This Week on “Succession” and “Perry Mason”: April 2-3

Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy; Chris Chalk as Paul Drake

I’ve decided that the best way for me to view “Succession” is to first watch it one time in the living room, on our big tv, trying to keep up with the banter, piecing together the plot line, and often confused about the references (What does it mean when Kendall calls Pierce TV programming “Dookie?” When Logan refers to the workers at ATN as as “Stakhanovites”? What does Kendall mean when he says for their Pierce primetime programming they should go “full Clockwork Orange?” I’ve read the book and seen the movie, but I have no idea. Should I be embarrassed not to know?) Then, after I’ve figured out what’s going on, I watch it again the next day, in bed, on my iPad Pro, where I can see the facial expressions of the characters up close and personal, and the relationship dynamics are not obscured by clever verbal joisting and bidding wars.

For those of you who are simply hooked on the snappy lines and the intrigues, let me tell you: it’s in that close-up reading that the real action shows itself. At least for me. It’s where the show reveals itself as a great novel, not just a platform for entertaining sparrring and power-plays but a compelling family saga. Despite the alienation I feel from the world of the show, despite my feeling (as I described in my last post) like a clueless nerd at a gathering of cool kids, the characters and their relationships with each other are the things that keep me coming back, week after week.

In this past week’s episode, it gave me pleasure to see the “kids” relaxing together, lobbing snacks and whoops at Logan’s girlfriend Kerry’s absurd “audition” tape. They are comfortable with and entertained by each other. Puppies in a litter, tumbling and nipping. Dorm-mates after class, munching on Cheetos. Kids together in the hotel room, getting high while mom and dad are off at some business dinner--a time, perhaps, when they weren’t yet interested in the business themselves. The clever banter in thia scene didn’t seem cold and cutting; it seemed intimate. And the coded nature of their talk made a different kind of sense. They get each other, they don’t need to speak in full, explitic sentences. Shiv makes a funny comment (calling Kendall’s proposal for a show focused on Africa “Homework: The Show”) and Roman giggles loudly—not sniggering but whole-heartedly, the way I used to crack up, trying not to pee in my pants, when my younger sister wise-cracked. How often—if ever—have we seen the siblings this way? I liked it.

For a contrasting moment of discomfort, my favorite was watching Tom trying to decide what Logan wants him to think about Kerry’s tape. Should he say it’s great? That she’s “got something” although she clearly hasn’t (unless it’s inappropriate facial and arms gestures.) He tries to get Logan to say what he thinks first, but Logan won’t bite. So Tom has to guess, and it’s cringey to see him nervously calculating, deciphering cues from Logan. The striking thing, though, is that his obeisance is so normalized in the relationship that he doesn’t even feel humiliated. And Logan doesn’t really think the less of him for it. He knows that Tom is sucking up to him. But that’s the way it’s supposed to be between a king and his “advisors.” (I know about this; I wrote a book about the Tudors.) And then, when it’s become clear that Kerry is not at all ready for prime time (or any other time) Logan maneuvers Tom to do his dirty work for him. It’s communicated without any direct instructions, and yet it’s perfectly understood—like the wishes of a moss boss, who doesn’t have to say the word “kill” in order for his underlings to know just what he wants of them. Or: Donald Trump, who Michael Cohen described as never having to ask for anything explicitly, yet managing to get exactly what he wanted done for him.

So much gets said by the characters in “Succession” in the silences between words, in the searching moments while they figure out what the best play is, whether the aim is to please or to out-maneuver, or just to leave a back door open. They are uncomfortable almost all the time.  Not Logan, of course.

I’ve been especially fascinated by Roman this season, and have developed affection for him. We’re seeing that whatever his sexual kinks (who wouldn’t have them in this family?) he’s a pretty normal and kinda nice person. (In this family, that qualities as a very nice person.) It’s that spontaneous, generous laugh at his sister’s joke. His upset when the helicopter to the wedding takes off without them (Shiv and Kendall are furious at their father for ordering the copter to not allow them to board, but Roman is more worried about Connor.) There’s his genuine recoil at the idea of alienating their father entirely by trying to squeeze more money from “the Swede.” And while Shiv and Kendall want to abandon Connor (who is in a state, thinking his bride has run away) to huddle over wheeling and dealing, Roman urges them to hang with their big brother. The episode is full of small, humane gestures.

Shiv and Kendall don’t trust a word Logan says, but Roman doesn’t know what to make of his father’s profession of love for his children.

