the weak dogs

I am convinced that 4x09 of Succession is the first thing they ever wrote and then they built an entire show around leading us here.

Honestly, for 3 seasons, I have been swinging between the siblings, rooting for each one to “win it all” at separate times. By the end of season 3, we see the siblings start to form an alliance but there’s not much weight to it. It’s like, they’ve got nothing left so why not? But in season 4, after Logan passes, that passive sentiment becomes so bleak and true that the siblings are forced to really see each other for the first time since childhood probably. And they’re only looking because they each so desperately want it for themselves.

Anyway, it’s been really interesting in this final season to see everyone drop their bullshit (except for Greg who seems to relish in it more now) because they…. Have no other choice? There are moments that feel so……. What’s the point? And I think Shiv is finding herself in those moments more and more.

It was so heavy to hear her eulogy of Logan, with a close up of Gerri and Carolina - after watching all of the past wives and mistresses of Logan unionize in the front pew at the funeral. “It was hard to be his daughter […] He couldn’t fit a whole woman in his head.”

I have instinctually wanted to root for Shiv but the things she did, they way she was at times… I’ve never fully understood her. I’m realizing now that was extremely intentional. The writers gave us glimpses of Shiv—her ferocity, sharpness, desperation. We’ve seen her ambition and her embarrassments. This season emphasized her playful approach to power. But often, her motivation is unclear. Or it shifts at a moments notice. We can’t root for her because we’re not sure what we’re rooting for.

She’s always pushing the line, but she knows the line—sees it clearly (even when others are oblivious to it). When the line is crossed, all facades drop and suddenly Shiv is human again. She reacts and the pulse of the entire episode falters for a moment. Like motion-sickness, viewers are suddenly disoriented - how did we get here? And then, whoever has betrayed her moves us all along and we write her reaction off easily.

Shiv is tired of playing. But everyone else is still in that place and trying to win. Maybe she should try to get back there too? I think this is part of the reason why Shiv didn’t fight Roman and Kendall when they essentially booted her off the top. She just took it. At one point, when things got tense, she pleads with them—“Doesn’t this feel good?” (In reference to their desperate “family first” approach).

In season 4, we’re confronted with the complicated love between siblings. Connor, the stand in father, always discarded but still persistent. Kendall, a narcissistic bullshitter, only genuine with his siblings and protective of them. Roman, complicated vulnerable Roman. The most abused and the most loving. Even if detrimentally ashamed—the most loving. And then there’s Shiv. Wanting to be seen, considered, and ruthlessly fighting for that opportunity. Usually the first to ground them all.

I wanted to believe, in the beginning of season 4, we’d see a cycle break. “Church and State” reminded us all of reality. Kendall will go on to take it all, his father’s selfish shadow. Roman will self-destruct, will seek out harm, will hurt and numb and hurt and hurt. But Connor and Shiv? Connor has only ever loved them and will only ever want to remind them all of that.

Shiv’s fate is separate but just as fitting. She’ll stay in her fucked marriage and she’ll be a prickly distant mother and she won’t be powerful so she’ll start to dull. She’ll fight the fading but she’ll inevitably fade. She’s been fighting, she’s already fading. And she said it out loud at her father’s funeral.

I’m not sure when I stopped picking one to root for—but I did. I hope, in our final episode, we just get some sort of reassurance that the siblings will keep this new alliance. Less about the upper hand, more about survival and recognition. They are all The Worst and they all deserve each other - fondly. They have to admit now that their father never loved any of them no matter how badly they begged for it. They have to admit it’s always just been them.

I worry that even though they have to, they won’t. The love they hold for each other will implode to total destruction and the show will end.

chef’s kiss (from daddy).

Like a sad sack Kendall jonesing for something better than park coke, I am already missing the presence of Succession in my life and so blogging and discovering the Vanity Fair podcast will have to stave off my season finale withdrawal. Upon listening to Slate Money’s Succession podcast season finale episode with guest Tamar Adler, I felt like I wanted to think more about the role of food in the show in general. “Thank you for the chicken” may just be the most iconic Tom Wambsgans line Succession has had so far, and there are so many (uncut) gems to choose from (“Just checking the till here, Mark, and it seems you're short a few million,” and who could forget this poetry: “king of edible leaves--his majesty, the spinach.”) The way the show traffics in excess, while also showing us how the Roys eat, but are never truly nourished, is a fascinating lens through which to see how these characters live. [Ed. note: I started writing this all the way back in October, and got sidetracked with school--in the interim, Eater published a great article ranking the dinner scenes in the show.]

If you were to ask me what the stand out food scene in season one is, I’d immediately answer Tom and Greg’s dinner with the ortolan course. It’s such a nouveau riche flex (but maybe it’s an old money flex too? I don’t hang out with ortolan eaters of any socioeconomic status!) and a silly one at that, but it’s fitting that Tom and Greg--of “you can’t make a Tomlette without breaking some Greggs” fame--are the ones to make a big deal over an elaborate dinner, because they’re the outsiders. While many of the show’s episodes are centered on a grand meal as set piece, it shows how commonplace formal, catered dinners are for the Roys. When you’re a billionaire, going out to dinner is probably more of a nuisance if you could just eat something decadent prepared for you in your own home.

By season two, it’s almost as if every episode plays some sort of food-as-metaphor role as the grand meals function as plot points more frequently. From episode one, “Summer Palace,” we start off with Logan trashing an entire seafood feast to order a bunch of pizzas (that don’t even get touched) at their Hamptons house. To the Roys, this kind of waste doesn’t upset anyone, and what’s even more interesting is Logan is totally fine with the idea of ordering pizzas. This weird highbrow/lowbrow liminal space that the Roys occupy is so fascinating to me. Billionaires are out of touch and weird, sure, but they act so artificially chummy, like the way Nan Pierce presents herself, for instance. While rationally I understand Logan demanding that his staff order a bunch of pizzas, I also cannot imagine a billionaire being like, “order a bunch of pizza instead of this lobster!!” (Clearly this is a bit of shades of Warren Buffet garbage palate happening here, billionaires: they’re just like us! #wealthtax.) 

