Hunting (Succession)

Roman asks Tabitha to reach out to PGM board member Naomi Pierce, her friend and past sexual fling, to broach the idea of an acquisition.

Logan has Karl, Tom and Greg sit in the corner of the room and subjects them to a viciously humiliating game he calls "Boar on the Floor," having the three of them play-act like pigs and fight over a piece of sausage, with the loser being declared the mole.

"Hunting" was written by Tony Roche, who had previously worked with Succession showrunner Jesse Armstrong as a writer on the series The Thick of It, Veep, and Fresh Meat, and the film In the Loop.

[1] Armstrong said the decision to set the episode in Hungary was inspired by Joseph Stalin's dinner parties, where he would frequently play cruel jokes on his close associates.

"[3] Armstrong named several real-life influences for the "extraordinary and extreme" nature of the way internal corporate conflicts were handled in the episode, including Sumner Redstone, Ghislaine Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch.

[2] Parekh added that his intent in filming the scenes where Logan intimidates individual members of his circle was to evoke "the feeling of being called on in the fourth or fifth grade [by] your teacher.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the episode has a rating of 94% based on 18 reviews, with the critics' consensus stating, "Delightfully bizarre and downright vicious, Logan Roy taps into his inner mad king as he maliciously debases his executives in 'Hunting.

'"[5] Spencer Kornhaber of The Atlantic praised the writers' ability at capturing the "fumbling, pseudo-jocular, not-all-that-witty way that real people actually talk," and noted how the script helped underscore the "culture of fear" inherent to the workings of Waystar RoyCo.

Kornhaber compared the episode's climax to the dinner party scene in the 2017 film The Square in the way fear and humiliation "[morph] professionals into pigs" and how "the hooting and jeering from onlookers is a clear demonstration of how easily civilization can collapse into something more animalistic.

[7] Scott Tobias of Vulture gave the episode a full five stars, interpreting "Boar on the Floor" as a punishment for "collective disloyalty," and also found parallels to the Trump family in the imagery of "the ultrawealthy hovering over endangered animals," which he called "stock villainy.