Maybe it has to do with being the youngest child (used to being kicked around, as he remarks when the siblings meet with Logan near the end of the episode.) Maybe the older ones remember a time when the family did go on vacations driving down Route One in an RV singing show tunes, and feel a bitter loss where Roman feels a longing for something he never had. (Shiv references such a “vaca” sardonically, as though describing a sitcom as alien to the Roy family as Leave it To Beaver, but the kids look pretty merry on that elephant ride during the opening sequence.) Maybe—despite Connor’s believing he holds that title—Roman’s been the most ignored while he was growing up, and the hungriest for love.

We don’t know; we get no flashbacks to their childhood, except in the incredibly evocative opening credits (someday I’ll do a post on that opening alone.) But what shows itself this season is that Roman hasn’t developed the same steel armor as Shiv (she strides across rooms, chest thrust out, like she’s at the front flank of an invading army) or the same same desire for vengeance that both she and Kendall have. He’s capable of making crude and hurtful remarks, but when he sees they’ve stung he wants to take them back. And unlike Kendall and Shiv, he gets no pleasure from besting others in the ongoing family power play, and is turning out to be the most mature (as his father would say, the most “serious”) of the siblings. Translation: He won’t allow a good business deal to evaporate just to piss off his father.

The two put Roman in an untenable position (which neither Shiv nor Kendall give a shit about; they only want to emerge triumphant over their father.) Roman sincerely wants the three of them to be a team, but he doesn’t want to cut ties with his father. And his siblings consider it a betrayal if he wishes his father “Happy Birthday. Take Care” in a text.  After Logan makes a last-ditch effort to convince the kids to not press “the Swede” for more money we get close-ups of Kendall and Shiv in a limo. Kendall is almost giggling with delight (“fucking Dad” was “amazing, just over too soon”) and Shiv is nervously contemplating the consequences of what they’re doing. But Roman, feeling “weird” over what’s transpired, goes to see Logan. And Logan immediately seizes the opportunity for a re-alignment of alliances. Although Shiv and Kendall don’t trust anything their father says (and they have ample reason not to) Roman isn’t so sure. Maybe Logan’s apology for the “Mom and Italy” thing was genuine? Maybe he really did feel hurt that the kids didn’t show at his Birthday party? Maybe, whatever his “feelings,” Logan is right that they shouldn’t be fucking with a good deal, business-wise. Maybe he does love his children, as he professes (tempering the admission by calling them non-serious “morons”.)

Logan’s motives are as inscrutable as always, and the scene is genius at putting us, the viewers, into the same quandary as Roman. We know, from last week’s episode, that he misses his kids so much it plunges him into existential angst. But does he know it? Or is his “feeling” talk purely tactical? Or perhaps engineered by Kerry, who he turns to frequently while delivering his appeal? When Roman and he talk privately later, is he sincere when he then tells Roman that he wants him to help him “reinvent” ATN, or is he just exploiting Roman’s vulnerability? It’s impossible to know. His face gives nothing away. It’s an impenetrable terrain of leather (and it’s not just because of the pocked remainders of adolescent acne, or the effects of aging.)

But the kid’s faces give everything away; they’d be terrible poker players. Roman winces perceptibly when Logan tells him he wants someone who is “a ruthless fuck” to join him reshaping ASN. (“Is that how you see me, dad?” He doesn’t ask it out loud, but it’s there in that tiny wince.) But the invitation to work hand-in-hand with his dad moves him. “I mean, you really want me at ATN?” Roman asks (and it impossible to avoid the word “beseechingly”” here.)

“More, Romulus, More. I need you” Logan replies.

Is Roman snared by Logan’s profession of need? We don’t know, as the episode ends there. But how many abused women have returned when their husbands, flowers in hand, lavish with apologies, have declared their “need”?

Watch out, Romulus, sweet boy.

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Remember the old days of series TV when a weekly episode ended and you wanted to see the next one so, so bad…?

Those days are back with the new “Perry Mason.” I’ve been praising this show since season 1, when I wrote a piece for CNN.COM about it. And this season everything that I loved about the show has ripened and become the juiciest fare on television. Juicy and gripping and real and beautifully produced—dark and lush at the same time—and with characters that you can look at forever.

The show is masterful at weaving together the pleasures of the traditional courtroom drama with a revisioning of the central personalities that Iends freshness and contemporary resonance.

Last week, Della spent a cozy week-end making huevos rancheros and sexy love with Anita St. Pierre. (“It’s my lesbian period-piece fantasy,” says Jen Tullock, who plays Anita. And the internet fan-club that’s developed around this relationship is right with her.)