But Logan is in no mood to waste neither food nor time in episode three, when they all go hunting and we are introduced to the world’s most insane Exterminating Angel cosplay also known as Boar! On! The! Floor! (!!!) No sausage gets left behind as this dinner party devolves into yet another opportunity for Logan to humiliate and belittle his family and colleagues. As Troy Patterson notes of Logan Roy, he’s carnivorous in every way. Lest you forget, though, the Roys love their beverages more than they appreciate food, and in this episode Connor introduces us to hyperdecanting and Logan views Roman out of touch with the common man because he can’t say how much a gallon of milk costs. Another highbrow/lowbrow moment: this season has made the clash of Logan’s upbringing with his children’s lifelong privilege much more of a thematic presence. (Do we think Shiv has ever ordered pizza delivery? She has worked on political campaigns, but strikes me as a “no thanks, I don’t have time for lunch” kind of staffer.)

Food waste runs in the Roy family, it seems. There’s this funny little moment when Roman goes to management training, picks up a sad looking danish, takes a bite, is disgusted, and puts it back. Oh Romulus, you are such a jerk, but I love your weird ways. One of the things I noticed this season about Roman on his “leadership journey” was that he seemed to teetotal more and more--perhaps as a result of witnessing his brother’s substance abuse issues--it seems as though as he becomes increasingly serious about taking over the job of CEO, he’s been drinking more Perrier and green juice.

As the season continues, the meals keep coming: when the Roys dine with the Pierces at Tern Haven, Nan has this bizarre moment of performative hostess mode when she presents a roast her housekeeper made to the guests as her own? It was such a weird scene, and so telling of who Nan Pierce is: she loves to appear as a homespun, generous person, but clearly is not just a “simple billionaire” who gets her hands dirty in the kitchen. The façades continue to crumble as the evening goes on as the Roys snap at one another, though somehow the disastrous dinner isn’t enough to halt the deal from happening (yet). It takes a weekend in Argestes, with lunches not eaten and dinners walked out on, for that deal to fall apart.

While the big set pieces of season two’s grand dinners reveal to us the cruel and illusory tendencies of our characters, the most revealing--and effective--use of food (or lack thereof) was Shiv and Roman’s visit to their mother in “Return.” We know that the younger Roys’ mother is cold, but in this episode we see just how withholding she is. Before we get to Lady Caroline’s, Roman makes a joke about eating muddy trout and filling up on mustard; on the plus side, we have a funny scene at a convenience store with Roman and Shiv looking completely confused by how normal people snack. It’s clear that Caroline does not have a healthy relationship with food--Harriet Walter says that was part of her backstory for the character--and she serves them pigeon with shot and feather not cleaned off. She cannot nourish her children, literally or emotionally. (lol at my *extremely incisive* commentary and psychoanalysis.) Later in the evening, while talking to Kendall in the kitchen, she cannot bring herself to have a heart-to-heart with him. In the New York Times’ review of the episode, Noel Murray says: “That’s one powerful symbol for life as a Roy. One parent hollers for protein. The other serves inedible meat.” These rich kids just can’t catch a break from their parental nightmares!

Succession shows its characters’ damage through their total lack of intimacy or vulnerability. It is not your usual HBO show with gratuitous nudity; besides Roman and Gerri’s .... situation, there’s not really sex on this show. The only way that the Roys derive pleasure is from money and the flashy status symbols that come with it (hello, mega yacht!). The scenes with food become the most emotional because it’s the closest they get to physical or emotional closeness in many ways. But the Roys don’t do emotional closeness; I think one of the cruelest--and funniest--examples of this is when Shiv, Tom, Roman, and Tabitha have dinner together and all Shiv and Roman can do is dunk on Tom for his bad suits (Roman: “You look like a divorce attorney from the Twin Cities,” and: “I’m sorry but like, what the fuck? You look like a Transformer. What’s wrong with your body, man?”).

All this brings me to the denouement of Season 2, in which we also reach the apex of Tom’s frustration with his terrible in-laws mistreatment of him, and the aforementioned “thank you for the chicken” line. First: Logan Roy is out here on a MEGA YACHT eating a chicken wing with some big Ricky Rozay wingstop energy. Second: Tom cannot bring himself to confront Logan, even if he finally vented his frustrations to Shiv; all he can do is stuff his face (it’s not love, Tom!! I learned the hard way!!!) and walk away. Third: all the yacht meal scenes are great--just a complete pile-on of courtiers backstabbing and badmouthing each other (Tom calling Karl a “sausage thief”) with a few genuine moments of emotional honesty. Connor drinks wine at breakfast. Greg, accustomed to quaffing rosé, fears he will be sprinkles on the sundae of a Tom sacrifice. Roman defends Gerri! The look Roman and Kendall exchange when the sacrifice is made. Roman, who is “widely known as a terrible person,” in general becoming the MVP of the latter half of the season, even asks to talk to his siblings “normally.” A request that they summarily mock him for. Succession season finales have major “Water, water, every where / Nor any drop to drink” vibes. 

We end the season with Kendall giving daddy Roy a (Judas) kiss after a figurative last supper on the boat, and what’s next is ripe for further scenes of familial drama. Let’s hope there’s similarly rich protein for us in Season 3, I’m already hungry for more.