Rust and Ruin

Roman says it’s not a magic chair but then Kendall dares to sit on it, dares to sit on what has been their father’s throne for years and suddenly it becomes all too real for both him and Shiv in that their father really is gone but also that this is who Kendall is going to become — version of the man this chair brings out — and suddenly it’s almost unbearable.

They love Kendall in their own ways, but it’s like Shiv says, they cannot stomach him right now because in some ways their own pain of this moment is staring them in the face. Roman never wanted any part of this, but he wanted his father’s love and that taught him to want this position, while Shiv wasn’t even considered and then spent time pretending she didn’t want it, venturing into politics instead, only to deep down want it like Kendall wants it but also because she just wanted to be seen and respected enough to be considered an option.

Instead, there is Kendall with his feet on the table that has seen Logan shape the course of a country and appoint kings and leaders, speaking with that bro-ish tone he slips into any time he’s feeling even a bit confident and like he might get what he wants and Roman just wants to be relinquished of this exhausting act of pretending to want, while Shiv just sees all the ways in which she will become invisible once again and now there is no other option but block it.

The thing that maybe is hardest to watch about Succession is how a lack of parental love has affected all four Roy kids. They have all the money, power, and influence in the world and will never want for anything materially, but they will still cannibalise their own souls and each other for one moment in the sunshine of their father’s fickle love to the point that even long after he’s gone they’re clawing and scraping for the one thing that says maybe they were the favourite. That maybe they were loved by him after all. And that maybe by clinging on to the part of themselves that most resembled him they can hold on to a piece of him forever.

The idea of Logan sitting down a seven-year-old Kendall and promising him the keys to the kingdom in a Lion King-esque “all that the light touches is yours” fashion while Connor, his actual eldest son, was around and well and probably in need of his dad sure is something.

The scene of Logan after dinner, singing a song with his whole c-suite (and Kerry and Connor) is so tragic in that it had seemed like Logan dying on a plane surrounded by these people who work for him (and Kerry and Tom) was so bleak and awful and an indictment of his life and choices (rejecting time with his kids and being at his own son’s wedding), but in a way he was with perhaps the people he felt closest to (and Connor) in that his expression of love was how many times he could kick you before you stop coming back and yet Frank, Karl, and Gerri always did, in a way that his youngest three kids really tried to stop and break away from, because they never got these kind of moments with him.