"All The Bells Say"
"I'm blown into a million pieces."
"I fucking win."
— Logan
A short while after the previous episode, Logan juggles phone calls while Connor, Willa, Shiv, Greg, Tom, and Roman play Monopoly. Through their dialogue, we learn Comfry saved Kendall from drowning in the pool. Gerri announces that the DOJ is fining Waystar a significant amount of money, which makes their bid to absorb/merge with GoJo even more difficult. Logan brings Roman along to meet with Matsson once again; at the meeting, Matsson pitches himself as CEO instead. To Roman's consternation, Logan appears to consider it, and meets with Matsson in private while sending Roman back to the wedding festivities.
At another lunch the Roy siblings confront Kendall about his mental health, but Kendall brushes off their concerns. Roman tries to hide Logan's meeting with Matsson, but when Shiv gets wind of financial rumblings, she gets increasingly worried that they are being shut out.
In the romance department, Caroline ties the knot with Peter, Willa agrees to marry Connor (who suspects Logan is trying to impregnate Kerry), while Greg hits it off with the Italian countess.
Kendall opens up emotionally to Shiv and Roman, admitting that he killed the waiter at Shiv's wedding and feels increasingly fragmented. Eventually, the siblings realize that Logan might really be going ahead with the sale that would make Matsson CEO. Kendall posits that part of Caroline's divorce settlement was to give the children super majority, meaning they could agree to stop the deal together, and so the three of them band together to confront Logan. Once they arrive, however, Logan announces he had already consorted with Caroline to amend the divorce settlement so Kendall, Shiv, and Roman can't actually stop him, devastating all three siblings — and when Tom (to whom Shiv had previously spilled the plan) arrives, Logan pats him on the back.
Tropes:
- Actually Pretty Funny: After Kendall's tearful confession of his involvement in the waiter's death, Roman jokes that he's the real victim because the waiter's absence forced Roman to have to wait over 45 minutes for a gin and tonic. Kendall actually laughs out loud at this and starts slowly getting out of his funk.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: The trio are nastily fucked over by their parents and godparents (Gerri wants to help but can't, but Frank and Karl do nothing), and Logan gets especially cruel while Shiv has proved she can be gentle, Connor yells at his siblings but makes it clear he loves them, Kendall's had a Heel Realisation and wants to be better, and Roman made his crying, suicidally depressed brother laugh; but they are still partly in this mess thanks to Kendall treating Greg badly all season and Shiv being an awful wife to Tom.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: This episode makes clear that the Roy siblings, for all they were warped by their ultra-rich upbringing and hurt each other in their quests for power, strongly care about each other. Although the conversation quickly goes south, the others try to confront Kendall at lunch and tell him that for what it's worth, they do love him; Shiv and Roman later comfort him when he breaks down in a parking lot. In this scene they realize that they might actually have strength in numbers and work together for the first time in the whole series. It fails, but it's the thought that counts.
- Bungled Suicide: Though Kendall denies it, claiming he just fell off an inflatable, the ending of the previous episode already strongly implied Kendall was ready to end it all, and dialogue here confirms it was only Comfry's timely intervention that stopped him from actually drowning. His fragile mental state throughout the episode all but confirms it.
- Conflicting Loyalties: The confession scene has Shiv and Roman closer to Kendall when they're trying to console him, and further away when they're trying to focus on a deal that might screw them. Eventually they both choose comforting their brother, and giving him a choice to wait while they sort things out.
- The Coup: Lampshaded by Kendall, who with the full support of his siblings puts his latest attempt to overthrow his tyrannical father into motion.
- Creature of Habit: Greg employs his favoured strategy for navigating the professional world to get ahead in the romance department: playing the field and fishing for the safest, most lucrative deal.
- The Dog Bites Back: Shiv has spent the entire season dismissing and belittling her husband Tom, who has been quietly ingratiating himself with Logan. Body language at the end of this episode implies Tom ratted her plan out to Logan and has thrown his lot in with him, cutting her out in the process... and she realizes it.
