No real spoilers here, I promise.

Episode 7 of Season 4 means there are only three installments left. So now the tide is turning, and pretty damn fast. A lot of things are clarified, and there are enough surprises at a pre-election party at Shiv and Tom’s triplex that we may to watch this one a few times.

There are a couple of startling confrontations that will have just huge impact on the next three outings. If you’ve noticed, in this season now with Logan gone, people are being much more viciously candid than ever. We are watching several duels at once, like tennis matches with swords, and the cuts are getting deeper and deeper.

Now that Kieran Culkin jumped into the Emmy game as a lead and not supporting — in direct contest with Jeremy Strong — Matthew MacFadyen has jumped into the lead supporting actor in drama. Tom and Shiv go somewhere on Sunday that George and Martha from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” could not imagine. Edward Albee’s emotionally ruthless characters would leave the room in tears, folks.

Who’s not at the big party, by the way? Sandi and Stewie, maybe because actor Arian Moyad was already rehearsing “A Doll’s House” on Broadway. (And Hope Davis is always busy.) Also missing: David Rasche (Karl must be exhausted after the last few episodes.) There’s only scene with Gerri that, of course, J. Smith-Cameron nails to the floor. A character from Seasons 1 and 2 returns. Kendall’s wife also returns and mention is made of his children.

Who is at the party? Lukas Mattson, whose whole world is being peeled like an onion.

Get out the scotch or whatever calms your nerves.

There will be no new “Saturday Night Live” this weekend. The episode which was supposed to be hosted by Pete Davidson has been cancelled because of the writer’s strike.

There are only two more installments this season. If the strike continues, that may be the end of this season. “SNL” can’t function without writers unless Lorne Michaels is going to let everyone just improvise. And that would be a big mistake.

“SNL” is in the same position as “The View.” You’d think they couldn’t keep going without writers. That troupe has improvised for two days, but it’s not a success. They’re very brave, but we’ll see how long that can last.

“Succession” this past Sunday really succeeded.

The water cooler show, in its 6th episode of its final season, jumped 29% from the previous week. The show notched its highest numbers of the season, with 847,000 total viewers on the main HBO channel.

HBO says that in addition to those numbers, the show had 1.9 million fans on HBO Max. The jump pushed “Barry” up by 100,000 viewers, as well by 45.7% in totals and a whopping 166% in the key demo. “Barry” is still pulling just 303,000 viewers, but that’s a surprising increase.

“Succession” on Sunday was brutal, which is nothing new. All the actors are working at the top of everyone’s game. But this episode was poignant because Jeremy Strong’s Kendall is balancing on a dental floss between mad genius and nervous breakdown. His final scene, floating in the ocean, starts out looking dire but ends on muted triumph. Kendall is a little manic depressive, so he’s always scaring the audience. This week, he also scared his siblings.

Next week is episode 7. We still haven’t had Logan Roy’s funeral. There’s speculation now that the funeral will be the final chapter, episode 10. This means that Season 4, even though taking weeks for us to experience, is moving almost day by day. It’s excruciating.

Apart from Kendall, the bizarre marriage of Shiv and Tom continued be fascinatingly cruel. The estranged couple played a game in which they bit each other’s arms– without drawing blood — and then had sex. Shiv still hasn’t told Tom she’s pregnant, and she’s flirting like crazy with Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard).

In the supporting area J. Smith-Cameron’s fight with Roman (Kieran Culkin) was startling. Even more crazy was she was fired again, for the second time this season. Roman has also caved to the pressure to living up to his father’s standards.

Where do we go from here? Up to 1 million linear viewers this weekend? And to a surprise, something out of left field for Waystar?