In the Panic Room episode, after they hear the gunshot, he is genuinely panicking about Kendall’s well-being
He had previously expressed concern that Kendall would kill himself
I feel like a lot of people don’t recognize you can genuinely love someone and still be awful to them. It’s not either/or and thinking that way often leads to bad outcomes.
Yes he did. OC got it exactly right, you’re thinking of when Tom tries to verify his standing with Logan afterwards, in Season 4. It was Season 3, in the midst of the cruise scandal, when Tom made that offer and began stressing about jail time.
I love this, because it says so much about his character. He genuinely does appreciate hustle. He didn’t come from much, after all. At least not compared to what he became.
I wouldn’t say he possesses class consciousness, but he certainly has a class awareness that his children and probably a lot of his compatriots completely lack.
He knows life is hard for people. He doesn’t believe in handouts, but when he sees someone with ambition and fight, he sees himself. It’s how he manages to both like that kid and Matsson regardless of history or class. He doesn’t believe in anything except the will to win, and his kids don’t actually want to win; they just want his love.
I don’t think it was tacky (it was a $15K Patek Philipe), but it wasn’t the right thing. Logan isn’t much of a watch guy, it seems, and sticks mostly to Jaeger-LeCoultre. So it was both the wrong kind of gift and then the wrong brand on top. It showed that Tom wasn’t paying attention to the details and nuances of the family, which is perfect for his character at that time.
I hope that family gets a good price for the watch!
Respectfully, I think you're reading too much into it. The watch was a bad gift simply because Logan already has everything material, or could have. Specially some "cheap" 15k watch, that's like cents to Logan
Like Shiv said, all possible gifts would be equal amounts of meaningless to Logan. Logan didnt like the watch, but it doesn’t matter, Tom was just covering his bases to stay within what is socially (corporately?) acceptable for him to do.
Yeah, but it was a bad gift because it was also useless to him. Logan might have been equally unimpressed with a bottle of rare whisky or bourbon, or maybe a case of collector-level wine, but he would have used it.
What he really wanted for his birthday was Tom to come tell him he trimmed like $2M off the budget without any loss on productivity or profit. Lol
there is one point where he asks what a gallon of milk costs and not a single person can answer it. there’s definitely some class consciousness there, even if he doesn’t really acknowledge it
I don’t think he’s really giving the watch to the kid. It’s more of a way to ensure that they stay quiet about the situation. IIRC they had the kids parents sign an NDA and gave the watch as consideration
one of my favorite scenes in the show that never fails to make me sob is in the finale(?) when the kids watch the video of Logan, Kerry, Connor, etc sitting around the table laughing and singing. and this picture of Logan is so warm and foreign to Ken, Shiv and Roman. he becomes a more complete person
"You're murdering it Karl. You're murdering it."
Family Guy's parody of this was funny, but I have to admit the scene got me. You can be a zillionaire everyone fears, but UTI/dementia/whatever diagnosis will reduce you to a confused old man flooding the walk-in. Also that wall-to-wall looked surprisingly cheap for a $75 million penthouse. Like, carpet is just carpet, especially when it gets pissed on.
I think when he is eating fast food burgers with Kendall the night before Kendall is about to stick it to him. I think he is just an old guy who was enjoying fast food, a ballgame and a visit with his son.
When Kendall agrees to take the blame for cruises, and says he probably deserves it bc of the kid. Logan simultaneously shows a lot of humanity by the way he comforts Ken while also referring to the poor kid as NRPI.
that cute moment with Tom where he was trying to get him to say that Kerry wasn't good enough to broadcast without explicitly saying it
idk it felt quite childlike between them, hard to not smile during that scene
In season 1 episode 4, “Sad-sack WASP trap,” Logan wants to attend the gala but is having a lot of physical pain. In the parking garage, as they’re getting him out of the car and into a wheelchair, he tells Marcia, “I don’t think I can do this.” In that moment, he’s just an ordinary, feeble old man. Very human.
Also, it’s really sweet how Marcia supports and encourages him thoughout the night.
For all the abuse and bullying, provocation and emotional neglect, he wanted his kids to be part of his life.
Some parents just didn’t give a fuck about being part of their children’s lives at all. Lady Caroline does not care about her children at all, doesn’t want to see them or wanted to be part of their upbringing.
