Kendall Roy: Preachin’ Trauma Truth (Masterful Character Arc Series)
I never considered myself a cinephile or a TV enthusiast. I watch a lot of television, almost to the point of feeling like I have to justify it. In our productivity-oriented frantic society, we’re told this is a waste of time.
Yet, to me, watching shows was never about passing the day. It was about listening to a story. For me, it’s taking a break from reading, and from life, in order to understand a little more of it. Because at the end of the day, that’s why we’re still watching ~ in the hope of better understanding our fellow man, and with him, ourselves.
There’s nothing I consider sexier in television than a strong character arc. I’m often put off by otherwise good shows, if I consider the character writing to be lazy or linear. That’s because I’m watching for transformation, for the psych angle, for the nitty-gritty inside that gray matter. So I have, in the years of watching, accrued a few favorite character arcs.
Initially, this was going to be a standalone article, but I’ve thought better of it, and now, I think it’ll be a series of posts.
Disclaimer: This contains spoilers for “Succession”. If you have not watched the show, but would like to, I suggest you click off now.
To be fair, Jeremy Strong is possibly one of the most appealing, wickedly talented actors on the planet.
When I started watching Succession, I rooted for Logan, largely because I only knew Brian Cox from the cast. That changed about ten minutes into Episode One.
Kendall Roy isn’t a portrayal of a man. He’s a portrayal of what once used to be a man, but what has since been gnawed to the bone by a deep desire for acknowledgement and love. All the kids in Succession vie for their father’s approval, but none more so than Kendall. Groomed to be the heir en-titre from a young age, Kendall embodies all the signs of prolonged exposure to micro-trauma (and sometimes, major trauma, in his case).
He is easily given to addiction, and to erratic, dangerous behaviour.
He has profound difficulty controlling and regulating his emotions.
His self-loathing runs so deep that he constantly humiliates himself for the sake of feeling something. Of feeling seen.
Yet what is most haunting about Ken, perhaps, is his perennially empty stare. Complex PTSD is often described as a continued state of emptiness/hopelessness, among other symptoms, and it’s fair to say that’s what Strong’s puppy-eyed, doleful stare conveys.
Kendall strives, but does so on auto-pilot. In truth, this is a man who has lost all hope. Or rather, he is a man whose hope has been abused, bullied and belittled out of him by his own father.
Another important aspect of the dissociation inherent in trauma survivors is feeling and behaving like no one can understand you. Like you are so far removed from anyone else you perceive as “normal” that there’s not even a point in trying to fit in anymore.
As a viewer, even I perceived Kendall as different. Maybe that’s why I feel compelled to write about him now. He was so unlike other TV characters, even unlike other characters on his own show. Yet, logically, that couldn’t be an accurate interpretation. Ken had two arms, two legs, difficult relationships, needs and wants, much like any other man. And to succeed in painting him as a permanent outsider, so far removed from his fellow men, is (to me) an exercise in masterful storytelling (and acting).
It’s easy to think he is a caricature of the traumatised child growing into a dysfunctional adult. In truth, all the characters on Succession have something vaguely caricature-ish about them.
Yet a character like Kendall is perhaps closer to our own truth than we’d like to realize. Yes, some of his characteristics come off as more pronounced than they might’ve in real life. But that’s because, born into an obscene fortune, Kendall never learns to regulate himself in tune to a surrounding society. Most of us learn to curb our coping and our behaviours, so that we are accepted into the surrounding society, but not Ken. He’s that rich that it doesn’t matter, the world around him learns to accommodate him, and not the other way around.
… which only plunges him deeper into self-hatred. At his core, Kendall is a man desperate to be understood. All of the Roy children are, in their own way, on a quest to assimilate the “real world”.
Shiv tries, through her liberal politics, to prove to herself she is a good person.
Roman through his addled relationship with sex, is grappling with what it is to be a man.
And Connor through his isolated life on the farm, through his constant attempt at reinvention.
(Talk about complex character building, Connor’s self-removal from a family that doesn’t really want him is harrowing and stunning in its own right.)
For Kendall, it’s his love of rap music, historically a genre revolving heavily around community and brotherhood, something painfully absent in Ken’s own life. As the show wears on, Kendall tries and ultimately fails to relate to others, not only to his father, but to his siblings, his peers, his girlfriend, and even his own children.
He is someone so unaware of his own hurt (and his inappropriate response to it, his projection of it unto anything that moves) that it forces the viewer to cringe, all the while wanting to reach out in sympathy.
For me, Kendall was a delight to watch, thanks to Strong’s acting and screen presence. But he also served as a valuable lesson in self-awareness, in how easy it is to project ourselves and our hurt unto others, to the point of becoming alienated and closing off the world.
And that, I reckon, is no picnic to portray on screen, especially on a programme that markets itself as a dramedy. So that’s why when I thought “masterful character arc”, my mind immediately, involuntarily, went to Kendall.
Thank you for reading. Guess what. I am actually publishing my first novel this fall. Wild, I know. Meanwhile, I’m gonna be documenting my process/journey/slow descent into madness on here, while also dropping the occasional opinion piece. I like talking about this incredible world of ours.
So if you’re someone who enjoys that kinda writing, well, why not subscribe? It’s free. And I’m desperate. So there, honesty.
