"Succession" Recap: An American Titan
In an all-timer episode of television, "Succession" shifts gears.
The best episodes of television are those that feel like shared moments. When a show is popular and you and your friends are watching it week-by-week, an episode can drop that changes everything. A character dies, some power shift occurs. Something happens that changes the series’ entire trajectory, and everyone feels it. You talk argue about it with friends. You discuss it online. Nothing will ever be the same after this one moment, and everyone knows it.
“Connor’s Wedding” is one of those momentous episodes, and not simply because Logan Roy dies. No, “Connor’s Wedding” is a momentous episode, and indeed one of the great TV episodes of all time, because of how hectically it happens. When Roman receives that phone call from Tom saying that his dad is “very sick,” it feels unreal. Of course he’s not sick, you think. He’s Logan Roy! But then Tom says that he’s not breathing. In fact, he’s receiving chest compressions. Could it actually be happening? Kendall and Roman begin stuttering their final words to their father’s corpse, and then—fuck, what about Shiv? They go and get Shiv, and she does the same thing, sobbing over remarks about how she can’t forgive him but she loves him anyways, and they talk some more, scrambling over their responses before realizing (in typical Roy fashion) that they forgot Connor. They loop him in, and his response is telling: “He never even liked me.”
Everything about this sequence is remarkable, from the contradictory statements to the high-strung insults to the haphazard apologies. From the moment Roman picks up that fated phone call, we are subjected to a fifteen-minute panic attack rendered in televisual form. It manages to strike a tone that is in some ways markedly un-Succession: There are none of the jokes or profanities we’ve gotten so used to over the show’s previous 31 episodes, but instead chaos and sadness as we watch these three adult children come to grips with the death of a paternal beast.
Then again, this is precisely the Succession that we have come to know and love: it is forever the show that subverts our expectations at the moment we think we know it best.
“Connor’s Wedding” wouldn’t be as shocking as it is if its first fifteen minutes weren’t so innocuous. The episode begins, as with many of the show’s best, at the titular wedding. Connor and Willa are finally getting married, shipping off on a luxury yacht to Ellis island to tie the knot. Kendall, Roman, and Shiv are in supportive attendance, but Logan is away, jetting off to Stockholm to iron out the kinks in the GoJo sale. He’s also shaking up Waystar’s management in a big way: He’s decided to fire Cyd from ATN, as well as remove Gerri as the company’s General Counsel. This latter task he’s cruelly assigned to Roman, who flipped away from his siblings in the previous episode. There’s conniving, backstabbing, and an absent father—about as Succession as you can get.
Everything about this setupd feels utterly conventional, so when we receive the news of Logan’s death, it’s jaw-dropping. Jesse Armstrong and his writing team—who are as significant in the world of TV writing as Logan is in right-wing media—have accomplished something truly triumphant here, fully convincing us that we were watching Just Another Episode of Succession before throwing into the deep end of real life. That phone call comes out of nowhere, causing each of Logan’s children to respond with a different kind of grief. Yelling over the phone, Kendall demands that Frank find his father the best doctors in the world, even though nothing can be done. Shiv, crippled by the knowledge that her relationship with her father was at its nadir, admits that she hoped the call was about their mother. An in-denial Roman screams delusionally at his siblings to stop proclaiming their father dead when they don’t know for certain—even though they do.
Of course, it’s not just the kids who are affected by their father’s death. All of Logan’s sycophants were with him on his flight to Stockholm, and now find themselves reacting to this cataclysmic event in a variety of ways. Frank, Karl, and Karolina go full-on corporate, drafting up a response for the press and consulting each other on how to deal with “the Swede.” Kerry appears the most shocked out of anyone, smiling and laughing with the shakiness of someone who “looks like she caught a foul ball at Yankee stadium,” as Tom describes.
