‘Succession’ Season 4 Episode 9 Recap: “Church And State”

On some shows, an instance of journalistic malpractice creating havoc on a national and potentially international scale might be where the season (or series!) ended. On Succession, the same people who imperiled the peaceful transition of power in a presidential election on Tuesday night have to get up on Wednesday morning for the funeral of the man whose news organization they either work for or hope soon to control. R.I.Protests!

At their separate homes, Roman obnoxiously practices his eulogy (I don’t think the part where he calls himself “King Dong” is on his index cards, but who really knows with this guy) and Shiv tells Matsson to have Ebba release the bad news about India while it can still get buried by the election. As usual, the only person behaving responsibly is Rava, who calls Kendall to say that, in light of all the literal unrest in the streets, she’s taking the kids upstate, so the three of them are going to miss the funeral.

She tries to manage his predictable fury by saying, “I’m really sorry but that is my decision, okay?” You’re never going to believe this but Kendall does not respect her boundary, sending his driver straight to Rava’s place and making a whole scene. By this point, Kendall’s already seen marchers with gas containers and businesses boarding up their windows, but he still blusters, “You’re too online. You’ve lost context.” She reminds him that he told her Jimenez would win and everything would be fine; everything isn’t, particularly their daughter, who’s so freaked out that she won’t lower the window when Kendall tries to reassure her. Kendall then brays that he’s going to go to court and get an emergency injunction to keep her from leaving town. Knowing that his father’s funeral is about to start and also that Kendall is usually full of shit, Rava wearily tells him to go do that and gets in the car anyway, whereupon Kendall threatens to get in front of her car so she can’t go anywhere, also known as pulling a(n alleged) Jason Sudeikis.

Kendall loses his nerve in seconds. Oh, how I wish we could have gone upstate with Rava and the kids. I don’t know anything about the “Travis and Robert” they’re going to see, but I’m certain they’re more fun than anyone we see at the funeral.

Kendall then meets up with Roman outside Shiv’s place and joins her in the giant limo. Considering how fraught everything was between them the night before, they keep it light, Roy-style: roasting their mother for trying to get them all to the Caribbean to talk out her part in the Season 3 finale’s big twist. That gives her a good segue: since she’s probably going to tell Caroline today, her brothers might as well also know that she’s pregnant. They both immediately make her regret telling them as Roman asks whether it’s his, and Kendall can’t even bring himself to ask whether it’s Tom’s before Shiv cuts him off and says it is. Apparently unable to stop himself, Roman goes on in his usual reflexively gross way — if he sees her nursing, he’ll have to go jerk off, etc. — until Kendall asks, “Guys, c-can we today— Shall we— For the funeral, just— Yeah? Cool it?” Somehow Roman and Shiv survive this savage correction.

Jess is waiting on the curb when the limo drops the Roys off somewhere convenient to walk to the church and avoid the protesters, like the ones who just flowed around the car while they were stopped in traffic, yelling and pounding the windows and generally revealing that they couldn’t see who was inside or they would have (and should have) done much worse. As Shiv and Roman walk ahead, Kendall tells Jess to make him appointments with lawyers next week so he can go after Rava for custody of the kids. Checking his calendar, he notices he already has a meeting with Jess on the day he wants to leap back into the family court system; obviously she should bump herself…but then he wants to know what the meeting’s about. Anyone with one scintilla of emotional intelligence would guess, especially after she repeatedly tries not to get into it on this particular day; but Kendall pushes so much that she tells him, as gently as anyone could, that she wants to resign. Kendall asks if it’s about Mencken, and when Jess demurs, he turns on her, ranting about the “extraordinary access” he’s given her that she won’t get elsewhere, and saying her decision is “very juvenile…it’s fucking dumb.” Professional to the last, Jess lets him pout: “Nice timing, Jess. Lovely day to tell me. Really thoughtful.” She could have just said he doesn’t deserve her and been right.

At the church, we see business hasn’t taken the day off to mourn: Kendall’s not even inside before Hugo’s telling him that Matsson’s sketchy South Asian subscriber numbers have come out. Roman tries to enlist Frank in a hypothetical attack on Kendall, much as Kendall did at the tailgate party. Greg — attending in Tom’s stead, since Tom is too busy living in the mess he made at ATN — begs Roman for an introduction to the just-arrived Mencken, since Greg was “amongst the crowning committee” that has made him the illegitimate president-elect; Roman just wants Greg to make sure Ewan doesn’t speak.

Caroline arrives, and no sooner have Shiv and Kendall agreed to try to maintain a relationship with her as their one remaining parent than Caroline looks from Shiv’s face to her midsection.

