There is only one more episode of Succession remaining, and finally the great (?) Logan Roy has been laid to rest, above ground, in his secondhand mausoleum. The funeral ceremony turned out to be the hottest ticket in town for anyone hoping to make a political or media-minded power play, and the eulogies rolled like an audition for Waystar’s successor, just as Logan would have wanted. Imagine what a poorly placed fire could have accomplished for humanity with all these salty dogs in one place.
When it comes to the Roy kids, Roman looked in the mirror that morning and saw the reflection of Future Logan staring back at him, but his scaffold of pre-grief crumbled the moment he got to the podium. Kendall took over and did what he did best: a rousing monologue at a moment of truth. In that moment, he emerged victorious as the winner of the funeral, and then wasted no time parlaying that into coalition-building with Mencken, Hugo (woof woof), and Colin, while making it clear to an already-vulnerable Roman just how thoroughly he fucked it.
KENDALL
(-1) The anger with which he screamed “Do not fuck with me today!” at Rava is a wee glimpse into what their divorce must have been like.
(-1) Kendall threatens that he will get a court order against Rava and will lie in front of her car so she can’t leave… but then he just steps aside. That’s Kendall in a nutshell. Promises clouds from Berlin, delivers vapor.
(-2) On the heels of the Rava thing, he corners Jess into telling him that she is quitting, and then calls her juvenile for wanting to leave. “Where are you going to get access like this?” Losing Rava and Jess in the hours before Logan’s funeral must have been rough. His grief guy has his work cut out for him.
(+5) His eulogy was really, really good without being ass-kissy and full of shit. All of Kendall’s best moments come when he’s speaking publicly in a high-stakes situation. He even got a round of applause, which I didn’t realize was a thing that’s “done” at funerals. Kendall should really consider a pivot to becoming a Tony Robbins for nepo babies.
(+1) For the corpuscles of life.
(+2) He won Mencken over with his eulogy, less than 24 hours after he told Shiv he was concerned that Mencken was “Roman’s guy.”
(-1) Because Colin, who was noticeably the only non-relative guest shown crying over Logan’s death, appears not to trust Kendall and is not particularly psyched about the offer to work for him.
(+2) “This is explicitly me trying to fuck the deal, and you can come. But it won’t be a collaboration, okay? You’ll be my dog, but the scraps from the table will be millions. Happy?” – Between Hugo and Frank, Kendall now officially has two senior greybeards on his side.
TOTAL: 5
ROMAN
(-1) “He was sent away during the second World War to bing bang bong, sad sad sad.” – It’s so disappointing that we never got to hear the actual details of what Roman had planned to say during his Joker-esque eulogy.
(-1) “Discord makes my dick hord.” – The sheer number of gross sexual jokes that Roman made in the hours before the funeral (I’m not even going to touch the shit he said to Shiv in the car), was a gigantic red flag that he was incredibly disconnected from whatever was going on and would end up melting down.
(-1) “You’re having a Wambsgland, I thought you were just eating your feelings.” – He fat shames and hits on Shiv in the same 30 seconds.
(-1) “Glasses, that’s smart. So you can cry in secret, hide all your emotions, and thus emerge victorious as the winner of the funeral.” – Roman’s subconscious is screaming at a decibel that only Caroline’s dalmatians can hear.
(-1) For the physical pains I felt in my stomach watching Roman break down. “Is he in there? Can we get him out?” Only minus 1 because we feel badly, and it hurts to watch two assholes like Matsson and Mencken revel in his pain. Then again, he did get a fascist half-elected.
(-3) This grim weeper needs to get himself to what Kendall would call a “headshrinker” asap.
TOTAL: -8
SHIV
(+2) For coming up with the American CEO idea and naming herself. “Besides, I also hear that apparently the chairman, that sad Swede, is basically pulling her strings anyway.” – She knows that ladies always curb their threat level when trying to power grab.
(0) “She’s one of those hard bitches, right? Who’s gonna do, what, 36 hours of maternity leave, emailing through her vanity cesarean? Poor kids will never get to see her.” – Shiv nets zero points for this one, because while it may be a power move in the show, we can’t condone it in reality.
(-1) Because her spontaneous follow-up eulogy was unnecessary. “Goodbye, my dear, dear world of a father.” The whole thing was very self-aggrandizing.
(+1) “Was it also a tax write-off, because it’s technically a residence?” – That’s our girl, thinking like an American CEO.
(+1) “How bad was dad?” – We stan an introspective girlie.
(+1) Waystar needs an American CEO who knows that “privacy, pussy, pasta” means “anarcho-capitalist parmigiana.” Everyone can read Swedish.
TOTAL: 4
TOM
(+1) “I’m already tarred with the Mencken brush, so I might as well get my goodies. There’s no point in joining the party unless you get your little dacha.”
(+3) For each time he asked someone to let Mencken know that he personally swung the race for him.
