By Haoran Xia
Published on: DeepFocus
May 25, 2023
The word “succession” itself already carries an immense tragic weight. What follows succession may at times be revolution, at times civil war, and at times a brief interlude of peace—but what inevitably accompanies it is death. Death and succession exist in a relationship of mutual implication, an indivisible and inseparable duality. The tension woven by this relationship cloaks succession in a distinctly horrific hue. When succession unfolds before our eyes, we—or the particular society in which we are situated—are involuntarily enveloped beneath an intangible dome of terror. We are compelled to confront the grief and nihilism brought forth by death, while simultaneously being forced to welcome the surging tides of struggle that succession unleashes.
Throughout history, death and succession have repeatedly reshaped and ruled human destiny through bloodshed and brutality: the Year of the Four Emperors following Nero’s death; the short-lived July Monarchy after Napoleon I; the fratricidal conflicts among Henry VIII’s heirs; the Nine Lords’ Strife after the death of the Kangxi Emperor. Again and again, these classical events drag both people and things into the abyss, let them tumble within it, then mercilessly haul them back out, deceitfully assuring later generations that history does not repeat itself and that the future is forever bright. And yet, succession—as a fatalistic theme—always returns when our guard is lowest, joining forces with the overwhelming power of death to destroy us once more.
Succession, true to its title, is a story entirely structured around inheritance and struggle.
The series opens in darkness. Gradually, the camera focuses on an elderly man groping his way through the night, unsteady, seemingly unable to care for himself. He begins to urinate in the dark. The lights switch on. Darkness vanishes, everything is exposed under pale illumination—he has soaked the carpet of his own hallway. Five minutes later, we learn that this elderly man is the founder and CEO of the largest media conglomerate in the United States. He monopolizes American—and even global—news and media platforms. He moves effortlessly among politics, finance, entertainment, and every industry tethered to money. He resembles a modern-day Nero: brutal by nature, invulnerable, expansionist, indulgent, decadent. His name is Logan Roy. Logan has four children—Connor Roy, Kendall Roy, Roman Roy, and Siobhan “Shiv” Roy—and he despises their incompetence.
From the very first second, both the characters and we as viewers are thrust into a classical dilemma: Is Logan dying? Who will succeed him? Death and succession resemble Godot in Waiting for Godot—omnipresent yet unreachable. Logan’s death and the inheritance of his empire become a philosophical problem that is simultaneously classical and absurd, hovering over New York, relentlessly hijacking the lives of his children. Logan does not like his children, nor anyone around him. He curses them, humiliates them, abuses them with the most vile, filthy, and inhumane language and methods. He is volatile, frequently enraged, calling his executives “morons.” In short, he places no one in his eyes. At a family gathering, Logan once confesses, “I love my children.” His children respond with shock and disbelief, for within his endless tirades, complaints, and denunciations, love is nowhere to be found. And yet, the tragic truth is that Logan does love his children.
The Impossibility of Love
At first glance, Succession appears to be a series centered on business and money. Yet its true question is this: whom does Logan Roy love most? Logan’s love operates on two dimensions. The first is recognition. Logan embodies the strictest definition of the father figure—authoritative, ruthless, immovable, absolute. In a family that lacked a stable maternal presence—Connor’s mother was institutionalized after his birth; Kendall, Roman, and Shiv’s mother divorced Logan during their childhood and later settled in London—love was never present. The four children received only half the love of a so-called normal family. In Logan’s eyes—or rather, in the eyes of a capitalist—love is worthless. He despises it, even loathes it, because love signifies weakness, and weakness belongs to the powerless. For a titan of industry, love yields no profit and expands no empire; its only function is to slow him down. Thus, Logan consciously tears love apart, conceals it, forbids its existence. In a conversation with Roman, Roman briefly mentions his love for Logan. Logan responds, “Are you a faggot? I never thought you were a faggot.” Love, when voiced by his children, is perverse, illegitimate, fundamentally unrecognized. To be recognized—or even permitted—this perpetually desire is a basic emotional need for human beings.