Caroline gives this development both a “blimey” and a “well, I never,” ending on a little passive-aggression that Shiv hadn’t already told her; Shiv tartly replies that she is sparing with the personal information she shares with Caroline since she tends to use it against Shiv. I guess this passes for relationship maintenance; it didn’t contain any curse words, at least. 

When Shiv spots Matsson, she resumes scheming, capitalizing on the cred she gained by telling him to release his numbers today to say that if Mencken does end up winning the election, they could still try to work him: maybe he wouldn’t block the deal if Matsson named an American CEO, like, for instance, Shiv Roy. She deftly turns all her weaknesses into strengths: yes, she’s inexperienced, but that will just make it easy for him to make him her puppet. There’s just one problem: Matsson’s heard Shiv is pregnant. (I’ll spare us all my diatribe on this being a deficit for Shiv when it was presumably a non-issue for Kendall when HE was about to become a parent.) Shiv cheerfully describes herself as one of those “hard bitches” who works through her “vanity C-section,” limits her mat leave to 36 hours, and never sees the kid…and, needless to say, it’s all exactly what Matsson wants to hear in addition to being a likely glimpse at her future, given how parenthood was modeled for her. 

When the casket arrives, the kids process behind it, all looking like they know none of them will merit a funeral this grand. Once everyone is seated, Greg predictably fails at keeping Ewan from speaking first; Shiv also tries and fails, giving Ewan a strong opener for his remarks: “What sort of people would stop a brother speaking for the sake of a share price?” Ewan gives color to Logan’s background: when the ship on which they were evacuated from the U.K. during the Second World War lost power, the children aboard were all told that if they made any noise at all, a German U-Boat might hear and sink the ship, so they spent three nights and two days, at the ages of five and four, “speaking with our eyes. So: there’s a little sob story.” We hear a little more about Logan and Ewan’s sister: Logan believed he was the carrier for the polio that killed her, and the aunt and uncle they lived with never did anything to make him think otherwise. Ewan loved Logan, as much as anyone could love someone so guarded…but “he has wrought the most terrible things.” As the kids look horrified and Greg and his mother Marianne try to distance themselves with vigorous head-shaking, Ewan continues spitting funerary fire: Logan only gave away a pittance of his wealth, and “fed a certain kind of meagerness in men,” perhaps because Logan had it himself. Ewan admits he may have it too, but that he tries; Logan stopped trying, at some point, “and it was a terrible shame.” He closes with “Godspeed, my brother. And god bless,” but without much conviction.

In their pew, the kids all babble about someone needing to “say the other side.” Would Roman have been okay delivering the eulogy we saw him breezily rehearsing if Ewan hadn’t spoken first? We’ll never know. What we do know is that he is most certainly not okay now. After loudly clearing his throat into the mic, offering a tentative “hi…?,” and then futzing with his cards, he can’t get through his first sentence, flubbing “world” for “word” and hissing “fuck” into the microphone, which is probably not typical for this church. Then he gets distracted by the casket at the head of the aisle and abandons the lectern, babbling to his siblings that he can’t do it and whimpering, “Is he in there?” He is. “Can we get him out?” The congregation looks embarrassed for Roman as he wails uncontrollably, doubled over in his siblings’ arms. But it’s still business time, and Shiv repeats that someone needs to say the other side.

…Which is how Kendall ends up at the lectern, doing a quick edit on Roman’s notes before improvising. Ewan was right: Logan was a brute. But he “also built, and he acted.” Not seeming to understand that action is not virtuous or laudable in and of itself — EVEN AFTER THE EVENTS OF THE PREVIOUS NIGHT — Kendall goes on about the lives and the livings Logan made: “And the money.” Well, now he’s got the crowd on his side! Kendall goes on, revoltingly describing money as “the life blood, the oxygen, of this wonderful civilization that we have built from mud.” Logan’s ambitions might have pushed his children aside sometimes, but Logan just wanted to do things, and Kendall hopes some of Logan’s force is in him, too. Good news, dude: we just saw YOUR ambitions push aside your children, PARTICULARLY THE ONE WHO MIGHT BE SUBJECT TO HATE CRIMES BY SUPPORTERS OF THE MAN YOU JUST (maybe) INSTALLED AS PRESIDENT. Anyway, Kendall goes on: there wasn’t ever a room in which he wasn’t comfortable (I mean, he didn’t seem to love the karaoke box, but go off): “He knew it, and he liked it, and I say amen to that,” Kendall concludes, to applause.

