Review: Succession, "The Munsters" | Season 4, Episode 1

The final season begins with some Roy family traditions: A bad birthday and family backstabbing

Photo: Claudette Barius/HBO

Welcome to Episodic Medium’s weekly coverage of the fourth and final season of Succession, which debuted tonight on HBO. As always, the first review is available to all, but subsequent reviews—which will continue to post on Sundays—will only be available to paid subscribers. You can find out more on our About Page.

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The Roys really ought to give up on birthdays. Logan, the patriarch of the mega-wealthy family at the center of Succession, ended his 80th in a hospital. Upon turning 40, Kendall—the eldest child from Logan’s second marriage and the guy who would’ve taken over while pops was laid-up in the hospital were it not for a history of fuck-ups both in and out of his control—threw a self-aggrandizing Meow Wolf installation of a party. That one culminated in Ken frantically rummaging through a mountain of stranger’s gifts in hopes of finding one that actually mattered: The one his kids sent.

Honestly, Kendall, his sister Siobhan, and their brother Roman ought to stay away from any type of celebration whatsoever. The shindig for Logan’s 50th year with the family business, Waystar RoyCo, was the site of Ken’s utter debasement to the beats of his boy Squiggle and where his poor (in so many senses of the word) cousin Greg learned the inheritance he’d long been counting on was going to Greenpeace. Kendall killed somebody after Shiv’s wedding to rising Waystar, um, star Tom Wambsgans; attending their mother’s re-marriage at the end of season three, the siblings learn the secret weapon they thought they had to wrest control of Waystar from Logan had been written out of a divorce agreement and it was Tom—the Eli Cash to the Roys’ Tenenbaums—who made it happen. It can’t portend anything good that their half-brother, dictionary definition of “also-ran” Connor, spends some of Succession’s final season premiere discussing his own upcoming nuptials.

In appropriately full-circle fashion, “The Munsters” partially revolves around another birthday party in Logan’s honor. And it’s a sign of how much has changed within Succession’s relatively compressed timeline¹ how different this one is from the last: No Marcia orchestrating a surprise, no family other than Connor and Tom, a penthouse largely stocked by the people paid exorbitant amounts of money to tell the old man that he’s right. It still ends poorly, though, and there’s still the same, ungrateful Logan at its center: He spends the first part of the premiere skulking about, complaining under his breath, having no fun whatsoever.

It’s not too often that Logan is the POV character of Succession, but the man who once told the estranged wife who’s now “in Milan, shopping, forever”—according to Logan’s current “friend, assistant, and advisor,” Kerry—that he didn't want birthday revelers waiting for him at the elevato ris seeing and hearing exactly what we’re seeing and hearing in this premiere. People who don’t matter to him. Numbers with no value. Walls that seem to be closing in.

“Munsters,” he grumbles (and gives the episode a title). “Meet the fucking Munsters.” It’s a statement that raises the question: Has Logan Roy ever seen an episode of The Munsters—or The Flintstones, the show whose theme song he’s bastardizing? I’m guessing no, and not just because he’d probably tell the entire era of fanciful sitcoms they represent to “fuck off.” No, a working knowledge of the residents of 1313 Mockingbird Lane denotes some degree of joy in a person’s life—and Logan has no joy. He’s a miserable fuck, delighted only by the stature that life has granted him—and the same is true of his whole fucking family. 

That misery is a fuel, maneuvering Succession into its endgame. At times, the dialogue and machinations of “The Munsters” move with the hastiness of Cousin Greg foregoing a search for the Roy penthouse’s “armory/cigar humidor” in order to do some hand stuff in a guest bedroom. We get a new status quo for Ken, Shiv, and Rome as founders of a digital media venture they can’t help but describe in meaningless terms (“it’s like a private members club, but for everyone,” “the ethos of a nonprofit, but a path to crazy margins”), and it’s tossed overboard as soon as Logan’s renewed interest in Pierce Global Media crosses their radar. (Courtesy of Tom, who blew up his father-in-law’s birthday gift to himself because he couldn’t keep from rubbing his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s nose in the drink he got with Naomi Pierce.) After running through most of season two, the PGM plot thread is tied up in a volley of phone calls and closed-door meetings. Watching Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, and Kieran Culkin talk through their characters’ decision to go after Pierce, I was impressed anew at this cast’s ability to believably banter with and needle each other—even as I struggled to stay caught up.