In Freud’s account, libido is the primal drive of the human subject, and it is parental recognition that first allows the child to perceive the self as whole. For Adler, parental recognition situates the individual within a social environment and establishes the capacity to form relationships. Yet within the Roy family, recognition is never articulated. Relationships collapse one by one, ultimately fragmenting entirely. None of the Roy children can form a healthy bond with another human being. Connor, like Narcissus, is obsessed with his own image, utterly lacking self-awareness. Kendall lives in drugs, finding meaning and emotional expression only through substance abuse. Roman eroticizes humiliation, masturbating while being verbally abused by women twenty years older than his. Shiv tells her husband, “Even if you love me this much, you’ll never have me—and I’ll never love you.”
Logan’s inability to express love, and the impossibility of love itself, establish the tragic foundation of the series. The children’s self-destruction and Logan’s self-concealment form a family destined for tragedy. Yet this tragedy does not arise from overwhelming external forces, as in Romeo and Juliet, but from an internal, inescapable, fate-like force embedded within the family itself. In the final shot of the opening credits, young Connor, Kendall, Roman, and Shiv stand before the gate, waiting for Logan. He never appears. He turns away and leaves. As the children watch him go, they simultaneously watch their fate depart with him.
This mode of storytelling returns drama to its most primordial form: compressing conflict into the family unit. Desire, emotion, relationships, and extreme expressions of intimacy are woven into the closest yet most alienated human structure. The family’s subtlety lies in its social mythos. It is imagined as an impregnable fortress, the highest standard of happiness, a miniature communist collective, a stable vessel for morality and ethics. Precisely because of this myth, when evil emerges, when morality fractures and love disappears, the family loses its original meaning—and with it, the foundational ethics of humanity itself. The irony of moral collapse rises like a tidal wave, violently dismantling familiar emotional structures and dragging us into the inverse of common morality, exposing the family in its most naked form.
From Orestes’ patricide, to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, from Pinter’s The Homecoming to Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm and Vinterberg’s Festen, these family tragedies - or what I call: the tragedy within the tragedy - do not depict catastrophe born of accident or historical upheaval, but rather the relentless, subterranean, volcanic tragic energy concealed beneath the family’s surface. The Roy family—like all families in which love is impossible—writes the inverse of love, the family’s other dimension, and thus articulates the most devastating form of classical tragedy available to human experience.
After Logan’s death, the narrative disperses, following the four children along separate trajectories. Connor exits the succession game entirely, entering politics with Willa and living a tender, almost utopian life. Kendall, upon learning he has been named successor, sheds his former self within seconds, becoming the “killer” Logan demanded. Roman cannot face the reality of his father’s death; he grieves in secret while adopting Logan’s behavioral shell—cold, severe, performatively cruel—attempting to reconstruct his father’s image and becoming a second Narcissus, trapped before the mirror. Shiv resents Kendall and Roman’s alliance and secretly allies herself with Lukas Matsson, all while remaining entangled in her violent love–hate relationship with Tom.
Logan’s death places the siblings into two simultaneous spaces. In one, they enter a suspended state, freed from the concrete figure of succession, emotionally dependent on one another, briefly allowing love to resurface. In the other, they enter a circular arena of absolute autonomy and total self-interest, where only position, power, and survival matter, and love is once again abandoned. Tragically, it is this latter space they choose, and from that moment on, the four Roy siblings turn upon one another.
At this stage, Logan’s love or recognition no longer matters. What matters is the throne itself. The brilliance of Succession lies in placing Logan’s death at the front of the narrative rather than its end. Had it occurred at the conclusion, the series would have reduced itself to a simple question of appointment. By moving death forward, the series expands its dramatic field, liberating the characters from a linear destiny and allowing the emergence of multiple post-Logan selves. These new Connor, Kendall, Roman, and Shiv are more daring and more fearful at once—daring in their ruthless defense of entitlement, fearful in their grief over never having heard, with certainty, whom their father truly loved. Logan’s shadow does not vanish with his death. Beneath it, they mask their fragility, forcing themselves into the posture of “killers,” suppressing the trauma inflicted by love’s impossibility.
This is laid bare in Season 4, Episode 6, when Shiv tells Tom,
“You took away the last six months I could have had with my dad,”
and Tom responds, “I didn’t make your dad not love you. I gave you endless approval, and it still wasn’t enough—because you’re broken.”
