The Box Set: "Succession."

Ep. 9: "Church and State."

There’s a belief in some circles of the TV critic world that the penultimate episode is usually the best one — on shows with some degree of excellence — and often the most important in that it allows the last episode to deal with the fallout, to pick up the pieces and order them in some way to create the narrative of the end that pleases the creator.

I think we saw a lot of that theory play out spectacularly well in “Church and State.”

Let’s deconstruct.