I really appreciated the beginning of this piece and its linking of the writing and themes of Succession to Tolstoy. It was so apt! Particularly the observations that the loss of someone for whom one felt great ambivalence can be just as wrenching, if not more so, than for the loss of someone cleanly loved and admired. I most identified with the increasing twitchiness of Roman, as he searched bodily for a safe space (on the floor, cross-legged on a chair). I could vicariously feel the trauma in his body as it happened ("The Body Keeps the Score," yes)...And as he kept saying, "Stop saying he's gone!" as if one could will the sun to never go down. When he seeks succor from Gerri, "I think....I think...I am sad..." I thought of how long the Roy "kids" lived in states of numbness punctuated by rage and primal jokes. It's interesting how extreme the lives of these characters are, and yet how much I could identify with each of them. "There is a grief that is biblical; one that displaces villagers" (BK)....To say I was "triggered" by this recent episode is to diminish great art....as if one could be "triggered" by Shakespeare and Tolstoy, etc. And yet....I needed Gerrri.....or someone.....to hold me.
This comment is so rich and brilliant I want to put it as a P.S. to the piece. Loved your description of Roman’s “twitchiness” and all the kids as in “states of numbness punctuated by rage and primal jokes.” As for Gerri, I think she needs a hug more than you do; she was on the verge of being totally fucked over in this episode, and may still be. Her face when Roman gives her the “message”: obviously shaken and then gathering her pride. Their faces and bodies say everything they can’t (or won’t) say in words.
you're so right - Gerri needs a hug. Boy, has she been used and abused. But she has that semi-maternal look, complete with plus-size blazer, that makes me (and Roman) have a maternal transference.
I do not watch television, haven't for years. But I have read and taught from your books and when your name appeared in a FB post I went to it. It has led me here to read your reading of a TV show and the characters in it. I have studied human behavior from the time I was six. I am thrilled to have found connection to your thinking once more, now in the present. Susan Landgraf
Thank you for finding me today. Just what I needed after seeing this episode. And I also thank you for bringing up Tolstoy. My Russian literature class was my favorite of all the classes I took in college and I’m reminded why.
The analogy to The Death Of Ivan Ilyvich is pure genius and spot on.
This show is the gift that keeps on giving. I could watch each episode 5x over (if I had the time) and see something different each time.
And last nights episode I must watch again because the distraction of “Is he alive or not “ perfectly manipulated me into the chaos.
No one touched me more than Kendall. I feel he is the most damaged and bore the brunt of Logan’s abuse more than his siblings. Jeremy’s performance brilliant in that he only allowed just the very slightest slightest hint that he held love for his father. The resentment too strong.
Then We have Connor .... my interpretation of him and his wedding seems quite different than most and I’m not sure why. I found no hope in it at all. Throughout the series we are led to believe that he is different. Only half a Roy-- he has a different Mom and he seems to be kind and vulnerable, the opposite of his siblings. But what we saw last night solidified that he is undeniably a Roy, a product of his father , through and through. No different than his siblings, but it manifests itself in different ways.
He decides to get married despite that fact that his betrothed tells him she is marrying for money, and they never say “I love you” on their own wedding day. People always thinks it’s the woman using the wealthy man, but here we see how truly selfish Connor is. He is fulfilling his own needs, despite the circumstances, not only of his relationship with his now wife, but also the circumstances of his father’s death. Connor moves boldly forward, to serve his own purpose, and no one else’s , a chess move only a Roy can orchestrate in this world.
Yet he’s seen as a sad lamb, and I just don’t get it.
When my husband watches movies and television, he always tries to think forward and predict what’s next, almost to see if he can outsmart a writer .... but I am the opposite. I never try to figure out what’s next. I dont turn to the last page of a mystery before I read the book. I enjoy the ride and for the ride’s sake and this show is quite the ride....
But if I am to predict, I think we will find that Connor really is the first born son.
On a side note, Greg and Tom need their own spin-off.
And the Compliment garden should be the entrance to every party. Haha!
I hadn’t thought much about it, but after I read your comments it struck me how right your view of Connor is! I’ve always found him kind of repellent, and didn’t go for his “I’ve lived on rocks and stones” speech at all. It all may be true, but delivering a prideful, “campaign”-style speech about it didn’t sit well with me. Of all the kids, he’s the only one I don’t feel any emotional connection with. Perhaps he’s the most damaged—but isn’t that the way monsters are created?