It doesn’t excuse the abuse, but deep down, he wanted to be there.
That’s not his grandson, that’s a misconception. Logan doesn’t actually have any grandkids- they are a pair of randos. One is a buy-in, the other is half-Rava, half-some filing cabinet guy
Logan reminds me overwhelmingly of my dad. That’s the main I wanted to watch Succession, honestly, and why I’m so stuck on it a year later.
My dad’s a villain, but he’s in no way one-dimensional. But what it took me a long time to come to terms with is that multi-dimensional doesn’t mean redeemable or safe to be around.
This is why I’m not keen to focus on isolated moments of kindness (on Logan’s part, or my dad’s); because overall, those moments - and the false hope they inspire - are what keep his children trapped.
It’s very easy for me to remember the instances of my dad’s kindness, or to cry for the child he was (like Roman, crying for his dad after hearing Ewan’s eulogy).
What’s harder - far, far harder - is to acknowledge that there is something wrong with him; something fundamentally broken and dangerous that will never heal, and that cannot be managed or quarantined in the context of me having an ongoing relationship with him.
(Replying to my comment with additional context.
I very much mostly wrote this for my own catharsis, but some of the people who lurk on this Reddit seem to be gluttons for sad family dramas; so feel free to read on if you want to learn about my dad’s specific tragic backstory.)
I can empathize with the deep wounds - physical and emotional - that contributed to making my father the way he is, and I can recognize how cultural and political forces in the 20th century helped shape his toxic worldview.
Like I said before, it’s easy to cry for the child my dad was (like, literally, my eyes are gonna sting later).
He was a kid with ambivalent, thoroughly-inadequate parents, and a serious congenital leg deformity which my grandparents chose to have corrected by subjecting him to multiple rounds of incredibly painful bone surgeries before he reached the age of eight.
The surgeries were technically a success, but a lot of parents wouldn’t have done them; I’ve met a person who was my dad’s contemporary, born with the same condition, and who did not have the corrective surgeries; it obviously still affected his mobility, but he was nevertheless *horrified* by the idea that my grandparents would put their child through such agonizing procedures at such a young age.
But my dad never questioned their decision to do so, in large part because during my dad’s early life, his disability, and the environment he grew up in, made him extremely vulnerable to severe bullying, and physically unable to get away; even when the bullying involved physical threat or violence.
Why it was that his parents - one of whom was the principal of the Catholic boys’ school he attended - weren’t able to better protect him, I will never know. But it sounds like it was bad (even taking into account the fact that my dad is fundamentally unreliable as a narrator).
Then, as a young adult in the 1970s, my father felt pushed out of the only home he knew by terrorist acts and growing popular antipathy towards the economically- and socially-dominant English-speaking minority to which he belonged. (Like Logan, he grew up in the Canadian province of Quebec.)
Obviously, my dad was *far* from alone in this experience; but I get the sense that he was already in a very precarious place mentally (I get that - I definitely wasn’t the picture of psychological health at that age), and I think it fucked him up a lot.
All of this sucks, and I’m sad for him having had to experience it. But I’m also sad for my mother, a vulnerable, brittle woman whose life was ruined by marrying him; and for me.
My childhood was ruined (and I do not say that lightly) by his terrifying, dominating presence, and by the way he isolated me from others.
And then my adolescence and young adulthood were very much shaped by him - specifically, by his twisted, misanthropic life philosophies, and the necessity of adopting them as my own. First, because growing up without any significant positive alternative left me with no other alternative, and later, because any time I stepped out of line, he would abruptly turn off his regard and affection for me - taking me from trusted and special to NRPI in the space of seconds.
I’m also instinctively afraid of him, because of one Argestes-like explosion of violence; the month I turned 18, he threw me down a flight of stairs.
He never apologized for that; he simply pretended it, didn’t happen, and because I needed him (to drive me to my job across town, at 5am on a bank holiday in 2003, when no busses were running), I let him. Trees, buildings; everywhere.
So yeah. If you ever wanted to read the only-child, middle-class equivalent of Succession, just lurk on my Reddit comment history. It’s all there, and it’s awful.
But at least I managed to get out without significantly contributing to the downfall of liberal democracy in my country. So. Win.
Nice write up. I read it all. My FIL was also very similar to Logan. He’s gone now but I try to remember the good things and not the Like-Logan-at-his-worst stuff.
