‘Succession’ Season 2 Premiere Recap: The Roys Are Back in Town

Ah yes, television, that escapist medium we turn to for respite from the real world. Instead of watching the rich and powerful loot everyone else and get sad about it, we can switch on Succession to watch the rich and powerful loot everyone else and have a few laughs!

Or try to, anyway. After a buzzworthy first season (the reach of which far exceeded its grasp), Succession returns for another look at the life of Rupert Murdoch stand-in Logan Roy (Brian Cox), his chief failson and would-be successor Kendall (Jeremy Strong), and the rest of their relatives and retinue. The premiere, titled “The Summer Palace” after the very smelly mansion in which much of it takes place (we’ll get to that), is the kind of thing you’ll like a lot if you liked this kind of thing the last time around. Skeptics, and I’ll cop to being one, will find the same frustrations.

For reasons neither his family nor his former allies can comprehend—because they have no idea he recklessly killed a man while driving under the influence and is now being blackmailed by his father—the once-rebellious Kendall Roy has been brought back into the Waystar Royco corporate fold. The company’s founder, Logan Roy, springs his prodigal son from a fancy detox center early to parade him in front of the cameras Weekend at Bernie’s style, in order to throw “buckets of cold shit” on the takeover bid being mounted by Kendall’s pal Stewy and Logan’s nemesis Sandy.

With the first of many fires extinguished, Logan calls a big family meeting at one of his many residences. It’s an all hands on deck affair that includes Logan and his wife Marcia, his advisor Gerri, his children Kendall, Roman, Shiv, and Connor, Connor’s escort turned significant other Willa, and Shiv’s glad-handing husband Tom. Two items are on the agenda: First, decide if Logan should sell to his rivals; second, should he choose to fight, decide who to name as a successor in order to placate the board of directors.

In the end, and over not-insignificant objections and doubt even on his own part—his seemingly genuine uncertainty as to the right play to make is a worthwhile new wrinkle to the character—Logan goes with Plan B. He chooses Shiv, the one child who isn’t a complete dickhead, to take over. He does this despite her current work for Bernie-esque presidential candidate Gil Eavis, and under the condition that no one be told of the succession just yet. Keeping a secret from her awful husband Tom is easy enough. But keeping it from everyone else…Hey, what could go wrong?

In this episode at least, some things go quite right. The writing by series creator Jesse Armstrong, for example, shines brightest one line at a time.

Logan on the odor haunting his summer residence: “It smells like the cheesemonger died and left his dick in the brie.”

Roman on his sense of humor: “It’s a funny joke! ‘Dad’s got cancer’—what’s not funny about that?”

Logan on Kendall’s valiant attempt to spin away his abortive takeover attempt: “Ladies and gentlemen, the first fucking thing my son’s ever done right in his life.”

Sandy on Logan’s plan to “send men to kill your pets and fuck your wives” should the takeover bid proceed: “Good. Well, let’s move ahead with that process, shall we?”

Best of all is the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it lower-third text in the ATN News broadcast briefly visible during the credits, a veritable turducken of right-wing talking points: “GENDER FLUID ILLEGALS MAY BE ENTERING THE COUNTRY ‘TWICE'”. (The other headlines: “DEM SENATOR WANTS TO CREATE ‘SUPREMER’ COURT” and “IS ‘SWEETCHEEKS’ HATE SPEECH NOW?”)

As you can tell from that last bit, Succession still has a sharp political bite, and it can attack from some surprising directions. More than anything else in this episode, the image of an army of servants attempting to prepare “the summer palace” for the family’s arrival, then dumping a resplendent spread of expensive and uneaten food right in the trash because it was exposed to the aforementioned terrible stench, is what will stick with me.

And in shades of Roman’s taunting of a local kid during family softball game from the pilot, Logan angrily stiffs the contractor who renovated the place, because he thinks the guy planted the dead raccoons that caused the stench after having been stiffed previously. It’s just a few hundred thousand dollars, chump change to Logan of course. But it’s the principle of the thing, the principle being “I am God.”

Yet there’s still a slightly off odor to the show itself. It’s not as overpowering as dead raccoons, but it’s there.

The look of the thing, for starters. Veteran director Mark Mylod is no slouch, but forcing him to adhere to the show’s shakicam aesthetic results in a seaside scene with Roman and Shiv so wobbly it can make you seasick just looking at it. The whips and zooms and such don’t add a sense of verisimilitude, just dizziness.

More fundamentally treating obvious comic relief characters as characters in a serious drama, the show winds up flattening the comedy and neutering the drama. Like, of course Logan entrusts the company to Shiv—she’s the only one of his children who isn’t a joke. Where’s the suspense in that? On the flipside, where’s the comedy in Kendall, now that he’s a murderer instead of just a fuck-up?

The sharper and tighter Billions manages both the comedy and drama halves of that equation much more successfully, perhaps because its satirical elements are not nearly so broadly drawn. I feel like I know who the characters on Billions are; Succession‘s characters feel like someone asked a bunch of stand-up comedians to reenact King Lear. Hey, at least the tickets are cheap.

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 Season 2 Episode 1 ("The Summer Palace") on HBO Go

Watch Succession Season 2 Episode 1 ("The Summer Palace") on HBO Now