I just finished watching it and I’m staggered--for all the reasons you so wonderfully described. Brilliant writing, brilliant directing. It had to ruin Connor’s wedding, as well.
Connor’s monologue about not being loved really got to me. He plays the fool but is probably the most honest. It struck me that his bride would not say she loved him, or even that she would stay with him. Something is going to break with him.
Yes, I just read it. I see him differently. He’s by far the neediest, I think, because he’s always been on the outside looking in. The other three have each other (in sick ways, but there’s a bond Conner will never have), and he has no one.
His reaction to the cake was baffling until Ken told the story of the ‘Loony cake’. Conner’s mother was institutionalized, rightly or wrongly, when Conner was a child, and the adults fed him a certain kind of cake to stop him from crying. Ken said ‘He ate that cake for a week’.
However it happened, the wedding cake variety was the same. Conner tells them they can display the cake but nobody can eat it.
When Willa leaves, Conner blows up—his first real display of anger besides the cake—and says over and over that he doesn’t need love. Will he be as conflicted as his step-siblings now? I suspect so. And he’ll fight for power.
He doesn’t, and wouldn’t, cry over Logan’s death. Why would he? Logan was never a father to him, and in this one episode, as much Conner’s as the rest of the Roy family, he’s dropping whoever he was before and a new Conner is emerging.
It’s tough when someone passes away. A close family member. I lost my wife of almost 40 years March, 2022. Not one person said a word to me. The children went about the business of planning her funeral and didn’t consult me at all. So, all I was left to deal was pay the bill, which our oldest daughter made sure I got in the mail from the funeral home. She had even gone as far as take her mother to Biloxi, MS on a ‘gambling’ trip one weekend a few months before she passed., after she had been diagnosed with 2 types of terminal stage 4 lung cancer. What she and her sister actually did was have her life insurance policies signed over to them, and made a list of everything each of them were to get, with there brothers getting what they didn’t want.
So, you guessed it. I ended up with a $14,800 burial bill I couldn’t afford, and nothing. Since then, my youngest daughter, whom my wife and I were living with, made it her life mission to make my life a living hell. I ended up paying all the rent, and household expenses, including buying the groceries, and supplying her with use of my truck so she could get back and forth to work.
In January, she quit paying the rent where we were living. When the landlady came around to see me, my daughter refused them access to me because “dad’s sleeping”, or “dad’s has a doctors appointment”, or, the best one I liked when the landlady talked to me was “dad’s naked and you can’t go in there.” My youngest daughter left last month moving back to Florida. She begged me to move back with her. I told her unequivocally:
“NO. Not no, but hell no! There’s no way in two hells I’m moving back to that state. A. Florida has gone to hell as far as teaching the children from kindergarten all the way through college. B. Florida has gerrymandered the voting until the Republicans are a shoe in on any election. C. All you want me to move to Florida with you is so I will pay your bills like I’ve been doing, and you can drive my truck. Hell no, I’m not going with you to Florida!”
Two days after she packed her U-Haul and left, I received a call from the landlady telling me everything and also telling me I had to get out. My youngest son heard what had happened. He and his wife came up and found me a little apartment and set me up in it. He talked to the landlady, and he was able to get a few things out of the house. So, I have my hospital bed, breathing and oxygen machines, my few clothes, and a few boxes of my personal family pictures. That’s it. Everything else is gone. I have nothing to remember my late wife. No pictures. No memorabilia that we had accumulated over 40 years together. Nothing. It’s like we were never married or anything.
So, if you haven’t guessed, I have a really bad taste in my mouth right now about life.
Oh lord, what a horror story!! It doesn’t mean much, I’m sure, but I hope things will somehow turn around for you. Thank you for sharing it here. Such a lot of terrible stuff to go through!! I’m really sorry. I don’t know you, but no one should have to go through this.
Thanks. I appreciate it greatly. If it wasn’t for my Substack family, honestly, I have no idea what I might have done. This is as close to insanity I think I’ve ever been.