I get why Ewan doesn’t join in the ovation, but he wouldn’t have his millions to give Greenpeace if not for Logan’s grubby businesses. Everyone is compromised! (Also: the little bit of Roman’s failed eulogy that we saw him practicing at least gave a nod to the art and journalism that generated so much capital, unlike Kendall’s, which makes the money sound like the only thing his companies made: honest, but gross!)

Shiv’s attempt to “say the other side” is (a) more self-centered and (b) congruent with her usual assignment of putting a superficially respectable sheen on her family’s venality. She remembers playing outside Logan’s office when she and her brothers were kids, and how terrifying Logan’s anger was when he’d tell them to shut up. Life with Logan wasn’t always easy, “but when the sun shone on you, it was warm in the light.” Yes, that’s textbook narcissism for you! After briefly admitting that Logan never really understood women — not how to keep them safe from assault, certainly, given the scandal in Cruises — Shiv wraps up: “You did okay, Dad. We’re all here, and we’re doing okay.” Maybe take a poll before you make claims like this; Roman definitely is not.

And still really isn’t as a ceremony outside Logan’s mausoleum wraps up and neither of his closest siblings give him a look because they’re too busy with their own concerns. Shiv asks Frank and Karl, “How bad was Dad?” “What you saw was what you got,” says Karl, though as she walks off satisfied, neither he nor Frank seems like it’s exactly what they’d tell each other about him. And Kendall’s back on deal-fucking duty, ordering Hugo — who’d already proved useful on the way out of the church by telling him the rumor that Shiv had offered herself as GoJo’s American CEO — to brief media on background that the GoJo deal lacks the support of key family members and the board doesn’t like it. Life is contingent, Kendall lectures; people who say they love you still fuck you. (Man alive, one of the main reasons I’m glad this show is ending is not to have to watch Kendall continuing to make himself the victim of his own life story. YOUR KIDS DID NOT WANT TO COME TO THE FUNERAL, DUDE, GET OVER IT.) How this relates to Hugo: Kendall will bring him on when he’s CEO, but it will be as Kendall’s dog, scooping up “millions” in table scraps. “Happy?” Kendall asks. “Woof. Woof,” says Hugo. There’s an adage about this — something to do with fleas? It’ll come to me.

At the reception at the St. Regis, to which mourners arrive amid fireworks exploding on the street, Kendall is the first member of the Roy family to descend on Mencken, trying to nail down the quid pro quo of Mencken’s coronation: when might Mencken get around to publicly undermining the deal? Mencken has casually said he will “try to help” with that — HMMM, that’s quite a downgrade from the deal Roman claimed to have made in that offscreen conversation on election night! Was Roman lying then, or was Mencken? As soon as they see Kendall chatting up Mencken, the rest of the vultures swoop in. Greg tries to ingratiate himself as one of the henchmen who called the election for him. When Roman orders Greg to fuck off, Mencken starts bullying Roman by calling him “the Grim Weeper” and mocking his “tiny tears,” to a mild rebuke from Kendall. Connor, assuming his Slovenia ambassadorship is a done deal, pitches Mencken on a “pan-Hapsburg American-led EU alternative,” simultaneously failing the Don’t Be The Weirdest Man Alive challenge.

Then Shiv pulls Mencken out of the scrum to meet Matsson on the other side of the room (and Kendall and Roman confirm that they both know about her potential CEO side deal). Both men seem faintly disgusted by each other, but as Kendall reminded us all in his moving eulogy, nothing is more important than money except MAYBE power, so they gut it out; Matsson pointing out that Mencken could get further with “a gateway to a broad and growing cultural influence” than just a couple of tiny men in his pocket. When the suggestion of an American CEO comes up, Mencken says he thought Shiv hated him, but Shiv smoothly says her father was flexible and so is she. When Matsson cues her to say she hopes Mencken ends up winning the election, she can’t quite manage it, saying that ATN’s audience loves Mencken and she respects its audience. WOOF. WOOF. 

Shiv must be high off this interaction because when Tom finally arrives, having not slept in multiple dozens of hours, and soulfully apologizes for not having been there for her sooner, she seems genuinely moved, and not only because he tells her that he was the first to see Logan after his death on the plane, and said his goodbyes then. Tears pooling, Shiv tells Tom to go sleep at their place, which he gratefully accepts…

…though he might have a hard time nodding out once Shiv gets home and starts whooping all over the condo: on her drive home, Matsson calls to tell her “it’s a yes,” and that he thinks he can make an American CEO work. She hangs up, looking breathless, even though Matsson notably did not say that said CEO would be her, or exactly what “yes” means in a situation with this many moving parts?

