Following last week’s emotionally devastating bombshell, the fourth episode of the final season of “Succession” opened by tossing a nuke-level development, then shrugged it off and got down to what the show’s always been about: business.
With the title question of who will inherit leadership of the Waystar Royco media empire now that patriarch Logan Roy is dead, his three contentious children Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Siobhan’s (Sarah Snook) newfound camaraderie is tested by their individual ambitions. The siblings, along with other family members and Waystar executives, honor his memory in a way Logan would have appreciated: by slicing one another’s throats as figuratively and verbally as they can.
There’s a hushed, corporately decorous feel to “Honeymoon States” compared to the emotional paroxysms of Episode 3. But make no mistake; blood’s left all over the imported marble floors of the fallen billionaire’s Manhattan penthouse by the time this installment is over.
Intimate Evenings
Episode 4 opens with the Roy siblings in their separate dwellings, concerned about their father’s death (or in Roman’s case, brushing his teeth like any other morning). Shiv gets a call telling her the amniocentesis looks great. In a lesser, less-disciplined show, confirmation that the leading lady is pregnant would suck up the rest of the episode’s oxygen. But that’s the last we hear of Shiv finally expecting a baby this week.
Protected by his trusty sunglasses, Kendall enters the lobby of his dad’s building to hear one of the company’s PR pros, Fisher Stevens’ Hugo, shouting at his daughter’s voicemail. She’s really put the strap-on to him, (hopefully) metaphorically speaking. Exiting the elevator into Logan’s penthouse, Ken’s surprised to see his stepmother Marcia (Hiam Abbass) receiving mourners. She was supposed to be shopping in Milan forever, as we were informed in the season premiere.
“We spoke every morning and afternoon, so I came as soon as I heard,”the third wife explains. “We were very close. It was complicated. But we spoke intimately every evening.”
Reeling from this TMI talk, Ken finds his brother and sister in another room. Wicked exchanges immediately kick off.
“Death becomes her,” Shiv says of Marcia.
“Where’s Kerry?” Ken asks about the assistant Logan cavorted with through his final days.
“In Marcia’s trunk. Inside an anaconda. Inside a sarcophagus,” Roman speculates.
Shiv notes their dad’s calendar indicates he hadn’t seen Marcia for seven weeks. Ken asks if she got the “intimate calls” memo. Shiv considers suing the stepmother for the thought of Logan doing phone sex. She then suggests a huddle since, sad as the day is for some, for others it’s a coronation demolition derby.
The Kitchen Cabinet
Her estranged husband Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) shares a glance with Shiv before he walks into another room where the Waystar execs are gathered. They’ve got to make a recommendation to the board as to who should replace Logan, now an interim position before the still-planned sale of most of the company to Swedish tech mogul Lukas Matsson goes through. To keep their deliberations out of bereaved ears, vice-chairman Frank Vernon (Peter Friedman) suggests “looking at the china.” Tom, PR head Karolina Novotney (Dagmara Domińczyk), general counsel Gerri Kellman (G. Smith-Cameron) and CFO Karl Muller (David Rasche) follow Frank into the kitchen.
While the siblings are blowing off an over-solicitous Cousin Greg, Matsson calls Roman’s phone. Ken wants to do five — when does he not? — to get their ducks in a row before speaking to the prospective buyer. No wonder the execs are discussing the kids in the kitchen. The velvet viciousness could be cut with a no-doubt nearby chef’s cleaver.
“If the message we gave is that the kids are, y’know …” Karl nonproposes.
“Screwups and dips—s,” Tom suggests.
“Maybe not constitutionally well-equipped at this point to take on the role,” Karl finesses.
Gerri and Karl test the waters for themselves. She deploys a speargun.
“Look, I think you’re a corporate legend,” she tells Karl. “What you did in the ‘90s with cable? Huge!”
Ouch! Sounds like David Zaslav speaking to HBO.
Tom, noting that he’s sick with grief, tells the distinguished veterans all he’s ever wanted is to serve.
“Oh, you’re sick with grief?” Gerri has reloaded. “You might want to put down that fish taco. You’re getting your melancholy everywhere.”
Eviscerating Tom is turning into this season’s top-rated blood sport. When he plows ahead and puts his hat in the ring, kind-voiced Karl frames the question the board might ask him, as a friend, just so he’d be prepared.
“You’re a clumsy interloper and no one trusts you,” he tells Tom. “The only guy pulling for you is dead. And now you’re just married to the ex-boss’ daughter and she doesn’t even like you. And you are fair and squarely f—d.”
Sympathetic Devils
Five having passed, the kids call Sweden back. A guy calling himself Oskar, no doubt a functionary from Matsson’s GoJo company, answers Lukas’ phone.
Rome asks if Lukas is there.
“Oh, ah, no,” Oskar replies. “He went now,” he says.
Shiv wants to know if he’s still buying Waystar.
“Oh sure man. Maybe,” Oskar responds, applying English as a second language to Swedish business purposes. . Oskar passes on condolences re: Logan, then says Matsson wants them, or one of their old guys, there in 24 hours. When Shiv suggests they come to New York considering the sudden death situation, he’s adamant GoJo’s annual retreat can’t be disrupted.
