A question that torments many Succession the fans, that’s it: why do I feel bad for these people when, in real life, I would absolutely hate them?

Tonight’s blue hour suggests the answer: because failed children are always children, unable to tear themselves away from the toxic influence of their parents. The show made the point at the end of last week’s episode, with Kendall literally swaddled in a blanket after her birthday party. (His girlfriend accepts the role of surrogate, probably because she knows what it’s like to be part of a family like the Roys.) Their vulnerabilities cannot be extracted from their malicious acts but are part of it. of a vicious cycle of abuse that the Roy Children absorb, mostly from Logan, and lash out at each other. Or whoever is closest to them. Or a nation of millions.

Maybe the only way the show could get us to turn on these characters is to allow them to enjoy their wealth, and if a luxury wedding weekend in the Tuscan sun makes them all so miserable, it’s safe to say. to predict that this will not happen soon. Mingling in Italy with the European super-elite – you couldn’t throw a cannoli on the pitch without hitting a Countess in the head – the Roys flew in to celebrate the union of Caroline Collingwood, Logan’s second wife, and of a smiling simp named Peter, whose holdings include a bankrupt salmon smoking business and a host of low cost retirement homes. (On the latter, Roman reports that they trick the residents into “pouring applesauce down their throats and telling them they’ve had a four-course dinner.”) No one thinks marriage is a big deal. loving bond, including Caroline herself, but she is Kendall, Shiv, and Roman’s mother, so the presence of the entire Waystar family is mandatory.

Written by series creator Jesse Armstrong, “Chiantishire” has unforgettable moments for the four Roy siblings who are so brutal that Connor’s excruciating and still unanswered proposal to Willa is by far the least destructive of all. souls. So let’s start with this: Connor always sticks to his one percent number, and that’s at least enough to get the attention of Politics, who asks about Willa’s story for an article they are writing about him. Neither Connor nor Willa want the country to know that she was a call girl who drifted into a relationship with him after he offered to fund her theatrical ambitions. Connor’s solution is to change the conversation by asking for his hand in marriage – like a loveless one. A pretty woman, basically – and so he kneels down at the villa reception and doesn’t get the response he strangely expects. Maybe he felt emboldened by Willa who yelled at Comfry on his behalf last week, but in reality that moment was more for her to feel his power.

Rightly, it’s Caroline’s three children who are hit the hardest, and it’s almost a draw to determine who does the worst: is it Kendall, who tries and fails to collect the offer. gift that spoiled his 40th birthday? Or is it Shiv, who engages Caroline in a candid conversation about motherhood? What about Roman, whose dreams as master of the universe crumble, thanks to a shaky acquisition deal and a hastily texted cock photo?

If you ask me, Kendall understands the worst. Kendall always gets the worst. A long and cursed campaign to oust his father from the throne did not end in a dramatic confrontation but in something worse: a dropout. Ultimately, Logan had access to all the levers of power and Kendall did not. The worst thing that happened to Logan was a few uncertain days at a hotel in Sarajevo airport, where he needed time to muster his forces and strategize. While Kendall couldn’t even deliver documents that might shake a Tory-held DOJ from its slumber, Logan crushed the investigation so effectively that it destroyed the president’s political career as a side effect. Kendall’s only gesture is therefore to wave the white flag, to accept her father’s proposal to “take it in and fuck himself” and face an uncertain future in exile. And daddy rejects him coldly.

Logan probably never intended to honor his gift. It wouldn’t be normal for him to categorically reject any of his children, including Kendall, who hasn’t spent much time outside the inner circle even after leading a “no confidence” vote and pushing the most rival. Logan’s relentlessness in a corporate takeover. He is a family man, after all, who always seeks the advice of children and pits them against each other for his sick perplexity. For Kendall, however, the cruise mess was an opportunity to prove to himself and the world that he was better than his father – not the monster who turns “black bile into silver dollars”, but the whistleblower. heroically exposing the wrongdoing in the company. But, of course, he was aware of the wrongdoing and black bile (“You just noticed it, did you do it?”), And, respectively, helped cover it up and spread it. . Logan bristles so much that Kendall is a “good guy” that he’s playing his trump card, the accident from the last marriage he covered up for a drugged Kendall. And he’s right, except for one small detail: Kendall is capable of making people feel guilty.

