Though we love them, the Roy children are not, as their father Logan famously said, serious people. Their parade of ineptitude and buffoonery, excused by their privilege and entitlement, is what makes them so sadistically entertaining to watch each week on Succession. Still, once in a while, the fact that these guys just really suck needs to be called out, probably for viewers’ sanity. And it’s so gratifying when it happens, as it did in Sunday night’s episode of the series, “Living+.”
The hilarity of Kendall and Roman (Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin) being co-CEOs of Waystar Royco stems from the fact that they’re huge idiots, and everyone knows it. Lukas Mattsson (Alexander Skarsgard), who is in the process of purchasing the company, knows it. Their sister, Shiv (Sarah Snook), knows it, to the extent that she can barely keep a straight face any time her brothers talk seriously about business. Someone as lowbrow as Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) is even aware of it, and he’s Cousin Greg. But no one is as cognizant of this as the senior leadership team at Waystar, and it is such a blast to watch when they finally get to vent about it.
There’s brilliant comms head Karolina (Dagmara Dominiczyk), who serves so expertly as an audience avatar that she stops just short of breaking the fourth wall and staring directly into the camera, blinking in disbelief. Her journey from certitude that Kendall’s speech on Investor Day would be a fiasco to bafflement, when it actually went well, channeled our viewing experience perfectly. And the “you listen to me, you juvenile prick”-style dressing down that Kendall received from CFO Karl (David Rasche) was such a long time coming that it was tempting to give it a standing ovation, as it finally happened on Sunday night.
As entertaining as those moments are, there was something on another level about the confrontation between Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) and Roman. The scene was excruciating to watch, but it was also electric and thrilling at the same time. After spending the series playing along with the bizarre and toxic relationship that Roman clearly has been craving from her—at times strangely sexual, other times mentorly, and always drenched in Roman’s unspoken “mommy issues”—Gerri finally was honest with him. It’s one of my favorite moments this show has ever produced.
She was, of course, correct in everything that she said. She’s the person that everyone knows should have been named interim CEO after Logan died, and it must be infuriating to watch the clown show staged every day by Kendall and Roman. But not only is Gerri now forced to observe imbeciles perform a job she’s more qualified for, but Kendall and Roman are also screwing with her financial payout. The boys seem determined to botch the sale to Lukas Mattsson, and, in doing so, will deprive her and the rest of the executive team of the windfall their entire careers have been building up to.
In the scene, Gerri first tries to get Roman to understand the ramifications of his impulsive, power-drunk decisions, like firing Hollywood executive Joy (Annabeth Gish). While he and his sniveling brother might find such actions to be baller moves, they are the work of two guys who are more playing dress up as CEOs than performing the job effectively. But Roman becomes instantly defensive after Gerri addresses him, asserting a new dynamic in their relationship.
Gerri explodes: “You are a weak monarch in a dangerous interregnum.” What the hell kind of dialogue is that? I’m not even sure what it means, other than to assume it’s brilliant. Only Succession can get away with casually dropping phrases like “dangerous interregnum” into a script and expect everyone, from the actors to the network to the audience at home, to just go along with it. But then came this dynamite stick of an exchange, the one that I can’t stop thinking about.
“I need you to believe that I’m as good as my dad. Can you do that?” Roman tells Gerri. I have never seen the feeling of exasperation so perfectly captured as it is on Smith-Cameron’s face at that moment. “Say it, or believe it?” she responds.
I screamed again, just retyping it.
There’s a lot that happened in last night’s episode Succession, the sixth of the season. But I think it’s telling of how intelligently these two characters and their relationship has been written over the years that, even amid a fireworks show of explosive moments, this is a scene from the episode that has been generating buzz on social media.
There’s so much history and unspoken baggage packed into that scene. It’s devastating, but it’s also finally time that it happened. My interpretation of the episode is that it is still up in the air what Gerri’s future is with the company. You could say she is in a bit of an interregnum—if you bothered to find out what in the world that means.
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