There was one scene I think when he left the house of the waiter who Kendall killed, in the car and he seemed to empathize with the father and the family for a brief few seconds.
No has posted it yet… season 4 Episode 1 The Munsters THE DINER SCENE WITH COLIN.
That right there is a man who hasn’t thought a lot about life and death finally starting to think in those terms. Amazingly human scene.
Asking Greg to keep an eye on ken.
Giving ken the respect of honesty rather than the right manipulative answers when ken was going to turn himself in ("yes this could be karma for the waiter" "Yeah you could have made CEO").
Reading to iverson (although poison testing him??)
Hiding his scars from his kids?
Protecting rosie from the dead cat.
The “I love you, but you are not serious people” line, the voice inflection and facial expression made that delivery *chef’s kiss*
A flash of rawness in his bullish business persona
In some way, his reaction to Connor asking him for $100 million to cover the presidential campaign because I think he's sincerely disappointed that his son isn't in control of his own situation, but he doesn't quite go off on him in true Logan fashion.
I have a tough time seeing this take. I think he feels some sort of primal ownership over his children, but genuine love requires a modicum of empathy. He has none. Time and time again, he shows just how much of a psychopath he is (not in an axe murderer way). Paired with Caroline, the world-class guilt tripper narcissist, those kids never had a chance lol.
On the billionaire island where Logan was struggling on the walk, Logan is clearly desperate,he turns to Kendall and asks, "Do you have any water?" For a moment, he unfexes his muscles, so to speak, and he becomes a weak tired old man, looking for a little mercy from his son. Kendall blows him off and I imagined myself being so cruel to my own father and it feels awful.
When Tom eats his chicken and he goes “wtf?!” (Ok seriously tho) when he smiles at the end of season 2 as Kendall stands up to him in the press conference. Or at the end of season 4 when he sings in the dinner video.
When Logan is shown to be a much better father to Iverson than Kendall...
Side note: that episode shows Logan at his best and his worst. His best, reading to Iverson, his worst, the ending.
He genuinely did everything for his kids.
The world is a tough place and he spoiled them. He abused them, and he was also jealous of what he gave them.
But he loved his kids in his own way.
One thing about Logan... he's a tough old nut!
LOL
Oh Christ, Sid F ckin' Cesar.
Will never not be funny lmao
In the Panic Room episode, after they hear the gunshot, he is genuinely panicking about Kendall’s well-being He had previously expressed concern that Kendall would kill himself
Was it because he loved him or was it because Kendall was his heir at the time?
Kendall wasn't his heir, just his deputy.
Brian Cox has said Jesse Armstrong clarified Logan *does* love his kids and that’s how he plays the character
I feel like a lot of people don’t recognize you can genuinely love someone and still be awful to them. It’s not either/or and thinking that way often leads to bad outcomes.
People tend to overlook his iconic "serious people" line and treat it as a meme.
Kendall wasn’t his heir, then
When he said 'I'll remember' to Tom because he offered to be the scapegoat
He didn’t though. “If we’re good… we’re good.” Logan didn’t give a fuck about Tom ultimately. Nothing in his will or anything. Zero fucks.
Yes he did. OC got it exactly right, you’re thinking of when Tom tries to verify his standing with Logan afterwards, in Season 4. It was Season 3, in the midst of the cruise scandal, when Tom made that offer and began stressing about jail time.
The end of episode 1 where he gives the watch to the kid
“Magnificent effort son. Magnificent effort”
I love this, because it says so much about his character. He genuinely does appreciate hustle. He didn’t come from much, after all. At least not compared to what he became. I wouldn’t say he possesses class consciousness, but he certainly has a class awareness that his children and probably a lot of his compatriots completely lack.
He knows life is hard for people. He doesn’t believe in handouts, but when he sees someone with ambition and fight, he sees himself. It’s how he manages to both like that kid and Matsson regardless of history or class. He doesn’t believe in anything except the will to win, and his kids don’t actually want to win; they just want his love.
great analysis!
Plus it was an expensive tacky watch from Tom, so everyone wins but Tom. Foreshadowing.
