Succession, season 4 episode 2 review: is Logan’s natural successor hiding in plain sight?
This review contains spoilers
Is Connor Roy Succession’s secret weapon? For three series, he’s been the idiot son, kept at arm’s length from the business and left to pursue his laughable bid for the presidency. But perhaps he’s not as dumb as we thought.
In a karaoke bar, after his fiancée Willa (Justine Lupe) had run out on their pre-wedding party and he’d persuaded his siblings to listen to him singing Leonard Cohen, Connor (Alan Ruck) showed a surprising amount of self-knowledge. “I’m a plant that grows off rocks and lives off insects that die inside of me. If Willa doesn’t come back that’s fine because I don’t need love. It’s like a superpower. And if she comes back and doesn’t love me, that’s OK too, because I don’t need it.” The good thing about having a family that doesn’t love you, he explained, “is that you learn to live without it”.
In all the jostling for supremacy between Shiv, Roman and Kendall, and the question of which child will take over the empire, have we overlooked Logan’s true inheritor?
I guess we’ll have to wait until the final episode to find out. In the meantime, let’s enjoy the journey. More than ever, deal-making is the least interesting part of Succession. I don’t care about Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) or Sandi Furness (Hope Davis). My mind starts to wander when they discuss the intricacies of takeovers.
It was the comic dialogue that stood out in this episode. The merciless kind – Roman poking fun at Kendall’s billionaire Buddhism (“Hey, Buddha. Nice Tom Fords”) – and the brilliant double act of Tom and Greg. The pair of them discussed how to tell Kerry, Logan’s executive assistant and “friend”, that she didn’t have what it takes to be a news anchor. “This is an incredibly delicate piece of diplomacy, Greg. Ok? It’s like Israel-Palestine, except harder and much more important.”
As for Logan, Brian Cox showed us two sides of the man. The terrifying boss, prowling the newsroom (Greg: “He’s just kind of walking around but with the slight sense that he might kill someone. Like Jaws if everyone in Jaws worked for Jaws”). And the disappointed father, telling his children: “I love you, but you are not serious people.” As we move towards the series finale, though, things are bound to get very serious, pretty soon.
Episode two is available now on Sky and NOW and will air at 9pm on Sky Atlantic on Monday 3 April
