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Successions penultimate episode, Church and State, presents three eulogies for series patriarch Logan Roy.
Its the one line he manages to get out when he actually reaches the podium.
A great man indeed.
But at its best and most exciting,Successionis a show that thrives in ambiguous spaces.
It loves conditional phrases and letting its characters talk about deals but rarely mustering the courage to make any.
The pleasure is in the negotiation, where all possibilities remain open and many interpretations could still be valid.
In classicSuccessionform, though, every eulogy contains its own hairpin turns and attempts to navigate contrasting ideas.
Even after Logans death,Successionrefuses to land on any single idea of who the man was.
The first eulogy is Ewans, and it establishes the framework for all three.
you could get a little high, a little mighty when youre warm.
Shivs eulogy, the last one in the set, is a mirror to Ewans.
She begins with childhood pain, although in this case, its her own.
We used to play outside his office, she says, and he was so terrifying.
Oh God, he was so terrifying to us.
Shivs eulogy takes Ewans image and twists it, attempting to soften it toward generosity.
He was terrifying because his work was so important, she says.
He kept us outside … but he kept everyone outside.
Rather than just the warmth of selfish privilege, Shiv suggests, Logans warmth could radiate onto others.
When he let you in, when the sun shone, it was warm.
It was really warm in the light.
For Ewan, Logan was a monster and a product of tragedy.
Ewan suggests that Logan believed he caused death.
Kendall describes Logan as an indomitable font of life.
He had a vitality, a force that could hurt.
And it did, Kendall says.
Its all pregnancy and birth images for Kendall: corpuscles gushing, quickening ambition, bloody, complicated life.
Logan was the engine of creation, and birth always comes with pain.
The money gushes, Kendall says.
It feeds into great geysers of life.
As ever with Kendall, theres still a question about what exactly hes doing in all of that water.
Is it a wellspring or a flood?
Is it birth or drowning?
He was comfortable with this world, and he knew it.
He knew it, and he liked it, Kendall says of his father.
Its thatSuccessionequivocation again, that attempt to keep all of the options open at once.
Logan was fire, he was ice, but he was temperate too.
He could find a middle path.
He was comfortable with this world is such a damning thing to say about Logan Roy.
Its the one thing no one else around him could ever be.
In the mausoleum after the funeral, Connor wonders whether all the siblings should eventually share his tomb.
A chance to get to know him?
I had trouble finishing a scotch with him, Kendall says.
Romans is the most gruesome: He made me breathe funny.
