• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, April 24, 2023

Barbara Lippert, who formerly entertained MediaPost readers with her thoughtful, witty recaps of the AMC show "Mad Men," is back to recap the last seven episodes of HBO's "Succession." The show is "ostensibly about wealth, but I became obsessed once it hit me that it's more about generational trauma," she says. Here's her take on Season Four's fifth episode:

Last week’s episode was all about interiority, a drawing-room play in which the writers turned Logan’s post-death apartment into a sealed game of Clue. (Frank in the library with a paper jotting?)

Whereas this week’s “Kill List” soars into the wild blue yonder, back to billionaire-power travel at its most testosteronal.

It’s only day one after the wake, and Logan is not yet buried. He died traveling to close the deal with Go-Jo, which is also in limbo.

It’s rude timing to be sure, but to finalize matters, Mattson demands that the whole Roy tribe drop everything and show up at his corporate mountain retreat in Norway.

They go, in a swarm of black SUVS, to de corporate plane. There’s an immediate joke showing Frank snapping on his compression socks so as not to drop like Logan.

With the added pressure of deal-making without their dad, this promises to be brutal. In the second season, when the group-visited Nan Pierce’s ultra-WASPy compound “Tern Haven,” they came off as a bunch of uneducated lunatics and vulgarians.

Now, the Roy Boys seem equally outflanked by the hoodie-wearing tech giant and coked-up poker monster Mattson, who laughs, along with the other giant Swedes at his side, at the size of the Roy party -- even though they’d been told to bring “everybody” to test “cultural compatibility.”

Indeed, though they find themselves on a Norwegian mountaintop in one of the most breathtaking places on earth, they're not exactly teaching the world to sing.

Kendall is scared and spiraling, clutching at his power moves. He complains that his gravity-defying room, a brilliantly architected glass cube attached to the side of an Alp, is “small.” Roman, who has recently shown so much growth, is “dead,” as he puts it -- so depressed that he’s refraining from making genitalia-based jokes. But the otherwise tossed-aside Shiv seems to be warming to her own competence.

Meanwhile, Connor stays back in New York City, fielding the funeral arrangements at Frank E. Campbell (the famous death chapel to the stars and celebrity mobsters).  He’s worried about being blamed for making a mistake, and shares that Marcia wants her warrior husband buried in a kilt, like a “Bay City Roller.”

At one point, Connor sends the brothers, who are in a cable car, a photo of Logan’s freshly embalmed body. Kendall demurs, but Roman wants to see it. The image seems to destroy him.

Obviously, even without prickly Papa’s presence, the kids are still attached.

At their opening meeting with Mattson, he pulls out a wild card: he also wants ATN, the news division, and will pay a premium for it. Ken and Roman are stunned. They “need to take a beat.” Shiv and the elders all know it’s a great deal and tell them to take it. (Shiv calls the news division a “toxic asset” because the fascistic soon-to-be President Jeryd Mencken has reportedly been calling in to its morning meetings.)

Mr. Go-Jo is smarter than the Roys, manipulative and undermining in the same contemptuous way as Logan was. “I preferred doing this with your dad,” he tells them. “I mean, he was a prick, but at least he knew what he wanted… I think he’d be embarrassed if he saw you now.” 

The e-word is triggering, and because they are outraged, the sons perversely decide to tank the deal. They don’t know that they’re projecting, reacting to a lifetime of Logan put-downs.

Instead, Roman, the poignant loyalist, thinks he is fighting for the “honor” of his father. (What honor?)

They later meet on a mountain (astoundingly angled shots of blue skies and cable cars go here) and the cinematography and music are lush. To mark his territory even more primitively, Mattson takes a pee off the side of a cliff. Roman chases him screaming, calling him an "inhuman fucking dog man... We’re not fucking selling to you… I fucking hate you!”  (He should win an Emmy for that vein-popping acting triumph.)

Though his brother lost it, Ken is right there with him, saying that they can keep Waystar and run it themselves, since they’re already doing so well. (After one day.)

I felt for Roman, but behaving this impetuously and emotionally in a negotiation is exactly why Logan said they weren’t “serious people.”

This retreat is full of male musk, including pointed shots of pigs roasting on spits outside. The pigs inside include tech master Mattson, who asks Shiv if he will be sued if he hugs her. His not-so-charming mastodon qualities continue with introducing her to Ebba, his head of comms, as an “estrogen air freshener” who “keeps things smelling clean at Go-Jo.“

Shiv plays it cool -- she’s on a mission to get her own connection going. Mattson invites her into a room; he wants to get a read on the deal, her brothers, and Shiv’s “husband situation.”  Then he tells her about the bizarre “pickle” he’s in with a woman he was seeing. (Turns out it’s Ebba.) When it ended, he sent her half a liter of his blood in a frozen brick, “as a joke.” And then he kept sending blood bricks.

Shiv responds with good advice wrapped in just the right amount of sarcasm, and also seems to be able to handle cocaine collegially while never inhaling. “I like you. You’re cool… You can take a joke,” he tells her. “Like your dad.” She’s thrilled.

Later, Shiv and Tom get into their George and Martha act, right out of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” sparring cruelly. But in the end, she saves him from the Kill List, and asks him if he wants to go to dinner.

Mattson appears to have taken all Shiv’s advice, including keeping Gerri and Karolina off the KL. Back on the plane, everyone’s tense, until Frank receives a call from Mattson. He still wants everything, including ATN, and is willing to offer $192 a share -- way higher than what anyone expected.

And the whole town celebrates, except for Ken and Romulus, who look angry and dejected. Mattson asks Shiv to take a photo of them. She complies.

Does Mattson have something evil up his sleeve?

With her new power, will Shiv shiv some playas?

I didn’t miss Logan in this episode, because he was there anyway.

See you with the Rollers at the funeral.