I really like 'Succession', however there's 1 tiny planning element I can't get my head round

I do not wish to nitpick. Succession is well one in all my prime three exhibits of the previous few years, and doubtless one in all my favourites of all time.

The writing is gorgeous, the characters are incredible, and there are such a lot of oof moments per episode that you just generally really feel such as you’ve gone 9 rounds with a boxer by the top credit.

Season 4, with Logan Roy’s surprising loss of life, the siblings scrabbling about within the energy vacuum he leaves behind, and an election episode that is so tense it is virtually painful to observe, is just about peak tv all-round.

However, all that being mentioned, I’ve to ask: Who the heck determined it might be a good suggestion to have Logan’s funeral the day straight after a presidential election?

Logan’s funeral is actually the day after the election.

Typically time is somewhat troublesome to quantify in Succession. In Season 4, although — not less than in some circumstances — it is fairly clear.

On the finish of episode 8, after a gruelling and irritating night time hunkered down in an ATN assembly room making selections that can have an effect on the destiny of your entire nation, Kendall (Jeremy Robust) leaves, will get into his automobile, and makes a name to his ex-wife Rava (Natalie Gold).

“I will see you tomorrow,” he says, after she’s advised him he cannot come over in the midst of the night time to see his children Sophie and Iverson. “I will see you on the funeral.”

Wait, what? Tomorrow? The funeral?!

Of all the times they might have picked to bid a fond farewell to expensive outdated dad, who determined that the day after a gruelling election night time — when principally no person will get any sleep in any respect — can be the day to do it? Provided that it will be filmed and is about to be an essential projection of the Roys as becoming leaders for Waystar Royco, why would they coincide the occasion with a day when all people goes to be specializing in the election end result and nothing else?

Who’s going to Logan’s funeral?

Granted, Kendall most likely will not have to talk at his father’s service, as Roman volunteers to learn Logan’s eulogy on behalf of the Roy siblings in episode 7. However Romulus himself has simply spent the night swindling far-eight, racist, white supremacist Congressman Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk) into the White Home — will he be able to ship it? From the appears to be like of the episode 9 trailer, he is about to ship…one thing.

Logan’s funeral will see the who’s who of Succession coming to pay tribute/sit there. Within the trailer, we see Logan’s funeral is an opulent, formal affair in a Catholic church in uptown Manhattan, and we spy appearances by the Roy siblings, in fact, alongside Logan’s estranged brother Ewan Roy (James Cromwell), Roy matriarch and Logan’s ex-wife Woman Caroline Collingwood (Harriet Walter), Lukas Mattson (Alexander Skarsgård), Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), Karl (David Rasche), Frank (Peter Friedman), Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), and Mencken.

Most of those individuals have been linked to yesterday’s election. The timing is odd, to say the least. So why has it labored out this fashion?

Why is Logan’s funeral the day after the election?

If I needed to guess, I would say that is extra of a structural season choice that the showrunners thought they might get away with, moderately than a call they hoped would make sense throughout the story. The factor is, in Succession Season 4, time is far tighter than it has been in earlier seasons. Every episode principally takes place on a single day, and the indication appears to be that lately are consecutive.

“We have been locked into the truth that every episode is in the future,” Brian Cox mentioned on HBO’s Succession podcast(opens in a brand new tab) after the third episode. “Which we have not accomplished in a collection earlier than. So he [Logan] dies on day three.”

A lot of the episodes revolve round huge occasions (the bachelor celebration, the marriage, the journey to go to Matsson, and so forth.) the place there’s an excuse to get all of the characters collectively in a single room. The day after the election takes place, it is useful for the story to have one other huge occasion the place Matsson, and even Mencken, will be current — so we will witness the fallout.

Does it make sense {that a} group of characters so highly effective they will virtually actually decide the following president would say sure to having their dad’s funeral straight after probably the most intense work night time of the yr? In all probability not. However given how good Succession is, I reckon we will let it slide.

Succession is now streaming on HBO Max(opens in a brand new tab), with new episodes airing at 9 p.m. ET Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.