I really appreciated the beginning of this piece and its linking of the writing and themes of Succession to Tolstoy. It was so apt! Particularly the observations that the loss of someone for whom one felt great ambivalence can be just as wrenching, if not more so, than for the loss of someone cleanly loved and admired. I most identified with the increasing twitchiness of Roman, as he searched bodily for a safe space (on the floor, cross-legged on a chair). I could vicariously feel the trauma in his body as it happened ("The Body Keeps the Score," yes)...And as he kept saying, "Stop saying he's gone!" as if one could will the sun to never go down. When he seeks succor from Gerri, "I think....I think...I am sad..." I thought of how long the Roy "kids" lived in states of numbness punctuated by rage and primal jokes. It's interesting how extreme the lives of these characters are, and yet how much I could identify with each of them. "There is a grief that is biblical; one that displaces villagers" (BK)....To say I was "triggered" by this recent episode is to diminish great art....as if one could be "triggered" by Shakespeare and Tolstoy, etc. And yet....I needed Gerrri.....or someone.....to hold me.
This comment is so rich and brilliant I want to put it as a P.S. to the piece. Loved your description of Roman’s “twitchiness” and all the kids as in “states of numbness punctuated by rage and primal jokes.” As for Gerri, I think she needs a hug more than you do; she was on the verge of being totally fucked over in this episode, and may still be. Her face when Roman gives her the “message”: obviously shaken and then gathering her pride. Their faces and bodies say everything they can’t (or won’t) say in words.
you're so right - Gerri needs a hug. Boy, has she been used and abused. But she has that semi-maternal look, complete with plus-size blazer, that makes me (and Roman) have a maternal transference.
I do not watch television, haven't for years. But I have read and taught from your books and when your name appeared in a FB post I went to it. It has led me here to read your reading of a TV show and the characters in it. I have studied human behavior from the time I was six. I am thrilled to have found connection to your thinking once more, now in the present. Susan Landgraf
So glad to have you reading these! It’s a new venture of me and I’m particularly delighted to have people familiar with my books follow me here!
It is my pleasure as well.
Thank you for finding me today. Just what I needed after seeing this episode. And I also thank you for bringing up Tolstoy. My Russian literature class was my favorite of all the classes I took in college and I’m reminded why.
The analogy to The Death Of Ivan Ilyvich is pure genius and spot on.
This show is the gift that keeps on giving. I could watch each episode 5x over (if I had the time) and see something different each time.
And last nights episode I must watch again because the distraction of “Is he alive or not “ perfectly manipulated me into the chaos.
No one touched me more than Kendall. I feel he is the most damaged and bore the brunt of Logan’s abuse more than his siblings. Jeremy’s performance brilliant in that he only allowed just the very slightest slightest hint that he held love for his father. The resentment too strong.
Then We have Connor .... my interpretation of him and his wedding seems quite different than most and I’m not sure why. I found no hope in it at all. Throughout the series we are led to believe that he is different. Only half a Roy-- he has a different Mom and he seems to be kind and vulnerable, the opposite of his siblings. But what we saw last night solidified that he is undeniably a Roy, a product of his father , through and through. No different than his siblings, but it manifests itself in different ways.
He decides to get married despite that fact that his betrothed tells him she is marrying for money, and they never say “I love you” on their own wedding day. People always thinks it’s the woman using the wealthy man, but here we see how truly selfish Connor is. He is fulfilling his own needs, despite the circumstances, not only of his relationship with his now wife, but also the circumstances of his father’s death. Connor moves boldly forward, to serve his own purpose, and no one else’s , a chess move only a Roy can orchestrate in this world.
Yet he’s seen as a sad lamb, and I just don’t get it.
When my husband watches movies and television, he always tries to think forward and predict what’s next, almost to see if he can outsmart a writer .... but I am the opposite. I never try to figure out what’s next. I dont turn to the last page of a mystery before I read the book. I enjoy the ride and for the ride’s sake and this show is quite the ride....
But if I am to predict, I think we will find that Connor really is the first born son.
On a side note, Greg and Tom need their own spin-off.
And the Compliment garden should be the entrance to every party. Haha!
I hadn’t thought much about it, but after I read your comments it struck me how right your view of Connor is! I’ve always found him kind of repellent, and didn’t go for his “I’ve lived on rocks and stones” speech at all. It all may be true, but delivering a prideful, “campaign”-style speech about it didn’t sit well with me. Of all the kids, he’s the only one I don’t feel any emotional connection with. Perhaps he’s the most damaged—but isn’t that the way monsters are created?
