Season 4, Episode 8: ‘America Decides’
The day earlier than Logan Roy died, he delivered a fiery name to arms to his ATN workers, letting them know what he anticipated from the community going ahead. The speech was an angrier variation of the populist spiel he had given many instances earlier than, wherein he insisted that the information ought to all the time be frank and unpretentious. He needed his anchors to inform their viewers “truthful” issues they’d by no means heard anybody say earlier than on tv. He needed ATN to be, in a phrase, “spicy.”
All through this week’s action-packed, nerve-shredding episode of “Succession,” Logan’s youngsters argue so much about what the previous man would need them to do, because the presidential race between the Republican Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk) and the Democrat Daniel Jimenez (Elliot Villar) comes right down to a few battleground states. The large sticking level is Milwaukee, the place a fireplace at a vote-counting facility has destroyed sufficient ballots to tilt Wisconsin from blue to pink.
How would Logan have dealt with this? Would he have maintained the coverage of “no brass on the battlefield” and left all of ATN’s messaging to the Choice Desk data-nerds? Or would he have seized the chance supplied by Mencken to Roman, to form the narrative such that the Mencken camp (and by extension the Roys) are the evening’s large winners?
To ask what Logan would do, although, is to overlook the actual crux of the difficulty. It was clear from Logan’s defenses of ATN that he didn’t care whether or not his community broadcast the details. He most popular “the reality” — which has a extra versatile definition, relying on who’s doing the telling.
On this election evening, up in ATN’s govt workplaces, there are two competing truths, represented by the Jimenez supporter Shiv and the Mencken backer Roman. Each time Shiv tries to show the dialog to issues like Menckenite obstructionists in “victory vans,” Roman shouts, “False flag!” and rebrands the ominous autos as “enjoyable buses.” The Roys are at an deadlock.
Roman has a determined benefit, on condition that ATN already has what Tom calls a “distinctive perspective” on the information. Whereas the opposite networks are suggesting that Mencken goons could have burned the Milwaukee votes, ATN floats theories like “electrical failure.” (Roman would favor to go along with “Antifa fireplace bombing.”) At one level, ATN’s Tucker Carlson-like anchor Mark Ravenhead (Zack Robidas) delivers a rant in the course of the community’s purportedly impartial protection, attacking leftists for making an attempt to show the fireplace to their political benefit.
Roman additionally has Kendall and Tom on his facet, to a level. Kendall is hesitant as a result of he’s no Mencken fan. When he mentions to Roman that he fears what a Mencken administration would possibly imply for his adopted daughter, Sophie, his brother mocks him for caring in regards to the beliefs of American pluralism. Roman compares their entire argument to once they have been youngsters, when Kendall would play the sober-minded large brother with a view to get rooster for dinner, whereas the whinier Roman needed steak.
Kendall asks, “As a result of we had a lot rooster whenever you have been a child, we now have to elect a fascist?” And though he’s being facetious, these sorts of lingering slights are what guides the decision-making this evening.
As for Tom, he’s underneath stress to quiet his critics by delivering large scores for ATN’s election protection. To get there, he endures glitchy touch-screens and a gentle stream of Roys getting into the newsroom’s forbidden areas. Tom stays inclined to facet with Roman, maybe as a result of that places him at odds with Shiv, whom he has not forgiven for his or her vicious argument on the tailgate occasion. Even when she tries to win him again by lastly telling him that she is pregnant together with his baby, he stings her by asking if she is mendacity, as one other “tactic.”
Shiv has a tough time general on election evening. Because the night nightmarishly shifts Mencken’s manner, she has a heart-to-heart with Kendall — in a mirrored image of the touching Season 2 scene wherein he confided to her that he would by no means be Logan’s option to run the corporate. Right here, he listens to Shiv’s argument that ATN may sluggish the Mencken momentum. Their Choice Desk guru, Darwin (Adam Godley), is aware of from historic knowledge and exit polling the place the Milwaukee votes would have gone. They may put Darwin on digicam and let him clarify why ATN gained’t mission a winner in Wisconsin.
