‘Succession’ Season 4 Episode 2 Recap: “Rehearsal”

I definitely don’t ever want an episode of Succession where we follow home any non-Roy characters; the show wouldn’t work if it didn’t treat the Roy family as the main characters of existence and all their various minions, rivals, and “friends” as NPCs. And yet, sometimes an episode practically demands us to wonder what people are saying behind the Roys’ backs. It’s fun to imagine Stewy, Sandi, Nan, and Naomi on a group text — hell, throw Colin on there too — pinging eye-roll emojis back and forth as they comment on the Roys constantly biting off more than they can chew, then somehow still being shocked when things don’t work out for them. Take the younger kids’ $10 billion bid to acquire the Pierce media empire. They’d already started gloating about it even before Logan give them the additional gift of calling to let them know he was mad about it. What no one seemed willing to acknowledge is that all the jockeying over Pierce was contingent upon GoJo’s acquisition of Waystar. Just days away at the start of the series, it’s almost a done deal, but that “almost” is there for a reason.

“Rehearsal” (Succession Season 4, Episode 2) kicks off on the eve of the deal’s finalization. All the ways Logan has decided to keep himself busy seem to involve annoying the people in his extended orbit: on his way to a surprise office visit at ATN, he has Kerry cancel a helicopter the kids have booked. Then we see why they need it: they’re on a mini-retreat at a lake house, watching PGN. Here’s one way they’ve gotten ahead of themselves: while they all agree that PGN’s daytime programming is boring, they don’t actually have any great ideas for changing it. All we hear is Kendall’s”floaty, kind of semi-pitch” for “hardcore international news,” like a daily show covering everything that’s going on in Africa: “I would watch that show.” His siblings immediately disagree, Shiv calling it “Homework: The Show.” They also don’t counter with anything better because they can’t: they only know how to insult other people’s work, not create their own.

Shiv then gets distracted from reinventing PGN: all the divorce lawyers she was thinking of hiring have already met with Tom, so they are conflicted out of representing Shiv. Having lived through her own parents’ bitterly contentious and lopsided divorce (if you can call this “living”), Shiv knows exactly who told Tom about this trick, and decides she’s not done antagonizing the culprit: she calls Sandi and decides now she’s into Sandi’s (earlier, offscreen) suggestion that the kids partner with herself, her dad, and Stewy to play hardball with Matsson. “Maybe we don’t just wave this through,” Shiv muses. “Maybe— Maybe it pisses off my dad, but maybe that’s okay!” Mightn’t this, in fact, kill the deal, and taking the Roy kids’ Pierce purchasing power with it? WELL MIGHT WE WONDER THAT.

While this is all going on, Logan’s at ATN — “terrifyingly moseying…wearing sunglasses inside…like if Santa was a hitman,” according to Greg. Having built this business, Logan doesn’t have to have any new ideas about it; he certainly has old ones, like “workers are lazy” (as he stands behind a journalist he apparently thinks is taking too long to write an email) and “spend less money” (why are new pizzas being delivered when staffers could just put old ones in the microwave?). His oldest idea is to reward his girlfriend, for her willingness to interface with his genitals, with a material benefit: specifically, an anchor job at ATN. Kerry’s audition tape has already come to Cyd and Tom’s attention, so when Logan brings it up, Cyd closely watches Tom as he tries his best not to give his opinion on it…

…because the tape is not just bad, it’s so bad that everyone at the company and the lake house is obsessed with it. Stuttery teleprompter reading? Awkward gesticulations? An inappropriate smile in the middle of a story on a child abduction? Kerry’s got them all! Logan says he’s not going to interfere, since it would be unprofessional of him to push for ATN to hire his assistant (…sure, let’s call her that); but he also keeps bringing it up to Tom, who finally delegates to Greg the task of disabusing Kerry of her broadcasting ambitions. Kerry seems to know the “focus group” — which overruled all the ATN executives who, like Greg, thought Kerry was great — is a Greg invention, and her promise to “take [him] apart like a human string cheese” if she’s proven right is on the record. Kerry may have spent enough time around the Roys to convince herself she could overreach like they do; unfortunately, she’s not actually a Roy. (Yet?)

Connor has apparently never questioned the health of his relationship with Willa since the moment she shrugged an acceptance to his wedding proposal, and now the wedding itself is also happening tomorrow…or is it? The other Roy kids are on their way into the rehearsal dinner (not via the cancelled helicopter) when they’re ambushed outside by Stewy and Sandi, applying pressure about their GoJo votes the next day; Roman thinks they’re done “cornholing” Logan, but Stewy is sure they can get more money out of Matsson. 

Kendall and Roman have barely absorbed this notion when they all find out Connor may have gotten too far ahead of himself with this: they arrive just as Willa is leaving. Connor, sitting alone, reports that she stood up to give a speech, said “I can’t do this,” and took off. This puts Shiv in an uncomfortable position, because she needs to start working on Kendall and Roman for Sandi et al, but now Connor expects his siblings to comfort him about his runaway bride, and even a couple of true trash piles like Roman and Kendall know they can’t abandon him. When everyone ignores Connor’s request that they go do karaoke, they accept his second suggestion: drinking at a “real bar” for guys “who work with their hands and grease and sweat from their hands, and have blood in their hair.” Connor knows that meatpacking doesn’t actually still happen in the Meatpacking District, right?

