This week, I feel like the Irritated Waystar Royco employee who is always complaining to her husband about the Roy kids definitely texted him, “Kendall and that one married to Shiv are having a REALLY weird convo RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY DESK about back channels to the White House and immunity and some shit. Like I’m not even here???? It’s like they never even considered that the Justice Department might call me? Everyone who works here has HEARD STUFF. Also Kendall’s wearing that dumb cap again and he called Tim (IS that his name??? Whatever) a EUNUCH? Then he whispered some shit I couldn’t hear. This place is so weird. I have got to get out of here. Later they’re making us go to some bullshit town hall? I have actual work to do.”
As I noted in last week’s recap, we’re using a rating system to structure the discussion of these episodes, and as this is Succession, that system is obviously organized by How Many F*cks Did I Give? And, to repeat my General Disclaimer: With the exception of maybe three people, I hope it goes without saying that everyone on this show is a nightmare person who needs massive psychological assistance, to take a vow of silence, and/or possibly court-mandated anger management courses.
Overall, this episode felt to me a bit like an in-betweener; plot points were mostly being moved into position for future shenanigans. Other than Shiv’s town hall, and the very last shots of the episode, it was mostly set-up for the rest of the season. That doesn’t mean this episode was bad — parts of it were really funny — but it was sort of workmanlike by necessity.
Zero Effs, AKA Who Cares?!?!?!?: I might not care about Kendall’s new girlfriend, although I appreciate that she wore a tunic (????) saluting the noble black & white cookie to this episode’s Gala Devoted to Keeping Journalists Alive, which was not that party’s actual name. I assume she’ll come more into play later but at the moment I’m not totally sure what purpose this character is serving. I do like her haircut.
1-3 Effs, AKA This Is Moderately Diverting: Real question: How long do you think it’s been since Tom and Shiv have had sex? (I assume her ex-boyfriend Nate appeared this week to remind us that he’s alive so she can sleep with him later this season. You don’t bring in an ex-boyfriend in the first act if someone isn’t going to bang him in the third.) Regardless: When Logan assuredly eventually comes back to Tom to take Tom up on Tom’s offer to GO TO PRISON (!!!!), it’s going to be very amusing for me. Frankly, Tom In Prison as a plotline alone might be very amusing, because he is super not going to like it. Poor Tom — don’t try to out-maneuver Logan Roy. And he was doing so well at the advertisers dinner (seriously!) until…you know. The Feds showed up.
Real Question Number Two: Who is supposed to be president right now? (I’m not totally sure what year this even is, now that I think about it.) My assumption is that it’s a fictional non-Trump Republican but I realized I actually cannot remember and we may not have ever been supposed to know. Does anyone have any theories?
4-7 Effs, AKA We Are Quite Intrigued: Kendall reminded us once again this week that he is the King of MASSIVE CRINGE. From him making the ginormous strategic misstep of deciding to let Ziwe — playing what seemed like a mash-up of herself and Samantha Bee as the host of a show called Disruption – interview him, to his (kindly, at least?) harassing of the writers of said show, to his making his entourage save and subsequently read him mean and nice tweets about him to his face, how does this man ever fall asleep given what has to be a veritable carousel of embarrassing moments playing through his brain? I guess this is why he used to do so many drugs. But listen, I also think bailing on Ziwe at the last minute was probably the right movie! That segment was not going to go well!
I also wanted to die when someone (Kendall?) played “Rape Me” by Nirvana over the PA during Shiv’s Bullshit Town Hall. (I feel like it’s possible someone is framing Kendall for that. Am I overthinking it? But, like….Kendall doesn’t know how to technologically even do that. Does he? It doesn’t seem like this would be within his skillset.) I likewise wanted to die when Shiv paid him back for this by releasing an open letter to the press — an open letter rarely goes well, let’s be honest — concern-trolling that Kendall is a narcissistic lunatic who has fallen off the wagon. Which might be true! But when even Roman is like, “YIKES THIS IS MEAN!!”, maybe you need to sit on said letter for a couple of days in case you find your emotions cooling off a little bit.
8-10 Effs: THIS IS WHAT I AM HERE FOR: THE FBI HAS ARRIVED. Cue everyone’s hysterical panic!
Bits of note which didn’t fit into our super scientific system of effs but which deserve recognition nevertheless: Poor Greg sincerely believing that Tom might be giving him actual cyanide; during the highly cringeworthy/humorous game of Good Tweet/Bad Tweet, Kendall being called “Discount Ross.” I assume they mean…Geller????; Greg’s self-consciousness about his wrists and this running thread with his watch (Nicholas Braun is so good and you can tell the writers love writing for him); the phrase “Times New Roman firing squad.”
And, finally, the best outfit of the week lives above, in the header: Obviously.
