[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Succession, Season 4 Episode 6, “Living+.”]
They hopped off a plane near LAX with a dream and their dead dad’s cardigan: Succession has brought the action back to the West Coast this week, where this season’s adventures first began. Kendall, Roman, and Shiv are gearing up for a presentation to investors, which includes the introduction of one of the final projects their late father had a hand in, a retirement community known as Living+ that feels pulled out of an episode of Black Mirror.
Speaking of Logan, the episode opens with the closest we could probably get to a jump-scare in Succession; what simple fools we were to cheer and tweet gleefully that we would never see that man’s face again. Archival footage of Logan discussing Living+ against a green screen is such a jarring opening, and it’s not long before Past Logan is tearing into his “idiot kids.” Just like old times!
While Kendall and Roman end up energized about a potential “tech angle” for Living+, essentially insinuating that the community could someday guarantee nothing short of eternal life, Lukas Matsson is less than thrilled. No matter how glossy and IP-friendly they might be, retirement communities are old; they’re boring. They’re not scalable. He doesn’t like it, and is sure to tell Shiv as much, crossing from his private jet to hers on the tarmac barefoot like the absolute deranged person he is. The “girl on the inside” and “boy on the outside” are as anxiety-inducing as they are delicious for viewers; maybe Alexander Skarsgård truly can have chemistry with anyone, but seeing him verbally spar with Sarah Snook is a delight.
Elsewhere, Shiv and Tom, two super normal people who certainly have functional, healthy communication methods, are enjoying themselves perhaps more than ever. The reality is that psychosexual games are their love language, and this chapter is, oddly, the closest thing to Tom and Shiv’s version of love we’ve seen on screen: They seem more into each other than they did leading up to their own wedding.
Dancing around each other in a perverse game of cat and mouse is their honeymoon stage; please, please sound off if you or anyone you know are familiar with someone who has ever challenged their partner to a game of “bitey.” (There hasn’t ever really been a boring season of Succession, but these writers have been firing on all cylinders lately.)
Succession (HBO)
