Cliffhangers, Part One: Succession

No predictions. Just connections.

On the Succesion fan pages and in journalist’s columns, everyone is making predictions about how the series will end. The theories range from far-fetched (Greg as CEO if the deal with Matsson goes through) to possible although a stretch (Tom) to making-some-sense (Shiv.) And then there are the scenarios in which the deal is wrecked (for any number of possible reasons), in which case Kendall seems the most likely inheritor of the Big Job. And then there are all manner of disaster/happy ending predictions in which none of the kids gets what they apparently want (but be careful, just might get.)

I have no idea what’s going to happen—a rarity for me, who has seen so many movies and television all my life that I almost always recognize the (intended and unintended) clues. I’m familiar with the easy-to-digest blueprints that so many writers turn to. But with Succession, the writers’ seem to care more about learning from their characters and their interactions than setting them up in advance for a resolution. And these are complex, unpredictable characters living in a world that is more complex and unpredictable than the one their father grew up in and, for a time, ruled.

Tolstoy, from a 1876 letter to N.N. Strakhov, writing about Anna Karenina:

“If short-sighted critics think that I only wanted to describe the things that I like, what Oblonsky has for dinner or what Karenina’s shoulders are like, they are mistaken. In everything, or nearly everything I have written, I have been guided by the need to gather together ideas which for the purpose of self-expression were interconnected; but every idea expressed separately in words loses its meaning and is terribly impoverished when taken by itself out of the connection in which it occurs. The connection itself is made up, I think, not by the idea, but by something else, and it is impossible to express the basis of this connection directly in words. It can only be expressed indirectly—by words describing characters, actions and situations. 

You know all this better than I do, but it has been occupying my attention recently. For me, one of the most manifest proofs of this was Vronsky’s suicide which you liked. This had never been so clear to me before. The chapter about how Vronsky accepted his role after meeting the husband had been written by me a long time ago. I began to correct it, and quite unexpectedly for me, but unmistakably, Vronsky went and shot himself. And now it turns out that this was organically necessary for what comes afterwards.” 

I don’t know—none of us do, only the writers (and now the actors) do—what will turn out to have been “organically necessary” for the ending of Succession. I do, however, trust these writers to have followed Tolstoy’s “method” more than, say, the writers of General Hospital or Rocky (or even Avatar: The Way of Water.) And as I’m waiting for the final episode I find I’m less interested in imagined scenarios than in what the Roy siblings have revealed about themselves so far and in what ways they “connect,” to use Tolstoy’s language, with each other, to the world around them, and to the man who was at the hub of it all.

Since the series started but especially during this season, there’s been a tension (or me, at least, and I believe for many other fans of the show) between the multiple plot entanglements that have kept us wondering, being surprised, laughing and arguing with each other, and a deepening of care for the characters—particularly the Roy siblings. Entertained by the sharp humor, the brilliance of the show’s dialogue, and the amazing smarts of it all, we may forget that it’s because we’ve come to care that we are so invested in the fate of various characters, so nervous about the show’s outcome. Jesse Armstong et al, over the seasons, drew us into a world that is satirically so adept and plot-wise intriguing we might not have noticed how disturbingly close to our own world it is—until this final season, that is, when screaming fights between Tom and Shiv, the death of Logan, an election and a funeral made the “reality” of it all too insistent to ignore.

We started out (and kept) laughing, and then found our hearts gripped, melting, twisted, pounding as people we’d come to love and hate moved toward the moment when they’d exit from our lives. It’s why what happens matters to us. It’s why we’re upset that it’s going to end. So much commentary has consisted of a ratings game or popularity contest—who is “on top” at various times over the seasons, who is liked and who is disliked—that as the last episode approaches, it may feel a bit like the inevitable but still surprising death of Logan himself. You mean these people are going to leave us? Something is going to be settled and they will be gone from our lives? How can that be? It seems unthinkable. It’s not the tying up of plot that has us anxiously pre-mourning. It’s the human drama.

As a human drama, I find (with some surprise) that I might not want what the characters apparently want for themselves—the keys to the kingdom. It’s such a vile world in so many ways. Do we really want Roman crushed by it? Do we want the worst in Kendall to be validated? Do we want Shiv to keep paying the price of keeping up with the boys? On the other hand, this particular kingdom—a media empire—is so powerful in the making of contemporary reality that we don’t want to see it just keep chugging along, dominated by money (as Kendall’s eulogy correctly diagnoses but scarily celebrates) and the “loudest voice in the room” (the title of a great book about Roger Ailes.) Are the qualities of leadership that Logan represented—and that have distorted his children’s lives—what we want to see rewarded?

