The ‘Success’ Season 4 Episode 4: ‘Consequences’ Recap finds dark humor in Logan’s exit (SPOILERS)
Editor’s Note: The following contains key revelations about the fourth episode of the fourth season “Succession’s”, “Honeymoon States”.
CNN
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After the shock to the aftershocks, the power vacuum, and perhaps most dramatically and impressively the laughs, as “Succession” pivots to face life after Logan Roy, in a finally titled episode of HBO program into full flower.
Logan Roy’s sudden departure has his older children and subordinates scrambling for one another, each seemingly humbly volunteering to fill the void, while worrying about how the different contenders will play against company’s board of directors.
At the same time, they mourn the greater character than the life they have lost, for he has mistreated many of them. And the fourth hour also marks the return of Logan’s wife, Marcia (Hiam Abbass), in what feels like “Marcia strikes back,” while his current and much younger girlfriend, Kerri ( Zoe Winter), bluntly pointed to the door. (The latter evokes memories of the musical “Evita,” as the title character kicks off Peron’s mistress, who sings about another suitcase in a different hall.)
More than anything, the episode underscores how funny “Success” can be, as Shiv (Sarah Snook) reads her father’s obituary and muses, “Dad that sounds great. I want to see my dad,” while brothers Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) humorously translate the language, alluding to Logan being an equal “man of his times” with “racism”.
The episode also introduces the executives at Waystar Royco, who was uncomfortable wondering what to do with a document that included not only Logan’s posthumous remains but also handwritten notes that seemed to specify who he wanted to succeed him. They joke weakly about throwing the paper in the toilet, while making it very clear how much they really want to throw the paper in the toilet.
All the knives come out, with Carl (David Rasche) mercilessly insulting Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), barely concealing the fact that he is presenting doubts about Tom’s future as a hypothesis.
In between, however, there are also human moments, with the tortured Kendall expressing his conflicting feelings to Waystar executive Frank (Peter Friedman) by saying, “He made me hate him, and he’s dead. I feel like he doesn’t like me. I let him down.”
“Succession” also emphasizes the fragility of not only the life but also the legacy of the company, with public relations people discussing how to turn around and reduce Logan’s involvement in the latter years of his life. as a means to revive the company and its stock price – a trick Kendall surreptitiously approved in the end, concluding that it was a smart and ruthless move his father would take.
Questions of succession also seem to be threatening the harmony Kendall, Shiv and Roman achieved before Logan’s departure, with Shiv being left as the odd woman in the plot to fill the CEO seat just long enough to close the deal for GoJo. Trust doesn’t come easy in series creator Jesse Armstrong’s world, and when Shiv says, “I need to get my beak wet,” reassurance from her brothers clearly leaves impression of how easily that beak could be bent out of the joint.
Finally, after the previous episode’s operational peaks, the series successfully turned the page from grief to the next business order. And that too, as Kendall said of Logan’s PR leak and “bad dad”, is “what he’s going to do”.
