Summary: Protests break out after Mencken's election. Rava tells Kendall she won't be attending Logan's funeral with the kids. Kendall also learns that Jess is quitting soon. The Roy children travel together and Shiv reveals she is pregnant. Tom stays at ATN doing damage control after the election. At the funeral, Shiv advises Matsson to come clean about the India numbers and cut a deal with Mencken to keep the GoJo deal with an American CEO. Shiv proposes herself for the position. At the funeral, Ewan goes up unprompted to eulogize Logan. Roman goes up after him but breaks down on the stand. Kendall takes his place and says words with Shiv going briefly after him. Logan is taken to a mausoleum. At the reception, Kendall hires Colin, who has been adrift without Logan. Kendall goes to talk with Mencken, but when Roman, Greg, and Connor all arrive, Mencken leaves with Shiv to talk with Matsson who gives him his proposal. Later, Mencken accepts. Tom arrives late and shares a moment with Shiv before she tells him to get some rest. Kendall proposes that Roman helps him at the board meeting against Shiv, but Roman is out of it. After, Roman goes out into the riot and provokes people into hurting him.
The Good: I love focused episodes of storytelling, and "Church and State" is a perfect example of this, with the episode fixated on sending off Logan Roy while addressing and admiring the complexity of this man and the fascinating, ambiguous nature of the relationships he had with those closest to him. We spend a ton of time at the funeral watching characters attempt to eulogize Logan, capturing him to the best of their own imagination to send him to rest. Yet no character is able to fully encompass all about Logan, and it takes three eulogies from three people closest to him until we are able to get a good grasp of who Logan was and what he meant to the world around him. Listening to these eulogies was a spectacular experience and the writing was phenomenal. If I had the time, I could easily do a line-by-line analysis of all that was great about this funeral, but I'll try to keep it brief and address the fascinating aspects of the story that was being told. Ewan's speech came first, and it was a magnificent exploration of Logan's upbringing, giving us the most details we have ever had about his past and answering some key questions regarding things like his uncle (from "Austerlitz") and what happened to his sister Rose (from "Dundee"). I found it compelling to hear Ewan reminiscing about his past with Logan, and it's beautiful to see that even with their differences, Ewan still fondly remembers his brother before he was corrupted by the life he had, and shares sympathy and pity for his cause. This nicely illuminates with Ewan still had a fierce loyalty towards Logan despite condemning him at every turn. He had his reasons to despise and disagree with Logan (and he wasn't afraid to let everyone know about them), but they are still family, and I like that "Succession" allowed Ewan to convey the mixed feelings about Logan instead of jumping into a rant like we had seen in earlier episodes like "I Went to Market". This eulogy added an impressive amount of depth that recontextualized the relationship between the two brothers, and was a perfect way to kick off the funeral by highlighting the man Logan was before his kids came into the picture. This feeds nicely into Kendall's eulogy which came next (I'll talk more about Roman later, don't worry). Stepping in for his distraught brother, Kendall is forced to improvise a speech about his father to try to fill in the holes that Ewan was unable to. Ewan condemned all of Logan's business moves, and it was up to Kendall to protect his image. This was a defining moment for Kendall, who is forced to step up on a day when he's unprepared, emotional, and struggling with outside problems (Jess quitting, his ex-wife and kids not coming to the funeral). He's been awkward since the beginning of the series, but we've seen him grow better and better at public presentations through the course of the show, with notable highlights in "D.C." and "Living+". He's not perfect in the eulogy (note how Kendall tries to not-so-subtly sell himself numerous times), but he steps up big-time and uses all of his experience to tell a grandiose speech in an effort to capture the massive majesty of what Logan accomplished with his company. Watching Kendall do this is engrossing and we can see the emotion pour out of him as he describes those gargantuan qualities his father possesses that have been a cause for so much internal conflict. Kendall has always wanted to believe that he is the spitting image of his father, and this is a chance for him to showcase why he admired Logan so much and why it is so necessary for him to continue Logan's legacy, the prime driving factor behind the character since the first episode. Not only was this speech about Logan's impact on the world, but it was about Logan's impact on Kendall and shedding more light on how Kendall's relationship with his father made both such fascinating characters to follow. Lastly, we get to Shiv's eulogy, the shortest and most personal accounting of Logan. Where Ewan and Kendall stood opposite of each other to argue Logan's weaknesses and strengths, Shiv chooses to touch on the humanity of Logan, highlighting how Logan was as a father and as a figure in the lives of the children. She's very emotional so she isn't quite able to nail everything about Logan, but she is able to tell a beautiful story about how even as a parent Logan was larger-than-life for the kids, and while this led to some troubles in their upbringing and connection with him, there was always a fascinating love between them, which is something that she will miss. Shiv is perhaps the one who was the harshest on Logan while he was alive, always snapping back at him, demanding