felt like such a jarring addition to a stable season. After lulling us into a false sense of security, Succession has done the most un-Succession thing possible: dropped the ball.

Living+ was an exercise in confusing character development, combined with an overblown plot that was borderline unbelievable.

The title of the episode is really where the problems begin. Living+ is the name of a new WayStar product whose launch forms the narrative arc for this episode. It’s pitched as a “community”, but really, it’s assisted living where old people pay top dollar to reside in a gated housing development while enjoying wall-to-wall WayStar content.

It’s a terrifying idea, made all the more terrifying by the fact Disney is actually developing something similar with Storyliving neighbourhoods. Even their real-life pitch sounds like a Succession line: New home communities where your next chapter flourishes. Imagine your life set in a place where world-famous Disney service is at the heart of it all.

We first learn of Living+ in the opening few minutes of the episode via a flashback of Logan Roy, who is begrudgingly filming a video pitch for WayStar’s Disneyland for the Dying.

“I’m convinced that Living+ real estate brand can bring the cruise ship experience to dry land; I couldn’t be more excited,” says Logan, who couldn’t look less excited.

While it’s nice to see a familiar (albeit unfriendly) face in the deceased patriarch, it feels strange that this is the first, we’ve heard of this product. Five episodes poring over the finer details of this merger, and yet the company’s next big idea failed to get a mention?

In the present day, Matsson seems equally confused, meeting with Shiv on her private jet to say what we’re all thinking: “Why are you doing this, bulls–t?”

It’s certainly a fair question. Why are they doing it, and why haven’t we been across it?

Matsson makes it clear he intends to kill Living+ the minute he takes over, but the best Shiv can muster for the product’s existence is: “It’s in the calendar.”

It’s hard to shake the feeling that this has been shoehorned in. Succession isn’t one for surprises; every eventuality has been flagged, even subtly, at some earlier juncture.

But all of a sudden, we find ourselves in Los Angeles, WayStar gathering investors together at their studio to launch Living+.

Shiv confronts her brothers following Kendall and Roman’s attempts to character assassinate Matsson.Credit: HBO / Binge

The chaos of this opening sets the tone for what’s to come: everyone is in free fall, motivations are murky, and nothing seems to stack up. At a morning briefing, Kendall and Roman revive their attempts to torpedo the merger by telling the board that Mattson exhibited erratic behaviour. “He’s a human Chernobyl,” says Kendall.

This part makes sense; we know the CEO-Bro’s want to keep the top job, but what comes next quickly descends into something more like a Veep-style parody. The brothers decide to inflate the potential of Living+ in the hopes WayStar stock will rise above $192, so they can price Matsson out of the deal.

We can stomach the criminal element of their proposal - the Roys are no strangers to dealing with the SEC - but how Kendall and Roman act is harder to swallow. Both brothers have been on something of a journey this season, but in Living+, all the hard work is promptly undone.

Gone is new-and-improved Kendall, the Buddha in Tom Fords, and we’re back to season one Kendall, erratic, overblown and saying things that only really make sense to him: “We got to up our velocity man, break the log jam, pump it up, shoot it to the moon!”

Who are you? And who am I? Kendall and Roman were in free fall during Living+.Credit: HBO / Binge

It’s Kendall’s idea to turn Living+ into a product promising eternal life to justify posting juicier numbers. Spare a thought for the poor accountant Pete who tries to explain to Kendall that “numbers aren’t just numbers, they’re numbers.”

And it’s Kendall who choreographs the presentation to investors. He wants to build a scale replica of a Living+ house on stage, complete with virtual clouds like the ones he saw in Berlin (?). He also introduces a new “no one can say no rule,” precisely the kind of rule you need somewhere like WayStar…what with its famously non-toxic work culture.

The number one boy seems to have undergone a factory reset, and while it makes for entertaining viewing, it doesn’t sit right with current Kendall’s character’s trajectory. He’s always been on the edge, but Berlin clouds and eternal life? Seems odd.

The same goes for Roman, who appears to have benched his recent emotional growth in favour of…firing everyone? Roman has been tasked with sorting out the mess at WayStar’s movie studios, and his plan is to turn on the money hose because throwing money at things typically works.