But “The Munsters” paces itself, too. Amid the marathon of negotiations and the wood-paneled claustrophobia of the New York scenes, there are two stunning sequences of exhalation. First, Logan goes AWOL to stroll through the park and page through oversized menus with faithful bodyman Colin. Then, in the episode’s coda, Shiv and Tom take account of the day’s seismic activity, and are shaken to find their marriage amid the wreckage.

Photo: HBO

Logan and Colin’s conversation in the booth of whatever diner or deli they duck into is some of the best work Brian Cox has done all series. It’s a counter to the version of his performance that exists in memes (to which I’m obviously not immune—see a few paragraphs back), the one that roars and curses and demands boars to get on floors. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s playing vulnerable, but he is showing that Logan can be hurt. It hurts that the kids betrayed him. It hurts that they’re not at the party. It hurts that he could have more money than God and the ability to reshape the world in his image and still feel so dissatisfied. Even if Logan Roy doesn’t deserve our pity, Brian Cox finds a way to make the words “You’re my best pal”—delivered to Colin, of all people—sound pitiful.

Of course, the discussion that follows indicates how he could be brought to this lowly state. He’s a giant. Everyone else is a pygmy. Everything’s a market. It’s the type of nonsense I can imagine Logan Roy prattling on about in any other semi-private setting, but Colin’s reactions suggests there’s something different here. 

Maybe Logan’s thinking out loud. The tragicomedy of Roy Family Business Brain has already reared its head in “The Munsters”: Shiv and Tom discuss their trial separation in the terms of a hardball negotiation; Willa and Connor talk about injecting $100 million into Conn’s presidential campaign (and its longterm impact on his finances) like Lucille Bluth considering the price of a banana. Maybe these are the free-associative thoughts of an octogenarian who’s been insulated from the rest of the world for half a century, who doesn’t tweet or leave a comment to express his disapproval of what he sees on his favorite cable news channel—he can just call the head of ATN at home and let her know what he thinks about the guy reading the story headlined “Brawl at Arkansas gun show goes too far.”

Or maybe he says all that first because he’s too scared to talk about what’s really bothering him: What comes next? This is, of course, what Succession is all about—I mean, it’s right there in the title—and having Logan grapple with it so explicitly makes this both a standout for Cox and and one of the premiere’s clearest “this is the beginning of the end” road signs. Logan Roy doesn’t do endings. If he has one proven skill, it’s staving them off, through a stubborn refusal to die or retire. And here he is getting at the root of why, with the one guy he knows won’t tell anyone about it: Logan’s hunch is that nothing happens after we die, but he agrees with Colin that there’s no way of knowing for sure.

The second bit is important. There’s no message of carpe diem being imparted here, no “don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” This is a man expressing his desire to exert control until the day he dies. Pretty grim thoughts from a guy who was just crowing about selling the company, keeping ATN, and buying Pierce. But if you’re one to play guessing games about what’s going to happen in the next nine episodes, there’s probably enough foreshadowing in this exchange to keep you busy through the end of May. Me, I’m going to stay stuck on the choice not to break the editing rhythms of the scene and linger on Cox’s face after he asks his big existential question.

In a private moment, Logan allows himself a smidgen of honesty about his misery, balancing the clatter and bluffing of the wind-ups and pitches for the assembled members of the Pierce family that follows. It echoes in the premiere’s scene at the Roy-Wambsgans residence, where Mondale no longer recognizes Shiv (obvious enough from her entrance, don’t know why it needed reiterated in the dialogue) and Tom must answer to his and Greg’s between-season adoption of the “Disgusting Brothers” moniker (a very funny third beat to something Tom clearly hates, should be included in all Succession scripts moving forward). This is no spectacular implosion; their marriage was a Jenga tower, and the events of “All the Bells Say” and “The Munsters” simply remove the last blocks keeping it upright.