In thinking about all this, I keep returning to some things Logan said about the “criteria” for taking over the reins (and the reign) and considering the kids in relation to them. Are any of them really suited to perpetuating the values Logan so successfully embodied? Do we want them to?

So:

Are the siblings “serious” people?

What does being a “serious person” mean? Judging from the context, it means you don’t do deals because you are hurt, or pissed off, holding a grudge, wanting an apology first, or to “get even”—which is exactly what’s motivating both Kendall and Shiv. They are so furious with their father for screwing them out of their majority on the board (to name just the most recently consquential; there’s also the helicopter, the advice Logan gave Tom regarding lawyers, his numerous betrayals of promises to them, and perhaps their entire childhoods) that they don’t recognize a good deal when it’s presented to them. (“Good”=”real”=not just a play.) “Serious” people keep their eyes on the prize; they don’t make decisions on the basis of “feelings.”

For better or worse, neither of the boys meet this criterion. Kendall’s plans shift dangerously with his feelings, which are volatile and at times disproportionate—the best example being his decision to call the election for Mencken just because Shiv has lied to him. Logan would undoubtedly find that reactive, childish, not serious at all.

Nor would Logan be sympathetic to Kendall’s flailing attempts to get Rava to bring the grandkids to the funeral. He’d be appalled to see Kendall and Roman arguing—in the context of making a decision that will affect Waystar (not to mention the whole country!)— about whose dinner choices were privileged as children. Chicken or fish? A right wing racist or a libtard?

Roman, in fairly typical middle-child fashion, is torn between his older brother and his younger sister, and is most threatened by the disintegration of the family. Until the fiasco of election night and the funeral, his natural inclination is to mediate (as he tries to in the scene above.) But he’s also probably the most damaged of them all (whether by neglect or worse—his fixation on older women does suggest sexual abuse of some sort from his mother, even if only inappropriate flirtation or physical punishment for “dirty” behavior, which remains eroticized throughout his life) and has the least self-control.

Roman’s caustic humor masks a hunger for affirmation from his father (that scene when Logan says “I need you, son” is so touching!) that is such a deep, empty well he is unable to distinguish between the heady, manic thrill of power (which temporarilly makes him feel emotionally “full”) and the “serious” wielding of power. And of course, it all breaks apart when the excitement of his imagination (“See Roman light up the sky!”) is replaced with the reality of his father’s body in the coffin. He’s too tender-hearted to be able to lead in a “serious” manner. And please, get my boy some medication!

Among Logan’s three children, only Shiv (with the exception of her fury at her father for giving all the good lawyers to Tom) seems to be operating despite the emotions of the moment. In fact, it’s why so many fans dislike her. Woman aren’t supposed to be so cool-headed. They aren’t supposed to make wry remarks that are intended as “plays” (for all his understanding of her,Tom continually misinterprets those—as he does, for example, when Shiv appears to offer him up as a sacrificial lamb for the cruise scandal, while secretly she’s begged Logan to choose anyone but Tom.) Women are supposed to lead with their emotions—although of course, doing so is then held against them when they try for higher office, either in business or politics. It’s called a double-bind, and it’s been the curse of many woman with aspirations.

All of the children try to be shrewd operators. It’s not clear that any of them are actually any good at it. But only Shiv operates from long-term strategy rather than “feelings.” This seems unnatural to many of the fans, and they find her despicable for it. I wasn’t surprised, then, when many of them questioned why such a cold bitch was having a baby anyway. They pointed to her drinking champagne defiantly in front of Tom, telling her own mom that she was “gonna do it the family way” and ignore the baby, and reassuring Matsson that it will be “what, thirty-six hours of maternity leave? Emailing through her vanity cesarean. Poor kid will never see her.”

The Shiv-haters (of which there are disturbingly many) took her sarcasm seriously—as though she hadn’t been raised in a family who habitually snarked at each other, sometimes in jest, sometimes with barely disguised venom. And surely it was worth a gulp of champagne to strike back at Tom for doubting she was pregnant. (Not gonna get into an argument here about whether it was “safe” or not, so don’t even start.) She’s also rightly aggravated that they are all so sure of what her being pregnant/mother means. All their assumptions! How dare Mattson question whether she’d be home washing diapers all the time instead of doing the job? How dare Tom tell her “it’s fine” when she has the champagne? How dare any of them think they know how she’d be as a mom?

But she’s not going to have a hissy-fit about any of it. She’ll use sarcasm, she’ll “play” along without calling Matsson on his sexism—for the time being. She’s not going to blow up or break down. In terms of Logan’s criteria, Shiv is the only one who’s a “serious person.”

