The Roys Stumble Into the Real World
In the penultimate episode of Succession, the warring siblings find themselves exposed to the chaos they stoked.
This story contains spoilers for the ninth episode of HBO’s Succession.
One of the (intentional) frustrations of this season of Succession has been how little information we viewers are allowed regarding the show’s world. The Roys are so reliably insulated in their penthouse panic rooms, and so exclusively fixated on their own obsessions, that, stuck with them, we get only fleeting glimpses of anything non-Roy. This episode, I found myself compulsively scanning chyrons and squinting at the text of the fake New York Times story about ATN’s preemptive Election Night call, trying to glean how bad things really were out there. (For what it’s worth, I learned that Ron Petkus—played by Stephen Root in the fake-CPAC episode of Season 3—is one of Jeryd Mencken’s first appointments, and that Roman Roy is well known in media circles for his “incendiary communication style.”)
With Mencken in particular, it’s impossible not to be queasily curious about his nature. Is he a fascist-fascist, or just a performer who name-drops “H”—as in Hitler—for attention? What exactly has he campaigned on that would make Rava so alarmed for the safety of her daughter? Without access to anything tangible, we’re left with nonspecific anxiety about what his ambient authoritarianism might mean. And this is because, for a family supposedly engaged in the news business, the Roys are strikingly uninterested in current affairs. They’ve always existed at a cosseted remove from the real world. Postelection, though, and without Logan, they’re more exposed than they’ve ever been to something new, something that could be called consequences.
“Church and State,” the middle of three final Succession episodes written by Jesse Armstrong, depicts Logan’s long-anticipated funeral, appropriately set on the same day that protesters are marching with gasoline cans in Manhattan. (Roman smiling at the words “violence and intimidation” on an ATN newscast while cockily practicing his eulogy is a nice touch.) Kendall, watching a restaurant board up its windows, learns that Rava will be taking her kids out of town rather than attending their grandfather’s service. He doesn’t take the news well. “You’re too online, okay?” he spits at Rava, while his kids watch from the car. “You’ve lost context. Everything is fine.” He bangs on the windows. He threatens to get “an emergency court order” to stop Rava from leaving the city. He says he’ll physically block the car from leaving, a posture that lasts not one second before he gives up and lets them pass.
Kendall has been pitiable in the past, and he’s even been pathetic. There’s something about Jeremy Strong’s hangdog face that makes Ken’s attempts at grandiosity always seem nakedly insecure and totally unconvincing. He’s preposterous when he’s fantasizing that he can steal custody of his kids from Rava, or trying to strong-arm the potential president-elect into carrying out his orders. He’s a child. Which is what makes his improvised eulogy for Logan—a soaring, Shakespearean soliloquy that somehow honors capitalism itself as much as any man—so improbable. We’re supposed to believe that Kendall, lamentable nepo-baby lemon that he is, could summon this kind of rhetorical power? “Corpuscles of life gushing around this nation”? “This wonderful civilization that we have built from the mud”? I love Kenny despite my better instincts—his attempts at humanity, his awkward efforts to be loved, even his deluded creative imagination. But it requires so much suspension of disbelief to consider him an orator of this kind of power.
This isn’t to say the funeral scene isn’t thrilling. Succession is never better than when it’s being tense and terrible at the same time, and the combination of Ewan’s extremely unfiltered disquisition and Roman’s most public breakdown is agonizing. So often, watching this show feels like a trap, a warning against our gullible impulses. See how broken these children are! See their warped, malformed psyches laid bare! Pity their frail and flailing souls! And no sooner than you do, someone bullies a survivor of sexual violence, or casually destabilizes democracy for jokes. There’s nothing to be gained from sympathizing with any of the Roys at this point, and yet Roman’s smallness in this episode, his diminishment in front of everyone’s eyes from a political power broker to a “Grim Weeper” punch line, still feels brutal.
With Kendall also reduced in clout by the end of the episode, and Roman so smashed up that he can’t even enter his father’s ludicrously capacious crypt, the lead horse heading into the finale seems to be Shiv. With Matsson by her side, she has persuaded Mencken that the cultural power of GoJo—and its insight into the dark arts of hooking the youth audience—might be worth more than the geriatric voters of ATN. That’s not to say Shiv didn’t have to make some sacrifices to get here. Her now-obvious pregnancy has made her more vulnerable than ever to the misogynist culture she’s fishing around in: Sexually harassed by her own brother, and sneered at by Matsson when she blithely declares herself “one of those hard bitches, right, who’s gonna do, what, 36 hours of maternity leave, emailing through her vanity Cesarean,” she then has to swallow Mencken’s Third Reich–invoking derision of her as “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” in order to make a deal.
With just one episode left, and every character abasing themselves in ever more desperate ways (forget Darth Greg; I’m Team Dark Kendall), can anyone come out on top? Will we get a Kerry-Marcia odd-couple spin-off? Will Manhattan (and Baltimore, and Portland, and Seattle) burn? Given that the Roys can’t avoid the firecrackers set off outside the St. Regis, or the protesters banging on the windows of their limousine like Kendall contesting the conditions of his parental agreement, I’m inclined to think they might all well burn too.