If you haven't seen the third episode of the fourth (and final) season of HBO's "Succession," you might want to stop reading right now.
Because we're going to talk about that episode, and it's inevitable that some key plot points will be revealed.
I don't agree that discussing plot twists inevitably spoils a movie or television series; most of us know how most of these things are going to turn out before we start watching them. It's not the details of the plot that matter so much as the way the scripted drama gets to its inevitable destination. It's the execution of the plan, not the plan itself, that matters most.
At its most basic level, "Succession" fits neatly into the prime-time soap tradition of series like '80s standards "Dallas" and "Falcon Crest," as it chronicles the power struggle within a family of miserable billionaires who, like the Murdochs and the Redstones, own a global media and entertainment conglomerate.
As the title suggests, the key conflict surrounds which of his children will succeed 80-something Logan Roy (the brilliant Shakespearean actor Brian Cox) as the maximum leader of Waystar/Royco, a sprawling multinational that resembles both the Fox Corporation and Disney.
Logan is acerbic and cruel, but over the course of the series it has become clear that he loves his children, even if he doesn't respect them. Each of the kids has a salient feature, though one of the advantages of episodic television is that it allows even the broadest characters to accrue something beyond a key set of attributes.
Kendall (Jeremy Strong) was once considered the front-runner to succeed his father, but his weakness for drugs, problems with reading rooms, and a depressive self-destructiveness all but eliminated him by the end of season one. His younger brother Roman (or Romulus, as Logan calls him when he's feeling paternal), played by Kieran Culkin, is a crass and flippant cad, who says whatever pops into is head because he's never had to face any sort of consequences.
Kendall's older brother Connor (Alan Ruck) is an inept eccentric who operates at a remove from the family business, in part because he's trying to earn Logan's respect. To this end Conn is running for president, desperately clinging to the one percent he's showing in the polls because he believes if he drops below that figure he'll lose all relevance.
The most capable (and Machiavellian) Roy is Sioban (Sarah Snook), appropriately known as "Shiv." Shiv was more or less making her own way in the world as a (Democratic) political consultant until it became apparent that Logan was slipping and that a search of a successor was imminent.
Shiv is married to Tom (Matthew Macfayden), who, in the third season, shifted his allegiance away from his wife and onto Logan, who -- no spoiler alert here -- decided he wanted to be the top dog for a little while longer. This led to a rift in their marriage which, despite all the background chicanery and expediency, kind of felt real.
Until this week's episode, I wasn't sure "Succession" was actually good. I knew it was enjoyable, because the dialogue is bright and funny and bracingly profane. (One of our dog Paris' multiple fictive personalities is a canine version of a muttering Logan Roy inviting everyone to expletive off.)
I largely watched the show as an aspirational black comedy, admiring the watches the cast wear, the mise en scène which often seems a parody of our ideas about how the very rich much live, and often the performances of the actors, but had only the loosest grasp of exactly what was happening. I just tuned in for the one-liners and the fireworks.
"Succession" has been compared to King Lear. But it's more like a profane, dark-hearted version of "Father Knows Best." For Logan always seemed to, even up to the second episode of this final season,when he dropped in on his rebel children while they were plotting against him in a karaoke room, to offer a chance at reconciliation and, when they refused that, to pronounce that they were "not serious people."
Then, last Sunday night, in the third episode of the season, Logan died.
Ignominiously, on the floor of his corporate jet, while he was on his way to Sweden to try to save a deal his kids had monkey-wrenched. I still do not know if "Succession" is a good series or just an entertaining one (it's not worth delving into the distinctions between those) but I do know that the third episode of the fourth season titled "Connor's Wedding" is one of the greatest hours of television I have ever watched.
In the first place, it seemed like a placeholder episode -- an entertaining diversion as candidate Connor marries his former sex worker fiancée Willa (Justine Lupe) in an overwrought ceremony at the Statue of Liberty. Connor, holding out hope that Logan would "pop by," would be disappointed because the paterfamilias had more important things to attend to. Or maybe Willa would back out at the last minute -- in the prior episode, she had fled their rehearsal dinner and at some point tossed the phone by which her betrothed was tracking her progress across Manhattan.
