In Succession Logan does die — now what?

[Ed. note: This post discusses the plot of “Connor’s Wedding,” season 4 episode 3 of Succession, in detail.]

In its fourth season, HBO’s Succession had a promise to maintain. As the ultimate season of the acclaimed drama, the present stretch of episodes has the burden of fulfilling the promise of the present’s title. Somebody has to take over for Logan Roy (Brian Cox), the patriarch of the Roy household and conservative media tycoon close to the tip of his life and profession. After deciding in opposition to stepping down and naming a successor amongst his squabbling youngsters greater than as soon as, it has develop into obvious that the one factor that can separate Logan from his firm is demise.

What makes “Connor’s Marriage ceremony” a terrific episode of tv is the way it makes Logan’s inevitable demise nonetheless really feel like a shock, thereby getting the viewers invested in his childrens’ messy, sophisticated grief.

Logan’s passing is arresting in its sudden mundanity. In a present that likes to wring each heavy drama and laugh-out-loud comedy out of board conferences and glad-handing, Logan’s ultimate moments are exceptional in how little weight they carry. He solely has just a few transient moments in “Connor’s Marriage ceremony,” asking his youngest son to let a trusted affiliate know she’s getting axed, and selecting to skip his eldest son’s marriage ceremony so as to safe a enterprise deal.

This informal callousness is signature Logan Roy, perfected throughout three seasons by Cox’s efficiency and Succession’s writers. He then will get on a aircraft. The subsequent we hear from him is when his son-in-law Tom Wambsgams (Matthew Macfadyen), the one member of the family on the flight stuffed with cronies, will get on the telephone with Roman (Kieran Culkin) to share the information that Logan went to the toilet and needed to be dragged out because the flight attendant began administering chest compressions.

What follows is a showcase for the performing skills of Succession’s forged, as Roman, Kendall (Jeremy Robust), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Connor (Alan Ruck) all course of the shock of their father’s passing in ways in which, in just a few transient moments, sum up who every of the Roy siblings are below the personas they current to the world, and the sophisticated emotions of affection and loathing that may come from a poisonous household relationship.

“Connor’s Marriage ceremony” poses a solution to a query often requested by Succession’s detractors: Why would I need to watch a present a few bunch of wealthy white assholes? The reply, it seems, is the results of any well-written story. Succession is a present about wealthy white assholes, sure. However these wealthy white assholes are individuals first. They’ve foibles and insecurities, richly urged internal lives and distinct interpersonal dynamics with one another. The yachts, villas, and galas they take pleasure in as 1 percenters don’t matter when there’s somebody on the telephone telling them their father isn’t respiratory. Wealth merely amplifies their worst tendencies, making them suppose their deadly flaws are superpowers, or that some payments won’t ever come resulting from them.

They’re usually proper to suppose this. Kendall Roy triggered a person’s demise in season 1, and all he needed to do was go to a elaborate rehab retreat to pay for it. Each single one of many Roy siblings has spent the sequence failing up, beginning and folding new enterprise ventures primarily on a whim. Succession is brutally trustworthy on this regard: The wealthy play by completely different guidelines, breaking the world round them with no second thought.

However Logan’s demise renders them powerless. They study through a telephone name that their father handed out in a rest room and may not stand up once more. They’ll’t say goodbye, or leverage their huge sources to get him higher care. Logan Roy is only a man, going out like many males his age do, and the Roy siblings are additionally simply individuals, with nothing to assist them wade via however the mess of a household they’ve.

For the viewer firmly exterior of the 1%, the Roy household is damaged in methods each painfully recognizable and hilariously international. All the cash on this planet, and it doesn’t make it any simpler to only inform your loved ones what they imply to you. None of it helps you deal with a lifetime of abuse or toxicity. Everybody ultimately has to face in entrance of a mirror and ponder what they’ve develop into.