In Succession - Pre-Nuptial/Nobody Is Ever Missing, Season 1, Episodes 9 and10

Episode by episode, series by series

Aka National Lampoon’s European Vacation II, since Kendall was on the editorial board of the Lampoon while at Harvard and the Roys’ Cotswolds escapades have a distinctly Griswold*-ian vibe about them.

With both Pre-Nuptial and Nobody Is Ever Missing being based almost exclusively in Britain and being concerned almost exclusively with Tom and Shiv’s wedding, I feel it makes sense to deal with the two episodes as halves of a whole. And speaking of wholes, Episodes 9 and 10 also allow us to fully make sense of why Kendall, Siobhan and Roman have turned out the way they have.

Enter Lady Caroline Collingwood, Logan’s second wife, the mother to three of his children and the sort of person who leaves you yearning for the affable warmth of her former other half. Played quite wonderfully by Dame Harriet Walter, Caroline’s a quite appalling person; utterly self-centred and taking immense joy in always saying the wrong thing. As meeting her leaves we the audience feeling slightly better inclined towards Logan, so we also come away from our encounters with Lady Collingwood amazed that Kendall, Shiv and Roman aren’t a trio of Joffrey Baratheons.