The beginning of the end of Succession takes us back to the beginning of the beginning of Succession: it’s Logan’s birthday again, and he’s miserable. He barely manages to endure “Happy Birthday” from the guests who’ve gathered for cocktails at the town house on the Upper East Side, calling them “the fucking Munsters” when Kerry checks on him. “Elated” probably isn’t an emotion Logan’s felt in some decades, if ever, but he should at least be a little relaxed: he’s only 48 hours out from finalizing the sale of Waystar to GoJo…
…but maybe he’s missing Kendall, Shiv, and Roman, who are in Los Angeles, working on the project they’re planning to start with their GoJo payouts: a new media venture called The Hundred, which Kendall calls “Substack meets MasterClass meets The Economist meets The New Yorker” (sounds unbearable!), and which they’re about to pitch to some potential backers just arrived from an unnamed country characterized by “petro dollars” and a bad human rights record. But…are the Roy kids actually ready to pitch? Because Shiv has been absent for hours, and vaguely waves away accusations that she’s going to ditch her brothers to work for Jimenez, the Democratic candidate who may win the White House in the election that’s just ten days away. Then Shiv’s further distracted by a call from Tom, warning her that if she gets wind of a meeting between himself and Naomi Pierce, it wasn’t because they’re dating, it’s not sexual, and it’s not business…
…or is it? Because no sooner has Shiv told her brothers about it than Kendall’s team informs him that some girl at Logan’s birthday party just posted something on her Instagram about Waystar buying Pierce. Suddenly the kids aren’t that excited about The Hundred anymore: the $3 billion they’re going to get after GoJo buys Waystar will be their “nut” for a bid on Pierce — a tarnished but still venerable legacy media brand the three of them can polish with their special talents, as Kendall notes: “Shiv, the yummy dummy Demmy; my profile as the fearless fighter of the good fight; [Roman], the dirty little fucker pushing the filth buttons.” By phone, Nan Pierce says both that she feels “honor-bound” to the initial bidder, and that she could maybe talk to Shiv about it if she came up to see her. As usual, Roman is the wariest about going against Logan, until Kerry calls to try to get the kids to phone the birthday boy; hearing that this request didn’t actually come from Logan himself seems to push Roman toward his siblings.
Logan has, by this point, slipped out for a walk; he and his body man Colin end up at a diner, where Logan states that Colin is his only friend. (Colin absorbs this with equanimity: possibly he doesn’t really take in anything Logan says that isn’t a direct instruction; possibly he doesn’t assume Logan will feel the same after he’s eaten something; possibly he already knew this was true without Logan’s having to say it.) Logan wonders if Colin thinks there’s anything after “all this.” Colin doesn’t know; Logan thinks not. Colin starts to give a more elaborate answer — mentioning his dad, who is religious — but this actually isn’t a conversation, it’s a monologue. They can’t know about an afterlife, Logan says: “But I’ve got my suspicions. I’ve got my fucking suspicions.” Any deity that may exist is probably relieved not to be on Logan’s radar and thus potentially subject to a profile on ATN.
Back to California: the Roy kids arrive at the Pierce vineyard, where they are eventually joined by Nan. As we know, it’s been very important to Nan to present herself as belonging to a different class of billionaire than Logan, so she has to put on a whole performance about how grubby this business is, wincing in distaste when Kendall declares that “Logan wants to take [her] company and fuck it,” and sighing that she hates feeling like she’s in a bidding war: “Different people saying different numbers. Eight? Nine? What’s next?” Even Roman knows the answer to that one.
Back in New York, Logan gets back to the party, hears there’s another bidder, and kicks out all his guests. Frank is the first to learn who Logan’s rivals are, and while Tom quickly distances himself, Karl loses the fight to avoid giving Logan the bad news. Fuming, Logan orders Tom to call Shiv and tell her she’s never had an original idea in her life. I hate to agree with this very bad man, but unfortunately, he’s right!
And then we’re cutting between New York (dark, shadowy, claustrophobic) and California (sunny, breezy, a brave new frontier) as the warring Roys shore up their bids. The consensus in the Upper East Side library is that opening at $7 billion is insulting, but Logan still makes Tom start at $6 billion. Then Shiv struts in from the patio to offer $8 billion. “This is disgusting!” Nan cries, notably not telling anyone to stop. When the Roy kids go back outside, Logan directs Tom to call Shiv and feel them out. Shiv bluffs that their ceiling is $12 billion, and Tom lies that theirs is too. But when they’ve hung up, the kids discuss the real number: Logan’s going to counter at $9 billion, so they should say $9.5 billion. Or $10 billion, Kendall suggests. “Just to show that we’re really serious?” Roman bleats. He points out, as apparently no one else is prepared to admit, that $500 million is actually a not inconsiderable amount of money that, if they didn’t use it to “end the conversation,” they could spend on “snowmobiles and sushi” instead. If you or I were on that deck, we might take Roman’s point further, noting that people who have money like this could choose to just relax instead of trying to punish their terrible father, who will surely die without ever apologizing to them for his many sins regardless of how they attack him.
But you and I aren’t there, and $10 million does, in fact, end the conversation. As the kids are walking back out to their car, Logan finally gets on the phone to them himself: “Congratulations on saying the biggest number, ya fucking morons.” When he’s hung up, Shiv laughs uproariously. Is this funny? Is it not, perhaps, actually pretty sad?