things of him, and feeling cheated by him. But now that he's gone, she is able to give him a fond farewell through the emotions she is feeling after his death. The eulogies aren't all that speak about Logan in this episode, and a lot of the most fascinating stuff came from Roman, who was completely unable to speak when the time came. Kieran Culkin shines in an episode full of tremendous performances with how he portrays Roman's challenging emotions at the funeral. He claims to have pre-grieved Logan's death, but it has been clear this season that he has been adrift without his father, a loose cannon that isn't able to put himself back together into the person he had become in the last season. All of the build-up of Roman not being okay paid off massively in this episode when Roman falls apart when he's about to make his speech, destroying his career in the process. Roman is heart-breaking as he cries with his siblings, begging them to take Logan out of the coffin to bring him back. This scene is a fantastic example of how bottling up grief is simply impossible, and it's devastating to see Roman's alliance with Mencken fall apart following his "pathetic" showing. Now Kendall has taken a leading role and Roman has been left behind, feeling truly empty without his abusive father to ground him to reality. Roman's relationship with Logan is an outstanding example of the love that someone can have towards their abuser, and how empty it can feel when that abuser is gone. It was devastating to see Roman, at the end of the episode, charge into a riot desperate to get the abuse that he needs from somewhere else. As beautiful as the eulogies were, this episode's greatest success is how it poignantly illustrates the important of Logan's abuse in Roman's life, and how self-destructive of a character Roman really is. There are plenty of other things I enjoyed in the episode, and it will be impossible for me to list every little thing that I enjoyed. I'll try my best though. Tom skipping Logan's funeral and showing up at the end in tears with Shiv was a lovely background story that perfectly encapsulated Tom's grief as a result of this weird relationship he had with Logan. Caroline getting Marcia and Kerry together for the funeral was oddly sweet, and a nice moment to have all the women in Logan's life come together out of respect for the man. I quite liked how the execs behaved in this episode as they reflected on their long past with Logan while still making moves for the future. There were several nice character moments here like Frank noticing Roman's distress as he goes up to the podium, Kendall raging at Rava for (justifiably) skipping the funeral, Mencken insulting Roman for crying, Connor's insights about the mausoleum, "woof woof", and many more. The Bad: I loved everything that happened at the funeral, but I have to admit that the episode somewhat lost me after the funeral scenes ended ended. This was a brilliant stand-alone piece about the impact of Logan Roy in the lives of those closest to him, and the burial scene felt like a perfect closing point to end the episode. Because of that, it felt jarring when I was reminded that this was the penultimate episode of the series and had an additional duty of setting up the finale. All the scenes at the reception are in service of furthering the main plot, and it felt entirely disconnected from so much of what I had just watched earlier in the episode. Is the content still good? Of course. But the set-up for the finale did not engage me because I was too invested in the Logan's funeral aspect of the episode to care about what's next for the Roys vs Matsson storyline. The funeral scenes feel like they form a complete episode with the set-up at the reception being an additional 15 minutes that were tacked on after the fact. The result is that the episode grew weaker as it went towards its end because I was in no state to invest in the set-up for the finale following the heavy emotional stuff at Logan's funeral. Thankfully, the episode ends on a real high with Roman at the riot, but there was a long while where the episode started to stagnate because it forced itself to set up the series finale. I also have to question the timing of this funeral episode. By design, funeral episodes are slow, contemplative, and emotional, which does not fit at all into a penultimate episode, which by design is typically full of set-up, excitement, and escalating tension for the finale, with some penultimate episodes even containing the climax of an entire season. It's so strange that a funeral was held at a point where the story should be ramping up, and I wish that the events and story of this season were rearranged with the funeral being one or two episodes earlier so that it would fit in more naturally with the narrative. The Unknown: Is Roman's alliance with Mencken dead? It looks like Mencken has went with Matsson, does this mean that he's completely cutting off both Kendall and Roman as allies? How is Kendall planning to stop Shiv? She has a pretty big advantage right now. Will Kendall's alliance with Hugo and Colin work out? How is he planning to get everyone on the board to align with him? Of course, the question everyone has wondered since the very start of the series: who is going to be the CEO of Waystar at the end? Best Moment: Roman's breakdown at the podium. Character of the Episode: Roman. Conclusion: The funeral of Logan Roy lived up to all expectations and provided a powerful, memorable close to the character and his relationships with those closest to him. The episode lost its way a bit when it shifted focus towards setting up the finale, but this was still an excellent experience. Bring on the finale, and let's see how this great story wraps up. Score: 74
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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