A fan of odd man in odious Roy clan

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This article was published 16/10/2021 (1820 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Succession, the superbly spiteful series about a monstrous media family, is back this week with its long-anticipated third season (episodes airing weekly on HBO, starting Sunday).

As the story opens, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), an aging patriarch who despises his children when they give in to him but crushes them when they assert themselves, is waging a battle for corporate control against son Kendall (Jeremy Strong). Expect lots of infighting and intrigue, backstabbing and betrayal, as Succession continues its sharply written, deftly edited, intensely acted mashup of slow-moving tragedy and fast, foul-mouthed farce.

Let’s spare a thought, though, as we prepare to follow the Roys’ internecine warfare, for Connor Roy (played with an absolutely magnificent degree of self-delusion by Alan Ruck). Sidelined and snubbed, the odd man out in a deeply odd dynasty, Connor gets no respect.

When you Google his name, the “People Also Ask” section starts with the question, “What is wrong with Connor in Succession?”

On HBO publicity posters, Connor is somewhere in the back. On talk show interviews with the cast, Ruck is at the outer edges.

The other characters, no matter how appalling, have their devotees. Roman (Kieran Culkin) and his self-loathing snark, Kendall and his bone-deep sadness, Shiv (Sarah Snook) and her super-chic viciousness — all have their dedicated fans. Even Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), that awkward, lanky bumpkin with a surprising amount of survival instinct, has a cult following.

Connor hardly registers with most Succession viewers. Despite a teeny contrarian cohort who call themselves “Conheads” and collect “Connor Roy for President” coffee mugs, he is generally ignored and overlooked. One critic calls him the “non-alcoholic beer” of the Roy clan; he’s there, but why? On some of those “Who is the Biggest Jerk on Succession?” lists, Connor doesn’t even rate, not because he’s not a jerk — he’s extremely jerky — but because his jerkiness is sort of irrelevant.

So, in this status-obsessed show, what accounts for Connor’s low position? You might think that as Logan’s eldest son with his first wife, Connor would get some of the perks of primogeniture. But it’s Connor’s three younger half-siblings, the children of Logan and his second wife, who are wrangling for control of the family company, Waystar Royco. Connor is basically the Tiffany Trump of the Roys.

Uninvolved in the family business, Connor likes to pretend he’s above it all. He has retreated to his ranch in New Mexico, where he more or less pays Willa (Justine Lupe), a former escort and would-be playwright, to live with him.

As Kendall, Shiv and Roman vie for power, Connor frets about his Napoleonica collection or gets all pompous about wine. (“You don’t hyper-decant?” You’re just doing regular decanting?”) Since most of the large problems of his life have been solved by extreme wealth, he tends to fixate on very small things or very strange things.

He has a real antipathy for cold butter and insufficiently precise cutlery placement at charity dinners, for example. He’s disappointed that Tom’s bachelor party is not being held in Prague because for the last two weeks he’s been aligning his Circadian rhythms for international travel. He’s obsessed with cryogenics.

Connor also believes he’s the intellectual of the family, taking particular pride in his political philosophy, which is an unstable, autodidactic mixture of New Age woo, libertarian nonsense and faux populism. Even though he’s a classic Large Adult Son, completely incapable of doing anything in the real world without being propped up by the family name and the family money, Connor — of course! — decides that he really ought to run for U.S. president. He’s “done his research” and come to the conclusion that the biggest threats to America today are “usury and onanism.” Now, there’s a platform.

As with so many things on this show, Connor is often undeniably horrible, occasionally weirdly endearing but always, always watchable. I can’t wait to see what his big Season 3 moment is going to be. As has been said before on Succession: “It’s burning my eyes, but I can’t look away.”

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca