If you want to catch up with our previous coverage of All These People Are Terrible And Need Psychological Intervention, you can do that here. As a PS, over the weekend, I got some weird emails at our GFY email wondering if I’d be interested in helping various folks who were in the market for a new therapist, and I was confused until I figured out that these so-called leads were coming from a website that used some kind of bot to crawl the internet looking for psychologists’ websites, and thought my Succession recaps qualified [!!!!!!], because I noted that all the characters in this show needed psychological assistance and anger management. To be clear: I am not a mental health professional and these recaps should not be considered any kind of psychological counseling of Kendall Roy or his associates. Which, again, to be totally clear: I STRONGLY SUGGEST THEY SEEK.
This week, I feel like the average Waystar Royco employee is still dishing to her spouse about how THE FREAKING FBI raided the office last week and worrying whether or not there was anything in the stuff they took that is going to implicate her and maybe she should ask a lawyer and WOW a lot of people at the top are acting squirrely, like that very tall one keeps getting gift baskets of pastry delivered to his office but he’s now working out of the Xerox room or something? What does that mean? Maybe it’s time to figure out how LinkedIn works.
To this week’s Effs:
Zero Effs, AKA Who Cares?!?!?!?:
a. Okay, I don’t ACTUALLY care about this — hence why I’ve assigned it the fewest of the effs — but is Kendall back in his own apartment at the beginning of this episode or does he just live at Raya’s and if it’s the latter…seriously where are his kids? (I give all the effs about the VIEW from that apartment because it is ACTUALLY AMAZING.) We know they’re alive because Kendall made Jess put their pet rabbit on “Rabbit Cam” for them at some point and he mentioned his son but…where ARE they? Perhaps more pertinently, where is RAYA HERSELF? I know Kendall was basically like, “I paid a huge amount of money in the divorce, so let me stay here” but did she just take off to the Plaza? Probably not a bad idea, actually.
b. I appreciate that Connor is finally starting to realize he has some leverage and I thought the scene with him and Shiv was actually really well-acted but his character has been mostly treading water for three seasons now and I am beginning to feel like they need to either bump him up a notch, plot-wise, or send him out of the country for a while.
1-3 Effs, AKA This Is Moderately Diverting:
a. The sweaters this week were delicious. SO much cabling.
b. I’m low-key beginning to think that Tom should leave Shiv, yeah? I mean — first of all, there’s that whole thing about how she told him on their wedding night that she doesn’t believe in monogamy (!) but I just feel like this relationship is not panning out well for him, career-wise, either, and I don’t think she loves him at all? So….that’s not great. Tom is not doing well in general; he is really spiraling about going to prison, which again, was something he suggested. He’s weirdly chicken-fighting in the Xerox room! (A true chicken fight, obviously, is done in a pool on someone else’s shoulders, Tom.) I wish Greg, instead of signing whatever-it-was he signed for Logan (I got kinda confused there, in part because I was thinking that it was weird for Greg to be having a rum and coke without ice), would hook Tom up with his Socialist Lawyer. SAVE YOURSELF, TOM.
c. Gerri is dating a guy who might also be able to fix their little issue with the Feds and Roman doesn’t love this. (But he should love that she’s actually giving him cogent professional advice, like how he should maybe sit on the news that he was part of a drunken scheme to get a homeless person to tattoo Kendall’s initials on his forehead. I’m glad that man got his money. I hope he got more than a million!)
4-7 Effs, AKA We Are Quite Intrigued:
a) I, uh, do not think Shiv has a future in giving successful editorial feedback! She may have got what she wanted here with their Faux Tucker Carlson (Fauxer Carlson, let’s call him) but this is, mark my words, eventually gonna blow up in her face. I do not think she is very good at this job! (Which is not her fault, as she has zero business experience. But maybe she should not have agitated for it so much.)
b) Adrien Brody’s house is….astonishingly good. I find it mildly irritating that this show does what Game of Thrones used to do, which is introduce a new character and pretend you know who he is — it makes the dialogue sound natural but it makes those of us whose recall isn’t what is used to be just assume we forgot a big plot point and then we lose the next few bits because we’re wondering if we’re really losing it — but his character does fit right in here and I think he’s who Kendall thinks he is. He’s also right that it’s rarely a good idea to bet on a blood feud and I actually suspect he’s actively smarter than Kendall is. Brody was also VERY good in this part; I kinda forgot what a good actor he is, so I’m excited to see what happens next with him. Next week looks JUICY.
8-10 Effs: THIS IS WHAT I AM HERE FOR:
The back-and-forth between Logan and Kendall this entire episode was just….chef’s kiss. I know that Jeremy Strong’s method acting drives Brian Cox nuts but you can’t say they don’t get results together. I was sincerely concerned that Logan was gonna die out in that brush. Except you wouldn’t kill off Logan Roy at this point in any season.
Bits of note which didn’t fit into our super scientific system of effs but which deserve recognition nevertheless: “This just doesn’t work for me. So….fuck you and God bless” is how I plan to sign off all irritating conference calls henceforth; “Shall I…chug this? I can…I can chug it.” I laugh out loud at EVERY Greg scene; “I’d castrate you and marry you in a heartbeat.” “….are you okay, Tom?” (HE IS NOT.); obviously everyone is going to be quoting the Just the Tip bit but I was more into Roman’s scolding Kendall about not giving Logan “a timely fucking Evian.” GOOD DAY!
And, finally, the best outfit of the week lives above, in the header: Adrien Brody just loves to layer.
