Succession review, season 4 episode 4: Major death has only amplified the greasiness of certain characters

“I wonder if I’ve just thought about it so much in one way or another that I’ve, I don’t know, maybe pre-grieved?” Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) observes this week at his father’s wake, wondering aloud why Logan Roy (Brian Cox)’s death hasn’t hit him like a speeding train. The line feels like a sly wink to the audience from the writers of Succession, who have after all been teasing Logan’s death since the show’s pilot, forcing us to pre-grieve more or less since minute one. Perhaps the most definitive sign that the show is ready to move on is the reveal in this week’s opening scenes that Shiv (Sarah Snook) is pregnant, presumably with the offspring of Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen). One can only assume that the infant is already slimily conspiring in-utero, double-crossing an ovary or blowing obsequious smoke up a fallopian tube.

Coronation demolition derby

In a development that I presume will go down like gangbusters on Twitter, Marcia (Hiam Abbass) is back for Logan’s wake, and although they had appeared to be estranged, she is insisting that they spent the last two months engaging in “intimate phone calls” every day. (Zoe Winters’ Kerry, who was Logan’s girlfriend when he died, was not invited, and when she turns up later on in the episode in tears, her ejection from the building is so merciless it’s borderline-impossible to watch.) When Shiv suggests that she can’t bear to think about Marcia and her father having phone-sex, she and Kendall (Jeremy Strong) immediately turn to Roman, the crown prince of jokes about parental incest and paternal dicks. “Oh, yeah, no, I can do a phone sex bit if you want,” he says chirpily, “I just thought you wouldn’t be in the mood.” Of everything we’ve seen in the last hour and 30 minutes of the show, nothing has been quite as shocking as the sight of Roman Roy deciding not to be disgusting.

Slipping into a side-room, the senior staff of Waystar Royco take a moment away from scarfing down hors d’oeuvres to begin sinking their teeth into each other’s throats. They agree that the best move would be to paint the Roy siblings as, in Tom’s words, “screwups and dipshits”; what they can’t agree on is which of them ought to take over as temporary CEO until the company is safely sold. “The negative case might go, ‘You’re a clumsy interloper and no one trusts you,’” Karl (David Rasche) tells Tom when he suggests he’d like to be considered. “’The only guy who was pulling for you is dead. And now the only thing you have going for you is that you’re married to the boss’s daughter, and she doesn’t even like you! And you are fair and squarely f***ed.’” Tom, in a rare moment of extreme relatability, reacts by saying exactly the same thing I said aloud after Karl finished his speech: “Jesus, Karl!”

Meanwhile, Frank (Peter Friedman) has come into possession of a piece of paper that concerns him, and from the look on Karl’s face when the two men read it together, we can tell that Karl is not exactly thrilled about it, either. “Might it just… go away?” says Karl. “What if your hand is moving a little wildly and a draft takes it away, and it gets flushed down a toilet by mistake? I’m kidding of course.” “You’re speculating in a comic mode,” Frank shoots back. “In a humorous vein,” agrees Karl. The fact that neither man sounds as if he has ever told – or laughed at – a joke in his life does not exactly help to make this an effective cover story for the scheme.

Whether for reasons of morality or because no suitable gust of wind appeared in time, Frank decides to share the unearthed document with Kendall, Shiv, and Roman. It specifies Logan’s wishes in the event of his death, and while it has no obvious date, has never been passed on to Logan’s lawyers, and has partially been written in pencil, it still suggests that at one time or another he had hoped for Kendall to succeed him. For emphasis, Kendall’s name has recently been underlined, although his siblings are extremely quick to point out that the line is drawn so clumsily that it might actually be a striking out. This ambiguity – a vague and indecipherable gesture that could either mean that Logan loved his son, or hated him – is a perfect symbol for the relationship Kendall and his father shared in life, and it tips Kendall briefly back into a familiarly simpering, desperate mode. Once again, even after death, Logan has successfully driven a wedge between his children. “It’s felt good, us, right?” Shiv says to Roman, sadly, speaking about the brief, almost tender truce they’ve been enjoying up until this new betrayal. “And now does this feel good?”

Eggwatch

As if rebalancing the scales for Roman’s uncharacteristic refusal to offer up a penis joke this week, Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) makes an unusual and, as it turns out, ill-advised choice to work blue at Logan’s wake. During a rousing speech, Tom and Greg stand at the back and whisper to each other, and Tom does his best to undercut the lionising mood with a few undignified gags, telling Greg that Logan died “fishing his iPhone out of a clogged airport toilet”. When it’s said that Logan Roy shaped America “like clay” into “something beautiful”, Greg sees his chance. “Into the shape of a dick,” he hisses in Tom’s ear. “Come on,” Tom sighs back, evidently finding his fellow Disgusting Brother a shade too disgusting in this instance.

One more Greg moment of note this week: to everyone’s surprise, his name also appears on the contentious document uncovered from Logan’s safe, in “an addendum of miscellaneous matters, in pencil, with a question mark next to it”. “Nevertheless!” Greg beams, never one to let humiliation get in the way of a good time. Roman, possibly correctly, posits that there is a simple explanation for Greg’s presence on the list: “He probably wrote it down so he can remember your name.”

“Long live the king! And the other king!”

Even in light of the fact that this is Succession, a show primarily about awful and amoral people doing awful and amoral things, it must be said that Logan’s death has only amplified the greasiness of certain characters, chief among them Tom. One by one, he schmoozes the Roy siblings, leading Roman to describe him as “tightrope Tommy, riding his little subtle-cycle across Niagara Falls”. Shiv is right when she says that he backed the wrong horse – “the dead horse,” as she snarls – in choosing Logan, and as Karl suggested earlier, he is left with few friends other than his faithful gangly idiot, Greg.

Ultimately, all this bitching and backbiting has to end sometime, and in yet another move that feels like a sly nod from the show’s writers, the Roy children end up with a mere 10 minutes to decide who will become the temporary CEO before the board is called together – no more drawn-out feuds, no more elaborate schemes, no more prevarication. Uneasily, they decide that Kendall and Roman will share the post, and just like that, the succession of the title has taken place, not with a bang but with an it’s just, like, here are the new CEOs I guess.

Ushered into Logan’s office, the Roys are informed by Hugo (Fisher Stevens), Waystar Royco’s sleazy senior VP, that there are two ways to make the public trust them: they can fabricate a close relationship with Logan, releasing archive photographs and playing at happy families, or they can discredit him, suggesting that he was not in his right mind in the last few months, and that they were already effectively in charge. “And we could go to Connor’s mom, physical and verbal abuse, the Kerry situation,” Hugo adds, shockingly casually. “Maybe don’t bring us this disgusting s*** ever again,” Kendall fires back, deciding firmly on the angle that will deify Logan and paint him as a loved and loving father.

Except: once the meeting has concluded, we see Kendall standing alone looking at a screenshot of that fateful piece of paper on his phone, zooming in to examine his name, and a shift occurs. It is clear that he agrees with Shiv that this does not feel good; we can assume that, as if it were an optical illusion, what he sees on Logan’s paperwork has changed, and the line underneath his name is now a disappointed strike-out. Suddenly, he is striding back to speak with Hugo privately, his face a mask of blank determination. “The bad dad stuff,” he concedes. “It’s what he would do. It’s what he’d want for the company. But no fingerprints.” He implies subtly that he is not above blackmail if the work is not done quietly enough. If it is too late to please Logan, Kendall seems to have decided, it is not too late to become him.