In this exchange, Tom—or Jesse Armstrong, cerator and write of Succession—exposes the core truth of the post-Logan children: they have not grown. Logan’s death did not dissolve his presence. The Roy family continues, as always, in a state of emptiness and inertia, until the impossibility of love is once again inherited.
The Impossibility of Capital
If recognition constitutes the core of Logan’s love, then power is its extension. In this second dimension, love ceases to be emotional or psychological and becomes economic and political—a token within the succession game. Logan treats love as capital, trading it for obedience, loyalty, and strategic advantage. He never acts as a father; he acts as a capitalist. His children are commodities, assessed, weighed, optimized. Their relationship to him mutates into a grotesque market exchange governed by competition and profit. This is made explicit in the Season 3 finale, when Logan, having outmaneuvered his children, declares, “I fucking win.” No matter how deeply he may love them, what ultimately matters to him is who wins the game of capital and who ascends to absolute power.
Under this logic, all characters are governed by capital and authority. The narrative detaches itself from the family unit and descends, under the gravitational pull of capital, into a broader, emptier, more absurd orbit—what Flaubert identified as the universal bourgeois mentality. Capital flows like water through every fissure of modern society, sealing off every possible exit of human essence and confining individuals within a darkness they gradually come to accept as comfort.
The absurdity produced here is not Camus’ existential absurdity born of metaphysical emptiness, but a historically conditioned absurdity generated by the inescapable dominance of capital markets and bourgeois realism. The opening credits of Succession are saturated with this logic: skyscrapers, freshly printed banknotes, nonstop news cycles, luxury restaurants, Cuban cigars. These elements do not merely frame the Roy family; they dominate it. They extend outward to New York, London, Tuscany, and Stockholm, forming a world in which romance kneels before capital and morality dissolves into transaction. Like the nineteenth-century realist worlds of Flaubert, Kafka, Chekhov, and Maupassant, this is a space where characters betray their souls in the name of salvation and surrender virtue in the act of worship. Logan stands at the summit of this mountain, and Kendall, Roman, and Shiv claw their way upward, mistaking the capitalist’s approval for paternal love.
The Roy family is merely a microcosm of this absurd world. Tom loves Shiv, but he loves Shiv’s surname—Roy—even more. For the sake of power and capital, he betrays his wife and turns toward Logan. In the finale of Season Three, Tom asks Greg, “Do you want to make a deal with the devil?”—without realizing that in the process of bargaining with the devil (Logan), he himself has already begun to mutate into a new one. Greg—the newly arrived Greg, the distant-relative Greg, the foolish and incompetent Greg—exists as a joke within the Roy family. Yet among all the characters, Greg embodies a peculiar lucidity within absurdity. His last remaining fragment of virtue repeatedly warns him, at the moments when he is crushed by capital and power: don’t do this. The brilliance of Greg as a character, however, lies precisely in how the writers construct for him an uncontrollable, positively sloped linear trajectory—showing, step by step, how he sells off his soul, assimilates into the Roy family, and ascends the mountain of capital. Marcia, the unloved French stepmother, Logan’s third wife, is equally driven by money. Like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, her actions serve a singular purpose: to climb this mountain. Marriage and sexuality are merely her most convenient tools of self-deception. In Season Four, Episode Nine, Kendall asks Hugo, “This isn’t a partnership. You’ll be my dog. Do you understand?” Hugo responds effortlessly: “Woof, woof.”
Within the ensemble structure of Succession, these characters represent only the tip of the iceberg. Yet through them, the writers construct a world that extends beyond the Roy family—in other words, a world that mirrors our own: an absurd world founded upon capital and power. In this world, human beings are never the winners; only capital, and the power that is born alongside it, emerges victorious. In this confrontation between humanity and capital, the irresistibility of capital destroys the most basic human virtues. Desire inevitably submits to its seduction; conviction is repeatedly shaken by its allure; even humanity’s innate self-discipline is assaulted, undermined, invaded, and ultimately appropriated by capital itself. What results is a struggle without outcome, a contest whose conclusion is predetermined: humanity cannot win. Human insignificance before nature and human insignificance before capital gradually converge, equated as one and the same. A biological smallness and a social smallness collapse like twin avalanches, burying the individual beneath their weight, leaving no room to move. After all, if even the Roy family—perched atop New York’s summit—has already forfeited its virtue and humanity, then those situated in the middle strata of society have even less chance of victory.
