Review: Succession, "Rehearsal" | Season 4, Episode 2
Featuring The Roy Family Singers
Siobhan, Kendall, Roman, and Connor are all seated at the 33-minute mark of “Rehearsal,” but Succession is doing some complex footwork. Dragged to an unassuming neighborhood bar by their sulking half-brother (abandoned by Willa at their rehearsal dinner, Conn is obsessively tracking his fiancé’s location on his phone—“I just think it’s a factory setting,” he transparently claims), the younger Roys are contemplating the next move in “Operation Piss Off Pops” when Roman’s phone lights up: It’s Logan, and he wants to talk. After a lightning round of accusations and iMessage forensics (“Feels warm,” Ken says of the tepid salutation “take care”), the conversation gracefully pivots into a moment of genuine empathy and understanding between Shiv and Rome. She tells her little brother that the guy he sent perfunctory birthday greetings to is the same one advising Tom on how to lock his soon to be ex-wife out of all the good divorce firms in New York. It’s brief, but some downward glances and Roman saying the words everyone wants to hear from Logan—“I’m sorry”—alter the temperature of the whole scene. There’s a beat, a little step-ball-change, and it’s back to contemplating Sandi and Stewy’s suggestion of spoiling the board vote on the GoJo deal in order to negotiate a higher asking price.
The technique is nothing new or novel, but it is quintessentially Succession. At play is the messy intertwining of Roy family business and the Roy family business, a facet of the show that complicates the corporate storytelling while simultaneously making it relatable to anyone who’s never had their company helicopter privileges revoked. It comes out in all the tests of loyalty the “rebel alliance” (Conn’s words) face throughout “Rehearsal,” but also in the pretty fucking cold fact that Logan scheduled the biggest meeting of his professional life on the same day as his eldest son’s wedding—and then he postpones that meeting to book a different one that will put him nowhere near the headline-grubbing patriotic burlesque of the Roy-Ferreyra nuptials. It’s stuff like this that makes you understand why Connor might sympathize with carnivorous plant life.