The key to Succession has been staring you in the face for four seasons and has been played as comic relief. He is the neglected son of Connor Roy, impeccably played by Alan Ruck.
Connor is often ignored by the rest of the family. His half-siblings and his father seem to view him as hopelessly foolish. But the main theme of Succession he stands out for his character: he is the eldest son, and he is irrelevant. He even has to remind his half-siblings that he – not Kendall, he’s the eldest son in the season 3 finale.
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Still, Connor isn’t in the running to replace his father, Logan Roy. He’s not even tasked with anything important. His mother was sent to “the fun farm” and Logan remarried. In the first season, when the brothers meet in the boathouse before Shiv’s wedding, he is not invited. In the most recent episode, his wedding, his father skips the celebration and dies on a plane. His half-siblings don’t think about making him say goodbye to his father until after Logan is probably already dead.
they don’t think about him not at all for 15 minutes. At her wedding.
“Oh man,” Connor says. “He never liked me.”
When Connor receives the news, Ruck’s performance is heartbreaking. He is in the middle of a meltdown over his wedding cake because it is made of the same type of cake he ate for a week after his mother was hospitalized. In season one’s “Sad Sack Wasp Trap”, Connor freaks out because the butter is wrong during the Roy Endowment Creative New York benefit gala. Connor’s call to micromanage an event suggests something about his past, something horrible He learned that management style from someone, and it wasn’t Logan.
When Shiv and Kendall get Connor to forget about the cake for a few minutes, Shiv says, “They think he’s dead.” And Connor stares at her, seemingly emotionless: “Well, right?”
Kendall says they don’t know, but Logan is having compressions on his heart. “Oh man,” Connor says. “He never liked me.”
He then immediately begins to comfort his distraught younger siblings, swallowing his own feelings. “You know what, I’m sorry,” she tells Kendall herself. “He did. He did.”
Of all the children, Connor seems to be the most aware that staying in his father’s orbit is a trap. But Connor is also what the rest of the Roys fear becoming. It’s a warning sign to his younger half-siblings: if they get out of Logan’s orbit, they’ll be just as irrelevant and unloving. After all, if Connor hadn’t been left out, they wouldn’t be competing for Logan’s attention at all.
“The good thing about having a family that doesn’t love you is that you learn to live without it.”
In the first season, Connor’s New Mexico ranch, Austerlitz, is the setting for an attempt at family therapy. The attempt is more of a PR stunt than an actual cure, much to Connor’s disappointment because, unlike his brothers and his father, he does he wants a real family. The family business, in which Shiv, Kendall and Roman are trying to separate to succeed their father, has twisted relations beyond repair.
Previous seasons have focused on the other siblings. The first season is mostly about Kendall. The second, Shiv. The third, Roman. Connor is arguably on the way, and their rehearsal dinner and his wedding provide the backdrop for two of the show’s most dramatic episodes yet.
Earlier this season, Connor’s brothers skip their rehearsal dinner to plot against their father. They catch bride-to-be Willa running and make a belated attempt to comfort Connor by taking him to karaoke. And while Connor, after singing Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat,” says his superpower is not needing love: “The good thing about having a family that doesn’t love you is that you learn to live without it.” the younger brothers fly-fished when Logan didn’t want to go. Maybe Connor tells himself that he doesn’t need love because he doesn’t think he’ll ever get it.
Certainly the sibling bonding karaoke moment is immediately overshadowed by Logan’s arrival.
Throughout Succession, Ruck’s portrayal of the major waif has been phenomenal. Sure, Connor is mainly there for the jokes, his presidential campaign providing most of them, but even through the jokes, Ruck manages to convey pathos. The shift from his honest reaction to Logan’s death to comforting his younger siblings tells you precisely who Connor is: sillier than the other three but also more human. Kindergarten
It took a brilliant actor to pull it off. I’d like to see what else Ruck can do.
