‘Succession’ Season 1, Episode 4 ‘Sad Sack Wasp Trap’ Recap: He’s Back [SPOILERS]

This evening’s episode of HBO’s Succession is packed with more drama and intense acting than the previous ones. The last chapter, titled “Lifeboats,” showed how Logan Roy (Brian Cox) told his son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) that it was a mistake to try and sell off the company to Stewy (Arian Moayed). On tonight’s episode, titled “Sad Sack Wasp Trap,” Logan’s power over Kendall strikes him hard that it seems very unforgivable.

The ‘Sad Sack Wasp Trap’

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During the RECNY, a charity event hosted by the Waystar/Royco and the Roy family, Logan and Kendall went head to head. The RECNY is a prestigious event to welcome investors and trade market corporates to an awarding and gathering ceremony. Connor Roy (Allan Ruck) took responsibility in manning the entire event. As Connor went through the program, he found out that Kendall was going to announce Logan’s retirement during his CEO speech. Connor then asked Logan if he knew about what Kendall was going to do, causing their father to get mad and do the address himself.

The previous episodes of Succession showed Logan battling through his comma while Kendall ran the company. But as Kendall strived to be more than what his father was, he always failed, stumbling into landmines. “Sad Sack Wasp Trap,” however, shows Logan cleaning up the mess that Kendall got himself into ever since taking over the CEO position. That’s why Logan decided to return and undo Kendall’s screwups.

Peter Kramer/HBO

Remember our theory about Greg (Nicholas Braun) from the previous recap? It finally came true, although a bit unexpectedly. With all that’s happening at the RECNY, Greg was the reason why Kendall had to announce Logan’s retirement. The Board of Trustees didn’t like Kendall as the new CEO of Waystar/Royco. That’s why Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) made a power play to use Greg in exposing Tom’s (Matthew Macfadyen) plan to reveal some secrets of the company. Greg also changed Kendall’s speech, because Gerri knew that by doing this, it would force Logan to come back as the CEO.

Why So Suspicious

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In every episode of Succession, Marcia (Hiam Abbass) always kept out of the limelight, but every move she does makes a significant impact to the narrative. As Logan’s wife and self-proclaimed “Keen,” Marcia has a few tricks up her sleeves. Since she is the only one that Logan shows kindness and loyalty to, Marcia seems to use this as an advantage to play strings with her husband. Every decision that Logan made seem to have come from Marcia’s prodding. Despite this, we still don’t know if Marcia is doing this for love or something else. Logan’s children also seem to see nothing wrong, but we’ll see once the next episodes come in.

Tom’s Virus

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Tom didn’t know what was coming as soon as he took over the Adventure Parks Department. The previous department head met with Tom beforehand to discuss matters off the record. Tom didn’t swallow the information accurately since it was something that Waystar/Royco’s Adventure Park Dept was keeping out from the public and possibly from the head company itself.  With Tom running the show now, any slip up would cost him his leverage as Shiv Roy’s (Sarah Snook) fiance and Logan’s soon to be Son-in-Law. With Tom’s failed press conference, it’s unclear what his next move would be.

Frank is Back

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In Succession’s pilot episode, titled “Celebration,” Logan fired Frank (Peter Friedman) as COO and replaced him with his other son, Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin). Tonight, Frank was re-introduced as Roman’s “guardian angel.” Of course, this all according to Logan’s wishes. Out of curiosity, Roman asked his dad about the sudden decision. All Logan could say is that Roman should learn more from Frank, signifying that he isn’t happy with Roman being the new COO.

‘Succession: Sad Sack Wasp Trap’ Overall Verdict

This evening’s dinner serving of HBO’s Succession took us all by storm. We finally got what we wanted—seeing Kendall and Logan indirectly have at it at each other’s throats. Although “Sad Sack Wasp Trap” focused on the event, it left a lot of characters out of the spotlight—which didn’t give balance to the whole episode itself. Still, it’s worth the anticipation since it gave us a heaping dose of drama and revelations.

Succession continues next Sunday, July 1st, with “I Went to Market” at 10/9c on HBO.