“My Dear Dear World of a Father”

Hi all,

At the risk of being TMI, tonight’s episode of Succession, “Church and State” left me drenched in sweat. From the slow, deliberate plotting to incredibly high stakes, ol’ Jesse Armstrong and the Succ gang gave us a lot to work with.

The first indication that this episode isn’t like other girls is the lack of a cold open. Straight into the theme music montage, and we are dispensed into the world of the Roys.

The election is still not decided, and Roman is practicing his eulogy in his apartment and acting completely normal. He pumps himself up, intoning, “See Shivvy cry, see Kenny lie, see Roman the showman light up the sky”. Roman’s got this.

Kendall calls, asking Roman if the intense political rhetoric coming from ATN can be toned down today, the day of their father’s funeral. It’s just chatter, Roman tells him. Meanwhile, Rava is freaked out and doesn’t feel safe in the city, so Kendall rushes over to Rava’s building to get her and the kids to the funeral.

Shiv informs Matsson that, between her father’s funeral and the contested election, it’s “an amazing day to bury bad news” and that he should leak his screwy numbers from India. Shiv and Matsson freely manipulate each other at this point, and it’s getting harder and harder to determine who has the upper hand. Delicious.

Kendall arrives at Rava’s, or more accurately the sidewalk in front of her building, to help her out. She affirms that she feels unsafe, and Kendall is furious that his kids aren’t attending their grandfather’s funeral. Remember when Logan hit Iverson? I don’t blame Rava by any means. For what it’s worth, I doubt the kids have particularly warm feelings toward ol’ Gramps. Kendall tells her that she’s “too online” and that he’s going to get a court order to prevent them from leaving the city. He tries to block their car, but it rolls away with ease.

Back at ATN, Tom and Greg go over a news article containing a leak about election night at ATN. Tom is mad, not that there was a leak, but that Darwin gets most of the credit. Greg begins to head to the funeral, but Tom demurs, feeling no sense of urgency. The streets are in bad shape thanks to anti-Mencken protests swarming the city, but Tom believes he can get there when he gets there.

The siblings share a tense limo ride to the church, where we learn that Caroline won’t just be at the funeral, but also wants the kids to join her in the Caribbean for some decompressing. As they wave the topic away, Shiv delivers her big baby news to her siblings. Uncle Kenny and Rome!

In a classically level-headed turn of events, Roman sarcastically asks if it’s his kid, one of many incest jokes he will crack at his father’s funeral. Ken has a more standard message of congratulations, but he soon returns to his earlier request of Roman; “Today is just about today”.

Before the family can enter St. Ignatius of Loyola Church, however, Kendall grabs Jess’ ear for a second. He wants to meet with a family lawyer for full custody of Sophie and Iverson, but, oh, ho what’s this? He and Jess are supposed to meet early next week? With some prodding, she informs him that she’s ready to move on. He passively allows it, but he just wants to know why. So reasonable.

She says it’s nothing personal, she’s just ready for new horizons, but Kendall freaks out, pinning it on her queasiness over Mencken. But he gave her access, he whines. He then goes on to call her “juvenile” and “dumb”, and excoriates her for telling him today of all days.

Connor and Willa show up on the scene, with Connor asking to deliver a “formally inventive” eulogy that Willa definitely wrote for him. His siblings curve him, and Roman pushes Kendall to do some business with Mencken before the funeral gets going. Greg, who has just hauled ass to the church on a CitiBike, is put on “Ewan watch” by Roman, hoping to keep Logan’s brother from excoriating him from the pulpit.

Mencken arrives, flanked by security. Roman’s eyes light up and he practically pops a boner on the arrival of the fascist fella who he loves so well. Caroline and Peter Munion show up, leading to the least warm mother-and-child reunion in recent television history. God, they hate her so much! At the same time, she’s no Marge Simpson.

Caroline immediately clocks Shiv’s pregnancy in a deeply weird and tense exchange. Peter’s excited to “roll in a pile of Senators” and goes off to meet Mencken. You have to respect his commitment to networking!

Shiv goes off to meet with Matsson and Ebba, who are delighted to find that Shiv’s strategy of leaking the story on a stuffed news day worked to Lukas’ advantage. Like an agile frog, Shiv jumps from this lilypad of good news to a proposition for Lukas, that he buy Waystar and hand it off to an American CEO, appeasing Mencken in the process. Who could it be????

Matsson, who also knows that Shiv is pregnant somehow, objects to her taking over while carrying a child. Shiv thinks of herself as a “hard bitch” who will pop out a baby, get back to work, and leave the kid with the help. “I can do anything. My dad just died”, Shiv purrs, heading back to her pew.

