Word: This text accommodates spoilers for a number of Succession episodes, significantly season 4, episode two, “Rehearsal.”
Rehearsal, the second episode of the final season of Succession, is an episode stuffed with speeches, pitches, and, as all the time in Succession, energy performs. Everybody needs to show that they’re standing just a bit bit taller than their enemies, and to do it, they’re shifting in unfamiliar areas.
On the precipice of promoting Waystar to tech firm GoJo, Logan (Brian Cox) ignites panic when he unceremoniously drops by the headquarters of his information community, ATN. He’s “terrifyingly moseying” across the ground of the newsroom, Greg (Nicholas Braun) tells Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), as if searching for prey to kill. “It’s like Jaws,” Greg frets, “if everybody in Jaws labored for Jaws.”
Nevertheless it’s onerous to not discover that Logan is a shark out of water. Logan within the cavernous ATN newsroom feels uncomfortable not as a result of he’s respiratory down everybody’s neck — although he’s — however as a result of the lights are too vivid, laying naked that Logan Roy is simply an unusual little man, the sort who stands on high of containers of paper to offer an awkwardly bombastic speech to the ATN workers.
“This isn’t the top. I’m going to construct one thing higher,” Logan vows to the ATN workers. He’s a soccer coach earlier than the massive sport, and he’s going to steer ATN via a brand new, irrepressibly daring new age. He’s bursting with youthful ambition and a fervor to overcome the world. You’d hardly imagine this was a person who was contemplating retirement again in season one.
And he makes an announcement that sends a shiver down each worker’s backbone: He’s going to be spending much more time at ATN.
He’s not the one one on this episode to roam in sudden locations. At one level, the Roy youngsters discover themselves in a dive bar. And later, all of them, Logan included, have an actual household assembly — the sort that they need to have had throughout their publicity stunt of a household remedy session in season one — in a personal room at a karaoke bar that resembles a spaceship, coloured lights dancing throughout the partitions in stark dissonance with the gravity of their assembly.
Connor doesn’t wish to be himself
If you happen to’ve ever questioned what every member of the Roy household would sing at karaoke — a Rorschach take a look at for somebody’s character — this episode supplies a minimum of one reply. Connor (Alan Ruck), the eldest Roy youngster, spends the eve of his wedding ceremony mournfully belting Leonard Cohen’s Well-known Blue Raincoat. Connor has determined to marry Willa (Justine Lupe), a former escort, and he’s morose after she has walked out throughout their rehearsal dinner, saying, “I can’t do that.”
Connor needs to take pleasure in some escapism — it looks like he didn’t also have a bachelor celebration — and desires to go to a “actual bar” with “guys who work with their palms” and “have blood of their hair.” They discover such a dive bar someplace in Manhattan. Connor, cosplaying the lifetime of a down-home dude, orders a “Belgian weissbier, however not a Hoegaarden.”
He needs to be somebody aside from Connor Roy, wealthy son of a fair richer father, for the night time. Connor each attracts in and drives away Willa, who sees the usefulness of his wealth but in addition chafes at how a lot energy he has. It’s suffocating. Even on the bar, Connor is continually checking her location on his cellphone.
Connor has lengthy occupied himself in pursuits completely different from his youthful siblings. As a substitute of vying to take over the household enterprise, he’s flushing his inheritance away on a presidential bid by which he’s polling at a “delicate” 1 p.c. Connor has been on the fringes of the warfare between his siblings and father, however on this episode, he’s the stagehand ferrying these feuding characters from one surreal set to a different. After the bar, he implores his siblings to do karaoke with him — and even will get Logan to affix them.
True to the episode’s title, everyone seems to be vulnerable to theatrics in Rehearsal. A lot of the Roys’ lives is a efficiency, with scripts and infrequently unconvincing line readings. It’s completely different from the standard deceptions they knowingly and typically gleefully commit. Generally it’s solely throughout the artifice of efficiency that folks can inform the reality. As Connor belts out Well-known Blue Raincoat — a tune by which Cohen addresses a pal or a member of the family that he’s estranged from — he’s being extra sincere and weak than he might ever be within the chilly gentle of day.