(+3) He gave up his vanity position as front-right wheelman at the funeral to keep working for the benefit of ATN. A very Logan-y way to honor the late Logan, and notably the opposite of what Kendall did when he went to Logan’s birthday party instead of staying on top of a certain Vaulter deal in season 1.
TOTAL: 7
GREG
(+1) On how the timeline of ATN calling the election for Mencken made it into the newspaper: “Well, a lot of people know, a lot of people don’t want to go to the Hague for war crimes.” Does Greg realize it was probably Jess after their little hallway rendezvous?
(+1) Greg went right ahead and took Tom’s front-right wheelman position without his express permission, but it feels justified because he swiped it from the sleazy nursing home magnate Peter Munion. At least Greg (?) was on that piece of paper.
(+1) “Can you get me an intro to Mencken? I’m amongst the crowning committee so… ” – Is Greg desperate to get the news to Mencken that Tom (and he) called the election for him, or is he secretly hoping for a West Wing job? Berlin by Christmas?
(+1) “You want me to take his legs out?” – At least he’ll stop somewhere, and that line is at kneecapping his own grandfather.
(+1) “That was a good hard take you gave.” – That’s our Greg, eternal fence-sitter.
TOTAL: 5
CONNOR
(+3) Connor has repeatedly shown that he had somewhat of a real relationship with Logan by letting us know things that the other siblings have no idea about. Must be one of the perks of being the eldest son. In this case, Connor got the early info on the family’s final resting place. “He never sent you pictures? You never saw this? He got it on a deal, he was really pleased. It was a dot-com pet supply guy who built this. Pop sort of… I think he didn’t want to go in the ground, and he didn’t want to think about it too much, so he went in on it at auction. I think it was $5 mill all in, and that’s forever, obviously.”
(+1) Because it’s always good to get your affairs in order early. “I was crazy for cryogenics, but yeah, I wouldn’t say no to a top bunk.”
(-2) “I just want to grab 5, just to talk macro-Slovenia, micro-travel budget. What? I’m trying to talk with my colleague to bat some ideas. What if I said to you: Pan-Hapsburg American-led EU-Alternative, what would you say to me?” – I kinda think that Mencken would have gone for the idea if not for Connor’s poorly timed interruption.
TOTAL: 2
MATSSON
(-1) “If you have a little dickie, maybe you don’t go to the nudist beach.” – Ultimately Matsson gives into Shiv’s advice to release the numbers, and we learn that Hugo was still checking the dicks after the tsunami.
(+1) “You’ve been a democracy for like 50 years… if you don’t count black people, which is kind of a bad habit. I’m just saying, you are nearly as mature a democracy as Botswana” – Leave it to the European to school Shiv on American history. How long until this episode is banned in Florida?
(+1) “Is the handsome Nazi gonna win? And ironically, would that be bad for a tall white guy?” – Lukas Matsson was clearly interested in history from a very young age.
TOTAL: 1
HONORABLE MENTION: EWAN
(+5) This guy didn’t even wait a split second before taking the podium and waving off everyone who tried to stop him. His speech actually provided new insights into Logan and was so perfectly calibrated to the tune of his personal arc.
(+1) Thank you to the writers for giving us the backstory on Rose. AI could never give us that subtle and perfectly written moment of satisfaction. #WGAstrong
TOTAL: 6
HONORABLE MENTION: CAROLINE
(-2) For the wordless conversation about Shiv’s pregnancy. No one has communicated so effectively with only a look since Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids. “Oh… are you, um, okay? Yes? Blimey! Well, I never. Well then, well, well.”
(+5) Caroline guiding the four ladies of Logan to be seated in the front row was my favorite moment of the episode. “Sally-Anne was my Kerry, so to speak. So it’s all water under the bridge now, innit?” Logan would’ve hated this and yet it was exactly what he deserved. Makes you wonder who Connor’s mom’s Kerry was? Was it Caroline herself?
TOTAL: 3
HONORABLE MENTION: MARCIA
(+3) Marcia redeemed herself from her cruel antics at the wake by holding Kerry’s hand for a second. Was this the most touching moment we’ve ever seen on this show?
(+1) “At least he won’t grind his teeth tonight.” – Marcia is the only one who could defeat Caroline. She’s like Harry Potter to Caroline’s Voldemort.
(+1) “I loved him very much, I miss him very much. He broke my heart. He broke your hearts too.” – It appears Marcia may have found a heart while shopping Via Montepoleone.
TOTAL: 5
Going into our final episode of the series, Roman is at an all-time low (literally, he is on the floor). Kendall’s ability to captivate a room any time he gets a microphone has him thinking that he is destined to be the CEO. With only one more episode left, which appears to involve a tense board meeting and a Caribbean air-clear with Caroline, it’s hard to imagine that any of the Roy siblings will truly be ready to replace Logan at any point in the near future. I’ll be counting the days until next week while carefully examining all of the HBO promotional posters for one last time.
If you can’t get enough Succession convo from Betches, check out our weekly bonus recaps on the @BETCHES Podcast, which will be out every Monday afternoon of season 4 and can be found on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Images courtesy of HBO.