Caroline meets Kerry and introduces her to Sally-Anne, her “Kerry, so to speak”. The three women and Marcia all sit in a pew together, comforting Kerry. Logan’s death brings all of these women together, a lovely moment of earnestness at an otherwise tense affair.

The casket arrives, and Greg is drafted as a last-minute pallbearer to fill in for Tom, who is still at the office doing business. As the funeral begins, a string quartet jumps into a peppy piece by Vivaldi and the camera follows the stone-faced siblings to the front of the church. Ewan, who has arrived with Greg’s mom (who I don’t think we’ve seen since the pilot), jumps up to give a speech. Greg attempts to exercise his duties as “Ewan watch”, but the old man makes his way up to the lectern to speak.

A fantastic dose of comedy came in the form of Greg telling Marianne to shut up, a window into his total lack of respect for an authority figure who isn’t Logan.

Ewan delivers a desultory philippic of a eulogy, sharing a brutal story about how he and Logan got to the States as boys. We cut to Kendall, Roman, and Shiv, who have never suffered a day in their lives as their uncle chronicles their harrowing experience of keeping quiet for three days in the hull of a ship in the middle of the Atlantic. We also learn about Logan’s guilt around the death of their sister Rosemary by polio. Ewan exposes his own vulnerability in the process of talking about his brother, a gorgeous indication of his own ability to face the horrors that his brother wrought as revenge for his own poor treatment in his early life. Despite loving his brother, “he has wrought the most terrible things”.

After Ewan’s long, uninterrupted speech, Roman hops up, joking about hooking up with Marcia in the process. Frank offers a show of support, which Roman shrugs off. He’s “pre-grieved”, remember?

When he gets up, however, time slows down. He’s shaky and under-prepared, and his speech comes out in a pathetic squeak. He sees the coffin and urges his siblings to come up to the pulpit.

After four seasons of piss and vinegar, Roman Roy finally breaks down. “Is he in there? Can we get him out?”, he asks, suddenly eight years old. Roman has nothing left, and hands his notecards off to Kendall, upon whom it is incumbent to deliver “the other side” of Logan to the crowd.

Kendall, who always goes off-script, starts giving a speech based on Roman’s. But, at some point, in a brilliant feat of writing from Jesse Armstrong, Ken’s off-the-cuff remarks change the rules of the episode, taking on a dramatic prose similar to Ewan’s condemnation of Logan.

Kendall calls Logan a “brute”, but extols his “vitality” and the “corpuscles of life” that emanated from him. The camera shows us Mencken and Matsson, the two men standing in Kendall’s way of becoming his father. Kendall speaks of the fear and awe of Logan’s sheer power. He closes by saying “If we can’t match is vim, god knows the future will be sluggish and gray”.

WHAT!? Delicious!!!

Roman is humbled, and Shiv gets up to speak on a thin pretense. In a speech that is potentially intended to get one over on Ken, she talks about how terrifying Logan was, but “when he let you in… when the sun shone, it was warm”. Despite this conditional warmth, Logan “couldn’t fit a whole woman in his head”. The camera, a silent narrator as always, shows us Karolina, and Gerri before rack-focusing on Kendall, who may be the same as his father when it comes to controlling the women in his life.

“We’re doing okay”, Shiv insists from the pulpit. But, as ever, she needs to have the last word. “Goodbye, my dear, dear world of a father” is her closer, an encapsulation of the totality of Logan’s presence.

As the crowd peters out, Kendall and Mencken shake hands. Yuck. What good’s a soul anyway, huh, Ken? Hugo grabs Kendall’s attention for a second, informing him of Shiv and Matsson’s new plan (via Ebba!!! Go Ebba!!!).

In an instant, we are at the cemetery, where we learn that Connor is the only Roy child to have seen the mausoleum where Logan is spending the rest of eternity. Roman, of course, can’t enter and runs off the second that Logan’s coffin is put inside. Despite all of his notions of having “pre-grieved”, it’s obvious that Roman was following more of an “out of mind, out of sight” mentality. The concept of seeing the box that contains his father’s corpse, however, brings the whole ordeal to life.

As the burial ends, Shiv asks Frank and Karl a question she has seemingly been dying to ask for decades. “How bad was Dad?” The guys demur. “What you saw was what you got.” Is that answer going to satisfy anyone? Probably not.

