‘Succession’ Episode 6 Recap: Vote Out the Git

We’ve reached a Pivotal Episode. It’s Succession Episode 6, “Which Side Are You On?”, and my understanding is that after watching it, a whole lot of viewers were firmly on Succession‘s side. This is a Tony vs. Uncle Junior type situation, in which a quartet of coup plotters — Kendall, Roman, Frank, and Gerri — make their move against Logan in a vote of no confidence brought before his company board. Their hope is to remove him before he embarrasses himself and destroys the company. It does not go well, and unfortunately I mean that in every sense.

For starters, there’s a subtle sloppiness to the set-piece voting sequence, which took me by surprise on reflection. While this isn’t a show that relies on drum-tight plotting like the similar but superior Billions does, generally you can understand why each falling domino proceeds from the one before it. Here, however, you have Kendall agreeing to let his idiot brother Roman finesse tech asshole Lawrence on the grounds that Lawrence hates Kendall, though no similar discussion was had regarding the relationship between Roman and fellow conspirator Frank, whom Roman convinced his dad to fire in the first episode. You’ve got a bunch of back and forth about whether or not the meeting can be delayed or items on its agenda shuffled around to accommodate Kendall’s terrorism-alert-induced absence and the answer is always no, that’s against the rules; but Logan refuses to leave the room or even just shut up as he’s obligated to do by those same rules, and all anyone does is kind of whine for a second before carrying on with the vote.

Cinematically speaking, the action in the sequence stems from an attempt to portray Kendall’s frantic race from Long Island through the dead-stopped traffic in the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel to the office in the Financial District and up the elevator to the top floor as a make-or-break thing. But Ken is perfectly able to participate in the meeting over the phone once he gets close enough to the tunnel exit to get reception on his cellphone, as indeed he does, and as he’d traveled to Long Island to convince ailing board member Ilona to do in the first place. His physical absence only matters in cosmetic, rally-the-troops, look-the-man-in-the-eye terms, which is not nothing, but nor is it the last chopper out of Saigon.

Oh, right: Who is Ilona? Who is her daughter? Have we ever heard of them before? I don’t believe so. My assumption is she’s an ex-wife or romantic interest from Logan’s life, and her daughter is a stepsister or something close to it and possibly also a former romantic interest but this time for Kendall, but who knows. The same goes for Asha and Dewey and “the war criminal” and everyone else on the board whose name I jotted down because they’re all suddenly of the utmost importance but who’ve never been important enough to merit so much as a mention before. For chrissakes, one of these people is played by the great David Patrick Kelly, late of Twin fucking Peaks, and he gets maybe one line?

It makes the whole sequence feel out of balance, especially because in the end it all comes down to Roman, who winds up getting shamed and intimidated into voting for his father. I’m baffled as to why. I’m baffled as to why Gerri, also a core conspirator, suddenly clams up when the time comes for her to put her two cents in. If they’re so cowed by the mere presence of an angry Logan, then why did they set this in motion in the first place? I have a hard time swallowing the notion that people with more money than God, who chew other human beings up for a living, are that easily chastised.

At least the abstentions from grade-a scumbags Stewy and Lawrence make sense for those characters no matter what half-assed assurances they offered Ken and Roman previously (the show was weirdly careful to avoid making either of them lie about their intentions outright, as if there’s honor among thieves). But what about Ewan, Logan’s estranged brother, who hates the bossman so much that he…votes in his favor to fuck over the other family members? I hate to say it, but James Cromwell’s crusty-by-numbers performance does nothing to tie this character together as anything more than a collection of gruff one-liners and the ability to do whatever the plot requires of him at any given time.

Which is not to say there isn’t some fine acting to be found in this episode, or even in this sequence. The moment when Logan finally realizes what’s happening, and who’s behind it, gives Brian Cox the chance to look emotionally (rather than just physically) vulnerable as Logan for the first time since the show started, and that brief flicker is brilliant acting…which makes cinematographer-turned-director Andrig Parekh’s decision to obscure Cox’s face in these key moments behind the back of some random board member’s head, and to keep whipping the camera around like a cat chasing a cricket that got into the house, all the more baffling.

Jeremy Strong, meanwhile, is blessed with the only drama character in the show (the rest are all comedy characters, which is a different animal), as well as one of only two or three decent people, and he makes the most of this here. By the end of the episode I had no doubt at all that he really did believe he was protecting his father by doing this, and that realizing he’d hurt the old man’s feelings and destroyed their relationship and wound up with nothing to show for it was devastating.

Elsewhere in the episode, Matthew Macfadyen remains a perfect nightmare cocktail of flopsweat and sociopathy as Tom, and Nicholas Braun is so unpredictably twitchy as his terrified protege Greg (that clearly improvised line about not being able to afford to keep the lights on when a bulb flickers in the middle of a scene between the two of them!) that I’m actually in borderline awe. Kieran Culkin as Roman deserves a shoutout too, both for his proficiency with lines like “I look like a matador and everyone wants to fuck me” and his convincing devolution into a chastened youngest child when he chickens out of voting to take his dad down. Alan Ruck puts in like a five-second appearance as Connor over the phone, but even in closeup he’s posed like the rugged Man of the Outdoors he fancies himself, and it cracked me up. I’m less sold on the alleged sexual chemistry between Sarah Snook’s Shiv and her ex-boyfriend and rival politico Nate, played by Ashley Zukerman; their extremely frank “maybe we should have sex, let’s consider the pros and cons” talk is normally something that would hit my buttons pretty squarely, but they’re so empty as people — they’re not even awful the way villains are — that my desire to watch them fuck is basically nil.

Finally — and I’ll be the first to admit this is a hobbyhorse of mine — there’s something ugly and hubristic about using the Almanac Singers’ no-fucking-around union anthem “Which Side Are You On?” to close out an episode about unfathomably rich shitheads squabbling over Daddy’s empire, even ironically. When you look back at the 75 years or so of history that have passed since Pete Seeger sang the song in 1941, or even just the 2 or so years of history we’re stuck in now, and you reflect on the fire and power of the music (traditional) and the lyrics (by organizer and activist Florence Reece), at what point do you also think “My show about people in expensive clothes making dick jokes earned this”? Rubs me the wrong way, it does, even if Succession‘s heart is in the right place with regards to the mega-rich, the right place being the steps of the guillotine.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Succession Episode 6 ("Which Side Are You On?") on HBO Go