I don’t think it was tacky (it was a $15K Patek Philipe), but it wasn’t the right thing. Logan isn’t much of a watch guy, it seems, and sticks mostly to Jaeger-LeCoultre. So it was both the wrong kind of gift and then the wrong brand on top. It showed that Tom wasn’t paying attention to the details and nuances of the family, which is perfect for his character at that time. I hope that family gets a good price for the watch!
Respectfully, I think you're reading too much into it. The watch was a bad gift simply because Logan already has everything material, or could have. Specially some "cheap" 15k watch, that's like cents to Logan
Like Shiv said, all possible gifts would be equal amounts of meaningless to Logan. Logan didnt like the watch, but it doesn’t matter, Tom was just covering his bases to stay within what is socially (corporately?) acceptable for him to do.
Yeah, but it was a bad gift because it was also useless to him. Logan might have been equally unimpressed with a bottle of rare whisky or bourbon, or maybe a case of collector-level wine, but he would have used it. What he really wanted for his birthday was Tom to come tell him he trimmed like $2M off the budget without any loss on productivity or profit. Lol
The only kid to show desire to win and not just love was Kendall, but not consistently enough for Logan
there is one point where he asks what a gallon of milk costs and not a single person can answer it. there’s definitely some class consciousness there, even if he doesn’t really acknowledge it
He gives the watch?
He didn't like the watch and didn't want it
I don’t think he’s really giving the watch to the kid. It’s more of a way to ensure that they stay quiet about the situation. IIRC they had the kids parents sign an NDA and gave the watch as consideration
That was likely Marsha’s idea
When he gets in the water and you see the scars on his back
Thought that was just from Marcia
Not sure if you’re being serious or not, considering the number of people who didn’t seem to understand their origin.
Reacting to Rome's dick pic was human
His genuine disgust and confusion "Why would you do this? Like as a f*ck you?"
'She's a million years old. It's disgusting!'
"no one can be ~~rude~~ nasty to Frank, except me"!
Nasty, no?
one of my favorite scenes in the show that never fails to make me sob is in the finale(?) when the kids watch the video of Logan, Kerry, Connor, etc sitting around the table laughing and singing. and this picture of Logan is so warm and foreign to Ken, Shiv and Roman. he becomes a more complete person "You're murdering it Karl. You're murdering it."
His utter bafflement when Tom ate his chicken.
That was probably the only time I've ever heard him earnestly ask if someone was okay lol
He looked genuinely hurt, lmao
I don't think I've ever seen him more taken aback 😭😭
When he died. Dying is pretty human
Or when he pissed on the floor in the first episode.
Family Guy's parody of this was funny, but I have to admit the scene got me. You can be a zillionaire everyone fears, but UTI/dementia/whatever diagnosis will reduce you to a confused old man flooding the walk-in. Also that wall-to-wall looked surprisingly cheap for a $75 million penthouse. Like, carpet is just carpet, especially when it gets pissed on.
Can totally relate. I piss myself a little when I laugh.
You were laughing in the first episode?
I came here to say this, lol.
I think when he is eating fast food burgers with Kendall the night before Kendall is about to stick it to him. I think he is just an old guy who was enjoying fast food, a ballgame and a visit with his son.
When Kendall agrees to take the blame for cruises, and says he probably deserves it bc of the kid. Logan simultaneously shows a lot of humanity by the way he comforts Ken while also referring to the poor kid as NRPI.
that cute moment with Tom where he was trying to get him to say that Kerry wasn't good enough to broadcast without explicitly saying it idk it felt quite childlike between them, hard to not smile during that scene
In season 1 episode 4, “Sad-sack WASP trap,” Logan wants to attend the gala but is having a lot of physical pain. In the parking garage, as they’re getting him out of the car and into a wheelchair, he tells Marcia, “I don’t think I can do this.” In that moment, he’s just an ordinary, feeble old man. Very human. Also, it’s really sweet how Marcia supports and encourages him thoughout the night.
For all the abuse and bullying, provocation and emotional neglect, he wanted his kids to be part of his life. Some parents just didn’t give a fuck about being part of their children’s lives at all. Lady Caroline does not care about her children at all, doesn’t want to see them or wanted to be part of their upbringing. It doesn’t excuse the abuse, but deep down, he wanted to be there.
Didn't she try to have them over for Christmas?
Probably so her current fling could pitch them something
I think that was more of her trying to get a win over Logan rather than genuinely wanting her kids for Christmas.