In Season 4, Episode 3, upon learning of Logan’s death, Connor murmurs, “Oh my God. He never even liked me.” Later, as Kendall, Roman, and Shiv scramble in a private room aboard the yacht, Connor marries Willa on deck. While the others fight for the throne, Connor cultivates political alliances, seeking a diplomatic posting to Oman or Slovenia. After four seasons, Connor finally attains the life he desired: a tender, almost communist existence with the woman he loves. Even when Willa admits that part of her love is motivated by his wealth, he does not mind.
He exits the succession game because he understands that in a family without love, survival requires learning how to live alone.
He accepts the impossibility of Logan’s love, recognizes the irresistibility of capital, and chooses, instead, the fragile possibility of love. He leaves the classical abyss. He leaves the absurd mountain.
作者：夏浩然
发表于：深焦DeepFocus
二零二三 五月二十五日
“继承”一词本身便承载着巨大的悲剧性。相继伴随继承出现的，有时是革命，有时是版乱，而有时是短暂的和平，但一定会发生的是死亡。死亡与继承是相互伴随的关系，一种不可瓜分，无法分离的双重关系，这种关系所钩织出的张力为继承添置了一种恐怖色彩。当继承不可避免地发生在我们眼前时，我们，或者所处当下的特定社会被情不自禁地笼罩在一层触不可及的恐怖穹顶下，我们既强迫自己面对死亡所带来的悲痛和虚无，也被迫性地迎接随继承滚滚而来的斗争汪洋。古往今来，死亡与继承不断以血腥和残暴的方式改变着、统治着人类的历史和命运：尼禄大帝死后的四帝之年、拿破仑一世死后短暂苟活的七月王朝、亨利八世死后的子女相残以及康熙皇帝死后的九龙夺嫡……这些古典事件一次次将事件中的人和物拖进深渊，使其在深渊中翻滚，而后无情拽出，以欺骗的口吻告知将来的人们历史不会重复，未来永远光明，但殊不知，继承这一宿命论话题总在我们最放松警惕时出现，与死亡这压倒性的力量一起，将我们摧毁。
《继承之战》，犹如标题，正是一个围绕继承和斗争展开的故事。
故事开始，一片漆黑，镜头逐渐聚焦在一个在黑夜里摸索的老人，他摇摇晃晃，似乎难以自理。随后，在黑夜中他开始小便，这时，灯被打开，黑夜消失，一切暴露在白皙的灯光下——他将尿洒在了自家过道的地毯上。五分钟后我们得知这位难以自理的老人是美国最大媒体集团的创始人兼CEO，他垄断着美国，甚至是全球的新闻报道和媒体平台；他游刃有余地游走在政治、金融、娱乐及其他所用与金钱挂钩的行业；他仿佛是现代社会的尼禄大帝——生性残暴、刀枪不入、衷于开辟、奢靡荒淫；他是洛根·罗伊。洛根有四个子女——长子康奈尔·罗伊，二子肯道尔·罗伊，三子罗曼·罗伊，和次女希夫·罗伊，但他怨恨他们无能。
