The abbreviated recap before you contains mainly spoilers for the first season of “Descendants”, but throughout it there will also be passing references to events in the second and third seasons, and it is mainly intended to refresh the events of the previous seasons for the fourth season, which will be broadcast on March 26 and will, of course, receive a detailed recap of its own herself
It is a particularly strange experience, to return to watch the first episodes of “Heirs” after you have already watched all three seasons. It is common among those who watch the series for the first time to feel two feelings following the first episodes: dislike (and even hatred) for most or even all of the main characters, and confusion in the face of the branching plot and heavy on financial jargon, especially the parts that concern what is happening in the Wistar-Royko corporation itself. The many who nevertheless persevered with the series, either because they were captivated by its poisonous and wonderful energies from the beginning or because they knew that it was a highly hyped series and that it was still worth persevering with it until it entered deep into the heart, usually focused on the more personal parts of the plot – more the giant conflict between Kendall Roy and his father Logan and less the significance of Kendall’s temporary appointment as CEO while Logan recovered from a brain hemorrhage, more the relationship between Tom, the outsider who tries to work his way to the top of the family and his protégé Greg, the outsider who tries to work his way to the bottom of it and less of the white collar crimes in which the two get involved .
On first viewing, the financial mumbo-jumbo gradually turns from noise to white noise to soundtrack, until finally we come out of the first or second season, certainly the third, when we shout words like “hostile takeover” and “bear hug”, and on the other hand we are in love with all the characters, even the cruel and rotten ones in which In front of Logan’s evil and aggressiveness it is impossible not to place the real sense of betrayal and disappointment he experiences from his children; In front of Tom’s laziness and manipulativeness it is impossible not to place his surprising loyalty and broken heart; Against Roman’s casual sadism, his humor and the fact that he is probably, as far as you can call it, the best son to his father and the best brother to his brother; And it is precisely in front of Kendall’s androgyny that one cannot help but place his narcissism, ego and pathos.
And that is what is so deceptive about returning to the first season of “Heirs”. Remembering it from the depths of the third season, it feels like great, fun TV, but drawn with a little more crude and simplistic lines than the hyper-complex relationships of the later episodes. But that’s not true. We remember Roman’s first appearance on screen with the greeting “hey hey, you bastards” but not that he shows up in his first scene of the series first to hug Kendall and tell him he loves him (yes, he also sniffs about what’s going on at the top the company on that occasion, but he also really treats Kendall with kindness and affection between insults – until it is actually Kendall who tries to turn against the family). We remember Tom’s endless arrogance and not his heartbroken looks every time his fiancee (starting in the second episode) and wife (starting at the end of the last episode of the season) Shiv turn their backs on him, metaphorically or physically. Or maybe it’s not true, and it’s actually the rewatching that simply loads incidental moments in the first episodes in all the contexts that will be developed in the following seasons?
For example, the first time that Jeri, the senior manager at Wistar-Royko, appears on the screen, the camera captures a close-up on the face of Roman, who follows her with his gaze. It is impossible not to immediately think of the particularly strange sexual relationship they will have in season 2, but both Kieran Culkin (Roman) and J. Smith-Cameron (Jerry) specifically referred to the fact that this storyline was born out of their improvisations on the set of one of the last episodes of the season. Is this late editing work that hints at a plan that has already been hatched or is it just a close-up that is difficult not to pour into it an excess of meaning? It is impossible to decide.
It’s impossible to summarize a plot of ten eventful episodes in a two-paragraph and it would be awkward to summarize it more than that. Still, we’ll focus on the main things and try to say a few things about them along the way: the first three episodes not only follow the panic at the top of Wistar-Royko when Logan Roy, CEO and legendary founder of the company is hospitalized with a brain hemorrhage – and his son Kendall is temporarily appointed CEO (Which also causes Roman, his younger brother, who lacks management skills but is not without good instincts, as it turns out later, to enter the position of vice president through the back door.) Along the way, he also had to make some questionable decisions: to purchase a digital media company called Vaulter Hers alludes to Vulture, New York Magazine’s leading cultural news site, but in essence it is much more reminiscent of the defunct Gawker – which, like Walter in the second season, was also eliminated by a Republican billionaire, but under completely different circumstances) and raise money from a fund in which it pulls the strings Sandy, one of Logan’s old business rivals.
When Logan wakes up, faced with the news of everything that happened while he was extremely partially conscious, he has to act quickly to make sure his iron grip on the company is still strong. Here too, on second viewing it is constantly difficult to separate the events of the past from the events of the future. Did Kendall act out of a thirst for power or out of a desire to save the company (certainly in light of the fact that he had to raise money to cover an irresponsible loan Logan took out a long time ago)? It cannot be decided. Is Logan acting because he is aware of Kendall’s treacherous nature, or is Kendall’s treachery a reaction to the fact that in episode six he fires him from the company? Are Kendall and Roman really afraid that Logan is acting irrationally and attribute this to the fact that he has not yet really recovered from his brain event (“What if he wakes up in the middle of the night, calls Jeff Bezos and sells the company for a dollar?” Kendall tells Frank, another company executive, After they find out that Logan is so fuzzy that he peed in Kendall’s office – a symbolic act for us as viewers, but absolutely a moment of loss of clarity for Logan within the series), so they initiate a vote of no confidence against him, or is it Kendall who wants his seat again?
All of these events lead in a way that feels inevitable to the final moments of the season: after Kendall is fired, he cuts off contact with the family and tries to help Sandy take over Wistar-Roiko. But at Shiv and Tom’s wedding, while his nose is blown with coke, he drives drunk along with a waiter from the wedding. The vehicle overturns and lands in the water. The waiter drowns, Kendall survives and returns to Logan’s arms, who promises him to “make it all go away” in exchange for him returning home – and preventing Sandy from taking over Wistar-Roiko. On the one hand it feels like a deal with the devil, a father blackmailing his son. On the other hand, what reward is Logan really gaining here from Kendall? His continued control of the family corporation or the return of the wayward son to his arms? In an interview given by Brian Cox (Logan) recently, he said that the creator of the series, Jesse Armstrong made sure to give him as a director’s note “Remember you love your children”, and that this is always his interpretation of Logan’s actions. Almost every step every character takes here always has two interpretations: high and low, emotional and cynical. “Heirs” at first seems like it’s trying to get its viewers to decide which interpretation is correct, with a bias towards the “bad” interpretation. But in the end, in this series the answer is almost always “both”.