Successor Season 4 Episode 2 Levels of Power: ‘Practice’

Business

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Nuclear war is invoked twice in “The Exercise.” For the first time, Tom compares Logan’s ATN newsroom floor to the threat of nuclear war. For the second time, Lucas Matson mentions nukes when talking about an attempt to scuttle his deal to buy Waystar. The implication is clear: all of these characters know that the price of failure is mutually assured destruction.

This is the attitude to bring to your brother’s wedding weekend! Conor and Willa are (probably) getting married, y’all! As a party favor, the Roy family wants to give you a dark and spooky sense of doom! Here’s who was up (Roman), who was down (Carey) and who entered the charts this week (Leonard Cohen).

The central scene of “The Practice” involves Logan trying to keep the kids from stealing GoJo’s deal. He wasn’t actually holding the hat in his hand, but if he was wearing the hat, his hand was halfway up. In a game of charades, he seems to be trying to get someone to guess he’s a “good father.”

At the beginning of that episode, Kerry Logan says he wants to deal with personal matters before the family business, but the dark joke is that whenever the family talks about personal business, the conversation immediately turns to finances. At one point, Logan tried to apologize for bumping the kids off in Italy, but immediately started talking about “income” and “family trust.”

Logan seems to think that his relationship with his kids can improve when he runs ATN and starts running Pierce. They can reset hard! The Roys are not really in love. To solve their personal problems, they must create a flawlessly structured agreement.

Since Roman is such a brutal insult in the area, it can be easy to miss all the ways he’s grown over the course of the show. I’m not saying he’s a titan of human empathy, but compared to most characters, his ability to recognize that someone can feel bad is unparalleled. (Actually, he’s clearing a very low bar.) Of all the Royces, Roman seems to be the most concerned about his family and the most afraid to take care of his family. He shows his love by being a little rough, so he comforts a distraught Connor when Willa leaves him to have sex with someone hotter and younger. He knows how to love someone indifferently, but seriously, he seems to know How to love someone.

Seen through that lens, “Practice” is the episode of Roman Champion, who just wants the feud out of the way so he can spend time with his family. He even does the most self-sacrificing thing imaginable: he gets drunk and goes to karaoke when he’s in trouble.

Everyone’s favorite “4chan Swede” barely makes an appearance in this episode, popping up to openly threaten Kendall on a video call, but all anyone can talk about is his deal to buy Waystar and whether he can squeeze in more money. It’s on Success, there is usually a ghost in the room, one person is absent but not everyone closes it, and that person usually holds all the cards. In this episode, that’s Mattson.

Seriously, what is Kendall thinking? He gets that call from Mattson and immediately sets out to try to help Shiv, Stewie, and Sandys push through the deal. He repeatedly mocks his father at the karaoke apologetics. He never stops talking about Buddhists. He must be on to something!

I don’t think he is. His relatively high ranking in these ranks stems from what seems to be an increasingly deep sense of existential ennui, a sense that things are so frustrating that he can become even more mad at them. Something to go back to our nuclear-war style Success Weistar-Royko has always made it clear that running is like running in the Ashlands. The entire business model is going down the drain, and the dividends that turn into profits are making the world a worse place. Kendall seems to realize that he already lives in the ruins and accepts that fact. He doesn’t get points for business skills, but he will do Get points for actually understanding his reality.

The primary idea that I hold in each section Success The show is about the toxic legacy of abuse and how it spills over from one family to the workplace and finally into the world. And many abused children’s nightmares come true in “The Practice”: Backed into a corner, Logan has to sit down with his kids (again, and I can’t stress this enough, at a karaoke joint) and try to apologize to them.

It starts with small things. He prevents them from getting on the helicopter so they are late for Connor’s rehearsal dinner. He then talks about family trusts and other business matters or meddling in Shiv’s divorce on Tom’s behalf. He’s not good at it, but he’s trying. He is not convincing, but Roman, who is starved for love, at least seems to want to believe him.

But in this episode, the abused child’s nightmare founders, which inevitably happens in real life. Logan has done a lot yet. Scary things When Roy’s brothers raise him, ignore Connor for years, or beat Roman as a child, it all starts to get too much. And those stilted apologies give way to what Logan wants to do: call the kids who they don’t care about, threatening to break up GoJo’s deal. Of course the apology was paper thin. What do you expect? But he still made the children sit and listen.

