Ominous Karaoke in Succession Season 4, Episode 2
Spoilers for the song Con sings at Karaoke and Speculation, Seasons 1-3
I’ve always been someone who loves very much out loud, and sometimes to a fault. I’ll become the person who pulls every thread. No one who has been around me in the last year has escaped my delight and true obsession with Succession. I’ve read every article about Jeremy Strong’s ‘method’ (though I actually love his strangeness, his intensity, his boldness: the most recent cover story he did for GQ was so inspiring to me, I bought to print version). I spend a lot of time after each episode trying to decide what is going to happen next, but also, trying to digest what I’ve just seen.
If you’re caught up, you already know that Con’s bachelor party was a little bit disappointing. (Existentially depressing. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen on television, and I’ve watched the rest of Succession.) I was thrilled to see Alan Ruck (Con), who is an incredible actor, get a little more stagetime in this modern-day Shakespearean tragedy, but his appearance comes at a heavy loss for his character: his fiancé— a former(?) prostitute who agreed to marry him, somewhat out of pity, at the end of the last season— runs off right as the anointed siblings arrive to the party. Shiv, Roman, and of course, Kendall, are the ones who were in the running to actually ‘succeed’ their father: Con is older and from another marriage. He’s running for president and has about one percent of the estimated vote. He’s convinced this is meaningful, somehow. After Willa runs out, the rest of the Roy siblings do something they have not done in the entire run of the show:
They show compassion for Con and go to a karaoke bar like he wants them to. It doesn’t go well: these are not people who know how to show compassion or even feel it. But they are there, which is more than we can say for Willa, who has turned the “find me” app off on her phone as Con searches desperately to guess where she may have run off to. He gives a heartbreaking speech in which he says he’s grateful he never experienced love, so he doesn’t need it now: he’s used to the way he lives.
And then he sings Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat.”
I would argue that as pivotal as the rest of the scene is, this is the true compass for the rest of the season. He doesn’t get to the last verse, which is smart: the writers must have known that would be too heavy-handed. But the implication is so loud, it was all I could think about for the last several days. The verse he is interrupted before?
What can I tell you, my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive your
I’m glad that you got in my way
If that isn’t an omen for the rest of the show, I don’t know what is. Succession has always been wise about the way it uses music: I’m still a wreck any time I even think about Kendall’s horrifically sappy, embarrassing “L-to-the-O-G” rap, and yes, I’m including the video (which is not safe for work or really, your eyes or ears or heart: he literally raps “Since I Stan Dad/ I’m alive and well.” Jeremy Strong deserves an actual truck full of Emmys for getting through this).
There’s also a scene in the episode “Too Much Birthday” where Kendall sings FAR too much of Billy Joel’s “Honesty,” the contrast between the event he is planning and the lyrics absolutely crystal clear and painful. But something about Con, this character who has been peripheral not just in the show, but in the lives of his siblings— despite Roman admitting a few seasons back that his fondest childhood memory, fly-fishing, was something he did with Con, not his father like he told the media— singing a song that we all know ends in, “my brother, my killer” sets me on edge. Of everything they’ve done thus far, which I genuinely think is ‘create one of the best shows of all time,’ this feels like a giant step forward— which is incredible. They shouldn’t be able to get better from here. And yet—
Con goes home. Willa is in bed. He crawls in next to her, still in his suit, after so much disappointment and admitting that he’s fine to be lonely forever— and he wraps himself around her like an apostrophe, like an addendum, like he’s a ghost in his own life. But which brother? Who is the killer? That phrase has been used in every season. In the first season, Kendall became a killer: in the second, his father said he couldn’t take over the company because he WASN’T a killer; and in the third season, he admitted what happened at Shiv’s wedding to his siblings. Kendall has ALWAYS been the character associated with killing (or lack thereof). I guess one of the greatest delights, for me, is knowing that I’ll get to see this slowly unravel, like untangling necklaces, over the next few weeks.
…and what an appropriate caption. Indeed, it does.