‘Succession’ Report Card S4E1: Happy Birthday. Logan?

The Succession Report Card is a weekly recap feature where we attempt to assign grades to the important people, things, and themes from each episode of Succession. The grades are entirely subjective and the criteria for scoring will change from week to week and occasionally mid-week. Someone might get detention. It’ll probably be Roman.

Willa

Willa gets an F only because I think she’s just now really, truly realized what she is getting herself into and she is not having any fun about it, which stinks because I like Willa. Her dipshit fiancé is at one percent and falling in the polls and he wants to have a wedding with a brass band and bum fights and razzmatazz and the faces she’s making while he says these things out loud are the faces of a woman who is seriously considering chewing off her own leg to get out of a bear trap. It’s not going great.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Life choices, wedding planning

Connor

I know I just mentioned it in the section on Willa, but look what is going on with this goof:

• Is polling at one percent
• His competitors are “squeezing” that percent, attempting to peel off the sad souls that have hitched their wagons to a horse that was never going anywhere but the glue factory
• He’s thinking about spending $100 million just so he doesn’t get extra super embarrassed by finishing in the decimals

The smartest people on this entire show are the sometimes unseen consultants and advisors who fleece these idiots for their money. Everyone with their hand in Connor’s pocket during this election is a hero to me. Good for them.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: [sighs deeply]

Tom

Tom is currently the man in the company whose job it is to deliver hard news to and from his boss, who is also about to be his ex-father-in-law on account of the thing where his wife is finally calling off the marriage and kicking off the divorce after running around and telling borderline strangers it was going to happen first as part of a business negotiation. The only thing he has left in his life, the only sliver of power and control, is mocking and belittling Greg, who is also his only friend.

The man is desperately clinging to almost nothing. I suspect he spends a lot of the moments we don’t see him just staring out windows. Could be going better.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: I feel like Tom might be in a better place mentally if he went to a driving range once a week and smashed about 100 golf balls as far as he can

Turnips, generally

The thing about turnips is that it’s rarely a good thing when you hear the word in conversation. It’s usually, like this week, saying someone “fell off the turnip truck” to imply they’re some naive rube, or apparently, because this was the first time I’ve heard it, “twist my turnips” to imply someone is grasping your balls and turning them, which doesn’t sound too hot either. It’s almost never “hell yeah, dude, look at those turnips” or “this dish could use a little more turnip” or something even reasonably positive. The turnip industry has really dropped the ball on the marketing. At this point, they might just need to change the name and start fresh. Call them Carrot Bulbs or something. That’s not a great suggestion but it is a free one.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Public relations and flavor

The Hundred

Rest in peace to the indispensable bespoke hub that was going to cover Israel-Palestine and artificial intelligence while being Substack meets MasterClass meets The Economist meets The New Yorker. God, I wish this website and/or app really existed. My hatred of it would have fueled me for hours at a time between cups of coffee.

Also:

This show really gets the little things so incredibly correct almost all the time. There are so many that I don’t even want to try to list them all because I’d be typing until tomorrow.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Existing

Logan

Logan is:

• Having a terrible time at his birthday party
• Grumbling more than usual
• Demanding his underlings tell jokes and roast him and then whipping off comebacks that aren’t so much funny as they are horribly mean
• Escaping to diners with his security staff and having long one-sided conversations about what people are and are not that reveal a deeply depressing worldview
• Losing out on acquisitions to his idiot children, who he calls rats and who spent his birthday party trying to ruin him from a scenic villa on the other side of the country
• Watching the news channel he owns and built an empire around alone in his house and calling network executives late at night to shout about the coverage in a way that implies that it is dawning on him that this sale will leave him with no family and no business and a big gaping hole in his life that he has no clue how to fill

Other than that, hunky dory.

GRADE: D-

MUST IMPROVE: Party etiquette

Kendall

Sometimes I feel like everything about Kendall worth saying has already been said and then he just very casually says things like “I’ve smoked horse” as part of a business discussion and, blammo, I’m back in.

Kendall, Shiv, and Roman are all broken in such separate and distinct ways and watching them try to do any sort of venture together is like watching a train barrel toward a cliff. Why would the train tracks lead the train toward and eventually off the cliff? Why would anyone plan things that way when they could have laid the tracks anywhere? Doesn’t this seem like a failure of planning and execution?

Great questions. And exactly the point.

GRADE: D

MUST IMPROVE: I want to say “business sense” here but I feel like that is just putting Neosporin on a cannonball wound

Shiv

Shiv is tricky because you’ll watch her operate a little bit and think for a second that she’s the most competent one of the group and then she’ll go ahead and toss multiple billions of dollars into a fire while negotiating against herself and the general idea of her father. She is saying “I’m fine” and “it’s fine” out loud kind of a lot, which is not usually a sign of someone doing fine. Her marriage is over and she’s lashing out a little bit. A D might be generous here. Shiv is doing real, real bad.

