My thoughts in two screenshots:
Forgive my Mother in Heaven for agreeing with Piers Morgan, but…Succession isn’t Succession without Logan Roy.
Sure, a show is bigger than any one character. But when WayStar’s stock price crashed, it revealed something fundamental about how this show is set up: Logan is the sun, the other characters mere planets in his orbit. That’s not to say there haven’t been fantastic moments, lines, performances and scenes in the episodes since the series shocked viewers by offing its lead. But there’s a stark difference between the episodes that revolve around Logan, even in absentia, and the ones that don’t. Namely, either they’re talking about Logan or they’re boring me to shit.
For three and change seasons, Succession revolved, sometimes to a repetitive degree, around a single question: which of his four children will business titan Logan Roy name as heir? Well, which of his three children. Connor is there for comic relief, and I love him for it. As the song says, Shiv, Kendall and Roman were competing for “a kiss from daddy,” their every action something that would either win or lose them points in his eyes as they jostled for his favor, or maneuvered against him. And Logan was no mere reactionary. He was bombastic, volatile, wily, selfish, vicious, hilarious and sometimes genius. His whims moved the story. Meat indeed.
So when he died unexpectedly, without choosing a successor, what was that? A betrayal of the premise, the title? It’s like one of those modern rom-coms where the girl can’t decide between two guys and ends up choosing…herself. And I suppose it would have been a bit anticlimactic to get to the finale and Logan just goes, “okay, it’s [character].” Yes, I see that it is more interesting, energizing and dramatic to have his death be not an ending but the catalyst for chaos. Which of his children has the balls to emerge from the melee victorious? Is this the new question?
Well, yes and no. Each of the episodes of season four takes place over the course of a day or so, one right after the other (which means Shiv doesn’t get significantly more pregnant through the season even though they kind of make it look that way…but I won’t nitpick). The episode in which Logan dies is superb. The next day/episode, when the family gathers at his townhouse, still reeling, is also fantastic. The effects of grief make long-simmering tensions combust, we see the axes of power shift and resolve, Marcia puts Kerry in a taxi, that one girl has a capacious bag. But the episode after that? In Norway? Couldn’t matter less.
Matsson is no Logan. He is pathetic as a Big Bad, and while he’s sort of interesting as a pawn in the Shiv-Roman-Kendall three-way chess game, he’s way overstayed his welcome. When he showed up on the scene, he was an enigmatic weirdo all about “privacy, pussy, pasta.” Later, that’s revealed to be his catchphrase, not an offhand comment. He’s about as cool as Elon Musk. At this point, I could not give a single shit whether GoJo buys RoyCo or WayStar buys Pierce. These characters will be rich and miserable no matter what, so the stakes are…???????? Kendall gets a taste of life in the big chair, and then, I dunno, they go on a hike. Like when they went on a walk with Adrien Brody, sorta. Are the Succession writers just playing the hits? Logan is dead, but it’s business as usual. Instead of going back to New York, where the action is, the next episode takes us to Los Angeles for the launch of Living+. Kendall does unexpectedly well in his speech about a product everyone knows will likely never come to fruition, and certainly not within the timeline of the show. The kids continue to form and re-form alliances, but none of them have the power to actual sabotage the other, unlike at the end of season three, when they finally formed a trio only to be undermined by Tom, who went to Logan, who at the end of the day is the only one who matters. Now, they’re just moving pieces around, asking themselves what it would be like to be in this group or that one, like trying on dresses when the prom is tomorrow. Pick something and let’s go.
Finally back in New York, the fifth Logan-less episode (including the one in which he is an airborne corpse) is literally just people bantering at a pre-election party. Shiv and Tom have a knock-down, drag-out fight that could absolutely have been the third act in one episode that included Norway and LA, but whatever. Perhaps if this were all set-up for the fifth season, laying the groundwork for future storylines, mucking up our core characters to give them new layers and problems to sort through, it would be interesting. But it’s not, so it’s not. We won’t even meet Shiv’s Fetal Alcohol Syndrome’d baby. They are, quite literally, killing time before the election. Anyone else smell a filler episode?