I’ve been there; I know the toll, the cost of it. On the other hand, I remember that the compromises with male power that many of us made put us in a position to transform it all. In high school I talked the talk with the cool lefty boys to show them I wasn’t a pussy. I swallowed a lot of sexist bullshit at philosophy conferences to get my criticisms of the discipline taken “seriously.” I joked around, flirted, even bent the truth a bit with the old white boys whose support I needed so that a little program could become a full-fledged department of gender studies. And don’t be misled by the backward turn this country has taken lately: my cohort of feminists changed everything.

I wonder what Shiv would do if ATN was in her hands? She’s the only sibling with enduring “liberal” political values. Nomatter what she’s scheming with Matsson, no matter that she’s tell Mencken she’ll be “flexible,” she’s unlikely to take the station the Ailes/Murdoch route. And she’s used to being patient, to playing the long game, something I’m not sure either Kendall or Roman has in them.

“You’re not a killer, son.”

Logan was wrong. Kendall is a killer. He’s the only true killer of the three. Roman as tyrannical king-of-the-hill is a transitory deviation—a performance that dissolves under the pressure of his grief (which turns out not to have been “pre”-experienced so much as denied.) Shiv is cruel to Tom, but it’s more from emotional cluelessness (“What? You’re hurt that I want to sleep with other people?”) than a desire to stomp on him. She’s genuinely shocked—and on the verge of tears—when he tells her, in that heartbreaking beach scene—how much she’s hurt him.

These three have been brought up by selfish, hyper-critical, and abusive parents; none of them have learned how to speak a language of love for another person. But it’s only Kendall who makes me wonder whether he can feel love. There are lots of fans who adore Kendall, but I find him the most chilling of the sibs, with a deep, deep iciness that is cloaked by the fact that he seems like such a soul in torment: So “sensitive” when he stews over the young waiter he didn’t save from drowning! So “honest’ when he tells Shiv about his ambivalence about Mencken (and his own fantasies of being number one—along) right before he learns of her alliance with Mattson! And that troubled face! Does he ever relax?

Kendall may be “nice” when he knows he’s got the sympathy of his sibs. But when he turns, he’s stone cold. And the fact that his knives emerge suddenly, unexpected, makes him all the more dangerous: He starts out understanding when Jess tell him “it’s time” for her to look for another position. But when what she’s saying sinks in, he transforms into a tryrant—chastizing her on the street, and even has the audacity to accuse her of bringing the subject up before Logan’s funeral, when it was Kendall who forced her to speak about it. He makes sure Hugo knows that he’s just a lapdog (albeit a well-paid one: “Me, rule the world. And you can come. But it won't be a collaboration, okay? You'll be my dog. But the scraps from the table will be millions. Millions. Happy?” Hugo: “ Woof, woof.”)
Worst of all, he’s unspeakably cruel to Roman, telling him he “fucked up” when his brother is clearly in distress. “It’s all right,” he adds. Who made you king of what others are feeling, Kendall?

Was the killer-instinct always a part of him? Or did it emerge after Logan asked him to take the fall (in the above scene.) Was that the last staw? The final betrayal? Shiv and Roman never imagined they would be considered for the Top Job as they were growing up; they knew that Kendall was the chosen one. (The opening sequence that first season shows Logan with his hands on the shoulders of a suited young man, clearly meant to be Kendall. It’s only in the second season that the other three are added and we now get a line up turning to watch their father pass by rather than the singled out son.)

But while Kendall may be a killer, he’s not Logan. Logan was “comfortable in the world”—as Kendall says of him in his funeral oration. Kendall isn’t. So he can’t maintain the “business above all” that Logan was able to. He may well get what he wants. But as in a Shakespearean tragedy, he may also be wrecked in the process.

At the Funeral

Roman breaks down. He’s always been a leaking volcano, spewing on Mattson in Norway, firing Gerri on a passing petulance. When he’s getting ready for his funeral speech, he’s so hyped up with fantasy (and perhaps cocaine?) that I’m sure many other viewers, as I did, began to sense disaster coming. No balloon gets that filled up without bursting. And Roman does—in a moment of absolute believability and wrenching identification for those of us who’ve been in that position. It’s my father who’s in the box. He’s not walking around in this world anymore. He’s in that box. Please, please let him out.

And his brother made him pay for it.

I’ve loved Roman for his vulnerability and sweetness. I don’t like it when followers of the show call him a “pervert.” I’ve frequently wanted to hug him. I hated him on election night. After the funeral, I loved him again—and worried for him. To go from so high to so low in the space of a day. What will become of him?

