‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 3 Review: A Shocking Twist

Well, I called it.

A few days ago I speculated that something big was coming in Sunday night’s episode of Succession. HBO didn’t send out screeners to critics, which could mean only one of two things:

1. The screeners weren’t ready for some technical reason or other, which is pretty unlikely for the third episode of a show that doesn’t have much in the way of CGI or special effects.
2. Something big was going down this episode that HBO didn’t want leaked ahead of time (because unlike AMC and The Walking Dead, HBO understands that you should keep big, show-stopping events secret rather than announce them weeks or months ahead of time).

“Could someone actually die and not just be metaphorically “killed” in a business deal?” I asked in that post. I had a sneaking suspicion that somebody would. Kendall is a suicide just waiting to happen. Logan hasn’t been in very good health since the very first episode of Season 1. And this show is wildly unpredictable, meaning anyone could bite the bullet at any moment. Just like in real life.

Sure enough, it was Logan. The most surprising thing about the Waystar RoyCo founder’s death, however, wasn’t that he died or even what killed him—a heart attack, apparently—but how it was portrayed in Succession. Let me explain.

Last week, Logan riled up the workers at ATN with a rousing speech about how they’d fight to the last breath, declaring “We’re f*&*ing pirates!” Underdogs, basically, in a desperate culture war in which they, and only they, would tell the unvarnished truth. He never seemed so hearty and hale, so full of vim and vigor.

One episode later, he’s dead. Just like that. Perhaps he was meant to die in the helicopter in the series premiere and got one last chance to make things right. Botching that rather spectacularly in the intervening year, his time was up. Once again, like Icarus flying too close to the sun, it was in the air that death came swirling down. This time, nothing could be done. Long before the plane turned back for New York, Logan Roy was dead.

Perhaps there’s some karmic justice in it. Had he stayed to attend his eldest son’s birthday instead of jetting off to Stockholm to meet with Mattson, perhaps they could have gotten him to a hospital in time. Had love ever been more important to him than money and power, it’s possible Logan would have survived a bit longer.

The most curious thing about this episode was what they chose not to show us. We don’t see Logan collapse in the plane bathroom. We don’t see his face as the flight attendant does chest compressions. Even when we finally get a glimpse of his head, it’s at an angle where you can’t really make out his face. We don’t see him topple. He does not utter some final profound words. The last time we hear him speak it’s about firing Gerri. As he boards the plane he says:

“Clean out the stalls. Strategic refocus. A bit more f*&*ing aggressive.”

And that’s that. The last we see or hear of Logan Roy. And isn’t that how it works in the real world? There’s nothing dramatic about it, nothing profound. Few of us get some poetic final utterance. Fewer still are able to tie things up with a bow. When we lose someone they’re just gone. Everyone else is left to handle the details. None of the Roy children know what to do or say when their father is dying. Tom puts the phone by their father’s ear, unsure if he’s even still alive, and they freeze, unsure of what to say. Too much has been left unsaid. How do you even articulate a final farewell to someone you have such a conflicted relationship with?

In my review of last week’s episode I wrote:

“Succession is one of those shows that makes you realize something profound and terrible about the world: People don’t change. We just sort of nudge our way forward, maybe picking up a thing or two along the way, probably repeating the same mistakes we’ve been making over and over again until, eventually, we snuff it.”

When Logan Roy shuffles off this mortal coil, he leaves behind not merely a vast media empire and enormous sums of money, but all the unresolved things he left dangling as part of his endless manipulation of all the ‘economic units’ in his life. So much resentment and so many hard feelings remain, like ghosts, haunting everyone who ever cared about him. Kendall and Shiv and Roman and Connor, all left with their grief and their rage and their guilt and their shame and, suffocating under the weight of all the rest, their love, also. “That man never liked me,” Connor blurts out, his first reaction to the news. Roman, speaking on the phone, almost has a panic attack when he tries to tell his father that he loves him, perhaps because he’s afraid of what he’ll say next. “I love you but . . . .” Kendall says he loves him but can’t forgive him. Shiv can barely string a sentence together.

