Spoiling Succession
On Spoilers and their Significance in Televisual Storytelling (Warning: Spoilers Ahead)
A warning to those who do not want to have their experience spoiled as I did: leave this essay, disconnect from the internet, and catch up on Succession before resuming. Then please return to contemplate spoilers with me because my thoughts go beyond this one.
Here’s a still of the show to provide a buffer because I’ve learned that is the polite thing to do to deter wandering eyes. But beyond this, beware!
I’ve developed a habit of watching new episodes of HBO’s Succession the evening after their air date, which had not been a problem until Monday morning when my newsfeed spoiled a major event in the show. These are the headlines I woke up to:
“Brian Cox Crashed ‘Succession’ Set to ‘Throw People Off the Scent’ of Episode 3 Shocker” – IndieWire
“How Brian Cox Felt About That Big Episode 3 Twist in ‘Succession’” – New York Times
None of these headlines are direct spoilers (I have certainly come across instances of those since watching the episode) but after my newsfeed algorithm stacked them all on top of each other, it was obvious what happened. What would Bryan Cox possibly be “throw[ing] people off the scent” of other than his character’s death? If it had been another character, I thought, the New York Times would not be interviewing Bryan Cox about it. But the Vox headline was the cherry on top, for what other major show event would warrant such withholding milquetoast language from a publication otherwise known for its more on-the-nose headlines (e.g. “Why Austin Butler still sounds like Elvis, explained by his own vocal coach”)?1
So yeah, message received: Logan Roy dies in episode three.
Perhaps you are thinking I should take some responsibility for exposing myself to these headlines. I can imagine some internet troll hopping in the comments to simplify things for me (Don’t look at your phone, idiot!) but the idea of avoiding news all day under the specter of television spoilers is absurd. Not to mention, our apps are designed to encourage habitual, ravenous use, and even if one is capable of resisting one’s addictive smart phone interface, there is still all that non-television related news (formerly known as news) that one reasonably wants to stay up-to-date on.
So, in the past twenty four hours, I have learned that if one reads the news spoilers are unavoidable. This phenomenon is amplified by both an algorithm that knows what shows you watch or read about and the fact that when a major character dies on a television show every news outlet in the world reports on it as if it were actual news. (See the LATimes’s cheeky headline: “Logan Roy, conservative media mogul who shaped contemporary politics, dies at 84”.)
None of this is a big deal though unless most of the pleasure you derive from television comes from plot twists. It’s hard to blame viewers for putting too much weight on spoilers when so many great television shows get reduced to their plot twist moments in the secondary media spectacle of clickbait and talk show appearances. But the pleasure derived from any great work of art – whether it’s a television show, movie, or novel – is always greater than what can be said of it in summary. Novels are often plot focused, but they’re also experiences of language, voice, setting, tone, and character. The same could be said of film and television with the added layers of performance, cinematography, music, and so forth. The pleasures offered by these media are numerous, interpenetrating, and mysterious – never as simple as the happenings we reduce them to in essays like this one.
Don’t get me wrong: I was upset when the above headlines undermined a pivotal dramatic moment for me – especially one in a series I’d committed some thirty hours of time to over the past few years. But spoilers did not ruin the experience, because my experience of the scene in which the Roy siblings learn of their father’s death had very little to do with the idea of Logan’s death and everything to do with how the show depicted it.
Similar to Tony’s fate in the series finale of The Sopranos,2 Logan’s death comes at an unexpected moment: when the story is ramping up. After all, the first episode of the season ends with a power reversal in which the Roy siblings successfully outbid Logan on Pierce, while the second episode opens with Logan planting the seeds for some big changes at ATN then ends with an attempt to flip Roman to his side. Through all of these movements, it feels like the show is setting the foundation for a climactic battle between Logan and his children, which one might reasonably expect to escalate well into the series's final episodes. Then in episode three everything changes.
The pivotal moment starts with Kendall and Roman alone in a yacht lounge where Roman gets a call from Tom who informs him that their father is “very sick… very very sick.” As they try to clarify the situation, Tom’s evasive responses escalate in minor notes, from “sick” to “serious” to “very bad” to “chest compressions,” until he offers to place the phone beside Logan’s ear so they can say their goodbyes. As Roman and Kendall take turns their words are awkward and stilted. Roman assures his father that he will be ok while also calling him a monster; Kendall contemplates forgiveness but withholds it even as the moment seems to call for it. Later, when Kendall shuffles off to grab Shiv from the cocktail party floor, he can’t bring himself to tell her the news straight. Then Roman passes her the phone and says it clearly, “They think Dad died.” As Shiv takes her turn, she airs some resentments while trying her best to be gentle to her father, who she realizes is likely already dead. The shock soon morphs into obscenities as they all doubt the finality of the loss and try to arrange for more medical treatment.
