Succession Season 4 episode 1 review: Logan Roy faces existential crisis
Showrunners promise Succession will ‘go out strong’ … so why does it feel like we’re about to watch another (albeit fictional) dysfunctional family organise a funeral and coronation?
You know it’s bad when Logan Roy is in the throes of an existential crisis.
By “bad”, in the context of the Succession and the Roy family, this means good.
No. Great.
Logan (Brian Cox) is front and centre in the first episode of the final season of Succession – the last of the prestige, feel bad TV shows from the HBO stable.
The patriarch, best known for his expletive-riddled tirades, his snappy cardigans and stubborn refusal to retire, has shades of Kerry Packer in his TV era in the last scenes of the hit show about media dynasties, power and sibling rivalry on steroids.
“I just watched the top of the hour. It’s bulls..t. People watch at night. I watch at night. Who is the f..king lunk anyway? He looks like a b…sack in a toupe. Are you losing it Cyd? Are you f..king losing it?” Logan says to the equally hard core boss he installed at his ATN empire on a late night phone call (which she dutifully picks up after one ring in the middle of the night).
Season four starts with the stench of death.
A smell that is even more ominous than when the series premiered in 2018 with Logan in an actual coma and the vultures – named Kendall, Shiv and Roman – started circling.
Succession, it has been confirmed, is going to do what it says on the can.
“There’s a promise in the title of Succession… I’ve never thought this could go on forever. The end has always been kind of present in my mind. From season two, I’ve been trying to think ‘Is it the next one, or the one after that, or is it the one after that?’,” showrunner Jesse Armstrong told the New Yorker recently.
He ultimately decided with the writers and cast, when they began planning season four more than two years ago, to expect something “more muscular and complete”.
The show is guaranteed to “go out sort of strong”, Armstrong said.
So why does it feel like we’re 10-episodes away from another, albeit fictional, dysfunctional family organising a funeral and coronation?
Season four picks up back in New York after season three ended in Italy on the eve of a corporate coup. There, the Roy siblings learned they’d not only been betrayed by their father, but also their mother, who altered the conditions of her divorce settlement with Logan so she got a new house and the kids lost their “supermajority”, which would have allowed them to overthrow Logan and split control of Waystar RoyCo evenly between themselves.
But the sassy and the ‘more British than Hugh Grant at the Oscars’ Caroline isn’t the villain. The real Judas is the Shiv’s hapless husband Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), whose skills at climbing the social and corporate ladder should be units of required study for nepotism babies born today.
Tom tipped off Logan about the coup before the merger with a tech outfit owned by a Swedish ‘bro’ Lukas Matsson. A series regular now, played to terrifying accuracy by Alexander Skarsgård, who was last seen moping about Lake Como in pool slides wearing a scowl and Lowes’ latest collection as he and Logan plotted against his progeny.
That’s a go on GoJo. Congratulations to Alexander Skarsgård of @Succession on his #Emmys2022 nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. pic.twitter.com/Vk7b7lceAB
— HBO (@HBO) July 12, 2022
Shiv knows.
We thought winter in Game of Thrones was chilly, but Daddy’s “carrot top” is about to unleash her own red wedding.
Her first victim – Tom.
To say their marriage is on life support would be like saying Covid was just a sniffle.
It’s nice to have the world’s most dysfunctional family back.
The trio of Kendall (Jeremy Strong), hard head Shiv (Sarah Snook) and impish Roman (Kieran Culkin) are the neapolitan ice cream of television.
All brilliantly written and executed, the result is a wonderful combination. They are finally united, albeit in their desire to thwart their father’s business merger that threatens to leave them destitute.
Well, as poor as you could leave three incredibly rich trust fund tycoons who never seem to actually work, take public transport or live in homes without an “armoury-slash-cigar humidor”.
New to Succession? Meet the Roys.
— BINGE (@binge) March 21, 2023
Catch up on Seasons 1-3, streaming on BINGE.#ISawItOnBINGEpic.twitter.com/ksVDG7BFDJ
They are plotting to reinvent themselves as the “new-gen Roys” by launching a new media business to “save liberal democracy” in the shadows of a general election. Instead, a bidding war with another feuding family breaks out.
It’s all very Shakespeare meets Silicon Valley, except these characters are more robotic than AI could even achieve. Logan being asked for a selfie before asking the help, who he calls his “best pal”, “What is a human?”, shows money can’t buy EQ.
However, there is a lot of tenderness in the first episode. As tender as steak can be after being struck with a mallet of insults, barbs and schemes for three relentlessly dark yet comedic seasons.
The scene of Logan with his security guard shows how pathetic and lonely he is.
Similarly when he projects his pain at missing his bold and brash kids at his birthday party when he demands the leeches left around him, including waffling Tom, Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) and his band of advisers “roast” him as “no one is funny anymore… No one does comedy anymore!”.
Perhaps the most intimate scene of the entire show comes when Shiv and Tom drop the act they’ve been attempting to pull off for three seasons – one of a married couple who tolerated each other.
The chemistry is reaching boiling point between Logan and Kerry (Zoe Winters) – who now goes by the title “friend, assistant and adviser”. Marcia (Hiam Abbass) – the usual hostess and third Mrs Roy – is shopping in Milan “indefinitely”.
However the most potent alchemy is between the “disgusting brothers”, Tom and Greg, who continue to be Beavis and Butthead dressed by Savile Row.
The plot and plotting is punchier. The dialogue is zippier than a Ferrari on the Autobahn and the stars – especially Snook, Cox and Culkin – are all shining bright as sunset dawns for Succession and they all, sadly, “f..k off”.
From the pool to the press conference.
— BINGE (@binge) March 20, 2023
Catch up on Succession before Season 4 drops this month.
Stream Seasons 1-3 on BINGE.#ISawItOnBINGEpic.twitter.com/CiwOaCt0Y3
Succession Season 4 streams from Monday, March 27 on BINGE, with new episodes dropping every Monday.