I just finished watching it and I’m staggered--for all the reasons you so wonderfully described. Brilliant writing, brilliant directing. It had to ruin Connor’s wedding, as well.
Connor’s monologue about not being loved really got to me. He plays the fool but is probably the most honest. It struck me that his bride would not say she loved him, or even that she would stay with him. Something is going to break with him.
See Michelle’s comment above!! She has a very interesting take on Connor, which has got me thinking….
Yes, I just read it. I see him differently. He’s by far the neediest, I think, because he’s always been on the outside looking in. The other three have each other (in sick ways, but there’s a bond Conner will never have), and he has no one.
His reaction to the cake was baffling until Ken told the story of the ‘Loony cake’. Conner’s mother was institutionalized, rightly or wrongly, when Conner was a child, and the adults fed him a certain kind of cake to stop him from crying. Ken said ‘He ate that cake for a week’.
However it happened, the wedding cake variety was the same. Conner tells them they can display the cake but nobody can eat it.
When Willa leaves, Conner blows up—his first real display of anger besides the cake—and says over and over that he doesn’t need love. Will he be as conflicted as his step-siblings now? I suspect so. And he’ll fight for power.
He doesn’t, and wouldn’t, cry over Logan’s death. Why would he? Logan was never a father to him, and in this one episode, as much Conner’s as the rest of the Roy family, he’s dropping whoever he was before and a new Conner is emerging.
The way I see it.
It’s tough when someone passes away. A close family member. I lost my wife of almost 40 years March, 2022. Not one person said a word to me. The children went about the business of planning her funeral and didn’t consult me at all. So, all I was left to deal was pay the bill, which our oldest daughter made sure I got in the mail from the funeral home. She had even gone as far as take her mother to Biloxi, MS on a ‘gambling’ trip one weekend a few months before she passed., after she had been diagnosed with 2 types of terminal stage 4 lung cancer. What she and her sister actually did was have her life insurance policies signed over to them, and made a list of everything each of them were to get, with there brothers getting what they didn’t want.
So, you guessed it. I ended up with a $14,800 burial bill I couldn’t afford, and nothing. Since then, my youngest daughter, whom my wife and I were living with, made it her life mission to make my life a living hell. I ended up paying all the rent, and household expenses, including buying the groceries, and supplying her with use of my truck so she could get back and forth to work.
In January, she quit paying the rent where we were living. When the landlady came around to see me, my daughter refused them access to me because “dad’s sleeping”, or “dad’s has a doctors appointment”, or, the best one I liked when the landlady talked to me was “dad’s naked and you can’t go in there.” My youngest daughter left last month moving back to Florida. She begged me to move back with her. I told her unequivocally:
“NO. Not no, but hell no! There’s no way in two hells I’m moving back to that state. A. Florida has gone to hell as far as teaching the children from kindergarten all the way through college. B. Florida has gerrymandered the voting until the Republicans are a shoe in on any election. C. All you want me to move to Florida with you is so I will pay your bills like I’ve been doing, and you can drive my truck. Hell no, I’m not going with you to Florida!”
Two days after she packed her U-Haul and left, I received a call from the landlady telling me everything and also telling me I had to get out. My youngest son heard what had happened. He and his wife came up and found me a little apartment and set me up in it. He talked to the landlady, and he was able to get a few things out of the house. So, I have my hospital bed, breathing and oxygen machines, my few clothes, and a few boxes of my personal family pictures. That’s it. Everything else is gone. I have nothing to remember my late wife. No pictures. No memorabilia that we had accumulated over 40 years together. Nothing. It’s like we were never married or anything.
So, if you haven’t guessed, I have a really bad taste in my mouth right now about life.
Oh lord, what a horror story!! It doesn’t mean much, I’m sure, but I hope things will somehow turn around for you. Thank you for sharing it here. Such a lot of terrible stuff to go through!! I’m really sorry. I don’t know you, but no one should have to go through this.
Thanks. I appreciate it greatly. If it wasn’t for my Substack family, honestly, I have no idea what I might have done. This is as close to insanity I think I’ve ever been.