Speaking of Tom: his world is ending. He keeps his composure in front of the higher-ups, but when he later calls up Greg, we see how broken he truly is. Tom is paralyzed at having seen Logan’s corpse receive chest compressions for a quarter of an hour; he is shocked and saddened at the loss of his protector. He paranoically demands that Greg to get close to Cyd (who now wields immense influence at ATN), and tells him to delete a hot-button file from his computer. (He’s named the file “Logistics,” of all things.) It’s Tom reverting back to what he knows best: protecting himself and making jokes at Greg’s expense. “What’s at the bottom of your stocking, Greg? An old guy who fucking hated you.” It’s the cruelest possible statement at the worst possible time, but it comes from a place of shock. Tom has lost his surrogate father figure, and now has no idea where to go.
Neither does Connor. On the day of his wedding, his horrible father left this earth, and now he’s reconsidering his whole life. In a frank conversation with Willa, he does what none of his siblings can and boils his feelings down into a single phrase: “My father is dead, and I feel old.” It’s a profound sentiment that causes him to reevaluate the transactional relationship he’s had with his bride-to-be. He apologizes for having trapped her in that ivory tower in New Mexico—“for having stolen you away from the world”—and then asks a question that he’s been avoiding for years: “Are you just with me for money?” Willa doesn’t deny the value of that economic security, but she also professes to being happy. Honestly, I’m tempted to believe her. The laugh that the two of them share after Willa jokes about not walking away from their marriage (“not today, anyway”) is surprisingly tender, and once again demonstrates that these two share what is probably the most emotionally authentic relationship in the entire show. By episode’s end, the two of them end up married in front of small crowd that constitutes Connor and Willa’s (but mostly Willa’s) closest friends. It’s as genuinely happy an image the show has ever produced.
Succession already features some of TV’s best-ever TV actors; “Connor’s Wedding” takes their talents to unprecedented heights. There are performative images in this episode that I will never forget: Jeremy Strong pulling himself back from unrestrained sobs after confirmation of his father’s death; Sarah Snook’s voice shaking as she lets out the words, “Daddy, I love you” for the first time in years; Kieran Culkin rejecting the tears that come when speaking honestly over the phone to his father’s dead body. Succession has relished in the metatextual blurred lines between actor and character, and in moments like these, they disappear entirely. Episode director Mark Mylod pulls us close into the character’s faces, more so than usual, and we feel the impact. We, like them, feel that this has come out of nowhere, that it doesn’t make sense, that this can’t be happening.
This sense of a world out of orbit is also what brings them together. The three siblings cooperate better than we’ve ever seen them, immediately identifying who should tell Connor, who should call Matsson, who should read their statement to the press. They delegate with care for each other and without second thought, recognizing at each moment who is capable and who is in need. When the plane containing their father’s body finally returns to ground, they share one final hug—a loving, genuine, honest-to-god hug—before finally splitting up to see their father off. In this moment, they are a family. It’s probably the last time they’ll ever be this close.
Notes and Quotes
In this episode, we watch as the Roy children’s privilege gets put to the test. Shiv asks if they can keep the plane circling in the air just so they can have more time to think, but she is shut down. Roman delusionally demands they get their father a doctor after he arrives on the ground in the hopes of saving him—he is shut down. Kendall, speaking over the phone to Frank, demands to speak to the pilot, but Frank finally shuts him down. Privilege can’t stop their father’s death, no matter how hard they try.
Speaking of Frank: When denying Kendall’s petulant demands, he is kind and patient. He calls him “son,” acting as a better father figure to him than Logan ever was.
Kendall exhibits some real maturity when recognizing how impactful their actions will be on this day: “What we do today will always be what we did the day our father died.”
One of very few funny moments in this episode comes in Kendall’s pitch for how to celebrate their father’s life: “We’ll get a funeral off the rack. We can do Reagan’s, with tweaks.” I’m not really sure what that means. I’m not sure that he does, either.
Karolina has my vote for Waystar CEO. The way she went cool and corporate in the immediate aftermath of Logan’s death shows a kind of resolve shared by very few other characters on this show.
Connor with the best possible misreading of Charles Dickens: “Mr. Scrooge just happened to be a huge wealth creator. They don’t mention that in Mr. Dickens’ books, do they?”
Sorry that this recap came out a day late. Not only was this episode harder to process than most, I also started a new job this week! I’ll do my best to have future episodes out on Tuesday mornings.