Your father never saw anything he loved that he didn't want to kick it just to see if it would still come back.

Caroline to Shiv, Chiantishire

Today I saw someone refer to Tom as Shiv's lapdog, and that's when it really clicked: kicking the dog to see if he comes back is what Shiv's been emulating with Tom all along. It was after Caroline pointed out to Shiv how her own father treats her that she tried to reclaim her power by degrading Tom with that infamous knife twist in the gut: "you’re not good enough for me. That’s why you want me. That’s why you love me. Even though I don’t love you. But you want me anyway.” Shiv's always taken it for granted that Tom would come crawling back.

But when Tom calls Shiv at the beginning of last night’s episode to give her a “heads up” about Naomi rumors, she suddenly feels powerlessness in the one relationship where she has wielded her blunt power with the most ruthless certitude. I think a big reason Sarah Snook is getting Emmys buzz is that we see all this hit her and play across her face in real time, in close-ups. Even more than pain, we see shock, disbelief, fear in her eyes. Because even with the trial separation, it's never occurred to Shiv once that she won't have a faithful dog to come home to at the end of the day, waiting in the dark just like poor Mondale in his pen. In a sick sense, it must kill her that she can't keep and hurt people the same way her father keeps and hurts people--the way he hurt her.

(Side note: for all the miserable toxicity and abuse of this relationship, it's an enormous credit to the writers, Macfadyen, and Snook that I felt devastated right along with them when they collapsed back on the bed and held hands with tears in their eyes.)

Hosts of the Prestige TV podcast have floated the idea that maybe the real story of this show isn’t the central King Lear tale of succession, but rather the story of the people in proximity to that world. The Toms and the Gregs; the aspiring bottom-of-the-toppers. There IS another line of succession in this show: the one between all the kicked dogs surrounding the Roys and Waystar-Royco. The bullied usually turn and bully the next shmuck down the ladder. Kendall and Shiv are acting out of vengeance for the kicks they’ve taken. Shiv acts it out on Tom. (Roman joined rank with the siblings, and he bears the scars of abuse more visibly than any other character; it’s a huge question mark whether he can hold while Logan beckons him back with an “I need you.”) Kendall made a mistake kicking Greg and lost a bumbling but wily ally with that miscalculation. Greg and Tom seem to have a more equitable relationship for now, but even Greg kicked Comfrey to the curb the second he found an attractive Italian woman with inherited wealth.

Even with Tom home for the night at the end of this episode, Mondale is the unlucky remainder of his nuclear family's little division problem. Sure, they're shitty dog owners, but Mondale is also forgotten according to the governing math of Succession’s world: there always has to be a remainder, an odd man out. Poor Connor will probably be waiting in his little exercise pen for someone to notice him forever.

Apart from Connor, the only guests at Logan’s mirthless little birthday party are people he pays to be around him, or people he’s kicked and discarded multiple times but then dragged back in (hi, Frank). He’s so alienated himself from all his kicked dogs—family, friends, colleagues—that he decides Colin the bodyguard is his “best pal.” Is that just a sad miscalculation, or a fatal one?

Where do you think we ultimately end up with all the characters motivated to act wholly or partially in response to the kicks they’ve received? Do they have any chance of success navigating around or in opposition to their “masters”?