“Throwin’ Off Some Kingmaker Vibes”
As we enter the uneasy middle ground of Succession season 4, between Logan’s death and the finale, we are left with a series of increasingly excruciating interactions between beloved characters that open new wounds and float more questions. Episode 7, “Tailgate Party”, followed a familiar organizing principle for Succession — a Roy-hosted party — which set us up for what might be a series of catastrophes for the Roy children.
In the cold open, Tom serves Shiv breakfast (and polling numbers) in bed. They’re cozy and gentle, somehow more normal than ever, until Tom gives Shiv a gift of a preserved scorpion. The sentiment behind it isn’t so much cruel as “guy who still doesn’t understand his wife’s sense of humor”, and Shiv shuts down.
Meanwhile, Kendall and Rava reunite at a coffee shop because Sophie isn’t going to school. For those of you who don’t remember, Sophie is of South Asian descent, surely an uneasy situation being a granddaughter of the Roy empire. She was shoved by a man wearing a Mark Ravenehead shirt while walking down the street, and is nervous about the election. Kendall is immediately defensive, accusing Rava of being neglectful and claiming that he’s “breaking [his] back and it’s all for” his kids. Who he probably hasn’t seen since nearly drowning the day before his mother’s wedding.
After the cold open, Roman is in the car planning opposition on Matsson on his way to brunch with his sibs. The gang meets up at Trump International in Columbus Circle (lol) for what ends up being a jaunty conversation on funeral plans. They still haven’t buried him. No concrete plans are made, but we do learn that Connor’s polling is up in Alaska!
After Connor leaves to do a campaign call, the brothers float to Shiv bringing Nate to their team in order to (if I’m not mistaken) push FTC regulations on the GoJo deal, essentially stalling the deal. Shiv is blindsided, for several reasons I would assume, but generally agrees. After her brothers leave, she warns Matsson about the shady business and then turns to sexting Tom, to whom she apologizes for *checks notes* “breaking [his] dick”.
What does Shiv want out of all of this? Does she even know at this point?
Meanwhile, at ATN, Tom turns an all-hands Zoom meeting to Greg, who reads a pre-written statement effectively firing all ATN international news employees. Tom doesn’t really give a shit, and walks out before Greg can close the meeting on Zoom. Greg’s making moves, but has fully lost his soul. Just as Tom promised in Italy.
After a lovely hors d’oeuvres-porn sequence (American flag cheeseburger sliders, anyone?), the Roy family pre-election “tailgate party” commences. Anyone who is anyone there, from the center-left to the “centrist ghouls” to the fascists aligned with Menken. While Tom and Greg discuss the merits of supporting Matsson versus the brothers in the big deal, the political game commences.
Kendall is sent to work the “libtards”, hoping to soften ATN’s reputation now that Daddy’s gone, while Roman is courting the Nazis, on the line to Mencken’s people throughout the night. The best thing about being a media conglomerate is that you can trade favorable coverage for political favors. Ken and Roman are starting to see this as a leg up on Matsson, so ask the same things of different people.
Roman is sent by Mencken’s team to Connor, whose success in Alaska is starting to spoil Mencken’s victorious goal. If Connor drops out “for the good of the Republic”, he could become Ambassador of Somalia. He’d rather the UN, but he mulls over the options with Willa.
Gerri and Frank arrive, and Ken gets up to give a somber speech, which concludes in a moment of silence for Logan, interrupted by Matsson and his gang. As soon as everyone is settled, Matsson goes on the offensive, negging Greg and Tom, implying to Shiv that he will fire Tom as soon as he gets the chance, and going head-to-head with Nate.
Nate’s on his way out when he has a moment with Kendall, who very intimately informs him that ATN will unconditionally boost Jimenez (the Democratic nominee) in exchange for putting the regulatory screws into the GoJo deal. They should kiss. Nate and Tom should kiss too!
Everyone kiss Nate!
While Shiv tells Matsson to tread lightly, the dirt that Roman commissioned on Matsson is coming up. The “blood bricks” are the least of his worries, it turns out. Regardless, Shiv is asking for a leg up in the company if the deal goes through, as the news of Tom’s imminent firing spreads through the party.
Ebba is there, the brunt (as usual) of Matsson’s psychopathy, which she somehow takes in stride. Matsson’s other goon, Oskar, hurls insults at Greg, an awful conversation that culminates in Lukas asking Ebba to fire Oskar. He wants to fire Ebba himself, Lukas muses… but he can’t.
