Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/HBO/Getty
This week’s Succession begins with a eulogy. No, it’s not for Logan Roy (Brian Cox), whose funeral takes up the majority of this episode. The speech is given by Roman (Kieran Culkin) and is actually for Roman. Roman eulogizes himself twice in this episode, a tribute to the times he held any power in the company. This is Roman’s swan song. Roman is still alive, but he’s dead to Waystar Royco, after a dreadful attempt to salute his late father.
In the beginning of “Church and State”—one of the best Succession episode titles of all time—Roman rattles off his speech from a series of pink (pink!) note cards to himself, alone in his apartment. “My father was a legend,” Roman says, “and fuck shit fuck.” Or something like that. This scene plays out the same way I practiced for a science presentation in seventh grade: half-assed. But he doesn’t even have a PowerPoint to back him up! Roman can’t get one single line of coherent thought across in his practice round, so God only knows what mess he’s about to cause at the real-deal funeral, in front of everyone in the entire world—his siblings, Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), even POTUS.
Only Logan Roy’s funeral would happen the day after the election. Swarms of left-wing protesters take to the streets of Manhattan, to push back against fascist Jeryd Mencken’s (Justin Kirk) win. Did he even win? After Milwaukee’s ballots were set ablaze by another batch of protesters (presumably right wing, though Roman argues the opposite) in the last episode, the election is being contested. The only news network to call the election for Mencken was ATN, which is now under fire for making an early and possibly incorrect call.