Election night has the same issues. Before, we had time to tease the problems in Cruises, then burn the evidence, then reveal the evidence, then go to The Hill and refute the evidence. But whatever Tom did by calling it for Mencken early won’t be resolved or even dealt with in the next couple of days, so, really, what does it matter? The ability to get Mencken elected was a testament to Logan’s power — he’s the one who likes calling presidents — not Roman’s. No, I get it, look how corrupt they all are even without Logan around, the poison has dripped through. The writers know what they’re doing. It’s all very Thematic. A helluva spec episode!
By the power of God (Jesse Armstrong), last Sunday’s offering returned us to Logan’s corpse, and I finally had a reason to watch. The funeral was appropriately weighty, darkly funny and emotional. Kieran Culkin, come and get your Emmy. By making it about Logan, forcing Kendall to face his legacy and the shoes he can’t quite fill, we’re actually getting somewhere.
But still, note how the show just keeps playing the hits. How many times are we going to watch the characters walk around meaningfully while a slow version of the theme music plays? Kendall’s off-the-cuff eulogy was riveting (if a little unbelievable — no one ad-libs the word “corpuscles”), but it was also a more mature, nuanced rendition of “L to the OG.” Does this signal growth? Yeah. Just like Kendall and Rava’s co-parenting relationship continues to grow…apart. We’re just seeing the aftermath we could have predicted. Well-observed, well-developed characters, rendered to perfection by phenomenal acting choices. But I felt like I was watching a novel wrap up its final chapters. The climax is over, the battle is won. But ah, look how poetically the dust settles!
Yes, it felt a little like the writers were showing off. Ewan’s speech perfectly summarized Logan, The Man…That They Created. It was a perfect New Yorker-style obituary for a controversial American businessman. But like, yeah, duh, because the people who wrote the eulogy also wrote the character. Look how well they know their own creation! Revealing the tragic backstory they…had probably been working from since season one! Ah, that explains it! And while I understand that it made the moment more tense to have his remarks be unscheduled, ultimately, again, there are no stakes, as the only person who could have gotten Ewan to sit back down was in a box in front of him. As Logan observed, his kids aren’t serious people. The show needs someone serious to kick asses and take names. Only Logan could ever do that.
I liked all of Logan’s former sex partners sitting together at the front. I liked the sibs joking that their dad got a good deal on his mausoleum. Kendall has finally sold his soul — Roman was always his soft spot, and now he’s playing his brother like a fiddle. Roman self destructs the way Kendall used to and Shiv has to repair her relationship with Tom so they can have a kid. These are interesting developments. If you beefed up the Connor-Willa of it all and gave Hugo a few one-liners, they could round out a new ensemble cast for a season about Mencken vs. Matsson. But we only have one episode left!
I think a time jump could have worked. Six months into the Mencken presidency, what does WayStar look like? But like coked-up, exhausted Tom, I feel we’ve been running on fumes here. Greg and Gerri have little to do, seeming to sense that without Logan around, there’s really no point trying to sidle up to power. The power is elsewhere, maybe Norway or DC. It may have made sense dramaturgically, but in offing Logan with so many hours still to fill, Succession…I don’t know how else to explain it! The show blew its wad too early.
I truly hope next week’s finale proves me wrong. It all pays off or at least works so well no one can dare raise a finger against the series, and I look so stupid for writing this. That would honestly be great. And please, sweep the Emmys! But for my money, HBO’s best show about a powerful patriarch and the dynasty he seeks to build with one goofaround son, one self-serious family man son and one narcissistic daughter married to a sincere goof, well, it comes back June 18.
Successionly,
Lizzie
PS- I interviewed Chappell Roan! She’s the coolest!