Once again, it’s time for me to pour this week’s Succession recap directly into your eyes as if I were Gregory Hirsch wielding a can of lemony, medicinal LaCroix. I’m not privy to the titles of the episodes before they air but based on the two standout Roman scenes, I have to assume that this one will be “Kieran Culkin’s Emmy Tape”. The first arrives as we open on Roman rehearsing his father’s eulogy and proclaiming himself to be “King Dong”. It both beautifully illustrates Roman’s unbelievably complicated relationship with his own unusual masculinity, and establishes a strange theme for the episode – namely, d***s, mentions of which practically bookend the action.
“I selected the President,” Roman says in a faint impersonation of his father’s voice. “Do you see his pecker in my pocket?” “If you have a little d***y, maybe you don’t go to the nudist beach,” Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) grimaces, when Shiv (Sarah Snook) suggests he use her father’s funeral as a smokescreen to leak his company’s dubious numbers. “He’s got our d*** in his hand,” Kendall (Jeremy Strong) says to Roman, about Mencken (Justin Kirk), “and we should have his d*** in our hand.” Who is holding whose d***, whose d*** is the biggest, who is the mightiest big d*** of all? It’s hardly a new preoccupation for Succession, but somehow this week’s phallic banter has a particularly Freudian vibe. Of course, as Roman’s other standout scene goes on to demonstrate, Logan Roy is always going to be the biggest swinging d*** in any room, even when he is a stiff.