“Oh, yeah, I totally see that,” Shiv says, giving the phone the finger.
Logan’s first son Connor (Alan Ruck) and his new bride Willa (Justine Lupe) arrive, fresh from their barely attended wedding. He’d hoped the event would generate free media coverage for his pathetic presidential campaign, but his father’s death drew all the attention from it.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Willa tells Marcia.
“Congratulations,” Marcia replies. “Look how far you’ve come.”
“Yeah. Look at us both,” a playwright in addition to an escort service provider, Willa knows how to drop a line, adding after a deadly pause, “right?”
Connor says they have a trip planned in a few weeks to what Willa calls the Honeymoon States; Midwestern battlegrounds about as romantic as a stump speech.
Connor sheepishly asks about someday buying Dad’s place. Marcia instantly sets her price range. $63 million it is! Spit shake. It’s his!
In the upstairs library Frank, who’s one of the estate’s executors, shows Karl and Gerri a “rather worrying” piece of paper he’s discovered in Logan’s safe. Undated with all kinds of hand-written addenda, it indicates that at some point the old man wanted Kendall to succeed him. They agree it has no legal standing and “joke” that it should get accidentally flushed down a toilet anyway. The term “not germane” is repeated by all.
As the kids make jokes about their dad’s newspaper obituaries, Hugo asks for a private moment with Ken. He confesses that his daughter sold Waystar stock just before the Logan news went public. A total coincidence! But he can’t recollect what phone records will show.
A moment later, Kendall brushes off an obsequious Tom.
The kids are called into the library. Frank tells them what the paper appears to say, and how the suggestions are non binding since the family no longer owns majority control of Waystar. Ken, of course, views it as ironclad.
“Ken, I get it, but this thing is old and you’ve tried to put him in jail, like, 12 times since then,” Roman points out.
Shiv questions whether Kendall’s name had been underlined or crossed out. Visual is ambiguous about it.
“Well, it sure as f—g s—t doesn’t say Shiv,” Ken snaps back. Shiv’s eyes go googly sideways, like she’s a rock played by Michelle Yeoh.
On the stairs, Shiv asks Roman if the three of them together felt good — it did. But now does this feel good? Tom approaches. Roman leaves. Tom tells Shiv he’s sad about Logan.
“Yeah, I guess you’ve already picked the wrong horse,” his wife sneers. “You might have picked the dead horse.”
She makes a generic statement about Logan’s grandkids, not mentioning she’s pregnant. Won’t let Tom touch her.
“It feels like I’m the only one who lost something that they actually f—g wanted here and it’s not coming back,” Shiv brink-of-blubbers.
Tom reminds her of the first time they knew each other, when he flew to her in France. She storms away as the recollection gets intimately tender.
A Nation Mourns
Right-wing blowhard Ron Petkus (Stephen Root) eulogizes Logan in the dining room, sincerely spouting horses—t about great men and angels weeping.
Tom whispers to Greg that Logan died fishing his iPhone from a clogged toilet. “They say Karl was the one who blocked it,” he adds of his new enemy.
Connor complains Petkus is trying to make his father into a neo-conservative when he was really a paleo-libertarian, practically an anarcho-capitalist. As if any of it were true or mattered.
As Greg’s yes-manning Marcia in the foyer, Kerry comes out of the elevator. With a wavering voice, the dead man’s mistress tells his wife she got her message not to show up, but has to get some of her things from upstairs.
“They’re in a bag,” Marcia says. Security man Colin blocks Kerry’s way to the staircase. A maid hands Kerry the bag. Roman comes into the foyer, asks if she’s OK.
Kerry, weeping now: “I’m good.”
Roman, who’s insultingly fantasized about Kerry’s oral skills in the past, says he wants to help and tries to get her private number. The bag drops, spills contents on the floor.
While on their knees picking up stuff, Kerry babbles something that sounds like Logan was making arrangements to marry her.
Colin’s guy takes Kerry out the back. Roman tells Marcia that was unnecessary.
“We’re calling her a taxi to the subway so that she can go home to her little apartment,” Marcia imperiously explains.
A moment later, Roman disses an ass-kissing Tom while, in another room, Ken solicits his old friend (and Waystar board member) Stewy’s (Arian Moayed) vote to succeed Logan. Affectionately but seriously busting his buddy’s balls, Stewy extracts an assurance that Ken will go through with the GoJo sale.
Ken then huddles with his siblings. He swears to work toward the trio’s previous goals if they’ll back him as CEO.
Shiv thinks it should be her.
“There is an argument that you’re the worst of both worlds,” she tells her brother. “Different, but the same.”
“That plays, Shiv,” Ken spins. “It does. With the board. Same old, but with a vibey new banner.”
Roman points out that he actually has COO experience, is close to Matsson and reveals he had recent communications with Logan. He and Shiv agree it doesn’t feel right for the CEO to just be Ken.
“I see that, Bro,” Ken concurs.
“Ohhh-key … And what about me?” Shiv wants to know.
