Succession Review: Hunting (Season 2 Episode 3)

The rich eat the less rich on Succession Season 2 Episode 3, “Hunting,” as Logan Roy looks to make a grudge a revenge purchase.

It’s an age of reckoning on the episode, as everyone is smoking each other out to try and find leverage to elevate themselves when really, the best move is to work as a team. But this show’s characters are incapable of that, using other’s weakness as a form of currency.

None know this more than Kendall and Roman.

Kendall’s turn on Roman is three episodes worth of revenge: he’s been waiting for his moment to strike. It’s a pretty harsh blow, leaving Roman close to the outside, if not fully. Gerri appears to be putting all of her stock into him, though, taking on this strange motherly role to boost him up. She’s one to play sides, but with Roman she has this extra level of care she places on him.

The trip itself, a team building exercise, is a level of torture and airing of grievances that would put Festivus to shame.

There is a level of unfair gamesmanship at play throughout the trip, through the way the boars are directed single-file into a firing squad, and the dinner scene becoming its own form of firing squad of humiliation and truth-telling. The episode is all about taking the easy shots and taking the fun out of the attack, as punching down in all its forms leaves no one winning.

It’s the outsiders that turn out to be the most human after all, Tom and Greg having each other’s back. The “boar on the floor” experiment leaves them as almost dehumanized by the rich, and it’s a sobering moment to show who Logan considers on the level and who is expendable.

The whole episode is an extension of this, as Tom continuously sees himself in a diminished capacity. Shiv even calls him her “meat puppet” at one point, debasing her own husband to simply being a pawn for her own efforts. It’s as though anyone who isn’t born into the family is instantly disposable, even when married into it.

Shiv, too, finds herself still as an outsider, despite the offer to run it all. It’s not until the end of the episode where she’s brought in fully; but her impulsive choices still come out, despite who it may damage or hurt along the way (mainly Tom). Their embrace at the end of the episode is chilly; there’s a loss between them, the promise of equality on the team likely too late.

Logan’s reign of terror appears to be purely out of spite at this point, righting perceived wrongs over the course of his life. The Pierce deal is a delicate maneuver where Logan needs everyone on the same page; clearly, that’s not happening. But it’s even spoken as a revenge purchase to upset his brother Ewan. $20 billion is quite the revenge purchase.

It’s hard to tell anymore if Logan wants to hurt people for good reason, or just to do so while he still has the chance. His anger in Roman for trying to push the deal himself, and immediately jumping on Kendall as the rat for the biography, shows him as vindictive toward his own sons; though, to be fair, he apologizes to Kendall fairly quickly once he realizes he’s touched a nerve.

For Succession Season 2 Episode 3, “Hunting,” it comes down to standing: you’re either a Roy, or you aren’t. Standing up to the boss is a family affair, best left to blood only, and all else will perish in the process. The world of Succession is one of mania and punishment, and only the duplicitous will survive.

Some stray thoughts on the episode:

• Cousin Greg watch: While Tom may be his buddy (for now), it’s impressive how cordial and attuned to pre-meetings jargon Greg appears when meeting the biographer. He doesn’t know about off-the-record, though, which proves his hilarious undoing.

 

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Succession airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.

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