The thing about people never changing that screws with our heads the most is hope. Hope that maybe they will. We cling to that almost as much as we cling to love. We tell ourselves that surely, someday, with the right words or the right circumstances, our abusive lovers or our negligent parents or our deadbeat children will change and that some healing will happen and some catharsis will take place. That we can glue together all the little pieces of our Humpty Dumpty lives and be whole again.

The trouble with dying is that hope dies, too. Other than all the pain and grief and anguish and the lingering, unspoken everything that remains, you might almost call it a blessing in disguise. We can let go, finally, of that terrible hope. The Roy children wanted so desperately to have their father’s love and approval. “I never did anything to make him proud of me,” Connor says, a fully-grown man in this 50s’, still incapable of understanding that this was his father’s shortcoming and not his own. Now Connor can let it go. Any chance of his father’s approval died with Logan Roy on that airplane, his assistant Kerry grinning ghoulishly at his side.

People don’t change and then they die and the rest of us are left to pick up the pieces, most of which are just broken things inside ourselves. Or at least that’s the way it is with the family Roy.

Verdict

Most of this episode was just the Roy kids standing around talking. Or the other passengers on the plane, shuffling around trying to figure out what to do and when. This is how it is when someone dies. It’s awkward. Grief and checklists. Someone will have to prepare the funeral, sort the belongings, make some calls. For the Roys it means a statement to the press, a call to Mattson, a new series of business challenges.

And a wedding, of course. Weddings and funerals always seem to come hand-in-hand. Connor tells Willa that he’s scared that if they call off the wedding, she’ll walk away. He asks her if she’s really just in it for his money, and she replies that honestly there’s something safe and comforting about the stability of it. But she’s happy. And she’s not going anywhere—at least not any time soon. It’s a nice moment, and reaffirms my belief that despite the decidedly transactional nature of their relationship, Connor and Willa have by far the healthiest relationship of any characters on the show.

MORE FROM FORBESRanking Succession’s Characters From Least To Most DespicableBy Erik Kain

Even though this was something I had prepared for, I have to admit I’m still shocked and a little bummed out. The season has barely begun and already Logan is out. Brian Cox and his magnificent performance, over and done with much sooner than any of us had predicted. I may not mourn Logan—he wasn’t a very good person—but I will miss Cox’s tremendous acting. He truly embodied Logan Roy, giving him a ferocity and presence matched only by his subtlety and nuance. He gave Logan depth and texture that not only made him feel real, but allowed us to empathize-and at times even admire—a man who we should clearly despise.

I’m not sure what will come next in the ensuing clash over the fate of Waystar RoyCo, but I’m here for the ride.

Scattered thoughts:

• Best funny moment was when Tom tells Tom “I got like three, four people Gregging for me…I roped in a few little mini-Gregs from the pig pen. Little Greglets.” “Well don’t turn me into a word, Tom, I’m a guy,” Greg responds indignantly. “Why do you have all these lil guys, these little Greggies running around?”
• A surprisingly moving scene was when Logan’s bodyguard, Colin, is standing outside the plane. Clearly, he must know at this point that Logan has passed away, but he still seems so crestfallen when his boss doesn’t emerge, as though he held out some shred of hope that it was all a fiction. Surely Logan Roy—no mere mortal—is still alive! Logan called Colin his “best pal” in the Season 4 premiere, and it’s clear in this moment that he felt a deep sense of affection for his employer.
• Another moment of note was when Roman went into the room where Gerri was and after asking her to leave, told her that he was feeling sad. Upset because he had tried to fire her earlier (on his dad’s behalf) she just says “uh-huh” and he repeats it. Once again, it’s only around Gerri that he can really let his guard down.
• Huge shoutout to all the other actors in this episode as well, but especially to the particularly strong performances of Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin and Matthew Macfadyen.

What did you think of this episode? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

Read my review of Episode 2 here and Episode 1 here.

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