Kendall presented an impressive but terrifying “eulogy.” As when he announced “Living Plus,” he began haltingly, awkwardly, but then got in some kind of groove—let’s call it inspiration from the gods of advertising—and knows just what the people want to hear. He’s skillful at weaving equal part of insight (Logan’s vitality) and honesty (he was “brutal”) and bullshit (Logan didn’t actually build all those bridges, etc.) Then, carried away by his own eloquence and sensing that the crowd was with him, he goes over-the-top: raising a waving flag to the glory of consumer capitalism. Mencken loves it, of course: “It was perfect.” And Kendall, having self-coronated, bids good-by to all the guests while Roman hides in the car and Shiv is off on the side. Despite having scaled the heights, Kendall still has the composure to issue orders to Hugo.to prepare for the next day’s meeting about the sale (or not sale) of Waystar.

Be afraid of Kendall. Be very, very afraid. He is genuinely a soul in torment. He’s a good speech-maker. But he is a bubbling cauldron of hurt and ambition, and will turn the business into whatever would produce the most applause for him. That’s the way Fox operates. Read about Roger Ailes.

I know I’ll get accused of being a “Shiv-Lover” who will always vote for the woman “just because she’s a woman,” but I found Shiv’s eulogy to be the most genuinely moving. I cringed a little when she said “He couldn’t fit a whole woman in his head”; that seemed—I don’t know—a little like a feminist talking-point. But my face crumpled up and I let out a cry “Oh, Shivy!” when she described how although “it was hard to be his daughter,” “When he let you in, when the sun shone, it was warm, yeah, it was really warm in the light.”

I used very similar words in another discussion in an earlier substack, referring to the first episode of season two, when Logan tells Shiv that he’s picked her as his successor. When she questions, yet again, whether the offer is “real” (How many times does she ask this? She’s in disbelief, having been “played” before), he tells her to remember the slant of light coming through the window at that moment, and Shiv’s face itself is literally lit up in the scene.

Logan: “This is real. Remember this, the slant of light.”

Every one of Logan’s children has felt the warmth of his sun at one point or another. And every one has been betrayed. Logan’s betrayal of Shiv is especially brutal because she—always on guard, never trusting--was so girlishly transported by his offer and when he later demolishes her, it’s so unfair. Unlike Kendall, who actually has been plotting against his father, Shiv merely commits the unpardonable sins of (1) usurping her father’s need to be in control of the announcement of his successor (she blurts out “why don’t you just tell them it’s me?” at the Pierce dinner table) and (2) exploring options with the Pierce Media empire (a trap set up by Rhea) while her dad waffles on the job for Shiv.

When Shiv says goodby to her “world of a father,” I also can’t help but think of the fact that she’s pregnant. And despite remarking how he shut the kids out, she may know a side of Logan that none of them mention at the funeral. From an earlier substack:

Logan can be tender, as he is with his grandson the morning after Kendall is saved from drowning. “Are you all right, son? Your dad was okay, you know. He was okay.”  They’re sitting close together and he’s reading to the boy from “Goodbye Mog,” a sentimental children’s picture book. Of course, that kind of reading matter will never do. Too babyish, not enough masculine action. But still. He’s behaving like a grandpa.

I suspect “Pinky” knows both sides of Logan— both the slant of light through the window and the darkness of his rages, having been a girlchild. And she knows that a new baby was the one thing she could have given him that he could unambivalently love—at least for awhile. She was the baby of the family herself once, and I’m guessing that as long as she did as she was told, Logan probably pampered her as he couldn’t pamper the boys (lest they turn out to be pussies.)

It couldn’t last; she soon got the message that to be respected you couldn’t stay a little girl. But that’s exactly what she becomes again, leaving a message to a dying (or already dead) father that is probably unable to hear it. All of them have trouble expressing their feelings to Logan, leaving their awkward little speeches about not forgiving him but loving him “in spite of” that. But Siobhan literally sheds decades of armor, fingers trembling, her voice pitched an octave or two higher than usual. The boys call him “dad”; she calls him “daddy.”  Her hands suddenly look like those of a little girl, and she can barely operate the phone.

No predictions.

******

Stay tuned for Part Two of “TV Watch.” I’m thinking Happy Valley, Love and Death, Silo, Fatal Attraction, and City on Fire. Maybe The Diplomat. Tell me what you’d like! I’m up to date on all of them and tomorrow is free for writing! (I’ll also be doing Part Two of “Royal Bodies” for paid subscribers. )