‘Succession’ Recap, Season 3, Episode 4: Meep-Meep

(Check out a recap of the latest episode in Season 3 of Succession)

Season 3, Episode 4: ‘Lion in the Meadow’

Last week’s punishingly bleak “Succession” episode was maybe the roughest since Season 2’s “Hunting” (a.k.a.“Boar on the Floor”). But as often happens in this series, this week’s episode pulls back a bit, bringing some much-needed comic relief alongside the ongoing melodrama. In “Lion in the Meadow,” the Roys take a break from scorching the Earth and get back to more subtle power plays, using schoolyard insults and small gestures of disrespect to needle each other. It’s all so oddly delightful.

The pettiness comes early and often. When Kendall has to join a Waystar conference call to strategize about the upcoming shareholders’ meeting, he uses an unprintable variation on “Little Lord Fauntleroy” as his sign-on (which is then repeated, hilariously, when he abruptly hangs up). Later, when he’s asked to talk with Logan briefly on a private airstrip tarmac, before they both meet up with a nervous Waystar investor, Kendall zooms off to get to the meeting first, leaving the message, “Tell Dad, ‘Meep-meep’ … It’s from ‘Road Runner.’” For the most part, that’s the level of the attacks and counterattacks this week.

The investor in question is Josh Aaronson (Adrien Brody), who owns about 4 percent of Waystar — a holding which, he complains, has lost 10 percent of its value since Kendall started giving news conferences. If Josh is going to back the Roys over Sandy and Stewy at the shareholders’ meeting, he needs to know how far this family feud will go. Does Kendall really want his father in jail? Does Logan really think his son is a mentally ill drug addict? How does this all end? Can the Roys maybe “close up the outrage shop”?

There’s another reason Josh invites Logan and Kendall to join him at his sprawling estate. He needs to know if they think of him as a smart guy who knows what to do with his money — and is thus owed some respect — or as some speculator who got lucky, and who only has value because of what he can buy. Is he really an important part of their business? Is he a part of this Waystar family?

The biggest chunk of this episode features these three guys putting on a show for each other. Josh tries to tease a little honesty out of the Roys, while Logan and Kendall pretend they’re still a loving family running a viable business, and wielding acumen no outsider can match. What makes these scenes so absorbing is that it’s not too hard to imagine Kendall, and maybe even Logan, wanting to believe the fantasy they’re selling. As they sit side by side in their matching black baseball caps — with Logan saying he can still see his son in charge of Waystar someday, and Kendall lovingly calling his old man “geezer” — they almost seem to be playing roles they wish were real.

It doesn’t last. The first few times Josh steps away, the Roys maintain stony silence. Later, as they walk back to the main house through some exhaustingly bumpy hills, Josh leaves the two behind and they start making threats, each insisting the other is playing with a weak hand.