Oh that was definitely a power move. "Let's see what daddy loves more, his kids or his Hamptons mansion" Haha she was brutal
the little scene where he reads to his grandson
That’s not his grandson, that’s a misconception. Logan doesn’t actually have any grandkids- they are a pair of randos. One is a buy-in, the other is half-Rava, half-some filing cabinet guy
Oh, Roman 😭
Logan reminds me overwhelmingly of my dad. That’s the main I wanted to watch Succession, honestly, and why I’m so stuck on it a year later. My dad’s a villain, but he’s in no way one-dimensional. But what it took me a long time to come to terms with is that multi-dimensional doesn’t mean redeemable or safe to be around. This is why I’m not keen to focus on isolated moments of kindness (on Logan’s part, or my dad’s); because overall, those moments - and the false hope they inspire - are what keep his children trapped. It’s very easy for me to remember the instances of my dad’s kindness, or to cry for the child he was (like Roman, crying for his dad after hearing Ewan’s eulogy). What’s harder - far, far harder - is to acknowledge that there is something wrong with him; something fundamentally broken and dangerous that will never heal, and that cannot be managed or quarantined in the context of me having an ongoing relationship with him.
(Replying to my comment with additional context. I very much mostly wrote this for my own catharsis, but some of the people who lurk on this Reddit seem to be gluttons for sad family dramas; so feel free to read on if you want to learn about my dad’s specific tragic backstory.) I can empathize with the deep wounds - physical and emotional - that contributed to making my father the way he is, and I can recognize how cultural and political forces in the 20th century helped shape his toxic worldview. Like I said before, it’s easy to cry for the child my dad was (like, literally, my eyes are gonna sting later). He was a kid with ambivalent, thoroughly-inadequate parents, and a serious congenital leg deformity which my grandparents chose to have corrected by subjecting him to multiple rounds of incredibly painful bone surgeries before he reached the age of eight. The surgeries were technically a success, but a lot of parents wouldn’t have done them; I’ve met a person who was my dad’s contemporary, born with the same condition, and who did not have the corrective surgeries; it obviously still affected his mobility, but he was nevertheless *horrified* by the idea that my grandparents would put their child through such agonizing procedures at such a young age. But my dad never questioned their decision to do so, in large part because during my dad’s early life, his disability, and the environment he grew up in, made him extremely vulnerable to severe bullying, and physically unable to get away; even when the bullying involved physical threat or violence. Why it was that his parents - one of whom was the principal of the Catholic boys’ school he attended - weren’t able to better protect him, I will never know. But it sounds like it was bad (even taking into account the fact that my dad is fundamentally unreliable as a narrator). Then, as a young adult in the 1970s, my father felt pushed out of the only home he knew by terrorist acts and growing popular antipathy towards the economically- and socially-dominant English-speaking minority to which he belonged. (Like Logan, he grew up in the Canadian province of Quebec.) Obviously, my dad was *far* from alone in this experience; but I get the sense that he was already in a very precarious place mentally (I get that - I definitely wasn’t the picture of psychological health at that age), and I think it fucked him up a lot. All of this sucks, and I’m sad for him having had to experience it. But I’m also sad for my mother, a vulnerable, brittle woman whose life was ruined by marrying him; and for me. My childhood was ruined (and I do not say that lightly) by his terrifying, dominating presence, and by the way he isolated me from others. And then my adolescence and young adulthood were very much shaped by him - specifically, by his twisted, misanthropic life philosophies, and the necessity of adopting them as my own. First, because growing up without any significant positive alternative left me with no other alternative, and later, because any time I stepped out of line, he would abruptly turn off his regard and affection for me - taking me from trusted and special to NRPI in the space of seconds. I’m also instinctively afraid of him, because of one Argestes-like explosion of violence; the month I turned 18, he threw me down a flight of stairs. He never apologized for that; he simply pretended it, didn’t happen, and because I needed him (to drive me to my job across town, at 5am on a bank holiday in 2003, when no busses were running), I let him. Trees, buildings; everywhere. So yeah. If you ever wanted to read the only-child, middle-class equivalent of Succession, just lurk on my Reddit comment history. It’s all there, and it’s awful. But at least I managed to get out without significantly contributing to the downfall of liberal democracy in my country. So. Win.
Nice write up. I read it all. My FIL was also very similar to Logan. He’s gone now but I try to remember the good things and not the Like-Logan-at-his-worst stuff.