In an episode filled with amazing set pieces, Logan’s visit to ATN at the beginning of the episode might have been the best. On the floor like “Santa Claus as a hitman” and “Jaws, if all goes in.” Jaws It worked for Jaws,” says Greg. He tries to convince Tom and Syd to give Carrie the anchor job. And it shines in the dark, hovers over the sent staff An email. (God, Logan shouldn’t visit my workplace!)

Then everyone goes on a wildly incoherent spiel about how there’s a pirate, and they seem pretty advanced. Avast, I Hearts, Yo-Ho!

Connor needs someone around him when Willa seems to have dumped him less than 24 hours before the wedding, and he fits in with his siblings. He makes them take him to a bar where they drink “men who sweat from their hands and bleed from their hair.” Even there, the siblings want to talk about business — specifically, how to make a deal that could make him a lot of money.

So he drags them to karaoke, and when That’s what he said. Thanks to Logan’s arrival, which turns into more business talk, he leaves for the evening, heartbreakingly saying, “It’s better if Willa doesn’t come back, because I don’t need love. It’s like a superhero.”

Say what you will when Connor responds to his abusive parenting by completely shutting down his emotions – this is it. Survival strategy! And hey, Willa is there when he gets home. He doesn’t want you to love him because there’s money on the table. It is a reasonable substitute (see: “1. Trade”).

Literally no one in Connor’s family cares about the ceremony, and they prove it over and over again, including his own father’s decision to discuss the wedding date with Mattson. Good thing Connor grows up without love!

While Tom and Greg are heavily involved with Roy’s family drama in this episode, they spend most of the time in their own room trying to break up with Carrie as she doesn’t have what it takes to be an ATN anchor. Yes, they may be on the fringes, but when there’s a funny scene where Greg has a problem with how Keri’s arms look on TV, can this duo drop from ninth place? No.

(Also: Tom, taking Logan’s advice, boxes Shiv out of getting a divorce lawyer. Violent action!)

It’s a good thing Leonard Cohen’s legacy is safe, because I’m not sure Conor’s depressive interpretation of “The Famous Blue Rain” does the music genius any favors.

Shiv’s problem is that she can never take the win. After cutting her father’s incredible deal, she’s now listening to Sandy and Stevie about how Mattson can squeeze in more money, even though everyone who meets the guy seems to be saying, “Ugh, I don’t know…”

Maybe we’ll come to terms with GoJo and learn that Shiv was right, but one of the most consistent things about her character is that she just doesn’t want to be right. She wants to be. Very correct. She resembles her father in many ways, but shares a deep desire for him. One Everyone listens.

That’s why what you see right through him at Karaoke Summit is so much fun. When you say Logan It doesn’t. He knows everything, but he’s so powerful and rich that he can make whatever he wants come true. Be trueShe is absolutely right. She was able to understand that motivation because it was somewhere deep inside her.

(Bonus points: Sarah Snook has a strong Brian Cox impression.)

Notice to the New York City Tourism Board:

INT WAYSTAR-ROYCO BOARD – DAY

Logan Roy turned from the window overlooking the city and smiled. The camera pans to his face.

Logan: Come on, my friends. Come to this town – where the rats are as thick as skunks!

See, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and it’s amazing that I’ve never been wrong. But when I said last week that Kerry would rise through the ranks this season? I’m dead wrong. She is really bad at being a TV anchor and everyone loves to make fun of her. Too bad, Kerry!

This therapist told me that if you said something meaningful to someone you loved, they would follow it with a “but.” They were erasing everything that came before that word. I thought of Logan telling the kids, “I love you, but you’re not serious.”

Perhaps Logan loves his children dearly and his constant beatings at them is an attempt to prepare them for a world he thinks they are not difficult to face. It’s hard to hear what he said and not think I love them. More If they were somehow “serious people”.

But that’s it. If love is conditional, it’s not family if it’s hanging on a string in front of you. You’re either loved or not loved, and Roy’s children haven’t been loved for a long time. Is it any wonder that the family is so busy?

The number is 15, as an ATN employee finally admits. is not It is the same as the number 40. Of course, it is less than 40. Another sneaky business insight from Logan Roy!

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