Succession Season 4, Episode 8: Power Rankings

Shivy, Shiv, Shiv

This week on Succession, billionaires tear apart the fabric of our republic, Shiv is cracking, Tom is doing lines in the office, ATN crowns a king and Kendall pretends to be a good guy. 

The trio has been fracturing already and everything comes to a boil in this episode when their morals and allegiances are tested. Even though Logan is gone, his spirit is very much alive. “What would Logan/dad do?” is asked every episode. It’s especially ironic coming from Kendall who’s been trying to rip power away from his dad’s hands since Season 1. Maybe you should have let the man do his thing if you admired his operational abilities so much????

Even as the kids clearly want to imitate Logan, they immediately go prancing around the ATN floors – literally the ONE thing Logan allegedly held sacred, and they walked all over that legacy. 

Bonus points for the LaCroix team getting fantastic product placement. This show goes to great lengths to not show us any labels and then LaCroix swoops in with an entire scene. Even stealth wealth needs a bit of sponsorship.

UNRANKED BUT SLAYING: MENCKEN

#7: SHIV

• It’s very “all is lost” for Shiv – her siblings hate her, she’s on the outs with Tom, the Matsson deal is fucked, she really has no real position at Waystar Royco. I guess there’s nowhere to go but up!

• In true Shiv fashion, she completely ignores the stress that Tom might be under and plows ahead with her own agenda. What’s the best time to apologize to someone for calling someone “parochial and servile” and saying that they never deserved you? When that someone has 3 ringing phones in their hands and their name is on the line. 

• Shiv has that Cersei from Game of Thrones thing going on where she’s definitely smart, but she takes it too far and thinks of herself as this cunning master manipulator. With Greg, for example, she could have just paid him off like he asked. We saw that big ass apartment Shiv, we know you’ve got the cash! Instead, she just thinks of herself as this intimidating mini-Logan and gives Greg a ridiculous and clearly empty threat of kicking his ass. Someone needs to tell these people that THEY ARE NOT SCARY LIKE LOGAN.

• Although Shiv clearly sees herself as the most altruistic of her siblings, she shows that she’s also unwilling to let go of her claim to power. Note how she refuses to even try to convince Jimenez’s team to block the Gojo deal because it could cause her to lose the CEO job that she is delusional enough to believe Matsson has in the works for her. 

• But Shiv might not be totally done; apparently, she and Matsson have some evil numbers plan, although I have yet to see Shiv execute a single thing to perfection or even COMPLETION.

  • But what could Shiv and Matsson POSSIBLY have up their sleeves that would compensate for this episode’s loss? She sounded super angry and righteous on the phone at the end there, but that’s Shiv – all bark, no bite (just ask Greg!).

#6: MATSSON

• I’m still reeling from an abomination that was last episode’s gold jacket, so Matsson had little chance of being high up in the rankings this week. Fashion matters, people!

  • However, he does get points for calling Greg Gregory Peggory

• In an idiotic move, Matsson told Greg about his alliance with Shiv. Perhaps he felt like Greg was in his pocket, not knowing that Greg’s loyalty lies with the highest bidder (always). 

• He is obviously not central to the episode, but he clearly anticipates that dealing with Mencken will be hard. Plus, it’s been established that Mencken is going to block the deal, and with all the weird number cooking happening in India it appears that Matsson needs the deal like a lot.

• Matsson is sitting on a few big powder kegs: the fake user numbers in India and harassment of Ebba and one of them is seemingly about to blow up. 

• Him and Shiv also don’t actually really trust each other

#5: TOM

• I feel like, in the past few episodes, we’ve seen a lot of people who want to fill Logan’s shoes and be intimidating boss-type figures. Obviously, the three kids are all trying to be Logan, but here we see Tom try to be all big and bad as well, with mixed results — note how when he raises his voice with his colleague Pam, she just laughs (“long night in dress shoes?”). Y’all will NEVER be Logan!

  • We also never really see Tom interacting with lots of staff over whom he allegedly presides. No rousing speeches, no fists in the air. He is kind of a lurking presence and it doesn’t seem like he has the confidence and support of the employees.

• Having said all that, this marks the second week of Tom absolutely bodying Shiv in verbal battle (cocaine makes Tom mean, clearly). 

• Is there now room for Tom to get in good with Ken & Rome? A sort of enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend situation, is what I’m saying.

• By the end of the episode, it looks like Tom’s coming under fire for ATN prematurely calling the election – emphasizing the trend of regular(ish) people paying the consequences for the choices of billionaires.

• Succession writers really do a fantastic job of staying away from TV tropes. For instance, when Shiv finally drops the baby bomb on Tom, you don’t see him suddenly embracing her and crying. There is disbelief in his eyes that immediately turns into apprehension: is it one of her so-called tactics? Once again, Shiv deployed information incorrectly.