‘Succession,’ Season 4, Episode 2 Recap: The Serious People

Season 4, Episode 2: ‘Rehearsal’

Here’s what you need to know about Logan Roy: He does not care about any of your social norms or niceties. In last week’s “Succession,” while his kids were stealthily trying to outbid him for Pierce Global Media, Logan did not bother to play their little games. He demanded that Tom call Shiv to find out what was what — and he did it in a room full of Waystar executives, so Tom could not say no. Logan never minds coming off as rude or presumptuous. Manners are a waste of time, which is a waste of money.

This week, the younger Roys are at it again, weighing a pitch from the maverick Waystar board members Stewy Hosseini (Arian Moayed) and Sandi Furness (Hope Davis) to gum up the works with the impending GoJo sale. So what does Logan do? He does not wait patiently and politely to see what will happen — heavens, no. He crashes a karaoke party.

Logan spends a lot of this episode in places no one wants him to be. Apparently, without telling anyone — except for maybe Kerry and Tom — Logan has made a plan for how to spend the rest of his life. Once Waystar is officially sold to GoJo, he is going to dedicate himself to “fixing” ATN, because the only part of his business that he has every really cared about is the news.

He shows up unannounced at the ATN offices late one afternoon and starts “terrifyingly moseying” around, according to Greg. (“It’s like ‘Jaws’ if everyone in ‘Jaws’ worked for Jaws.”) Logan complains to Tom about how much everything costs, from the air conditioning bill for ATN’s new hangar-style bullpen to the fresh pizzas being stacked atop the unfinished cold pizzas in the break room. (“There’s a sog factor,” Greg weakly explains.)

In a stirring and terrifying speech — delivered to the assembled employees from atop some boxes of printer paper — Logan proclaims his vision for ATN. A state-of-the-art election package with spiffy new graphics? Who cares? What Logan wants is for his team not just to report the news but to make it. He wants them to start giving the audience “something everyone knows but nobody says.” It is time, at last, for brutal honesty.

So it is inevitable really that Logan ends his night facing some of that honesty himself from two of the people with the biggest grudges against him: Kendall and Shiv. (But not Roman. We will get back to that.)

The showdown is set up by a couple of typically petty Logan moves. The kids are supposed to helicopter into New York City for Connor and Willa’s wedding rehearsal, but their father cancels their Waystar chopper privileges with no warning. This infuriates Shiv, who is already fuming because he advised Tom to tie up every notable divorce lawyer in New York, so that they are all “conflicted out” from handling her case — a classic Logan breakup move. (“I got Mommed,” Shiv grumbles.)

The vibes are even worse in the city, where just as Kendall, Shiv and Roman are walking in late to the rehearsal dinner, Willa is ducking out. Connor explains that when his fiancée rose to give a speech, she said, “I can’t do this,” and then disappeared into the bathroom. Connor is now mopey and anxious, and tracking Willa’s whereabouts via a locator app on his phone. Roman, incapable of letting a prime opportunity to needle a loved one go unheeded, revels in describing what kind of decadent escapades Willa might be up to. (Connor, when the app shows Willa at an aquarium supply retailer: “Is that a drug thing?” Roman: “It is.”)

To cheer Connor up, they indulge his longstanding dream to sing karaoke at a “real” bar “away from the Fancy Dans,” just like people do in the movies. But while Connor is in the middle of an impressively miserable version of Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” — an impressively miserable song — the kids get the alert that Logan is on his way.

Because Logan knows everything — in this case, thanks to Connor — he knows his children are thinking about squeezing GoJo’s Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) for more money. He is also convinced that deep down, this is personal for them not business. He needs to give them something they want more than money: an apology.

But an apology for what? Logan wants to limit his regrets to some of his minor recent obnoxiousness. But Kendall and Shiv, who have had enough of their father pretending to atone one day then going back to being awful the next, want him to acknowledge his biggest sins: ignoring Connor, hitting Roman, weaponizing Tom against Shiv, conspiring with the kids’ mother to push them out of Waystar … everything, basically.

Logan sees no point to this, so he abruptly ends his family reconciliation time with a gentle but devastating kiss-off: “I love you, but you are not serious people.” Only after he leaves the karaoke bar does Logan start raging, ranting to Kerry about how in New York there are “rats as fat as skunks.” He then pivots back into Logan mode, deciding to cancel the board meeting and to meet with Mattson again, with every major Waystar player there except Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron). He wants to skip the procedural hoo-hah and settle this person to person.

Shiv and Kendall seem almost giddy that they got to tell the old man off to his face — though later as they ride home separately, only Kendall is still smiling. And Roman?

Well, it turns out Roman has been texting little “hey how are you” messages to his father for weeks. So after the karaoke fiasco, he drops by his dad’s home and immediately gets roped into the big Mattson plan. Logan needs “pirates” like Roman to lead his new ATN. “Smart people know what they are,” he tells his son.

This is something Shiv and Kendall have missed, as they have been dragging Roman from one Logan-skewering plan after another and treating him like their mascot. They think their brother is the George Harrison of their band. But when pushed, Roman stares them down and straightens them out, proclaiming — with a confidence that should frighten them — “I’m John.”

Due diligence

• The best running gag in this episode — just edging out how Kendall keeps pestering Roman with snackable bits of Buddhist philosophy — involves Kerry’s audition to become an ATN anchor. She has produced a terrible tape. (For some reason she keeps smiling at all times, even when reporting on a child abduction.) Tom, tasked with figuring out what to do about this, gravely tells Greg that the situation is “like Israel-Palestine, except harder and much more important,” before passing the buck and offering a step-by-step guide for how Greg should handle it. But when Greg tries to follow those steps, he botches it. His best attempt to soften the suggestion that her tape is awful is to say, “It can happen that they shoot weird, the cameras.”

• A serious question for serious people: Why do the Roy children even want to be in the news business? News is Logan’s passion. The children, based on all available evidence, seem baffled by its appeal. While watching some PGM programming and brainstorming about how to improve it, they sound completely lost. Shiv only knows they should “broaden out and stop over-indexing to college professors.” Kendall tosses out jargon like “from global-global to hyperlocal” but when he tries to clarify what he means all he can come up with is, “Every day: What is happening in Africa?” And as a bit of possible foreshadowing, Roman comes closest to imagining something like his dad might want when he proposes info-dumps in the day and “A Clockwork Orange” at night.

• The younger Roys do a lot in this episode to torpedo any sympathy viewers might be nurturing for them. When they follow Connor into one of his non-Fancy Dan bars (where he sighs, “Ah, America! I’ve missed you.”), Roman mutters, “Do you think they know how to make a vodka tonic?” while Shiv chuckles, “House red? Do I dare?” Later, Roman seems bemused and repulsed by the plastic menus listing basic pub food like wings. The Roys’ contempt oozes … and it stinks.