Season 2, Episode 5: ‘Tern Haven’

The ongoing “Succession” world tour makes a stop this week at yet another lavish country estate, for two days of earnest haggling and phony congeniality. In “Tern Haven,” the Roy clan treks from Manhattan to the ancestral home of Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones), the matriarch of a media empire respected as a force for truth and justice. The result? A classic “Succession” clash between two titanic know-it-alls.

Logan Roy, notoriously, has little use for truth or justice. But he’s so anxious to buy Pierce Global Media that he approaches Nan as a humble businessman, espousing admiration for PGM as “essential to the functioning of this grand republic.” Connor listens to Logan wax eloquent and quietly asks, “Why can’t this Dad be Dad?”

The charade can’t last. Logan has drawn up the corporate takeover equivalent of an elaborate heist, masterminding the theft of PGM. But he’s asking his family members and associates to play roles for which none of them are suited. Overall, this week’s “Succession” isn’t as riotously funny as last week’s. But as Naomi Pierce (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) puts it, watching the Roys melt down is “the most deeply satisfying activity on the planet Earth.”

Roman botches his mission immediately. He starts making sarcastic comments as soon as he arrives, giggling so loudly that his dad snaps, “When you laugh, do it at the same volume as everyone else.” There’s something curiously disarming about how Roman can’t help but be contemptuous. When Mark Pierce (Jeremy Shamos) quotes Thoreau, saying, “Maine may speak to Texas, but what if they have nothing to say to one another?,” and another Pierce adds, “That should be engraved into the bezel of every iPhone in the world,” Roman, inevitably, rolls his eyes, muttering, “Hear hear. The bezel.” He can’t even pretend to care.