Kendall certainly sounds sure of himself. She offers him vague assurances that she plans to start working him into the quarterly earning calls “as a signal,” though it seems fairly obvious that the newly empowered Gerri is in no hurry to cede anything to Roman, of all people. When he shows up at her new Waystar chief executive office, cracking his usual bad-boy jokes about how she chained herself “to a fire hydrant that spews out cultural insensitivity and sperms,” she quickly hustles him right back out the door.
She unconvincingly reminds Tom that she loves him - and he responds in kind, adding, “Good to know we don’t have an unbalanced love portfolio” - but she hesitates to tell him anything about who’s in line to become Waystar’s new “King Potato.” And when she finally does return to Logan, he promises to give her a fancy corporate title of “president” that can mean “whatever you want it to mean” … which, in Logan-speak, means it’ll probably be meaningless.Įven more pathetically, Roman gets a similar runaround from Gerri. Although Siobhan pretends to keep her husband in the loop, he has to hear from Greg that she has sneaked away to Kendall’s ex’s apartment. This week, Logan has trouble getting anyone from his family to check in - with the exception of his wife, Marcia (Hiam Abbass), who comes back in part because she hates his kids and would love to help destroy Ken.Īnd then there’s this: On their own, the younger Roys appear to be flailing. Last week, he was ordering his team to retain three “white shoe” law firms and to get a bunch of the other top attorneys tied up with conflicts of interest. Indeed, we see signs of Logan struggling throughout this episode.
He applies the most pressure to Shiv, getting under her skin by saying he’s doing what she failed to do as the Roys’ “token woman wonk woke snowflake.” “Right now, I’m the real you,” he needles.īut Kendall also makes a persuasive case that the only way for the Roy children to save Waystar and to hold onto to any kind of sociopolitical clout is to oust Logan, who is weak enough right now that a unified front from his sons and daughter could finish him. On the one hand, he tries to hold himself up as the family’s noble truth-teller, finally calling for an end to decades of privileged, exploitative, chauvinist “vibes” at Waystar.
His argument is a mix of the self-righteous and the pragmatic. Once Roman, Siobhan and (surprisingly) Connor are huddled up, Kendall makes his pitch, with buzzwords flying around the room. (Roman, feigning shock after Ken calls his siblings to her room: “He remembered his kid’s name.”) And the kids? Well, they actually do get together someplace unusual: the bedroom of Kendall’s daughter, Sophie. Logan is still in Sarajevo, fretting over his inability to get any of his progeny on the phone. The Roys don’t travel anywhere special or gather for any major event they’re just continuing in the same crisis mode they were in when the season began. “Mass in Time of War” feels more like the second part of last week’s installment than it does a typical “ Succession” episode. In this week’s episode, “Mass in Time of War,” he drops words like “epiphenomenal” and phrases like “let’s clean-slate this” and “detoxify our brand and we can go supersonic.” Even when his siblings ask how he’s doing, Ken answers with a studied earnestness, like a guest on “Power Lunch.” (“Certain amount of regret, but y’know … pretty cleansed.”) Now, in an ever-intensifying national spotlight, Ken is tossing around jargon with a frenzied, improvisational flair, like a jazz singer scatting in double-time.
Here’s a guy who essentially learned to communicate by listening to cable TV panelists, leadership conference speakers and the macho bluster of his venture capitalist college bros. There’s a mad genius to the way Kendall Roy uses language. (Check out a recap of the latest episode in Season 3 of Succession ) Season 3, Episode 2: ‘Mass in Time of War’