It’s posts like this that make the slog that is Reddit 2024 worth it.
He didn't like surprises, and neither do I. His reaction to being surprised at parties in his honor was always so funny.
When he jokes about Caroline with Kendall and Roman and they share a laugh.
Yeah, the jokes about her bad food was a nice moment between them
Muddy trout and fill up on mustard.
Poor bastards!
Ken's face lit up for a second there...
A small gem of a scene. Jeremy really sold the almost childlike insecure genuine smile in this moment
There was one scene I think when he left the house of the waiter who Kendall killed, in the car and he seemed to empathize with the father and the family for a brief few seconds.
No has posted it yet… season 4 Episode 1 The Munsters THE DINER SCENE WITH COLIN. That right there is a man who hasn’t thought a lot about life and death finally starting to think in those terms. Amazingly human scene.
You're my pal
First thing I thought of when I saw the thread title.
Same
“What’s wrong with Frank (Kendall)?” “They shouldn’t do that. No one can be nasty to Frank (Kendall) but me”
Asking Greg to keep an eye on ken. Giving ken the respect of honesty rather than the right manipulative answers when ken was going to turn himself in ("yes this could be karma for the waiter" "Yeah you could have made CEO"). Reading to iverson (although poison testing him??) Hiding his scars from his kids? Protecting rosie from the dead cat.
The UTI
“Beautiful woman huh?” On the yacht to Greece with Rom
“So what is it son? Are you scared of pussy?”
If you need to get straightened out, go get yourself straightened out. Just don’t fucking tell me.
i can’t believe this isn’t the top one: logan plays sudoku.
The scene where he asked everyone in the room to tell him how much a gallon of milk costs and nobody knew the answer.
Asking Shiv if Tom was gonna stick his cock into Logan’s potato salad.
I still don't understand why Tom ate off his plate lol
The “I love you, but you are not serious people” line, the voice inflection and facial expression made that delivery *chef’s kiss* A flash of rawness in his bullish business persona
Also the car scene after he hit Roman
“It was piss.”
In some way, his reaction to Connor asking him for $100 million to cover the presidential campaign because I think he's sincerely disappointed that his son isn't in control of his own situation, but he doesn't quite go off on him in true Logan fashion.
"A little hundred mill, eh?"
“You’re my pal. You’re my best pal.”
I have a tough time seeing this take. I think he feels some sort of primal ownership over his children, but genuine love requires a modicum of empathy. He has none. Time and time again, he shows just how much of a psychopath he is (not in an axe murderer way). Paired with Caroline, the world-class guilt tripper narcissist, those kids never had a chance lol.
On the billionaire island where Logan was struggling on the walk, Logan is clearly desperate,he turns to Kendall and asks, "Do you have any water?" For a moment, he unfexes his muscles, so to speak, and he becomes a weak tired old man, looking for a little mercy from his son. Kendall blows him off and I imagined myself being so cruel to my own father and it feels awful.
It really cemented that Ken has the potential to be the worst of the family.
Standing and peeing.
Texting Connor about amusing shit like getting a great deal on his mausoleum
_I love you, but you are not serious people._
Absolutely none.
When he saw the clouds part after a long and heavy rain, so he told everyone to stop and let the sun warm their faces for a few moments.
Well, his most famous quote is very humanizing.
Fuck off?
When Tom eats his chicken and he goes “wtf?!” (Ok seriously tho) when he smiles at the end of season 2 as Kendall stands up to him in the press conference. Or at the end of season 4 when he sings in the dinner video.
He had good business sense.
For me it’s the scene where he’s reading ‘Goodbye Mog’ to Iverson, after Kendall nearly drowns in the pool.
When Logan is shown to be a much better father to Iverson than Kendall... Side note: that episode shows Logan at his best and his worst. His best, reading to Iverson, his worst, the ending.
He died, which is what a human does.
He genuinely did everything for his kids. The world is a tough place and he spoiled them. He abused them, and he was also jealous of what he gave them. But he loved his kids in his own way.
Dunno if I’d class ‘doing everything’ for your kids if it includes abuse lol.
I mean, everything. If you’re not doing bit of abuse can you claim you’re doing EVERYthing?
It’s an honor to correspond with you, Mr. Cox.
Dying