NOTE: this post contains spoilers for Succession season 4 episode 7, "Tailgate Party."
"Tailgate Party" is a tale of two parts. There's before the pre-election day party and the pre-election day party. This is the party that changes everything. Let's start with everything that happens before the party.
Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) brings breakfast to Shiv (Sarah Snook) with a gift on top. He greets her warmly, noting it's the day before the election. She gets a text from Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) saying he's not going to the party, then she opens her gift to find that Tom gave her a glass paperweight with a scorpion in it. She's puzzled, while he tries to explain that it's cute.
Rava (Natalie Gold) meets Kendall (Jeremy Strong) to tell him their daughter is refusing to go to school because she doesn't feel safe. She'd been out with friends when she was bumped by someone wearing a racially insensitive shirt and it made her uncomfortable, and then an anti-ATN club formed at her school. Kendall, who evidently hasn't been in touch with his daughter for a while, glosses over the issue — his daughter feeling unsafe — to wonder why she was out with friends in the first place. Rava gets upset that he's questioning her parenting when he's never around.
Roman (Kieran Culkin), meanwhile, is looking for dirt on Matsson. He then arrives at a restaurant, where he, Kendall and Shiv meet Connor (Alan Ruck) to do some last-minute funeral planning. There's a question of who will speak at the funeral, and Ken offers to do it but there's no real agreement. Connor gets a call about the election so he has to leave. Ken and Roman tell Shiv they want to invite Nate (Ashley Zukerman) to the party because he can run interference with the GoJo deal. After the brothers leave, Shiv calls Matsson and tells him her brothers are planning to go the regulatory route to sink the deal, so he'd better be at the party.
At ATN, Tom and Greg (Nicholas Braun) greet a Zoom room full of ATN international employees. After handing the call off to Greg, Greg informs them that they're no longer employed at Waystar. He ends the call before they can react.
Shiv finds Tom at their apartment, where he's preparing for the big party with some of the biggest and most influential people in the country. She tells him that Nate is coming and he takes it well-ish. After all, Shiv and Nate had an affair and they've only just gotten back together, so this isn't exactly welcome news but Tom puts on a happy face.
That's what happened before the party. If that was the calm before the storm, batten down the hatches for rough seas ahead….
At the party, the Roy brothers prepare to spread some regulatory rumors among the guests while Tom advises Greg to get in good with Matsson. Greg thinks Matsson hates him, though. Roman gets a call from presidential candidate Mencken's people asking for Connor to drop out of the election because the race is so tight in some states that Connor's meager percentage points could make a difference.
When Nate arrives, Tom offers him wine and thinly-veiled insults. Then Frank (Peter Friedman) and Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) arrive and Frank tells Roman that Gerri is still upset about the whole being fired thing.
Kendall gives a speech to welcome everyone and closes it with a moment of silence for Logan Roy (Brian Cox). Matsson walks in at that very moment, instantly becoming the center of attention with his gold jacket.
Tom moves on Matsson, then Shiv arrives to fill him in on what's happening. Matsson eventually talks to Nate, and then Kendall talks to Nate. Nate, who is working for the Democratic candidate, isn't comfortable with Kendall's plans.
Connor doesn't want to drop out, but he listens when Roman proposes a possible ambassador position. He wants to go to the UN but Menken is only proposing small countries. Connor won't hear about any countries that don't have nuclear weapons.
Matsson and his people, including ex-girlfriend Ebba (Eili Harboe), are vaping when Greg settles down with them and Matsson starts talking about how he wants to fire one of his people. He jokes that he can't fire Ebba, so when Greg offers to do the job, Matsson takes notice with interest. Ebba storms off and Kendall follows. She reveals to him that GoJo's numbers in India are problematic, which gives Ken a smoking gun. Shiv takes this information to Matsson, who doesn't deny it.
Roman tries to talk to Gerri, who has every intention of leaving Waystar with lots of money and protection. She has all of Roman's pictures, after all. When Roman gets rebuffed, he takes his anger out on Connor and says he'll never win. But Connor still won't drop out, grabbing Willa's (Justine Lupe) hand and says he's listening to the only person who has ever believed in him. He leaves, and Matsson, who witnessed the whole interaction, gets into a fake love-fest with Kendall in front of the other guests. They hug it out and seem to celebrate the deal.
Shiv ends up in a shouting match with Tom, who is upset that everyone is talking about him losing his job, and they essentially put everything on the table. Though the day started with breakfast in bed, it's ending with a very broken marriage that probably can't be fixed.
Finally, Kendall has a secret meeting with Frank, informing him about the GoJo numbers. He now wants to flip the deal, with Waystar acquiring GoJo. He's doing all of this without Roman or Shiv's knowledge, telling Frank, "one head, one crown," making his grab for full control of the company.
It was a chaotic day in the life of the Roy family, and now the election looms over them.
Succession airs Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT on HBO and streaming on HBO Max.
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