Between the death’s affront to the narrative momentum of the story and the disorderly blocking of the scene, the dramatic execution here is top shelf. Every minute feels raw and messy, like processing the news of a death should be (especially for the Roy children). The chaotic writing – broken sentences, delusional thoughts, miscommunications – traps us there alongside Kendall, Shiv, Roman, and Connor, unleashing a pathos one might not expect of a show otherwise known for its sharp insults and corporate doublespeak. That trademark defensive humor – that fear of vulnerability – hovers over the scene as they process Logan’s death whilst suppressing the instinct to torch their sadness with cruelty. When a phone call about a press statement announcing Logan’s death gets testy, Shiv lashes out: “You wanna choreograph some steps with my dead father, Tom?” There’s a pause, followed by an apology to which Tom responds in classic deferent Tom voice, “That’s ok. It’s a difficult day.”
Across these phone calls, we feel the weight of the identities the Roy siblings have constructed for themselves – identities forged in the struggle of surviving the brutal world their father created. They love him, but they resent him; they mourn him, but they also strategize around his death. As Kendall says, “Let’s grieve and whatever, but not do anything that restricts our future freedom of movement.”
As an audience member, I find all these characters deplorable for the societal ramifications of their extreme wealth and the ways in which arbitrary familial ties have anointed them rulers of a vast media empire for which they lack a vision beyond increasing their own status within it. As Jeremy Strong put it in an interview with Stephen Colbert, the Roy family is an embodiment of a “malignancy at the heart of late stage capitalism.” Yet I still feel for them in this primal moment of loss.
A lot of credit for that feeling goes to the performances. In their “Inside the Episode” interviews, each actor relays their unique approach to the demands of the episode: Kieran Culkin admits he did his best to turn off the character after work, but couldn’t; Sarah Snook insists that if she couldn’t turn it off she would have ruined her performance; Jeremy Strong says he has to live in the character for the entirety of the shoot; and Alan Ruck defers to the talent of his fellow actors, who bring the performance out of him. Not one of these methods is necessarily superior to the others. The point is together – under the direction of Mark Mylod – they create television drama that transcends the secondary media spectacle of their behind-the-scenes interviews.3
Spoilers are part of that secondary spectacle. They are the great limitation of the medium: the viral “water-cooler” moments executives are always chasing, because they hold some promise of encouraging more viewers to tune in. The problem is elevating those moments is antithetical to television’s strengths as a medium.
Because of its expensive long form storytelling constraints, and the corporate bureaucrats who control a lot of the creative decision making in television development, the medium rarely achieves artistry comparable to its sister mediums: film and the novel. As a result, novels are still better equipped to bury deep into social issues and the human psyche, while films remain bolder and more progressive in their audiovisual storytelling techniques. (Even Succession’s cinematic style is derivative of other corporate dramas and rarely adventurous in its audiovisual elements.) We could accept these relative weaknesses and embrace television for its virtues instead: duration and episodic format. The former allows for plumbing the depths of character in many dramatic contexts, while the latter allows for greater experimentation in narrative form, from bottle episodes (see: Breaking Bad’s fly episode) to inventive story structures (see: Mad Men’s “Far Away Places”). Great television shows like Succession are watchable minute-to-minute because of the ways in which they use medium-specific elements like episodic structure to explore character through new conflicts, settings, and thematic registers.
The brilliance of “Connor’s Wedding” lies in a culmination of all that time we’ve spent absorbed in the world of Succession so that when we’re stuck on a boat with the Roy siblings as they process the death of their father (and media empire patriarch) we experience that moment in a way only television can accomplish. Spoilers in headlines might takeaway some shock value, but our concern about that shock value also reveals a tendency to reduce television to its “water-cooler” moments. If we stop attributing so much significance to spoilers, maybe we can shift the conversation towards what is actually great about our favorite television shows. In the case of Sunday’s Succession episode, greatness took the form of a death that felt as grounded and real as any I’ve seen in a movie or read in a novel. Spoilers or not, you have to watch it.
Even when a headline alone isn’t enough to pass for a spoiler, often the image associated with it finishes the job (see Slate’s “Why Succession’s Biggest Moment Happened Off-Screen” – featuring an image of the Roy siblings crying into each other’s shoulders).
Sorry if you didn’t know that one, but it’s been nearly two decades since it aired so I think it’s excused.
Which reminds me of that other secondary spectacle: the gossip mill surrounding Jeremy Strong’s method acting.