As they wait for their drinks at an establishment Connor finds sufficiently gritty, Kendall gets a FaceTime call from Matsson, who apparently knows everything about everything and warns Kendall in so many words that if they push him again, he will back out of the deal. This galvanizes Kendall to text Stewy for comps on the deal…

…and inside, Connor takes a break from tracking the location on Willa’s phone to participate in a conversation about whether to join Stewy and Sandi in voting no the next day. Everyone’s secrets come out: Shiv as much as says she’s doing this to get back at Logan for telling Tom how to screw her in the divorce. While they’re talking, Logan texts Roman, which is how his siblings find out he’s been in touch with their father. Eventually, Roman is convinced to change sides. If a frustrated Connor can’t get what he wants — his money out from the GoJo deal, and married tomorrow — he’ll settle for making them all do karaoke, because he’s seen it in the movies and no one ever wants to go…

…but he also capitalizes on the fact that his siblings never pay attention to him by texting Logan to say what they’re plotting and where they are, and before long, Logan arrives, Colin and Kerry in tow. What follows is a “twinkly old man” performance from Logan the likes of which we haven’t seen since his first lunch with Pierce’s Rhea back in Season 2. He just wants this figured out. It would have been nice if they’d come to his birthday party. They knew he wanted Pierce, and when he lost out to them, it felt bad. When the kids don’t engage with his obviously calculated attempts to relate to them emotionally, he downshifts to business: Matsson will not move on the price; the GoJo deal is good and will give them all enough money to do everything they want. When that also doesn’t work, Logan tries an apology, but then the only thing he can think of being sorry about is the helicopter. Father and children go around some more, but since Logan can’t actually give them the apologies they want because he’s not sorry about anything, all he can do is repeat that what they’re planning will cause Matsson to walk. Kendall and Shiv get sarcastic — he wants to make his own pile; Shiv has to listen to her gut — and Logan gives up. 

“You’re such fucking dopes. You’re not serious figures. I love you, but you are not serious people.” True, of course, but it’s clear it never has and never will occur to Logan that these boobs are exactly what Logan — with his inconsistency, violence, neglect, and indulgence — made them.

Then it’s time for the dénouement. When Logan has gone, Connor is content: having never had love, he’s learned to live without it. While Logan’s younger children are “greedy love sponges,” Connor likens himself to a plant that grows on rocks and eats the bugs that die inside it. If Willa never comes back, it’s fine. And if she does but doesn’t love him, that’s fine too, because he doesn’t need it. 

“Thanks for the party.”

In his car home, Kendall smirks. Shiv looks at Tom’s contact in her phone, but does not call. And Connor returns to find Willa in their bed, and willing to be spooned by him.

Roman ends up back at Logan’s, regretfully saying, “That just felt a bit weird.” Logan is unconcerned: “We know what they’re like.” Neglect; indulgence. He invites Roman to join him the next day for a secret meeting to reassure Matsson. Roman hesitates, since that would mean he’d miss the wedding, but as Logan’s actual number one boy, he agrees. And that’s not all he gets. It’s going to take “a ruthless fuck” to remake ATN, and he doesn’t just want Roman to do it: “I need you.” Given what we know about ATN, I think this offer is both inconsistency and violence.

Margin Calls

• Odd audition: Kerry’s astonishingly terrible ATN audition put me in mind of another tape that made the rounds a few years back: Chris Klein’s audition for the Mamma Mia movie. Somehow I don’t think Kerry will be able to laugh at herself, the way Klein did in this spoof.
• But actually is Kerry sleeping with Logan? This show is famous for how horny it’s not — in Season 2, we never saw Logan and Rhea fooling around either — so I guess I should say that, officially, we don’t know Kerry and Logan are sexually involved. There did seem to be a turn in the Season 3 episode “What It Takes,” when Kerry seemed a lot more comfortable in high-level meetings, suggesting a change in her status had taken place offscreen — and in this episode, she freely threatens and insults Greg both before and after he tells her she’s not getting hired at ATN — but we don’t know anything for sure. (To be honest, I’m only noting this in case it comes out before the series finale that Logan just really respects Kerry’s talent and judgment, but on a strictly platonic level.)
• More moseying to come: Logan lets Tom know that after he gets rid of Waystar in the GoJo deal, he’s going to have much more time to focus on ATN. Seems like that’s going to be fun for everyone!
• Come to your senses: “Think they have ‘Desperado’ by The Eagles?” asks Connor hopefully, arriving at what is apparently his first-ever karaoke box. Buddy, if this place has one song, it’s that.
• Willanother lady take her place: Connor is excited to make it to the karaoke box at last, but is still tracking Willa; Shiv curtly tells him that maybe Willa’s not right for her, but Kendall and Roman both quickly disagree, telling Connor he’ll never do better. I know beautiful women in New York have their pick of men, but is it really that hard to imagine that none of the gold-diggers available couldn’t at least manage to fake it better than Willa does? Maybe the reason we never see Connor in a sexual context is because what he’s into is unimaginably weird.
• Logan can be wrong: In the karaoke box confrontation, Shiv refuses to take Logan’s word as gospel on what Matsson will do if they push him, complaining that he only thinks he’s always right because he’s surrounded by people who agree with him. Maybe that’s how he’s gotten the idea that pizza can be effectively resurrected in a microwave because NO WAY, MAN, YOU NEED A TOASTER OVEN. I don’t care how much Colin threatens to rough me up, I would say this to Logan’s face!!!!!

Television Without Pity, Fametracker, and Previously.TV co-founder Tara Ariano has had bylines in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Salon, Mel Magazine, Collider, and The Awl, among others. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great, Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place), Listen To Sassy, and The Sweet Smell Of Succession. She’s also the co-author, with Sarah D. Bunting, of A Very Special 90210 Book: 93 Absolutely Essential Episodes From TV’s Most Notorious Zip Code (Abrams 2020). She lives in Austin.