(reference: The Atlantic)
CHARACTERS:
1. Logan Roy-the media magnate
2. Conner Roy
-comic relief
-Connor, humiliated by his girlfriend’s offhand assertion that he doesn’t do anything, decided inexplicably to run for president.
3. Kendall Roy
-heir apparent
-a recovering addict as desperate for his father’s love as his father is loath to bestow it
-It’s no coincidence that Succession’s mournful theme tends to accompany Kendall more than any other character.
-Kendall is the core of what makes Succession a tragedy.
-Kendall tends to be sympathetic, mostly because Strong makes his open emotional wounds as garish and as scene-stealing as his Lanvin sneakers. There are plenty of things (and people) to despise within the series, but the pitiable Kendall isn’t one of them.
-Kendall’s car crash—all of these plotlines hint at the larger consequences of the Roys’ dysfunction.
-Kendall, after finally besting his father in business, was so traumatized by Logan’s verbal abuse that his mission to buy drugs ended in a man’s death. (There was some awful resonance in the fact that when he returned to the wedding after watching an intoxicated man drown, he danced with his children to a Whitney Houston song.)
4. Roman Roy
-comic relief
-Roman’s catastrophic shuttle explosion
-Roman, desperate to prove his capabilities to Logan, hurried the Waystar rocket launch he’d been tasked with overseeing, before literally washing his hands of the catastrophe that ensued when it blew up.
5. Shiv Roy
-embodies enigmatic self-assurance
6. Tom
-Tom’s efforts to squash a sexual-abuse scandal
REVIEW:
In midseason, though, it found its footing by exploring the root of the tension between Logan and his children.
The episode was the series’s best work to date, finding a balance between darkness and humor that made Kendall’s relapse all the more wretched to witness.
This is a family drama, but it’s also an exploration of power, and how the Roy’s family dysfunction ripples outward.
And there’s something undeniably satisfying, at times, about watching the Roy family choke on its own excess. But Succession is most effective when it’s able to make you empathize instead with the awful people it presents. Extreme wealth might be rare; human frailty isn’t. The Roy children have been condemned since birth to suffer the abuse Logan metes out to counteract the advantages he’s so angry at having given them.
Logan and his clan might be insulated from the consequences of their actions by money and connections, but they’re no more protected from the ravages of their toxic family dynamic than the rest of us.