As Kendall and Logan have a dinner that doesn’t last after uneaten appetizers, Shiv and Caroline meet to drink wine and trade insults, but it doesn’t take long before this interaction leaves scars too. . “Maybe I was a bit of an uneven mother,” says Caroline. “But you were a shit girl.” Caroline is stuck on Shiv’s decision to choose her father over her in the custody dispute (“I’ll have the carbonara and daddy”) and doesn’t buy her excuse that she was just a child. at the time. At this point in their conversation, Shiv can still handle her sarcastic smile because she has a habit of playing rough. But the next line gets it: “The truth is, I probably never should have had kids,” Caroline says. “You made the right decision. Some people just aren’t cut out to be mothers.

Shiv’s realization that she is becoming his mother seriously shakes her. His lack of interest in Tom as a partner in their marriage, let alone a partner in parenthood, had been glaring as his supposed prison term approached, when he wanted a baby to anchor him in their. future together. When she comes back to him that night, raving about wanting a child and winning the fight for the company, Tom is elated at the attention. He’s less thrilled that the conversation on Shiv’s pillow – which can’t be fully rested at Caroline’s feet – begins with, “You’re not good enough for me.” I’m far from your fucking league. It just got worse and worse from there.

And finally, there is Roman, whose disgrace was as hasty as it was inevitable. His overconfidence is a subtle issue as a big board meeting draws near, when Sandi Furness inquires about Shiv’s absence and Roman tells him, “It’s just a circle. restricted “, not respecting the fact that Sandi owes her seat on Shiv’s board of directors. . But bigger hiccups are to come, starting with his role as warlord Lukas Matsson, who has always been fishy but gets more fishy when Matsson appears to be pulling out of Waystar’s acquisition of his company and suggests a merger instead. ‘equal. (Shades of AOL Time Warner, which turned out to be awesome!) Roman stumbles upon a bit of luck when Logan reveals a surprising openness to the idea, but in his celebratory heat, a cock shot meant for Gerri ends up on Logan’s phone instead.

Logan is apoplectic. Thank Brian Cox for digging deep into the rhetorical bag of the thunderous “ROMAN!” Which practically shakes the hotel floor. Roman is again reduced to a child. Every important person in the business knows he’s having trouble with Dad, and all the gooey deals he made to make Logan happy are reduced to ashes between his fingers. He’s a “sick” now, a “laughing stock”. In his omniscience, Logan has probably been aware of his son’s strange sexual peccadilloes for some time, but now that they have become a corporate affair he must put a stop to them.

But Roman, like Kendall and Shiv, can’t stop anything. This is who he is. And that’s what they are. And it was the architects who built them.

• Logan looking into the boardroom while on recusal during the cruise investigation, draws a very funny line from Stewy (“I feel like shitting at the Guggenheim, all of you”), but it reminded me most of the meme where Guy Fieri looks out the window.

• Roman celebrating his status as Child # 1 by performing victory tricks around Shiv gets so mean that even she finds it particularly off-putting. (“What were you doing? Brunching with other girlboss puppet presidents?”)

• Assuming Connor has met Pope John Paul II, who is much more of a “fat pop” than Pope Francis.

• Logan is not the first to bring up the drowning incident near Shiv’s wedding. Comfry informs Kendall that a podcast tells stories about the Roy family from different angles, including the deceased caterer. Put a big pin in there.

• “Do you want to make me the happiest man and the most bulletproof candidate in the world?” “

• Remember that our own Kathryn VanArendonk wrote an article on “The unbearable sadness of Tom Wambsgans” before this episode was released to the press. His devastating conversation the next day with Shiv about their “spicy” pillow talk surely belongs to Tom’s sad record.

• Logan forcing his grandson to try mozzarella before chasing him is a hollow moment before you even remember that this is the same grandson, Iverson, whom he hit with a can of sauce with cranberries on Thanksgiving the first season.