The episode starts out that way, with Logan heading off to Sweden, but not before testing the loyalty of Tom and giving Roman, on the verge of breaking with his siblings and returning to Team Logan, the queasy psycho-sexual nightmare assignment of letting longtime Waystar executive Gerri Kellman (J. Cameron Smith) know that she's getting the boot. (Roman and Gerri had a peculiar but sweet quasi-romantic entanglement that involved the sending of unfortunate photos.)
Kendall, Shiv and Roman dutifully turn up for Conn's wedding -- shuffling onto the chartered ferry that will take them out to Lady Liberty, even though, by their lights, they have more important business to attend to on their phones.
Then there's a call from Tom, on the company plane, to Roman. Logan is down, in distress -- "very, very sick" -- and the flight crew is administering CPR. Tom was trying to get Shiv; she wasn't answering. She's gone off to tell Connor that Logan isn't going to make it to the wedding after all.
The next half-hour plays out in real time, with very few cuts, as the kids try to wrap their minds around what is happening and Tom doles out generally unhelpful facts about what is going on in the air. Then in a gesture of intricate tenderness and delicacy, he puts the phone near an unresponsive Logan's ear. At first neither Roman or Kendall grasp the point -- what good does it do if Logan can't hear them?
Tom explains it's their last chance to speak to their father. And each child mumbles inadequate final words. Kendall tells him he loves him but cannot forgive him. Roman tells him he'll be OK, because he's a "monster." When Shiv returns she allows that there are things they can't forget, but "It's OK, daddy, it's OK. I love you."
None of them feels good about their last words with him. Roman especially laments that he failed to tell Logan he loved him. Then they all realize that no one went to get Connor, to bring him into the scene. Logan is gone, or at least almost certainly dead. ("We don't know that!" Roman protests.) And he wasn't coming to the wedding anyway.
Connor is strangely all right with it. "Oh man. He never even liked me," he remarks matter-of-factly. Now he's run out of opportunities to change his mind. Maybe the pressure is off. While obviously it's put a damper on the wedding, after conferring with Willa -- who while she admits that wealth and safety are probably her prime motivations for going through with the marriage --she is happy with Connor. And Connor, having grown up in a family without love, is used to that -- he can live with it.
Upon learning that Logan's inner circle, with him on the plane, are drafting a statement to deliver to the press and reassure the market, the siblings seem to realize that all they have hoped for and dreaded has finally come to pass. The king is dead, and the power vacuum will be filled. They push back, insisting that they will draft and deliver the statement.
So they head to New Jersey to meet Logan's returning plane. And Waystar's stock price plunges on the breaking news -- who is the leaker? Poor relation cousin Greg (Nicolas Braun), or Logan's much younger girlfriend Kerry (Zoe Winters) who, shattered and in shock, is tittering hysterically ("like she just caught a foul ball at Yankee Stadium," Tom observes)?
Kerry, who in the episode before was formidable enough to deter Tom from delivering her bad news, is, with Logan's death, suddenly and abjectly powerless. The executives essentially pat her on the head and dismiss her. Like Tom, she's lost her protector. Like Tom, she's been taken off the game board.
(Unless, as some "Succession" watchers theorize, she's pregnant with Logan's baby.)
Connor and Willa go through with the wedding in front of a few hopefully genuine well-wishers.
And in New Jersey, Shiv tearfully delivers a simple, nearly elegant statement for public consumption, as the shutters click and cameras purr. She's not taking any questions.
As she walks away, she briefly leans her head on Tom's chest, and he folds his arms around her. Roman is compelled to go onto the plane, to see his father's body where it fell. Kendall is content to watch from afar, as the corpse is put into an ordinary ambulance and driven away.
He's dust now, as we all will be. His empire did him no good in the end.
And yet it is still something to be striven after.
The soap opera about deeply unserious and unlikable rich people will likely resume Sunday. But this meditation on grief and helplessness will haunt you.
pmartin@adgnewsroom.com