This week, the Roy siblings squabble over whether or not ATN should help a right-wing celebrity nut-job win the US presidential race, a completely fictional scenario that none of us have to feel concerned about since famously, all television news channels are bastions of morality and impartiality, and a right-wing celebrity nut-job would never successfully win the US presidential race (ha ha! Do you see what I did there? Been a weird decade for politics, hasn’t it?).
Anyway, what their dilemma amounts to is a battle for the soul of America: an unusual proposition, as it still isn’t entirely clear which of the Roys have souls themselves. This episode has some of the season’s funniest material; it is also genuinely hard to watch. Like all the best pitch-black comedy, Succession manages to side-swipe you with something truly nasty, now and then, by lulling you into a false sense of security with the rest of its dark-but-not-too-dark gags. When Roman made a “joke” about “the Blacks and the Jews” this week, my heart leapt into my mouth, just as it did in the second season when the acronym NRPI was first discussed – in both instances, the abstracted and amusing terribleness of the Roys crystallised for just a moment into something all too real, and the show felt less like a gallows comedy and more like a warning. It’s a pity that the warning in this instance comes too late.
Maintaining our unique perspective
It’s the day of the American election, and Tom Wambsgans (Matthew McFadyen) is visibly manic in his role as the big boss at ATN. Two nights ago, he did not get enough sleep because he spent too long competing in the “orgasm Olympics” with his maybe-ex-wife Shiv; last night, he did not get enough sleep because he spent too long competing in the argument Olympics with her, both of them tying for gold. He is tense, to say the least, and Greg (Nicholas Braun) does very little to diffuse that tension when he mentions that on his night out with Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), the GoJo CEO revealed that he was maintaining a “special relationship” with Shiv. “You wanna fry her ass up?” Greg asks, and Tom responds with a chunk of grade-A, memeable Succession dialogue: “Information, Greg, is like a bottle of fine wine. You store it, you hoard it, you save it for a special occasion, and when the time is right, you smash someone’s face with it.”
In the boardroom, the Roy siblings are treating the poll results like a sport. Taken together, they present a kind of f***ed-up political spectrum: Roman (Kieran Culkin), perhaps the most heavily abused by their father and thus perversely the most devoted to him, has no real political allegiance, and is happy to jump into bed with Nazis if it might make Daddy posthumously proud; Shiv (Sarah Snook), everyone’s favourite half-arsed pantsuit-wearing girlboss, is ostensibly a Democrat; Kendall (Jeremy Strong) sits between the two poles, also wanting to live up to Logan but realising that an America run by fascists might not be the safest place for his South Asian daughter. “My team’s playing your team,” Roman tells Shiv, shortly before it’s revealed that the captain of Roman’s team – Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk), the right-wing candidate who thinks “H” had some “good pitches” – turned a blind eye as his followers set a fire in Wisconsin that burned up a number of what were extremely likely to be Democratic votes. After a worried call from Rava (Natalie Gold), his ex-wife, about “intimidation” on the streets, Kendall calls Nate (Ashley Zuckerman), the advisor to the Democratic candidate Daniel Jiménez (Elliot Villar). Nate wants to know if ATN will be covering “the s***heads kicking off”; Kendall, obviously torn between his business interests and protecting his terrified daughter, insists that he’s making sure the coverage is “fair as f***”.
Here is the rub: Mencken, in exchange for ATN “setting the narrative” and calling Wisconsin in his favour in spite of the destroyed votes, is willing to work with the FDC to block the GoJo deal, and in this sense he is the most attractive candidate for Roman and Kendall, who are still desperately clinging to the idea of preserving Logan’s empire. “What would dad do?” Roman asks Kendall. “[Choose] the guy in the pocket, the guy who’s going to answer all our calls, the guy printing US dollars… Nothing matters, Ken. Nothing f***ing matters. Dad’s dead, and the country is a big pussy waiting to get f***ed.” (His choice of words is interesting, given that f***ing pussies – big or otherwise – does not seem to be Roman’s thing, although maybe he meant to say that the country was a big replica of his mother’s pussy he could walk into, instead.) Connor (Alan Ruck), learning that his results in the poll are dismal, agrees to concede in Mencken’s favour on television in exchange for an ambassador’s position in Slovenia, giving an unhinged speech that includes the jauntily delivered phrase, “I’m a billionaire – sorry!” Things are looking terribly, terribly dark.