A great side element of the post-Logan era of Succession is the constant fear of information coming to light. What if Karl and Frank were more specific? They can’t chance that at the current moment, so it’s best to play it safe.

Marcia, wearing a fabulous hat, tells Siobhan that he not only broke her heart, but she sees that he broke all of the kids’ hearts. But didn’t Shiv say they were all “doing okay”? Marcia knows the real toll, however.

As the cemetery workers tear down chairs, Kendall gets a chat in with “Big H”. Kendall is planning a full-court press to destroy Matsson and Shiv’s deal. If he takes over, Hugo will be Kendall’s dog. Hugo’s only response? “Woof woof”. Gross.

At the reception, we see hors d’eouvres, wine, and a picture of Logan with Nancy Reagan. Kendall meets up with Colin, whom he asks to stop therapy (his therapist may be leaking info to the press) and come on board as his security detail. But Kendall doesn’t want to give Colin a job. It’s all about safeguarding the flow of information.

Everyone, from Greg to Connor to Shiv, swarms Mencken like flies to get what they want, from a pitch for a “Pan-Hapsburg American-led EU alternative” to a simple leg up in politics. Shiv whisks Mencken away to a side meeting with Matsson. Shiv insists that her father wasn’t about politics, but rather winning, but she is serious about running the show.

Mencken, of course, a proud fascist, reduces Shiv to “kinder, küche, kirche” and doesn’t bite on the plan. A woman CEO? In Jaryd Mencken’s America? Not very likely.

Tom finally arrives on the scene, where he and Shiv snipe at each other and she downs a glass of champagne to spite him. He begs her for an explanation of… pregnancy, I guess? She reveals that she didn’t tell him until election night because “it seemed so sad” to her. Before he can say anything, Caroline arrives and congratulates Tom. Shiv tells her mother that she plans on following family tradition and avoiding the child like the plague, which sends Mommy away to Shiv’s satisfaction.

Tom explains that, just like election night, he was just sooooo tired, too tired to go to the funeral. The truth is, he already feels like he said goodbye because he was on the plane that fateful day and breaks down. Shiv’s heart melts a little bit, and she allows him to go back to their formerly shared apartment for a nap. Again, the delicate, tentative relationship between Shiv and Tom is endlessly fascinating. When will they decide if they are or are not in each other’s lives??

As Tom shuffles off, Shiv gets a call from Matsson. Mencken likes their new move, and it’s full steam ahead. Shiv wants to “make a meatball burger”, and it seems like everything’s coming up Shivvy.

But, did anyone besides Shiv say that Shiv was going to be in charge?? Interesting…

Ken, who now has the upper hand after his rousing speech and tango with Hugo, informs Roman that they’re losing leverage on the deal because Roman “fucked it”. Roman, still in cope mode, is sure that they can use ATN to turn public opinion on Mencken if he gets in their way. Come on, man, we know that isn’t how this works!

Kendall, however, has a plan and is willing to fight Shiv through the board. As Roman leaves, he tells him, “You fucked it. But it’s alright”. Roman wanders out, and we see Karl and Frank watching a leaked video of Roman’s breakdown at the pulpit. Gerri, her eyes following Roman out the door, briefly tells them to knock it off. But only a little.

Oh, Gerri, what’s going on in that big brain of yours?!

We then follow Roman walking home through the anti-Mencken protests, where he harasses the protestors who simply don’t get it. After getting up in someone’s face in the middle of 5th Avenue, Roman gets punched in the head and briefly trampled by the “bull run” of protestors. After a moment, he staggers off.

Consequences, huh?

Wow! That was quality! From the three very different, gorgeously composed speeches, to the careful camera choices, to the gorgeous and stirring performances from Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong, Succession is really giving us so much good stuff before we say goodbye for good.

Roman’s rise and fall in this episode was just so perfectly dished out. It’s hard to feel bad for the guy, but we finally saw how deeply fragile he is. That is a child in a man’s body, and he’s probably stuck that way.

I know I’ve already talked about the writing of this episode, but this was Jesse Armstrong and the Succession writing staff at its finest. They know when to give us a big, theatrical slow burn, where we are hanging on every word, but they also know when to give us fantastic images, like Roman standing just outside of the mausoleum or Caroline clocking Shiv’s pregnancy. Succession is the perfect blend of cinematic artistry and dramatic writing.

What is in store for next week’s feature-length finale? Will everything get wrapped up? Will we have a time jump to 50 years from now? Will the kids destroy each other once and for all?

Who knows. But, as always, it’s been amazing to take the ride.

See you next week for the series finale!!!!!