Ebba storms out and the brothers intercept her on the deck. Wanting to check in with her on a “human level” (but also looking for context for the dirt), Kendall bums a cig and she explains that she is his whole image. “He’s not even a real coder” and she and her comms teams built his rep. Sound familiar?
Back inside, Greg regales Matsson and Oskar with tales of his firing prowess over a shared vape pen. His secret? “I look like I care but I don’t.” No soul!
Shiv has got word of Matsson’s situation in India, which turns out to be numbers that “might be a little bit bullshit”. He and his team have been embellishing subscriber numbers in India, and he believes that Shiv will be able to fix it. The evolution of Shiv and Matsson’s relationship, where their business needs are starting to become a vicious parasitic cycle, is really tough to watch, but also so central to who this new version of Siobhan has become.
Roman tries to confront Gerri over some martinis, but she stonewalls him. He has somehow forgot that he fired her last week, and offers to “stand in a cupboard and jack off while [she] explains the SEC” to him. To his shock, Gerri wants an apology, which he falls short of actually giving.
She wants a healthy severance package, and she has people on retainer. If Roman defames her at any point in her exit process, she says, she will sue Roman and leak the dick pics to the press. On her way out of the conversation, she drops the truth bomb of: “I could have got you there. But no. Nope.”
Gerri is not playing around!!!!!!!!! Go off Gerri!!!!
Connor and Willa continue to hold fast, since Willa doesn’t really want to move to Oman, Mencken’s current deal, but Roman spits some Islamophobic bile at them and they leave.
Matsson has been sitting behind them, the whole time, and he starts to mock New York’s self-importance to Kendall. Kendall, NYC til he dies, pushes back and these two rich babies have an entitled tantrum battle.
Highlights? “Your numbers are gay”, “I think I am the wave, actually”, and the weirdest hug between two grown men in television history. Matsson and Kendall’s fight is a revisit of another great motif in the show, where two people have a screaming match and pretend like they’re just playing around. These self-important men want to deny that they have any feelings to be hurt, so they engage in ludicrous affection to remain on the high road.
But that’s nothing compared to the Shiv-Tom fight of the century. Tom is heading to bed, after telling everyone the whole night how sleepy he is, and Shiv asks him to stay for at least another hour. Somehow, this argument spills out onto the deck, where she chastises him for the scorpion gift while also expressing her guilt about nailing herself “to the Matsson cross” and double-crossing her brothers.
He’s also mad about the rumors of his firing going around. They yell at each other for double-crossing the other and being soulless. She calls him “servile” and “a hick”, and he criticizes her for choosing to marry him. His greatest betrayal, in Shiv’s eyes, is stealing her last months with her father. Tom “sucked up to him and cut” Shiv out, all while he fucked her for her DNA.
Tom resents her unwillingness to have his child (I got some tough news for you there, Tommy), and expresses that all he ever wanted was to love her. Shiv, as always, gets the last word. “You don’t deserve me, you never did, and everything came out of that”.
She leaves with a smile, and Kendall calls a “just Frankie and Kenny” meeting in the coatroom. Frank doesn’t want to hear Kendall’s take on the GoJo deal, citing a conflict of interest. But Kendall has a new plan. He will buy GoJo, hoping that the incoming dirt on Matsson will destabilize the company. It seems like Kendall is also willing to dump his siblings in order to get the glory.
Tom finally comes in from the balcony and kicks everyone out. After all, he is so sleepy. Roman tells his siblings that he wants to speak at the funeral now, to which they all agree.
The last thing we see are Shiv and Tom, both sad and wide awake in separate beds. Not to cite an overwrought metaphor, but they have both made their beds, and they must lie in them. Well, they probably didn’t actually make their beds. But, again, a metaphor.
In “Tailgate Party”, we saw the final deterioration of at least three relationships central to the show: Kendall and Matsson, Roman and Gerri, and, of course, Shiv and Tom. But I suppose that’s what happens when you constantly tell your husband that you hate him and could do better.
As usual on Succession, there are simply no winners. Everyone swims in the same toxic stew, and destroys their capacity for empathy in the process. Shiv could have shut Tom up in a second if she told him about her pregnancy and Kendall could have gotten Matsson out of his way months ago if he was honest with his misgivings about the deal.
But these aren’t people who say what they mean.
Except Gerri. Gerri gets it all.
This week we learned that the finale is a full-length 90-minute episode!! What do you think is going to happen? Musical number? Ghost of Logan? I simply can not wait.
See you next week for the election!!!!!