Back at the reception, the stink of Roman’s eulogy failure is apparently keeping guests away, because he’s sitting alone when Kendall makes him talk deal strategy over Roman’s explicit request not to; he doesn’t feel well. “That’s because you fucked it,” Kendall tells him. “Thought you were Dad, tried to Dad it.” Roman claims that if Mencken tries to back out of their deal, they can attack him through ATN, but Kendall seems to know that Mencken’s acolytes are past swaying by the lamestream media. Kendall should have stopped the call, so he blames himself, but if they don’t want to lose the company, they’re going to have to fight Shiv at the board: “The Roy Boys versus Shiv The Shiv.” (If Shiv can just repeat this corny shit, she has it in the bag, imo?) Roman squirms as Kendall buttons the conversation: “You fucked it, but it’s all right.” Gee, I hope talk like this doesn’t make Roman turn on Kendall!

Then Roman storms out — past the Top Teamsters being appalled by Karl playing an audio recording of Roman’s breakdown at the church — and goes to the street to flip off the marchers. When some of them yell back at his order for them to go home, he steps into the stream of people and walks against it, muttering a stream of abuse. If he thinks his bubble of privilege will protect him, he quickly finds out how wrong he is when a marcher elbows him in the nose. That’s all it takes to knock Roman onto the street, folded into the fetal position while the march goes on around him and violently slapping away the one person who stops to help him.

When Roman staggers to his feet, he’s been stripped of his pugnacity and hugs himself while he joins the flow of traffic. Shiv was right on election night: things do happen.

Margin Calls

• Connor’s Ulysses?: As mourners are still filing into the church, Connor proudly shows Shiv the eulogy he wrote, even though they had all agreed to let Roman do it; Willa backs Connor up on the boldness of its formal experimentation. Shiv thinks it leaves them open to legal action. I realize Succession isn’t that kind of show, but this is exactly when we need a robust official website to publish this opus in full!
• Peter stays classy: Caroline has, of course, brought her latest husband Peter to the funeral, sneering at how excited he is to social-climb all over it and “joking” that he brought his autograph book. “Daddy’s here,” he tells the kids. All in all, it’s a perfectly horrible way to bid farewell to this character forever.
• Logan’s Ladies: Caroline takes a break from needling Shiv about her pregnancy to pull Kerry away from her support team (her brother, and a lawyer friend in case anyone tried to bar her from entering the funeral) and pull her to the front of the church, stopping on the way to collect a Sally Ann as well: “Sally Ann was my Kerry, so to speak,” she tells Marcia. But as far as Caroline is concerned, it’s water under the bridge now and they should all sit together in the front pew, with Marcia. She drily comments on how much Logan would hate it. Marcia gets in the spirit, adding, “At least he won’t grind his teeth tonight,” to snickers. In my opinion, she doesn’t entirely erase her unkindness at the wake by taking Kerry’s hand, but judging by the tears streaming down Kerry’s cheeks, Kerry is duly moved.
• Tales From The Crypt: Connor is the only one of the kids who knew Logan had bought a whole-ass mausoleum off a pet-supply dot-com magnate. (“Cat food Ozymandias,” Shiv snorts.) It was $5 million, but that includes perpetual maintenance. “Good deal,” Kendall says, feigning expertise — not the most grating thing he says in the episode, but in the top 10.
• And how does that make you feel: Speaking of which: at the reception, Kendall finds Colin at the buffet and comments that he knows Colin’s been talking to a therapist. Alarmed, Colin says that was supposed to be confidential, and Kendall uses his shittiest tone to laugh that it isn’t. (Honestly, if anyone should have known the dirty tricks that would be used against him in this phase of life, it’s COLIN.) Kendall says he thinks Colin should come work for him — then, he doesn’t have to talk to a “head-shrinker” because he can talk to Kendall! Colin accepts…because now Colin knows there was already a new Colin in town informing on Colin, and how much worse the new Colin could make life for the original Colin if he tried to refuse. Good luck, Colin! Pray for a sarin gas attack to take out all the Roys plus the board tomorrow and maybe you’ll finally be free!

Television Without Pity, Fametracker, and Previously.TV co-founder Tara Ariano has had bylines in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Salon, Mel Magazine, Collider, and The Awl, among others. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great, Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place), Listen To Sassy, and The Sweet Smell Of Succession. She’s also the co-author, with Sarah D. Bunting, of A Very Special 90210 Book: 93 Absolutely Essential Episodes From TV’s Most Notorious Zip Code (Abrams 2020). She lives in Austin.