This week, Della’s relationship with Anita deepens—they say “I Love You” to each other—and also becomes more fun, as they visit a thirty’s-glam nightclub full of happy, uninhibited lesbians (but note the foreboding, unidentified guy in the car outside, silently smoking.) You might think that contained Della would be a bit overwhelmed by the exuberance, but she beams with delight throughout the date, and when Anita asks her if she’s enjoying herself, she says “immensely.”

Della is, to put it mildly, a complex character in this reboot. And just in case she was starting to seem too perfect, the series reminds us that no-one is, and has her lying to her longtime girlfriend about where she spent the night. Della isn’t great at lying; she nervously provides too much information. And Hazel had been calling the office, and knows Della wasn’t there. “You’re a fucking coward,” she tells Della, leaves the room and slams the door. Our Della? A lying coward? Yeah, just like the rest of us. And—the salient point—not like the characters designated as wholly admirable or “noble” in the movies. Up to this point, that’s been Della, telling Perry off for not sharing with her and representing the voice of reason when he behaves like a child. But this series won’t let its characters become paper-dolls being pushed around by the script into predictable positions.

Did I mention yet that it has some of the best kissing scenes on television? Such a delicious break from the ubiquitous stroking of perfect bodies that stands for sex in most movies and television. “Perry Mason” takes its sexual vocabulary more from “The Notebook” (and “Klute”) and knows that the kiss is the more intimate exchange of desire. Perry gets some, too; I just couldn’t find a pic of it.

This week’s episode, almost as if reading our minds (“But when are we going to get a courtroom moment??”) gives us some more traditional pleasure too. Perry, having no idea how he’s going to try a case with two confessed killers, is working into the night, searching for a clue. We see him “noticing” something. A lightbulb moment, having something to do with the numbering on a blown-up photo of Rafael’s fingerprint found on the steering wheel of McCutcheon’s car. The next day in court we find out what it was, as Perry demonstrates that the fingerprint, as it’s backwards, could not have come to be on the steering wheel naturally but had to have been deliberately planted. Go, Perry!!

The episode belongs, though, to Paul Drake:

Wait, not that Paul Drake. This one, reimagined by the writers as a sober, introspective investigator who gets back with Perry because he needs the money but is quickly becoming an important member of the Perry/Della/Paul team:

Chris Chalk, like Matthew Rhys, isn’t conventionally handsome. But he’s as mesmerizing as Perry is an adorable mess. And this week, he is magnetic as a basically decent man who finds himself doing not-decent things. He has little choice. It’s either beat Ozzie the quivering middle-man into submission or have his own fist cut “clean off to the fucking bone” by mob boss Perkins. So he does what he has to. But every punch—and he can’t hold back, or Perkins will see through it—pierces his soul.

Later that night, he slips into bed with his wife Clara, who immediately senses that something isn’t ok. She turns to Chris: “What’s wrong?” “Am I good?” Chris asks her. It’s the question that Della is likely asking herself this week too. It’s the question no one except Roman ever asks themselves in “Succession.” It’s the question that at one time or another haunts every decent person. I know it does me.

The episode ends on an ominous note. Perry, coming home after a good day in court and an evening with his new girlfriend Ginny, opens the door to hear a whirring sound. We don’t know what it is as we follow Perry from room to room. From the doorway of the last room he looks into, Perry sees the toy train he’s given his son circling over and over, whirring, whirring. In the middle is an ashtray with a still-burning cigarette. It’s the calling-card of the guy we’ve seen trailing Perry at Shantytown and Della at the nightclub.

Every week, “Perry Mason” rolls its ending credit over an image recalling something chilling from the episode. Last week it was a hundred dollar bill. This week it’s a pair of little girl’s shoes. We know, from a conversation between the jailed Gallardos and Perry, that a McCutcheon project has been built on the ground where the Gallardo family’s home once was. McCutcheon has had the police pull the family out in the middle of the night and burned the house to the ground to clear the way for his construction team. Inadvertently left inside is the youngest sister, who dies in the fire. It’s not just money that’s the motivation behind the brothers’ murder of Brooks.

In the closing credit, a smoldering spot appears on one of the little girl’s shoes. It spreads and spreads, until the shoes are engulfed in fire.

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See you next Wednesday for more “TV Watch.” (I was a bit late this week; want to guess why?) And I’ll be back Sunday for politics/media commentary.

If you missed my previous posts on tv, check out the “TV Watch” section of the website. There’s more Perry and Succession there, as well as Mad Men, 1883, and other shows.