Admittedly, it’s not as sad as the next scene: Shiv returns to her condo to some serious barking from Mondale, who apparently doesn’t know her scent anymore. The noise rouses Tom, and from their conversation, we piece together what we’ve missed since “All The Bells Say“: Shiv has been living in a hotel. Tom and Greg have started calling themselves The Disgusting Brothers, and Shiv sarcastically speculates about all the models they’ve been defiling together. Gravely, Tom says that if she wants to have “a full accounting of all the pain in [their] marriage,” he’s prepared to talk about it, but she doesn’t. In fact, having already reassured Nan that she needn’t worry about Shiv being married to the head of ATN because they’re getting divorced, Shiv realizes she should probably make Tom the seventh to know. “There are some things I wouldn’t mind saying, and explaining,” Tom tries, but Shiv cuts him off: they’ve both made mistakes, and “a whole lot of crying and bullshit” won’t change that. When Tom agrees, she seems disappointed, but while we see her face crumple, Tom does not. (His follow-up offer to “see if [he] could try to make love to [her]” is politely declined.) They end up flopped exhaustedly back on the bed, holding hands, presumably for the last time.
Uptown, Logan’s still awake, watching ATN in the wee hours. There’s no hour too wee to keep him from calling Cyd to complain: the stories are bullshit and the anchor looks like “a ball sack in a toupee.” Is she losing it? Is he?
Margin Calls
- Don’t skip intro: With a new season comes a slightly remixed opening-credits sequence. New insertions include a couple of shots of ATN reporting — “CHINA HACK COULD SEE 40M AMERICANS ENTOMBED IN THEIR ELECTRIC CARS” and “DEEP STATE BLUNDER: CLASSIFIED DOCS DISPLAYED ON NBA JUMBOTRON” — and footage of the infamously terrible StarGo mobile app, spinning as it fails to load.
- Kerry is so very: Season 3 closed with a lot of speculation about Kerry’s rise in status — slow, then very fast. Where does she stand now? At the party, she introduces herself to Greg’s date as Logan’s “friend, assistant, and advisor.” In that order?
- A Bridget too far: Speaking of Greg’s date: oof. Her name is Bridget. (What’s her last name? Kerry asks. “Is it Randomfuck? Bridget Randomfuck?”) Kerry’s concern is that a stranger who has suddenly met Greg on the eve of a gigantic deal could be a corporate spy; when Tom later asks why Bridget is carrying such a huge purse, I thought it was because he suspected that she had a hidden recording device in it, but no, he just thought it was gauche: “What’s even in there? Flat shoes for the subway? Her lunch pail?”
Bridget does drive the story forward — she is the guest whose Instagram post tips the kids, in California, to the then-imminent Pierce deal — but mostly, she actually is just a Randomfuck. She tries to leave early after asking Logan (offscreen, tragically) for a selfie; according to Tom, she makes a mess of the bathroom guest towels; according to Greg, she pulls him into a bedroom so that they can fool around — just hand stuff, but since (per Tom) Logan has the whole place wired with cameras, Greg had better confess before Logan stumbles upon their amateur sex tape unawares. Once Colin finds out what has happened, he informs Greg not only that Bridget has to go, but that Colin’s going to have to go through her phone first and delete any media she recorded; Greg, ever the gentleman, peels off and leaves Colin to give her the “Guantanamo” treatment. I said it in Season 3 and I’ll say it again: QUIT IT WITH THE GREG GOOF PLOTS. It’s lazy and at this point we’ve seen it a lot.
- Marcia Marcia Marcia! Actually, we only hear her name twice, and that might be it for the foreseeable future: Kerry states that she’s “in Milan, shopping, forever.” Thank god at least ONE Roy has figured out how to use her money for fun!
- What about Tom? Tom’s betrayal in the Season 3 finale changed the story for all the Roys. So what’s he going to get out of it, in the post-sale regime? Logan’s just as vague about that as Shiv was right before Tom turned on her. Hmmm.
- He’s never going to be president now: Let’s be real: Connor was never going to be president under any circumstances. But ten days out from the election, he has not earned the nomination for either party and is polling at 1% — an achievement he is desperate to protect. The fear is that the parties are both trying to squeeze him down into decimal points, though aggressively maintaining his current standing — and, again, definitely not win, and only possibly have “a place in the conversation” — will probably cost another $100 million. This is a no-brainer for Willa; though she doesn’t deny that it’s a lot of money, after he spent it Connor would “still be, you know, like, rich.” He does not counter by telling her how many productions of her terrible plays he could finance with that much money.
If he had, she might have dropped it before Connor got an idea: what if he and Willa got married before the election, at the foot of the Statue of Liberty? “With a brass band. Get a rapper?…Jet packs and confetti guns and razor wire and bumfights and, you know, goody bags and hoopla and razzmatazz!” (Willa: “…Bumfights?”) See, Connor explains, making the wedding a spectacle could get them a ton of media coverage, and for free. Faintly dismayed, Willa mumbles, “It’s dumb, but I wanted a nice wedding.” It is dumb; if she wanted a nice wedding, she could have married someone else.