GRADE: D

MUST IMPROVE: Snaking

Cousin Greg

ON ONE HAND: I am so disappointed in what my sweet boy has become. He got that haircut last season and it’s all gone to hell since then, with him sucking up to Logan and embracing the worst of the entitlement issues people on this show have and bringing dates from various apps to high-society functions and rummaging to fruition with them in the bathroom like the Disgusting Brother he so desperately wants to be. Sometimes I think I hate him a little bit now.

ON THE OTHER HAND: I still smile a lot every time he is on screen. I can’t help it. I love this doofus.

GRADE: C-

MUST IMPROVE: Romantic entanglements

Various Karls and Franks

I know this is the last season and there isn’t much time to wander off the main story thoroughfares but: I think I would really enjoy a standalone episode where these two go on a business trip together and end up sharing a hotel room in, like, Minnesota.

GRADE: C

MUST IMPROVE: Telling jokes

Colin the Security Man

Poor Colin.

GRADE: C

MUST IMPROVE: I mean, being a goon who does dirty work for one of the worst people alive? This one is hard. I should hate him more but I don’t see that happening for a while.

Kerry

Logan’s friend/assistant/advisor spent a solid chunk of this episode as a messenger between her new boyfriend and the grown children who hate him and demean her about it all. She would have gotten a much worse grade if not for the thing where sometimes she makes a face that tells you she knows none of this a great situation but she’s in too deep now. I would like to know what she talks to her therapist about.

GRADE: C+

MUST IMPROVE: Negotiating calls and texts

Bridget from the apps

Bridget:

• Got to go to a fancy party at a billionaire’s house on a first date
• Absolutely housed some canapés
• Had a little bathroom fling with a lanky goofball
• Came out of all this with a killer story she can tell new friends and acquaintances for many decades

Good for her.

GRADE: B

MUST IMPROVE: Selfie etiquette

Roman

One of the things I like most about this show is Roman actually being the sibling with the most business savvy and humanity but having so little confidence about it that he gets steamrolled and undercuts himself before anyone stops to realize it. Watch him kick the bankers out of the room so they can talk to Shiv after her phone call with Tom about Naomi Pierce. Watch him be the only one to recognize that tossing $500 million dollars onto a bid just to make it a round number is both insane and stupid. There might actually be a real person in there under all those layers of sniveling and self-loathing.

We are now officially rooting for Roman. I know this is weird. I suspect he will ruin it next week. But here we are.

GRADE: B

MUST IMPROVE: I’m going to say “having a backbone” here but that’s barely scratching the surface

Gerri

The smartest thing anyone did in this entire episode: Gerri just walking away while Frank and Karl were hemming and hawing about who was more suited to deliver bad news to Logan. They weren’t going to chase her. They’re too conflict-averse for that. These are survival skills honed over many years of living in a snake pit. Let the other suckers get wrapped up and swallowed whole until the snakes aren’t hungry anymore. It’s a good strategy.

GRADE: B+

MUST IMPROVE: Part of me hopes that by the season finale Gerri has left this life and started flipping houses or running a food truck or something.

Tellis the Banker

I meant what I said earlier about the people with their hands in the Roy family’s pockets. This dude is a creepy vulture who works for a soulless financial institution that exists to move money from one billionaire’s bank account to another billionaire’s bank account. There is almost no other world where I have anything but disdain for this man. But here, on this show, given the people he’s working with and billing upwards of eight figures to for the most basic and worthless business advice you could ever imagine… I don’t know. There’s a begrudging respect here. Real “in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king” situation.

GRADE: A

MUST IMPROVE: I would like to see him in one of Kendall’s stupid black hats

Mondale the Dog

He’s a good boy.

GRADE: A

MUST IMPROVE: Time on screen

Nan Pierce

Nan is a shark in a goldfish tank. She squeezed an extra $3 billion out of this family — Logan’s soft offer was $7 billion, the kids gave her 10 — just by playing naive. “Oh, I just hate this” she says while doing it like a champion. “Everyone is saying numbers” she says while then saying two numbers herself that are both higher than her best offer and imply even that’s not enough. She and Logan are flip sides of the same coin, not so different, two old warriors who built and/or ran things and are ready to get out right after they squeeze a few more nickels out of the people stupid enough to think they are smarter than them. The woman did everything other than wink directly into the camera about it all during that negotiation. I’m very proud of her. I want to see her run her fancy wine business a little. Maybe a lot. Maybe as a whole spinoff.

GRADE: A

MUST IMPROVE: Peasant tastes