Snook and Matthew Macfadyen play it splendidly, the businesslike façade of their previous scenes giving way to venomous expressions of disappointment. When they get to the bedroom, the story’s in the eyes, where each actor is on the verge of tears but never quite tips over the edge—when Snook is in close-up after Tom asks if Shiv wants to stay, she’s giving every indication that she’d burst into tears if she turned around. It’s raw, effective stuff.

Photo: HBO

And to think, just a scene earlier, Shiv was the very picture of smug victory. In addition to a welcome visit with the Mirror Universe Roys—their flowy California fashions and sun-dappled sitting room juxtaposed with the suits and bunker-like atmosphere of Logan’s library—the Pierce bidding war is a narratively expedient path to new depths of Roy misery, and the next² stages of Succession conflict. Given Roman’s attachment to The Hundred and initial reluctance to go after Pierce, it’s bound to test the kids’ fragile peace. There’s also the matter of the money, which they don’t actually have yet, raising the stakes of the GoJo deal and creating a situation where aligning with their dad is key to completing their revenge plot against him.

Try to fight it as they may, the Roys still need each other. No one else can sympathize with their ordeals, know the right glib jokes to crack at the wrong times, or share in this tradition of family celebrations gone awry. Only the Roy children would receive a call from their dad on his birthday (rather than them calling him), in which the birthday boy’s greeting is “Congratulations on saying the biggest number, you fucking morons?”

So I could’ve been wrong earlier. Logan Roy might be intimately familiar with The Munsters. A family of monsters, living in a big house, bonded by a bizarre way of life that puts them at odds with polite society? Their schemes frequently backfire? One of them is significantly taller than the others? Subjects of an entertaining television show? Sounds pretty familiar to me.

Stray observations

• Hello, and welcome to coverage of the fourth (and final) season of Succession! I’m Erik Adams, and I’m chuffed (to borrow a phrase from Myles) to be a part of the Episodic Medium team, alongside so many of my old A.V. Club pals and writers whose work I’ve enjoyed elsewhere. Screeners willing, we’re aiming to have these recaps ready for you after East Coast broadcast every Sunday night from now until the end of May.

• No cold open this week, just straight into the theme sequence—and after a year-plus off the air, there’s no better way of announcing Succession’s return than crashing directly into those Nicholas Britell keys. New additions to the sequence that I caught: The control room chyron “China Hack Could See 40m Americans Entombed in Their Electric Cars,” the ATN building chyron and headline “Deep State Blunder: Classified Docs Displayed on NBA Jumbotron” and “Man with Bird Flu Can’t Stop Thinking of Ducks,” and what appears to be a home screen for the soon-to-be relaunched StarGo app. What other changes did y’all see?

• We catch a glimpse of the caterers working Logan’s birthday while Kerry is destroying Greg, and while I can’t imagine Party Down Catering ever booking a gig this prominent (regardless of what transpired on the most recent episode), it did make me want to see an episode of Party Down set at an event for a family of Roy-esque wealth and inner turmoil.

• All of the descriptions of The Hundred hit far too close to home for this digital media veteran: “Substack meets MasterClass meets The Economist meets The New Yorker,” “the made up company of dreams we were ready to pitch,” “high-calorie info snacks—info parcels or info snacks?”

• Greg’s plus-one, Bridget, seems like a perfect match for him: “Maybe we should go.” “Are you okay? What happened?” “Nothing. I just asked Logan for a selfie.”

• Greg reports back from apologizing to Logan for his “rummaging” session with Bridget: “So, he says he finds me disgusting and despicable, but he kind of smiled.”

• Greg getting continually dressed down by people who are shorter than him is always funny, but I’m going to give the honor of the week’s top visual gag to Karl meekly extending the nut dish to Logan before relaying the news of the kids’ Pierce bid, as if defeating hanger will shield him from Logan’s fury.

• Frank channeling Norm Macdonald at The Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget in his attempt at giving Logan “a drubbing”: “The thing about Logan is… he’s a tough old nut!”

1. Creator Jesse Armstrong confesses that he hasn’t paid too much attention to the fictional clock, but “there’s probably been a couple of years elapsed in story time” between seasons one and four.

2. Even if I hadn’t seen the first four episodes of the new season, with the way “The Munsters” (and Succession in general) moves, I wouldn’t be betting that this is the final conflict.