“Succession” 4/9/2023

An appreciation in two parts

1. The Genius of Leo Tolstoy and the Brilliance of Jesse Armstrong

   

Many people who have read “The Death of Ivan Ilych “ (and many who haven’t) believe the novella begins with the memorable words:

“Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”

But actually, that famous line is at the beginning of the second chapter. The first chapter is entirely about the reactions of family and colleagues to Ivan Ilych’s death. As they “pay respects,” there are awkward moments, dealt with by conventional expressions of sympathy, followed by more awkwardness:

“Peter Ivanovich, like everyone else on such occasions, entered feeling uncertain what he would have to do. All he knew was that at such times it is always safe to cross oneself. But he was not quite sure whether one should make obeisances while doing so. He therefore adopted a middle course. On entering the room he began crossing himself and made a slight movement resembling a bow. At the same time, as far as the motion of his head and arm allowed, he surveyed the room.”

There are discussions of whether or not the event of Ivan Ilych’s death should interupt the bridge game scheduled for that evening. (It doesn’t.) There are calculations on the part of Ivan’s wife as to whether and when to weep, as she questions Peter Ivanovich about her financial situation. And there are conjectures as to who will be given Ivan’s post: “On receiving the news of Ivan Ilych’s death, the first thought of each of the gentlemen in that private room was of the changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves or their acquaintances.”

This first chapter of The Death of Ivan Ilych is, on the one hand, a blistering look at the hypocrisy and self-orientation of Ivan’s family and colleagues. But on the other hand, their reactions are so familiar, so recognizably human that what could easily be dismissed by the reader as “not me! I wouldn’t respond that way!” becomes a window onto the scared, denying, selfish, awkwardly-flailing-about corners of all our souls. A good deal of Sunday’s episode of “Succession” was like a modernization of that opening chapter. Some characters say the stupid, stumbling, conventional things (“So sorry for your loss.”) Others are distracted by thoughts of the consequences for their own futures. There is talk of whether or not to cancel Connor’s wedding (“I think it’s cancelled,” says Willa; she and Connor marry anyway, but in a low-key, sparsely attended ceremony.)

Everyone has trouble knowing what to say and do when someone has died. In the case of “Succession,” that awkwardness is compounded by three facts: One is the fact that Logan is a public figure whose death will affect the world outside the family (at one point, Roman points to the descending stock market and says, “There’s Dad’s death”.) Another is the fact that he’s not just the kids’ father (or Tom’s or Gerri’s or Kerry’s employer); Logan’s fortunes have been their fortunes, and his whims have decided their futures. Their lives, even though they are grown-ups, are as entwined with Logan’s and dependent on him as children. And last and most significant for the impact of this past week’s episode: The kids love their father, yes, but he’s also been heartlessly cruel to each one of them. And now he’s dying.

Logan Roy’s death itself is nothing like Ivan Ilych’s. Ivan had been suffering from a long, drawn-out illness (unidentified but variously diagnosed by different commentators, most often as cancer.) Logan, although he’s suffered from health issues during past seasons, has seemed as fierce and forceful as ever—perhaps, looking back at last week’s episode, suspiciously more than usual, as he mounts a pile of boxes to deliver a slightly unhinged fight call to his ATN employees. (His final words as he’s mounting the stairs of the plane: “Clean out the stalls, strategic refocus. A bit more fucking aggressive.” )When he dies unexpectedly, perhaps of a stroke, perhaps a heart attack, on route to the meeting where he is about to close (or not) on a major deal that will decide the future of Waystar Royco, those of us watching the show are as shocked as the family (and for a good chunk of the episode, as uncertain about whether Logan has died or not.) The viewer, as director Mark Mylod has described it aptly, is “hijacked in exactly the same way as the siblings are when they hear the news, so we’re immediately parachuted into their emotional experience.”

“Hijacked” and “parachuted.” Perfect metaphors. That Logan’s death comes so early in the last season (and off-stage, in the bathroom of a plane headed to meet with tech-mogul Mattson) is, in itself, a stroke of genius on the part of the writer Jesse Armstrong—and not just because it provides the show with a surprise that upends convention about killing off stars early (much in the way that Janet Leigh’s death early in Psycho did) but because it avoids a culminating death scene after which we’d all be wondering what happens next. Logan is no tragic hero whose death signals the end of someone flawed but noble and allows for unambivalent mourning. We never really get to know him, his motivations, or what he’s planning. And that opaqueness is integral to the character and to the responses of those around him. Like Henry VIII, who can declare his love one moment and remove a head the next, he counts on others skating carefully on the thin ice of his approval, all the better to manipulate them. His kids, on the other hand, are as transparent (and as fragile) as glass, even when they don’t know themselves what they’re feeling or doing, and it’s their story that’s the true tragedy (and comedy) of the series. And nowhere is this clearer than in this episode.

Their ambivalence toward their father is vividly described by another fan of the show, Michelle Orr, who posted this morning:

“Thank you x 1.000.000, for deeply capturing the moment a child loses a parent they both love and were abused by. The reaction was quite palatable— confused that you feel deep sorrow for someone who was so cruel yet had moments when their love shined on you like there was no other star in the sky.

