Succession Perfectly Understands What Family, Grudges and Grief Mean
In its first chapter, broadcast at the beginning of June 2018, Succession already raised what would be one of its main concerns: the death of the father. After Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) birthday celebration, where family dynamics are established, the communication mogul suffers a stroke that leaves him in a coma, suggesting the complicated issue that gives the fiction its title, Succession. Many of us thought that perhaps the HBO series would go just like that, with four brothers devouring each other to seize power, but the patriarch recovered, returning to the dynamics of King Lear. Which of the four Roy sons deserves to succeed the despotic businessman? Or does he consider them all so incompetent that he is capable of initiating a game of chairs (or thrones) to prevent anyone from taking his place?
Logan Roy’s death has been around ever since; in the third season, Cox’s character suffers from a urinary infection that leaves him incapacitated on the brink of a major corporate decision. But the death of the father has not only been a plot theme but also symbolic. We could talk about that philosophical expression of “killing the father”: Kendall, Siobhan, Roman and Connor constantly fight to get out of Logan’s shadow, but no matter how much he despises and humiliates them, they are unable to overcome the dependency: logistics, financial, emotional… But the death of the father, the literal one, hasn’t happened until Season 4 of Succession. Although it lurked in almost every narrative twist, and although we knew that, as the last installment in the series, it could happen soon, it certainly caught us off guard. That’s what its creator, Jesse Armstrong, wanted, as Mark Mylod, the director, has recounted in an interview with Variety.
The death of Logan Roy could not have been more surprising and inconvenient: with a whole season ahead of him, on the day of his son’s wedding, before signing the sale of his conglomerate of companies, of a heart attack in mid-flight in Sweden, where a specialized medical team cannot treat you, where not even your children can say goodbye. These elements have made this scene one of the best written in recent years, capturing how surreal, ridiculous, and vulgar the death of a parent can be. It is also amazing from the point of view of direction and interpretation. As Mylod comments, the sequence in which Logan’s children find out that his father is about to die required a camera choreography that forced almost everything to be recorded in one extended take of 30 minutes. Jeremy Strong (Kendall in the fiction), Sarah Snook (Siobhan), Kieran Culkin (Roman), and Matthew Macfadyen (Tom) culminate in this scene the master class in interpretive virtuosity that they have put into practice during these four seasons, adding to their characters all possible nuances for one of the worst moments in anyone’s life.
Succession Abusive Relationships and Parent-Child Referents
Much has been written about how Succession (and other dirt-rich shows that have come after it, such as The White Lotus) aim to expose the privileged 1%, but is it? Can we relativize our experiences with their characters to the point of not regretting their misfortunes? The chapter on the death of Logan Roy puts the viewer to the test by confronting its protagonists with a question that is usually posed rhetorically. How would you say goodbye to a father who is about to die? It’s interesting to see the Roys more torn than ever between love (the typical “I love you”, and “you’ve been a good father”) and resentment (trying to blame their father at the last moment for the affection he denied them). Connor’s reaction is also exhilarating: Instead of saying goodbye to his father, he decides to skip and fulfill his commitment to Willa, shaking off the pain in another act of desperate dependency.
Those who have lost their father, especially if their relationship with him has been irregular, will understand why that scene from Succession is so masterful. It addresses universal (and very Shakespearean) reflections on the strength of blood ties (as the Anglo-Saxon saying goes, blood is denser than water), but also on the family bond as something imposed (the normative family versus the affective family). Where do we find affection? Why do we look for them in a family where we know we won’t find them? How do we reconcile this belief in the nuclear family with emotions such as contempt or rancor in full mourning?
Succession is a series about the family, yes, but above all, it is a series about relationships of dependency and abuse, about referents and replicated behaviors, and about how the thread of manipulation is transmitted from top to bottom, from generation to generation. in generation. Considering that their father is Logan Roy, it is not strange to us that Ken, Shiv, and Roman can unite only when the interest is economic or corporate (when it comes to power), but not emotional (when they have to serve the other). of confidants or a shoulder to cry on).
We even see this abusive dynamic in the relationship between Tom and cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun); Tom receives the blows from above and transmits them down like a cable conducts energy. However, there are some exceptions to the above. Precisely because of their general absence, displays of affection stand out specially when they happen. We saw it in the last episode of season 3 when Shiv and Roman timidly supported Ken when he confessed to them that he was responsible for the death of a young man months ago.
And we have seen it in the chapter about Logan’s death, in that hug of three before the runway where the plane carrying the lifeless body of his father has landed. According to Mylod, that hug was improvised by the actors. Now it only remains to see what the consequences of that loss and that duel are. If the dog is dead, the rabies is over. If in the remaining chapters of this fourth and final season the Roys will be able to repair their relationship, if they can (or will know) love each other even though they have not been taught how to do it. If they will be able to kill the father, even though the father is already dead.
