Succession, S.3, Ep. 4: “Lion in the Meadow” Review
It’s been quite a season of revival for Adrien Brody. After a few years in which his public profile has been largely defined by frequent sharing of a couple of embarrassing old clips of kissing Halle Berry at the Oscars and doing a cringe Jamaican accent on Saturday Night Live, Brody has had two high-profile acting roles just this fall.
First, he appeared in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, as an unscrupulous art dealer. And now he’s on Succession as Josh, a wealthy investor in Waystar Royco who demands a joint meeting with Logan and Kendall.
You knew the father and son whose feud forms the main plot arc of the season would end up in the same room eventually, and that finally happens in the fourth episode. The gist is that Josh (Brody), an investor who owns 3 percent of Waystar, is demanding a meeting with both Roys, and is threatening to side with Stewie and Sandy in the still-ongoing proxy battle. His price? The Roys agree to reconcile, in such a way that Kendall agrees to back off his anti-Logan quest.
The prospect of Logan’s health problems has mostly been on the back burner since his near-death in the first season, but they return here, as Kendall shouts bitter invective at his father as he appears to suffer a heart attack.
In the end, the show of unity is for naught, as the Brody character reacts to the fighting and health episode by jumping off-board.
The episode’s other main plot is the continuing cracking up of Tom Wambsgans. He’s scouting out future prisons, can’t stand Shiv being his direct boss, and while he has some success convincing Greg to play ball (due to Greg’s fear of “goons and roughnecks”) these are not happy days for the son-in-law.
That plot also has the return of Mark Ravenhead, the Tucker Carlson-like, Nazi-adjacent TV news host who admitted that he’s read Mein Kampf “a couple of times.” He’s being asked to ratchet up the pressure on the president (who the Roys refer to as “The Raisin”) but resents being told what to do by management.
It’s a fascinating commentary on how exactly the dynamic works between ATN’s real-life counterpart, Fox News, and Republican administrations. Ravenhead, like Carlson in real life, appears more committed to certain ideological beliefs than to individual politicians, while someone like Sean Hannity is more of a straightforward partisan hack.
A quote from Shiv, meanwhile, fits with actual Fox News: “We don’t get embarrassed.”
Waystar notes:
It appears that the shareholder meeting that’s been hyped for close to two seasons will finally take place in the next episode. I don’t know that popular culture has produced an exciting shareholder meeting probably since the Teldar Paper scene in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, but I have high hopes.
– “Everything’s coming up fuck,” Logan says, and it’s a surprise he’s never said anything like that before.
- “The Beatles put out some of their best shit when they were suing each other,” Kendall says, which is true if you’re especially partial to “Let It Be” and “Abbey Road.”
– A surprisingly Jewish episode- Logan makes a crack about bagels to Josh, which Kendall interprets as anti-Semitism, while Tom speculates that he might end up incarcerated at Otisville, New York’s “Jewish Jail.”
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