- Foreshadowing: Logan begins the episode reading Goodbye Mog to Iverson.
- Good Is Boring: Tom's success in luring Greg further under his appears to hone in on this trope and their agreement on it.Tom: Do you want a deal with the devil?
Greg: Well...what am I gonna do with a soul, anyways? Souls are boring. Boo, souls! - He's Back!: "Pass me the fucking shotgun."
- Internal Homage: Logan yells at his kids that they've come in with guns in hand and said guns have turned into sausages, showing that this is just another version of "Boar On The Floor" with him.
- Internal Reveal: Kendall tearfully confesses to Roman and Shiv that he was responsible for the death of the waiter in Shiv's wedding. Roman and Shiv both try to console him.
- Like Father, Unlike Son: While none of them are good people, all four Roy siblings get a chance to prove they are at least better than their parents:
- Connor yells at the younger three for forgetting about him and being entitled, but makes sure that they know he loves them, something Logan only does to manipulate and control them.
- Kendall has a Heel Realisation that he's not a good person and finally admits personal responsibility for the waiter's death. Logan may admit to all his wrongdoings but he refuses to want to atone for them.
- Roman sits down with Kendall and tries to make him laugh through his tears, while telling him that it's narcissistic to call himself a murderer given the specifics of the situation and even praises how he tried to rescue the waiter, admitting he wouldn't have been brave enough to do the same. Logan's been hanging the waiter's death over Kendall's head for two seasons (several months in-universe) now.
- Shiv is kind and understanding (if awkward and trying to focus on business as well) to Kendall after he tries to commit suicide, and to Roman, trying to make him see that their father will throw him under the bus as he's done to her and Kendall. Turns out that both parents will screw over their children when push comes to shove.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Caroline might be a terrible mother and stiff person, but during her final phone call in the episode, she points out that involving the children with Waystar Royco has turned them into bad people.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Roman and Shiv, who are traditionally pretty good at dealing with unexpected setbacks through Stepford Snarking, both look to be on the verge of an emotional breakdown upon learning about what their parents' deal with Matsson entails.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Roman has spent the last few episodes paranoid that his mother reopening the divorce settlement with his father is for the naked ambition of his new stepfather Peter, at the cost of Roman and his siblings' inheritances, a concern that Shiv regularly dismisses. This episode reveals he was right to be paranoid about it, but not because of Peter's social climbing — she had reopened it specifically to remove the clause that gave the children majority control, allowing Logan to go ahead with the Matsson deal that would likely cut them out.
- Out of Character Is Serious Business: The Roy siblings know shit is amiss when Kendall, The Starscream extraordinaire, is too depressed to care about a monumental acquisition that puts all their futures in flux.
- Parental Sexuality Squick: Connor recognizes one of the herbs in Logan's smoothie as one that's used to increase fertility, causing the siblings to come to the realization that Logan is trying to conceive another child through his affair with Kerry. They are all naturally deeply disturbed by this.
- Stealth Insult: In her toast at Caroline's wedding, Shiv wishes her a marriage "as rich, happy, rewarding, and fulfilling" as her own.
- Unexpected Successor: Lampshaded by Tom. Greg comments that the Italian aristocrat he's flirting with is a distant heir to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the dormant Italian throne. Tom comments that Greg would be "one plane crash away from becoming Europe's weirdest king" if he marries her.
- Wham Episode: The show has asked which of Logan's children might succeed him for three seasons. This episode's plot twist — that he might sell the company and cut his children out — threatens to upend all that. Kendall, Roman, and Shiv spend the back half of the episode trying to stop it, only learning in its final moments that the deal will go on. This effectively changes the status quo of the show.
- Wham Shot: Logan patting Tom on the back, heavily implying that Tom betrayed Kendall, Roman, and Shiv.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Shiv and Roman both lay this on Kendall when he confesses to his murder of Andrew Dodds. Only, as Roman fairly argues, it was hardly a murder: the kid swerved them off-road and Kendall repeatedly dived to save him; the stain on Kendall's soul is less sooty than he'd allowed himself to believe.
