Logan Roy is back from the dead. Three weeks after Succession’s monstrous patriarch made his sensational, unexpected exit from the series, episode six (“Living+”) begins with Brian Cox’s menacing visage front and centre. He’s not risen from the grave, of course. It quickly becomes clear that we are actually watching a video that Logan recorded before his death, announcing the launch of a hellish-sounding new business venture, Living+. The video, which sons Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) are exhuming to launch the product themselves, offers nothing in the way of catharsis: the speech Logan reads is all corporate jargon and rote mission statements. (We do, at least, get one more delicious snapshot of Logan’s crocodilian personality, as he lashes out at instruction to be more upbeat – mirroring a recording-booth scene from season two in which Roman did similar.) In Succession, nothing is ever sacred, so it’s no surprise when Kendall has the video doctored to place inflated financial estimates in his father’s mouth, driving up the company share price.
Through deft sleight of hand, Succession has always excelled at selling us on the credibility of its world. We know, for instance, that real people do not speak like the characters on Succession – with Shakespearean pith, often stringing together whole conversations from nothing but highwire witticisms – or that the dysfunction of the real Murdoch family (one of the key inspirations for the Roys) does not have quite the same air of operatic farce. Succession takes reality and dials it up just enough to become compelling drama and indelible comedy. And yet, this latest episode, with its crass revivification of Logan Roy, is not remotely far-fetched. The scary thing about the fakery is just how real it feels.