However two issues get in the way in which. The primary is that Kendall actually desires the following president to kill the GoJo deal, which Roman insists Mencken will do. So Kendall asks Shiv to take yet another shot at persuading her ex-lover Nate to get Jimenez to make that very same promise. As an alternative, she merely pretends to make the decision after which lies to Kendall, saying that the Jimenez individuals are open to contemplating his proposal. This units up the second obstacle: when Kendall calls Nate to iterate extra clearly what Shiv claims to have stated.
There may be some phenomenal staging on this episode, numerous which includes folks passing telephones forwards and backwards — and at one level even holding one cellphone as much as one other in order that the folks on the traces can converse to one another. However the perfect cellphone sequence is Kendall’s name to Nate, which performs out principally unheard on the opposite facet of one in all ATN’s monumental workplace home windows, as Shiv seems on with dread. After Kendall will get the phrase from Nate that Shiv by no means known as him, he walks over to speak to Greg, who Shiv is aware of is conscious of her consultations with Matsson.
Kendall, feeling betrayed by the sibling he trusts most, spits some icy phrases in Shiv’s route after which tells Tom to make the decision for Mencken. ATN actually is about to assist elevate an authoritarian to America’s strongest public workplace as a result of one spoiled brother is in a snit.
Though this episode is extremely entertaining, it does minimize uncomfortably nearer to real-world politics than is typical for “Succession.” This present all the time options characters and concepts impressed by actual political figures, however the creator Jesse Armstrong makes use of these primarily because the backdrop to the Roys’ household drama — and as a manner of satirizing usually the blinded vanity of the highly effective. Right here although, the way in which the election performs out is a lot like the particular circumstances of 2016 and 2020 that it’d fire up unhealthy reminiscences for anybody who sweated and fretted by these nights.
That’s OK, although as a result of whereas Roman could “sarcastically” make racist feedback within the newsroom and will guarantee Shiv that “nothing occurs” when horrible folks take energy, Armstrong is displaying right here that the pettiness of the Roys and their ilk does have repercussions. Every part for this household is about banking a win within the second, no matter whether or not it’d later flip right into a loss. That’s what their father taught them: Take what you’ll be able to, when you’ll be able to, and let another person clear up after.
In order the night ends — with ATN having known as Wisconsin and the presidency for Mencken, with out having let Darwin clarify that that is all simply “pending” — Roman sums up what occurred in phrases Logan Roy would have understood.
“We simply made an evening of fine TV.”
Due diligence
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Tom has a foul election evening, too, ending with Greg handing him his cellphone and saying, “Loads of crucial folks need to scream at you.” It is a nice episode although for followers of the sicko Tom-Greg dynamic. Not keen to entrust the “Gregging” he must anybody aside from Greg, Tom retains his lanky lackey shut at hand, counting on him for every part from a fast bump of cocaine (Tom: “This isn’t a factor. It’s not getting into a e-book.”) to double-shot coffees. Tom lays out a doomsday situation wherein Greg fails to maintain him from getting drowsy, Tom miscalls the leads to Colorado, China invades Taiwan, the world blows up and “We’re again to amoeba.”
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One in every of Tom’s non-Greg assistants makes the error of bringing bodega sushi into the workplace, which Tom nixes (“Tonight my digestive system is principally a part of the Structure!”) however Greg sloppily eats, finally resulting in a stray smear of Wasabi ending up in Darwin’s eyes. Greg makes issues worse by pouring lemon La Croix onto the affected space. (“It’s not that lemony!” he insists.) True to Tom’s dire warnings, it’s whereas Darwin is briefly incapacitated by foodstuffs that the Roys begin making the choice to name the election for Mencken.
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As soon as Connor learns he misplaced Kentucky (“Alas Kentucky, Willa … alas vainness”), he scrambles to appease Mencken, providing to “concede in his route.” So we get the fantastic spectacle of Connor delivering a peppery kiss-off speech in entrance of an indication bearing his marketing campaign slogan: “Sufficient Already!”
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Simply because ATN declared Mencken the winner doesn’t imply the election is over. The mess in Milwaukee must be resolved; and it may all finish with Wisconsin flipping to Jimenez. In different phrases: As soon as once more on “Succession,” a giant deal stays unclosed.
