TALK TO THE DEAD

Best Succession episode ever? (Spoilers ahead!)

Three siblings, on a boat, passing around an iPhone. Each taking turns to utter awkward last words to their dying father, who is circling above on a private jet. Although the fact of the matter is that their dad, media tycoon Logan Roy (Brian Cox), is most likely already dead. So the chances that he heard their confessions of both love (“I love you..”) and rage (“I can’t forgive you”), are pretty much nil.

A day after watching this episode for the first time I got wind of another viral story going around social media. A tech entrepreneur, Divik Patra, known mostly for developing an AI controlled app that helps rural farmers in India, made a tweet he now wishes he’d never sent. (Below).

Of course this poor guy got slammed on Twitter. Everything from “This is not a good idea” to “Shut up you psychopath!”. I’m sure Logan Roy himself would have tweeted “Fuck off!” to this guy.

But some of the more nuanced critiques were along the lines of “You wouldn’t really be talking to them, would you?” Well, the Roy children weren’t actually talking to anyone either. So is it really that different? The show made it clear that despite preformative CPR, Logan was quite dead and most likely had been for a while.

There’s been Black Mirror episodes and many books & articles written about this sort of thing. I won’t debate them here. (Feel free to ask me questions in the comments!). But there seem to be a universal fact about the human condition when it comes to dealing with our passed relatives. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, we almost always wish we could have said more. This essence, the wanting one more word before they go, is what showrunner Jesse Armstrong and director Mark Mylod (along with a great writing team and simply amazing performances by all the actors) captured so well in this truly stunning, unflinching episode.

It opens with Logan on a private jet en route to Sweden to finalize the GoJo merger when the apparent heart attack happens. Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) calls Logan's children, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin), to inform them of the situation. (All this action the plane happens off screen. So us as viewers are as in the dark everyone else who isn’t there with Logan physically.) The siblings are all gathered on a boat bound for Ellis Island. The destination for the wedding of their half brother Connor (Alan Ruck, with his best performance on the show to date).

It takes a while for the team on the plane to reach the Roy offspring. Tom keeps calling his estranged wife Shiv, who keeps seeing his name and hanging up. That’s the only clue we get that something’s wrong. Tom then calls Roman who is the first to hear.

What happens next is really hard to encapsulate. The news spreads and each sibling finds out one at a time. Denial; attempts to get “accurate” information about whether or not Logan is really dead yet; panic; confusion. All of it. Not in a clean “stages of grief” way either (which it turns out is kind of a fiction anyway). But all these emotions boomerang around as they hand the phone to each other and scream at underlings with the delusion that the march of death on a plane 30,000 feet in the sky can somehow be stopped or slowed by people stuck on a wedding boat. The whole family is literally cut adrift.

There’s one abstracted conceit by the show’s creators that’s really a brilliant touch. Tom, who as a character seems to have more human compassion than he even wants, tries to patiently tell all the kids that Logan is indeed dead or a least dying. But unlike anyone else on the plane Tom seems to instinctually know that the kids need some sort of closure with this man. So he offers to hold his phone to Logan’s ear while they each try to say goodbye.

Again, the rest of it is really hard to even write about. (I’ve seen it twice now, and just recalling it as I type this is making me well up). It’s such an honest portrayal of shock and grief by all of the shows main stars, I can imagine this episode not just winning awards, but I think these scenes will be studied as the gold standard on how to dramatize true to life “grief” scenes for quite some time.

The subtext of course is that their dying father, who they all seem to love in varying degrees, was a terrible human being. Unlike other anti-heros of the past couple decades of TV’s new “Golden Era”, Logan didn’t really have a good side. He didn’t have conflict about his bad deeds like Walter White or Don Draper. Or even Tony Soprano. The conflicting emotions are only on one end of the phone. On the boat. With theses spoiled, entitled, truly privileged yet also traumatized grown up kids.

They all find a way to say “I love you” to him (except maybe Roman), and they all eventually do. But they also mix in the truth occasionally. Even if it’s sometimes subliminal. “You’re a monster” Roman blurts out trying to convince Logan he’s gonna’ survive. “I love you…. I mean…I can’t forgive you….but it’s okay”. Kendall blumbers. Subconsciously repeating a great line from last years wedding episode. Shiv’s Freudian slip is one I almost missed until I watched it a second time. Through her tears she says something like “I love you…. and there’s no excuse for……but it’s okay.” Hinting at some abuse we haven’t even been told about?

Physical or not this man has manipulated and publicly shamed all his kids for four seasons. How he treated them as actual children is assumed to be even worse, considering how terrified of him they seem to be as adults. “He never even liked me” his oldest son Connor says plainly when he’s finally told the news.

I’ve had two major deaths in my life. The awkwardness and sheer raw emotions that bubble up are hard to explain to people who haven’t gone through it. These performances really nail it so beautifully. Good, bad or other, when someone is finally gone, there’s almost always one more thing to say.

So if the AI scientists actually come up with some simulacrum way to actually say that one thing you wish you had said but didn’t get a chance to, would that really be so bad? The scary part is that this avatar or ghost of the lost one would be able to talk back. Even if it isn’t sentient, the spooky part of this new “Chat GPT” type of technology is that it really might be able to tell us what the dead would have said to us if they could. That’s a thought that sounds both horrific but also maybe wonderful at the same time. Yes. Wonderful. Especially if your loved one wasn’t the sociopathic Logan Roy. RIP.

(I’ll discuss my reason for why I feel that this tech could actually be “wonderful” if done right, below in the comments. Or in private if anyone prefers. Just email me. It’s really a longer story. So speak now or….you’ll have to ask “Robot Barney” all about it after my flesh version shuttles off this mortal coil. Good luck with that. Ha!)

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