A Short Note on Last Night’s Succession (Patreon)

Note: Almost done with D&D movie essay and then gonna see the movie about Italian plumbers, but I had to just drop in to talk about last night’s episode.

So I already wrote a big deep dive into the reasons Succession works so well, but the short version of that essay? It’s a scathingly funny show about terrible people, but it succeeds because it never pulls punches about the costs of their unrelenting pride and the way they mistreat those around them. At the same time, it doesn’t make the mistake of trying to humanize their characters through empathy-building, nor espousing things that secretly get you on their side. No, the emotional core of the show is pity. In that it finds the sorrowful core of these miserable, miserable people and shows the ways that they have both tremendous weakness and fear at the core of souls, which was often something born long ago. And in its own way, last night’s episode highlighted that completely.

[spoilers and such to follow]

For the show’s entire run, Logan Roy has been the sun and every other character has been orbiting around him. Yes, such is the nature of his position as the Murdoch-esque titan at the head of their media empire. But for the kids, there’s an emotional gravity that goes beyond the mere position. Yes, they were all given the most immense privileges in the world, and yet they all have their severe complexes from the years of Logan’s selfishness, ignorance, and verbal abuse. But since they’re financially dependent on him and those privileges, they are stuck in that system. Which means this whole time, in their own ways, they’ve all wanted their various forms of approval from him and often tried to bargain for it. Despite the following song being funny, it’s a dynamic perhaps best exemplified,  Demi Adejuyigbe’s incredible lyrics written to the opening theme: “Who Will Get A Kiss From Daddy?”

And now Daddy is dead. Logan died suddenly, off screen, and right in the midst of the usual family in-fighting that defined the series. And while they so often deal crassly with these serious things when it’s about OTHER people within their solipsistic view (say if Karl died on the plane, it would barely be an inconvenience and we’d get a few comic rumblings of them trying to do their best). And even still, the episode had time for a few great jokes. Like the way they Kendall straight-faced says while planning their dad’s funeral that, “we could do Reagan’s with tweaks.” But since their entire lives revolved around Logan, there is no escaping what is happening here. And the way each of them responds is so telling about the heart of their character.

First is Roman. Note the way that Culkin’s performance goes so physical because he can’t handle what’s happening. He always has a deflecting barb, but here he quickly reverts back to his most boyish postures. He gets small, down on the ground, and curling over his knees. Remember this is a kid literally kept in a cage at some points. And note the way he blames himself, asking if dad was listening to the voicemail he left. For all the jokes, he never really left that cage. Not deep down inside. And he’s the most scared and wounded out of all of them. Meanwhile, Shiv has the most emotional response. Granted, she’s the one who, despite her own mistreatment of many, has the thing closest to a conscience. But who is to say how much her “liberal” politics even really plays into much of anything. But she was also the one who had the closest thing to love with her father. But much of that seems born out of the fact that she spent decades OUT of the family business (with a tad of a rebellious streak felt in there), but it was the chance to prove herself that got her sucked back into this vortex in the first season. And as she discovered, there’s no way to really win it. But like Roman, she reverts back and it’s almost shocking to see her character openly crying and losing that unflappable edge she worked so hard to keep up.

Connor’s reaction to the news hits something even deeper. Just the episode prior he lambasted his half-siblings for saying they’d nuke the deal and talking about how he didn’t need Dad’s love, nor even Willa’s. And here, on his wedding day (which his father wasn’t even going to come to), the first words out of his mouth are “He didn’t even like me.” Which is something he knows is true in his bones. Sure, he takes it back. But Connor is a “first born” kid who always felt like an unfortunate by-product of a failed first marriage and whatever dark, Jane Eyre-like mistreatment of his mother lies at the heart of his own pitiful story. And this is just another cosmic reminder of how little his dad thought he mattered. And yet, the shot of him and Willa kissing to only a handful of people in attendance? There’s pain there. But also a strange freedom of him being the one most free from Logan’s gravity.

Which just leaves the one most affected by it. The episode ends with Kendall staring off at the shore,  like a sullen ghost. That’s because Kendall has never really been a person at all. It’s all just a reaction to Logan’s whims. Which is why he’s swung wildly so many times. He’s been a defiant one, a boot-licker, and a heel. Everything is an empty posture, all his desperate attempt to be his own person, but constantly asking others to confirm how he is viewed. And yet, deep down he knows he is nothing without Logan’s gaze. He is nothing without his support, anger, or resentment. These things seemed to not just give Kendall purpose, but an identity, if only for a moment. Logan was gravity. And without it? All of them immediately start spinning out of time and space. Will they crash into and consume one another? Or find a way to orbit around something else? Or another? Perhaps the harshest reality will be the realization that planets are not suns. And Logan was an undeniable star in the galaxy. Which brings up the deepest question of all… For all this time, all this battling, all these machinations, the question for all four kids is “for what?” All with his last words to the group echoing in their heads: “you are not serious people.”

So what are they now?

<3HULK