Kerry needs to be a TV star
Again at ATN, past reminding his little employee bees how a lot of his cash they’re losing, Logan is visiting for the essential mission of securing a job for his assistant/girlfriend, Kerry (Zoe Winters). Kerry has aspirations to develop into an ATN anchor; Tom and Cyd (Jeannie Berlin) lie via their enamel, telling Logan that Kerry is deserving of a slot on the community. In actuality, Kerry is clearly uncomfortable in entrance of the digital camera: She garbles her phrases, smiles sinisterly as she reads off dire headlines, and may’t determine what to do together with her arms. Logan goes via the motions of pretending he’s not laying a metric ton of stress on Tom and Cyd, however he’s by no means been an moral chief. “She’s my assistant. It will be very unprofessional of me to become involved,” he sighs.
Everyone seems to be laughing behind Kerry’s again as a result of one way or the other everybody has gotten maintain of her audition tape (together with Logan’s youngsters). Relationship a strong man like Logan comes with its perks, clearly, however one wonders if it’s definitely worth the unrelenting humiliation. Kendall (Jeremy Robust) muses that Kerry being made an ATN anchor is an plain signal of his father’s “whole lack of judgment and management.” However in distinction to the bellicose pep discuss he offers at ATN, in terms of romance, Logan is a coward. As a substitute, Greg is left with the duty of making an attempt to persuade Kerry that being an ATN anchor could be far more bother than it’s price, however he fails spectacularly as a result of, not like the Roys, Greg may be very dangerous on the artwork of manipulation. His superpower is getting individuals to assume the precise reverse of what he needs them to assume.
That GoJo sale is completely occurring (besides perhaps with a tiny delay)
Logan hasn’t gone totally delicate — he’s nonetheless an apex predator. Rehearsal sees Kendall, Shiv, and Roman feeling the fallout of their showdown with their father over Pierce World Media within the final episode. Logan isn’t one to let an insult go; his youngsters stole PGM from him, so he revokes their entry to the corporate helicopter. The trio doesn’t uncover that they’re grounded till they’re already on the tarmac, working late for Connor’s rehearsal dinner. It barely even registers as a shock; in fact their father reacted vindictively, that’s his everlasting nature — would you get offended at a storm for pulling down bushes?
However that’s not the one approach Logan is sniping again. Shiv finds out that his father helps Tom, her soon-to-be ex-husband, battle out all the perfect divorce attorneys in New York so none of them can signify Shiv.
This newest affront drives Shiv to make contact with Sandi Furness (Hope Davis), a Waystar board member, the day earlier than the board will vote to approve the sale. Sandi and Stewy (Arian Moayed), one other board member, imagine that Logan is promoting Waystar to GoJo for a criminally low value — they need the children to vote towards the sale with them to allow them to return to the desk for the next value. It’s, in spite of everything, what their father would do, and in enterprise they need to all naturally emulate Logan.
Shiv acts like she’s abruptly all for squeezing extra money out of the deal — that’s simply good enterprise sense — however it’s not a convincing act. As traditional, the true driving power is that her emotions are wounded, and delaying the sale is a approach she will be able to get again at Logan for the divorce lawyer ploy.
Shiv’s brothers aren’t on board with delaying the sale, although — who cares about an additional billion or two? Kendall and Roman are prepared to scrub their palms of Waystar and accumulate their assured payout tomorrow. However Sandi and Stewy, and now Shiv, wish to power Logan “again into the ring for one final spherical.”
They spend many of the transient time they spend at Connor’s wedding ceremony rehearsal dinner bickering backwards and forwards about it, whereas Connor is stuffed with nervousness over the place Willa is. She ran out of the dinner proper as she was about to offer her speech. Willa, regardless of her obsession with being taken significantly as a playwright, can’t plaster on a pretend smile and browse her ready strains like the remainder of the household.
What adjustments Kendall’s thoughts about delaying the Waystar sale is when GoJo CEO Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) enters the stage. He calls Kendall, ostensibly to ensure the children aren’t considering of blocking the sale tomorrow. He takes a threatening tack. “Don’t push me,” he says, claiming that in the event that they return to the desk, he’ll stroll away. For some motive they’re on a video name, and Kendall can see that Matsson is up late ingesting soda and consuming junk meals — it’s not simply Stewy and Sandi who’re harassed about the opportunity of leaving cash on the desk, Matsson is extra harassed than he’s letting on, too. As he rambles on, Kendall has the dawning realization about Matsson’s present of aggression. It means he’s apprehensive, and there’s completely room to drive the worth increased. It’s additionally another alternative — perhaps the grand finale alternative — to explode one in all Logan’s offers. Shiv means that perhaps Logan has really misplaced his contact if he’s getting taken benefit of by Matsson.