Shiv mentions the future several times in this week’s episode as part of her argument as to why Mencken shouldn’t win, and although her brothers don’t yet know why she might have a special investment in the America of tomorrow, this is the day Tom finally finds out. Cornering him to apologise, Shiv finds Tom in a foul mood, stewing over what he’s learned about her connections with Matsson. She excuses herself for her recent bad behaviour by emphasising the fact her dad just died. “Well, you hated him, Siobhan,” Tom says, plainly. “You also kind of killed him.” Shiv reveals that she is pregnant with Tom’s baby, suddenly, and he brings that figurative bottle of wine smashing into her tearful face a little sooner than he’d planned. “Is that even true?” he asks. “Or is that a new position, or a tactic, or what?” The expression Sarah Snook makes in this moment is extraordinary, a grimace of such intense pain and disbelief that it almost resembles a smile for a split-second before it collapses into hurt.
Eggwatch
A bumper week for Eggwatch this time around – an embarrassment of Hirsches, if you will. For election night, Greg has been demoted and is back “Gregging” for Tom. Part of his job is supplying coke, which he offers Tom while hiding behind a convenient whiteboard and exclaiming, smoothly, “Just rubbing the board innocently, simply cleaning the whiteboard here!” “I don’t want to get addicted from two nights in a row!” he whimpers, when Tom offers him a bump and he merely pretends to do it. “It’s medically good for your brain,” Tom Wambsgans MD tells him. “What, are you saying all Aztecs are stupid? Don’t be a racist little b**** about it.”
Greg’s Gregging ends up causing something of an issue later in the episode, as he sits in on a tense meeting about whether or not ATN should call Wisconsin, potentially helping Mencken win. ATN’s political expert says he’s willing to call if it is marked as “pending”, and provided he can go on air to explain what is happening; suddenly, he wipes his eye and ends up blinded by a glob of the wasabi from Greg’s convenience store sushi, which he’s accidentally put his hand in. What follows is a scene that forced me to hit pause so I could laugh like a hyena, as Greg – who evidently does not have Tom Wambsgans MD’s medical knowledge – frantically tries to rinse out the expert’s eyes with LaCroix. “It’s clear!” Greg wails. “It’s natural! It’s just a hint of lemon!” Either way, the announcement ends up happening without any surrounding context, and without the caveat of “pending”, and unwittingly or otherwise, Greg makes the first of two decisions that end up majorly influencing the election.
As mentioned earlier, Greg and Matsson have formed an unlikely bond in the wake of their night out together at what Greg calls, wonderfully, several “unseemly venues”. (“I danced with an old man,” Greg reveals, hauntingly. “He didn’t wanna dance, but they made us dance. He was so confused.”) That bond gives Greg an unusual amount of power for, well, Greg, and there may be no more obvious proof of his new status than the fact that Shiv is obviously threatened enough to drag him into an empty board room and make like Samuel L Jackson asking if Marsellus Wallace looked like a b**** in Pulp Fiction. “I’m just letting you know that if you try to f*** me,” she hisses, “I’ll kill you.” Showing surprising cunning, Greg suggests that his silence on the matter of her bizarre thing with Matsson is “golden. Like, how golden? Is there an offer?” “Yeah,” Shiv says. “How about I offer to let you keep all of your internal organs inside your body rather than my pulling them out of your asshole?”
Shiv’s dismissal of Greg ends up coming back to haunt her, as after a brief exchange with Kendall in which she describes him as “a good guy… essentially a good guy” and “a good father… well, you’re OK”, her brother asks her to ring Nate and ask if there’s any way Jiménez can block the GoJo deal, instead. Shiv, because of her allegiance to Matsson, merely pretends she has called, and spins a lie about Nate looking into helpful options; Kendall says he’ll call and pressure Nate himself, and Shiv’s face does that heartbreaking crumpling thing again. Kendall, learning that Shiv lied, approaches Greg to ask if he has noticed anything odd about her relationship with Matsson, and the jig is up. “She’s f***ing us,” Kendall tells Roman, “right, Shivvy?” Like a child having a tantrum, Kendall throws reason and humanity aside and decides ATN should call the election wholesale for Mencken, ignoring the issue with the burned-up ballots, and leading the conversation in Mencken’s favour all over American media.
Greg, walking past the glass wall of the conference room, sees Shiv and smiles – a knowing, horrible smile, lending credence to the idea that he knows far more about what he is doing at Waystar Royco than his bumbling affect would suggest. When he’s tasked with delivering the message that ATN will be favouring Mencken for the win, it is impossible to tell whether his gee-shucks nervousness is because he genuinely thinks the wrong man won, or whether it is an act to cover up his giddiness at gaining power. As Mencken gives a victory speech peppered with phrases like “polluted land” and “proud and pure” and “willed, almost, into being”, I am once again reminded that underestimating a man with no actual scruples merely because he appears to be an idiot can be a huge mistake.