The boys have all kinds of rationalizations why it should just be them. Shiv needs her beak wet. The brothers assure her she’s just not fronting, would be inside everything, this is “just sell.”
“Yesterday was real,” Roman states, evoking how Logan’s death bonded the three of them as never before.
Shiv wants it all equal as f—k, not to get f—d on this. “This is a Dad promise. On Yesterday.”
Her brothers agree.
In the library, Ken makes his pitch to the executives for him and Roman to be recommended as co-CEOs.
Karl cites that both of their recent contretemps with Logan makes them damaged goods.
Gerri toots her own horn. Roman suggests we all know Dad had soured on Gerri.
“I don’t think there’s anything on paper to that effect.” Gerri asserts to a silent pause with accompanying side-eyes. “But I’m not going to push it.”
Ken and Roman reaffirm they’re excited about the Matsson deal.
History in the Murking
Among a waiting throng in the library’s anteroom, Greg tells Tom, “History is happening. Can you smell it?”
“Uh huh,” his mindf—k buddy ripostes. “Roses and rotting corpses.”
Karolina announces “OK, it’s done, they voted it up, Ken and Rome step up from COO.”
The brothers emerge from the library to applause, handshakes and shouts of “Long live the kings!” Shiv shoots by behind them and heads for the stairs as Tom watches. Marcia’s coming up as she’s marching down them.
“Everything well?” the stepmom asks.
“Yep, all great. All good,” Shiv replies with a terse, phony smile.
She tells two laughing guys to shut the f—k up, it’s not a comedy night, then falls on her way into the parlor. Stewy and Tom help her up.
“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine! Don’t f—g touch me. Stop smiling!”
Ken and Rome enter Logan’s home office with Karolina and Hugo. The boys study his desk.
“Did you know he did Sudoku?” Roman asks.
“I, I think I knew that,” Ken sputters.
They stare at Logan’s jacket draped over the back of the desk chair.
Hugo and Kaorlina want to go over coms points for Monday’s market openings, to help solidify the new bosses’ position. Strategic choice is between embalming Lenin by emphasizing the boys’ connections to Logan, or take on any issues about their competence by stressing how the kids have actually been running the company as their dad lost his focus toward the end.
“OK. So it’s Operation S—t on Dad,” Roman accurately assesses.
Hugo and Karolina in unison: “No!” Then Hugo details how far they could go in trashing Logan’s reputation — though they wouldn’t.
Roman and Ken agree now’s not the time to s—t on Dad.
Rome thanks the PR team then says, “Maybe don’t bring us this disgusting shit ever again, OK?”
Later, Ken tracks down Hugo.
“You know the stuff, the bad Dad stuff?” he mentions. “It’s what he would do. He’d want this, for the firm. So action that. But soft. No prints.”
Oh, and don’t tell Roman or Karolina.
“Down low. Just get on it. Unless you want me to pull out the strap-on,” Ken tells a hesitant Hugo, referencing the conversation he overheard at the start of the show.
Best One-Liners:
Nothing expresses the kids’ real feelings about their dad as well as when they “translate” lines from a namby pamby newspaper obituary.
Ken pats him on the shoulder. Back in room, asks about obits.
Shiv: “The Courier, you need a codebook for this one. You ready? ‘A complicated man.’”
Ken: “Threw phones at staff.”
Shiv: “’Sharp reader of the national mood.’”
Rome: “He’s a bit racist.”
Shiv: “’He was very much a man of his era.’”
Ken: “Again, racist. Also relaxed about sexual assault.”
Shiv: “’Business genius.’”
Rome: “’Never paid a penny in U.S. tax.’”
Shiv: “’Well-connected.’”
Rome: “Now that’s not fair. Well-connected is generally accepted to be a euphemism for pedophile, and no one ever suggested that he would, y’know …”
Ken: “F—k a child? Yeah. He wouldn’t even hug his grandkids.”
Then they all share a laugh.
Stray Observations:
Keeping almost all of the episode’s action inside Logan’s apartment made for textbook hothouse drama. Even though issues of national and international import are on the line, this staging strategy turned even the most abstract business dealings accessible. Never seeing the board vote, or Waystar’s Scandinavian suitors, kept the impact of every move personal and intimately agonizing. Turns out we didn’t need a splashy announcement that Shiv’s expecting to be fully, emotionally invested.
Exceptional use of language in this installment, even by the series’ superb writing standards. How the executives go from extra-careful phrasing to withering attack mode in split-seconds, the way a Swede speaking English conveys passive aggression without overtly seeming to, the debate over what Logan’s “disturbing” paper really means, everything that comes out of Marcia’s permanently sideways mouth. And while there are fewer “f—ks” to be heard now that Brian Cox is no longer around, the profanities in this episode seem to mean more, plot- and character-wise. As they should.
Now that she’s married into the family, Willa is really asserting herself. While everyone else is focused on the succession issue, she’s showing her mom what she plans to do with Logan’s plush apartment now that her husband Connor’s agreed to buy it from stepmother Marcia (whom Willa just put down with minimum words and maximum effectiveness). She’s starting to look like executive material; is Waystar’s board watching?