Again on the bar, Roman will get a textual content message from Logan, and his siblings are aghast. Roman reveals that he texted his dad glad birthday. It will have been dangerous sufficient if he’d replied to a textual content, however to ship a number of unsolicited texts to their father? “We stated no contact till he apologizes,” Shiv says in an completely scandalized tone. “So, then, by no means?” Roman retorts.
It’s an attention-grabbing revelation, even when it isn’t totally shocking. After a lifetime of abuse, it’d be comprehensible in the event that they selected to haven’t any contact with their father ceaselessly. However what they’re searching for isn’t an exit; it’s for Logan to bend the knee. Shiv and Kendall attribute Roman’s disinterest in stonewalling to his worry of battle, not as a philosophical distinction on what strains to cross or not cross whenever you’re offended at household.
The Roys do a tune and dance
The Roy siblings take their argument to the following vacation spot: a personal karaoke room in Manhattan’s Koreatown. To be clear, for all their aptitude for the dramatic, the Roy siblings will not be karaoke individuals. They’re solely right here as a result of, in some recess of their hearts, they really feel dangerous for his or her oldest brother, who could or is probably not getting married tomorrow.
They don’t pity him for lengthy. Connor drops a bombshell: He instructed Logan about their plan to puncture the sale, and Logan is at the moment en route to fulfill them.
More often than not, a personal karaoke room is absolutely the worst place to have an essential dialog. However the Roys (plus Kerry) have a critical heart-to-heart. Logan waltzes in with a conciliatory, virtually remorseful tone. “I suppose I needed you there at my celebration,” he says, referring to the birthday celebration that Kendall, Shiv, and Roman skipped within the final episode. Does anybody imagine this masks for even a second?
His youngsters don’t. They drip with sarcasm and bile. “Holy shit,” Kendall says. “Did Dad simply say a sense?” Shiv tells Logan to chop the shit; it’s clear he’s right here as a result of he wants them to not torpedo the vote tomorrow. However their father tries to play a siren tune, proposing a future the place they’ll coexist, the place they’ve moved past the fixed cycle of preventing — he’ll run ATN, they’ll run Pierce, and their relationships might be more healthy. It’s an entire fairy story. An excessive amount of has been stated and accomplished to so simply untangle the knots of their resentment and wounds. Kerry tries to advocate for Logan, which is a mistake. Kendall, Shiv, and Roman flip vicious on her.
“Look,” Logan says. “I don’t do apologies. But when it means a lot to you, then sorry.” There’s a second of deafening silence. “There’s nothing you would say to me now that I might ever imagine,” Shiv replies.
Roman asks the true query: What’s he even sorry for? They squabble backwards and forwards, with Logan making an attempt to gaslight them, Shiv citing his help to Tom of their divorce, and Kendall dragging out previous skeletons within the closet round how Logan has handled all of them.
Logan’s persistence wears out finally. They’re not all for seeing sense — his model of what’s clever, a minimum of — they only need an airing of agonies. “I like you,” he says earlier than he makes his exit, “however you aren’t critical individuals.”
And that’s the present. The curtains fall.
Epilogue
Afterward, Shiv and Kendall crow about how exhilarating it was to verbally beat up their father. Nevertheless it seems like they’re simply papering over what they actually really feel — shaken, unsure, and realizing that damage and anger are nonetheless embedded deep even after what was speculated to be their cathartic, climactic second. Connor calls his youthful siblings “needy love sponges,” and asserts that he’s made peace with an absence of affection. “The benefit of having a household that doesn’t love you is you be taught to stay with out it,” he says.
Besides nobody actually learns to stay with out love. They solely develop coping mechanisms. On the automotive trip house, Shiv stares at her cellphone, considering calling Tom. Connor, regardless of his declarations, returns to his place and is relieved to search out Willa already there. Roman, in the meantime, goes to Logan’s condo. Logan needs his youngest son to return with him to go to Matsson in Sweden tomorrow — the day of Connor’s wedding ceremony. He dangles the carrot of Roman changing into head of ATN. However extra persuasive than the job is Logan’s reply when Roman questions if he actually needs him to guide the community. Logan tells him that he wants his son.
It’s all his youngsters have ever dreamed of.