He meets with Joy, a film executive at WayStar Studios, but the lunch takes a sharp turn when she raises concerns about ATN’s “rightward lean” and their relationship with right-wing nominee Jeryd Mencken. Things go from bad to worse when Joy suggests that Roman is where he is “for a very good reason.”

Short-lived Joy. The head of WayStar’s studio division was promptly fired by Roman.Credit: HBO / Binge

Roman interprets it as a slight, and two minutes later, Joy is fired.

OK, sure, happy for Joy to be fired, given we just met her. But when Gerri discovers what Roman did, she gives her one-time slime puppy a dressing down, delivering one of the episode’s more memorable lines: “You are a weak monarch in a dangerous interregnum.”

The shared history of Gerri and Roman should allow her space to overstep, but in Living+, Succession is not interested in anything that’s come before. And with that, Roman snaps and Gerri is gone too: “Shall we get started on the paperwork? Do you want to do it yourself, or do you want me to get someone a bit sharper?”

We know by now that firing Gerri is near-impossible, and even she doesn’t seem too concerned, but the unravelling of Roman does feel concerning.

Succession’s strength has always been in how accurately it shines a light on a world few people ever access. But the events of Living+ made Succession feel less like a finely tuned satire and more like just another TV show.

Roman firing a studio head and Waystar’s General Counsel on the same day? Unlikely at best, unbelievable at worst.

The saving grace for Living+ was Shiv and Tom, whose awkward foreplay from last week carried over into a reunion of sorts. After stumbling upon his ex-wife crying alone in an office - AKA “scheduling her grief” - Tom and Shiv kiss, which later leads to makeup sex.

Step into my office but also bite my hand until it bleeds. The strange romance of Shiv and Tom is easily the best part of this chaotic episode.Credit: HBO / Binge

In the aftermath of their intimacy, Tom tells Shiv he wants her back, but she shoos off talk of a future by dredging up the past. “Well, then you shouldn’t have betrayed me, phony.”

Here we get one of the episode’s strongest scenes, Tom explaining, “All my life, I have been thinking a little bit about money, how to get money and how to keep money.”

He needed to look out for himself in Tuscany because no one else - especially Shiv - was looking out for him.

Ultimately, he holds a mirror to Shiv and forces her to see they’re more alike than she realises. He loves money, and she loves money, so why can’t they accept that and maybe learn to love each other too?

The exchange ends with Shiv joking, “I’d follow you anywhere for love, Tom Wambsgans,” before they both start laughing. The argument could be made that it is actually Tom who is playing Shiv, leveraging her vulnerability by offering stability and positioning himself near power once more.

But for now, Succession’s most transactional lovers have found their way back to one another, and the playing field looks a little more level.

The episode ends where it begins with the launch of Living+ and Kendall presenting to a room of investors who fully expect him to self-implode. It doesn’t help that he has gone full 40th birthday Kendall, wearing a custom flight jacket (“for the launch”) and walking on stage to the sounds of Public Enemy’s Harder Than You Think.

But to everyone’s surprise, he stays in control, with no slip-ups. Yes, he goes off script, pumping Living+ up as a crime-free sanctuary that offers “health and happiness” benefits thanks to Waystar’s connections to big pharmaceutical companies. But he’s also charming and funny, interacting with a hologram of Logan and slowly winning the crowd over.

The entire scene is bonkers and fun, but again it doesn’t quite fit. Kendall has been careening out of control but somehow pulls it together, even when Matsson fires off a tweet comparing the Living+ experiment to a Nazi concentration camp.

Following the presentation, Kendall receives a hero’s welcome from the WayStar board. Hugo even chucks in a “long live the king.” The only person looking subdued is Shiv, who was complicit in Matsson’s social media missile.

How many frauds does it take to figure out a tweet?Credit: HBO / Binge

By the end of this hour of chaos, we have the children once again splintering in different directions. Kendall dives deep into the ocean, washing off whatever skin he’s been wearing; Shiv and Tom speed off together while Roman broods over a doctored video of Logan abusing him from beyond the grave.

This was an episode that left us with more questions than answers. So much happened, but how much of it made sense? Does it matter if Succession slips up once in a while? Could Kendall go to jail for cooking the books? Is eternal life really possible? And if it involves living in a world where these people exist, do we even want it?

Succession is dropping new episodes every Monday on Foxtel and Binge.

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