One of the great things aboutSuccessionis that, despite juggling plenty of plot lines, every episode can be concisely summed up,Friends-style, as “the one with…” The episode “Which Side Are You On?” is “The One with the Vote of No Confidence.” “Retired Janitors of Idaho” is “The One with the Shareholder Meeting.” “The Disruption” inSeason 3 is “The One withZiwe.“Successionmay tell a serialized story about an ultra-powerful family fighting to win a kiss from their dad, Logan (Brian Cox) (well, at least that’s how it was up until a few weeks ago), but every episode has an identity of its own. In a time when many seasons of prestige TV feel like very long movies with breaks every forty minutes, it’s heartening to see this sort of commitment to episodic storytelling.
There’s a certain type of episode, however, that consistently produces some ofSuccession’s best, most entertaining hours: what some fans affectionately call the Roy family’s “evil little field trips.” Every few episodes, some combination of the Roys and the Waystar Royco top brass will pile into their private jets and fly off to some obligation or another. Sometimes it’s for a private business meeting, such as in “Tern Haven” or “Kill List,” other times it’s a more public affair, like the Davos-esque summit in “Argestes” or the celebratory gala in “Dundee.” Still, other times, it’s limited to Waystar, as with the Los Angeles investment meeting in the recent “Living+” or the Hungarian forest retreat in “Hunting.” Whatever the reason for the excursion, these episodes are inevitably gripping, funny, and revealing, exploring the fraught dynamics of the Roy family and giving us many ofSuccession’s greatest moments.
Shiv Roy and Judy Gemstone: A Tale of Two Faildaughters
The Roy Siblings Struggle When Outside Their Comfort Zones
One ofSuccession’s central themes is the isolating nature of extreme wealth.The Roys are an immensely rich and powerful familywhose passing whims have a direct effect on the lives of millions, but they are so blinkered by their wealth and privilege that anything outside their sphere of influence may as well not exist. (Consider the cold, callous phrase Waystar used when regular people died in the cruise ship scandal: “no real person involved.”) What makes these evil little field trips so satisfying is that they force the Roys out of their bubble (at least a little bit), expanding our understanding of their world while also reinforcing how small and insular it really is.
“Forcing the Roys out of their bubble” is a pretty relative way of wording this (after all, they’re not going out to plant trees for Greenpeace), but it’s still fascinating to watch them adjust to new environments. “Tern Haven,” for instance, sees the Roy family travel to the Pierce family estate, owned by the liberal equivalents of the Roys. The tension between the brusque, new-money Roys and the preening, old-money Pierces is played for comedy at first, with plenty of cocktail hour barbs concerning useless PhDs and hairless felines (“penis cat,”Shiv (Sarah Snook) says with a grimace, as it brushes past her). Gradually, however, polite passive-aggression gives way to thinly-veiled contempt, with dinner growing so unbearable that Shiv ends up blurting out something shereallyshouldn’t have. After a season and a half of the Roys as the undisputed kings of the world, “Tern Haven” shows them interacting with business partners on equal footing, and the results speak volumes.
A couple of seasons later, “Kill List” sends the Roy siblings to the Norwegian compound of the eccentric Scandinavian billionaire Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) for a corporate retreat. The Roys are trying to put the finishing touches on a deal that their late father Logan set into motion, but they are immediately ill at ease in this new environment: all severe Nordic architecture and freakishly competent employees (who, hilariously, can be heard trash talkingNicholas Braun’s Greg in Swedish). Even though Gerri (J. Smith Cameron) tries to give a jingoistic pep talk on the plane ride over, Waystar is clearly out of their element, andShiv only barely manages to salvage the deal after Matsson(metaphorically) dog-walks her brothers up and down the negotiating table. When Matsson dismissively refers to the Roy siblings as “a tribute band,” it’s hard to disagree.
In ‘Succession,’ There Is No Escape
Those are only a few instances where the audience gets a taste of how the Roys are seen by other characters in the show. The Pierces may entertain offers from the Roys, but it’s clear that they view them as a bunch of fascist interlopers. “Lion in the Meadow” punctures Logan’s invincible mystique, showing that a hikearound the private island ofAdrien Brody’s shareholder characterJosh Aaronson leaves him on the verge of a heart attack. When the university in Logan’s Scottish hometown names their new journalism school after him, it sparks protests, both eloquent (“what’s next, the Jack the Ripper School of Female Medicine?” sneers Logan’s estranged brother) and clumsy (the absolute legend holding a cardboard sign simply reading “Roy C**t.”) The Roys have never been overly concerned with the opinions of others, but that’s because they rarely venture off of friendly turf, because, when they do, things can unravel very quickly.
Not that “friendly” turf is necessarilyfriendly. The Hungarian retreat may be an all-Waystar affair, but as every unfortunate member of Logan’s hunting party learns, that doesn’t mean he goes any easier on them. In a rustic wood-paneled room filled with taxidermized heads and lit like a Gothic horror movie, Logan grills every member of the top brass to see who was leaking to the press. He barks orders like a mad tyrant. He plays capricious games, rewarding Gerri for her honesty and punishing Greg for his. It all culminates in “Boar on the Floor,” a humiliating hazing ritual where the accused wrestle on the floor for a piece of sausage. It’s one of the darkest, cruelest moments in the entire show (also one of the funniest, because this isSuccession), and it makes perfect sense for the episode to be set in Hungary. It forces the characters into a foreboding mansion at the edge of a dark forest, far from home.
The forest is still beautiful, of course.Every location the Roys travel inSuccessionis beautiful: the Martha’s Vineyard-esque mansion in “Tern Haven,” the English castle that hosts Shiv’s wedding, the Tuscan countryside at the end of Season 3, the breathtaking mountain scenery in “Kill List.” Wherever their evil little field trips take them, they live at the absolute height of luxury, surrounded by exquisite beauty everywhere they look. And yet, not once do they experience anything resembling pleasure or wonder. It’s taken completely for granted, just another unimaginable luxury they understand as their birthright. Perhaps that’s what makes these trips so fascinating: they bring us joy, an emotion these characters can’t feel in any way that matters.