Children of abuse have a hard time understanding their emotions towards abusive parents even as adults ….

And also the moment when we imagine what we will someday say to such parent is completely taken away from us.

Tom, for all his faults practiced a lot of grace in allowing the children to speak to their father (albeit in the most awkward of ways) in his last moments.

These moments are not for the dying but for the living.

No everyone has the courage to tell their abuser that they both love and hate them.

Thank you writers and actors for this episode. Probably the best television I have ever seen.”

Like the opening of Ivan Ilych, this episode is about the living, not the dying. And if anyone wondered whether Shiv and Kendall’s alienation from their father has turned their hearts to stone, this episode rejects that possibility definitively. As I discussed briefly in last week’s post on the show, we don’t know exactly what their childhoods were like. But we do know they’ve spent most of their adult lives trying to please Logan, trying to get that sun to shine on them, and only began to plot against him when they felt utterly betrayed. And fury at a still-living parent doesn’t protect against devastation when he dies. As they talk on the telephone to a father who they suspect is dying (but are not sure is dying) Shiv and Kendall are torn in both directions: They want Logan to know they love him—and we realize, perhaps with certainty for the first time, that they truly do—but they can’t suppress the “despite everything.” They want him to know they don’t forgive him, even though they love him—which is absolutely where they are at. To pretend otherwise would be a kind of self-eradication.

And besides, they aren’t sure that Logan won’t live. Neither are we; we spend a good deal of the episode suspended between the possibility that he will still come around (“What’s happening here? Where’s the Swede?”) and the growing realization that he’s gone.

Pretty fucking brilliant, Jesse Armstrong.

2. When Someone You Love Dies and You’re Not There

This is something I know something about, as do the many people whose relatives died in the early days of COVID. My older sister Mickey had been sick (not with COVID) for several months, but I never expected her to die. For one thing, it was unthinkable; she was a force of nature and a permanent (up until then) member of the sisterly threesome—Mickey, Susie, Binnie—that gave my life a big part of whatever stability and meaning it’s had. I understood what Shiv felt—although I wouldn’t have put it the way she did—when she responded to news of Logan’s death with “No, I can’t have that!” And I had convinced myself, aided by the semi-reassurance of reports the night before she died that her vital signs were ok, that if it did happen it wasn’t going to be the next day.

My husband and I had a reservation for a place near where she was going to be living. I live in Kentucky; she lived in Connecticut. A trip was planned around his fall break—but she died before that could happen. I had offered, when she got sick, to come up to her, but she was deep in COVID-panic, and vehemently refused to let me. I was, to be honest, relieved. I don’t fly and it’s a long drive and I was nervous about traveling through parts of the country that had bad COVID rates and stupid people. But I also expected to see her again. So when the call came, I was almost as shocked as Logan’s kids. I also felt guilty. Why hadn’t I pushed harder on my coming up? She didn’t even die of fucking COVID. Why had I been so quick to accept her refusal to let me come? I had the fantasy that if only I’d have been there, it would have made all the difference. I still do.

I was angry, too, at the friends of hers who seemed to have taken over the last months of her life and the events immediately following her death. So even though Logan’s kids had “business” reasons and not just emotional ones, I understood when they bristled at the planning that was being done without them. I felt the same way about a memorial that one of my sister’s friends organized without consulting me or my sister Binnie. We weren’t ready for anything like that, but no one seemed to be paying attention to the particular ways that we were grieving, or the timetable for our “recovery” from the devastation of our sister’s death. And although Mickey and I were not alienated from each other but very close, I still felt a strong twinge of identification when Kendall objected to being described as “estranged” from his father. No one imagined I was estranged from Mickey, but I was haunted (whether justified or not I don’t know) by people thinking I had a less intimare relationship with her than I in fact had or was less affected by her death, just because I wasn’t there.

I had been at my father’s bedside in the week before he died, and I felt acutely the difference between having been there to talk to him and touch him (even though he was largely barely aware of my presence) and never having had the chance to be with Mickey in that way. It was a powerful trigger for me emotionally when the Roy kids, one by one, tried to make connection with their father on the telephone. No, I wasn’t haunted as Roman was by the last conversation he had with Logan. I didn’t have anything I needed to say that hadn’t been said hundreds of times, both in words and in actions. She knew I loved her. I knew that she loved me. I had nothing to apologize for and nothing that she had to apologize for. In that way, there’s no comparison between my sorrow over not having been present for my sister during the last weeks of her life and those painful last phone calls the Roy kids made to a probably unconscious father. But one of the most important events in her life had happened without me. And that will never stop breaking my heart.

Several commentators have described what’s likely going to happen next over the remaining weeks of “Succession” as a “bloodbath.” Possibly. Maybe probably. But for now, I celebrate, without relishing the return of cruelty and conspiring (although I’ll undoubtedly enjoy them when they happen,) the last couple of episodes. Thank you, Jesse Armstrong

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