从故事的第一秒开始，剧集中的角色和作为观众的我们被带入进一个古典困境：洛根快死了吗？谁是继承人？死亡与继承犹如《等待戈多》中的戈多，他无处不在，却无处追寻；同时，洛根的死亡与集团的继承成为了一个既古典又荒诞的哲理问题，盘旋在纽约上空，时时刻刻以最显眼的方式挟持着他的子女。不过洛根并不喜欢他的子女和他身边的人：他咒骂自己的子女，他羞辱他们，他以最恶劣，最肮脏，最不人道的言语和方式虐待他们；他脾气暴躁，时常大怒，用“白痴”形容他的高管；简而言之，他不将任何人放在眼里。在一次家庭聚会上，洛根坦白：“我爱我的孩子们”，他的子女听到后纷纷表示诧异和惊讶，因为在他的无数次咒骂、埋怨和怒斥中，爱无迹可寻，但可悲的事实是洛根很爱他的孩子们。
爱的不可能性
晃眼一看，《继承之战》是一部以商界和金钱为核心的剧集，不过剧集的落脚点在于：洛根究竟最爱谁？洛根的爱有两个维度，第一是认可。洛根的存在是最严格意义上的父亲形象——威严、凌厉、不可动摇、绝对的权威。在一个从小缺失母亲角色（康奈尔的母亲在他出生后被关押进精神病院，肯道尔、罗曼和希夫的母亲在他们年幼时与洛根离婚，后定居伦敦）的家庭环境里，爱从来没有彻底饱满，四个子女得到的爱仅仅是正常家庭里爱的一半。而爱在洛根眼里，或者在一个资本家眼里毫无可贵之处，他轻视爱，他甚至厌恶爱，因为爱在他看来是软弱之辈的强项，对于一个叱咤商界的人而言，爱既不能为他获得利益，也不能拓展他的商业帝国，爱唯一能做到的是拖他的后腿，所以洛根自主性地将爱撕毁、掩藏、不允许它存在。在他与罗曼的一次谈话中，罗曼短暂提及他对洛根的爱，洛根却反问他：“你是同性恋吗？我从来没想过你是同性恋”，孩子们口中的爱对他而言是畸形的、不可存在的、在根本上不被认可。被认可，或者被允许，这一始终处于被动地位的欲望，对于作为社会性动物的人而言，是一项需要被满足的基本情感需求。
在弗洛伊德看来，力比多，即性欲，是人的原始驱动力，也是人的根本欲望，而我们对于性欲的最早启蒙来自于我们的父亲和母亲，唯独父母的认可能让我们在早期意识到，“我”是一个完整的人；在阿德勒看来，父母的认可将我们第一次放置于一个社会性环境，让我们认知“我”是一个有能力与他人构建关系的正常人。但在罗伊家族里，认可从未被表达，以至于家族里的一切关系纷纷分崩离析，最终支离破碎，没有一个罗伊能与他人建立健康的关系——康奈尔犹如纳克索斯一般着迷于自己的形象，对自己的所有毫无认知；肯道尔活在毒品之上，他在毒品中找到了生活的意义，以及表达自我情绪的方式；罗曼喜欢比自己大二十岁的女人，在对方凌辱他的同时，他最大限度地手淫，视辱骂为性快感；希夫对自己的丈夫说“即使你这么爱我，你也没有办法拥有我，我更不会爱上你”。
洛根无法表达的爱和他爱的不可能性构筑了悲剧的底色，四个小孩的自我毁灭与洛根的自我掩藏构建了一个注定走向悲剧结局的家庭，而这个悲剧的悲剧并不是因《罗密欧与朱丽叶》中不可抵挡的外来力量而起，而是由于一股内在的，无法避免的，如命运般注定的内在力量所致，即一种与生俱来，伴随家庭而生的悲剧命运。《继承之战》片头的最后一幕里，年幼时的康奈尔，肯道尔，罗曼和希夫站在庭院的大门前，等待着洛根的出现，但洛根始终没有出现，他转头离开，四个小孩目送他离开，而就在这一刻，他们也目送他们的命运就此离开。
这样的情节展现方式回到戏剧最原始的展示方式，即将矛盾压缩在一个家庭单位里：欲望、情愫、关系、极端的情欲表达，一切纷纷交织在最亲密也最疏离的家庭关系中。家庭的微妙感在于：在社会的普遍意识中，家庭是一座无懈可击的堡垒，幸福的最高标准，一个小型共产主义集体，一个社会道德和世间伦理得以生存的稳定群体，正因为所谓的社会普世家庭观的存在，导致当一丝恶的出现，道德生出隙缝，爱不复存在时，家庭失去了它承载的最原始意义，同时与之消亡的还有与家庭共同存在的，人类的基本伦理。
道德丧失的讽刺掀起巨浪，它以最猛烈的方式摧毁着我们已知的情感模式，将我们带入普遍道德的反面，赤裸裸地揭晓“家庭”的最真实面目。俄瑞斯特斯的弑父悲剧，陀思妥耶夫斯基的《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》，品特的《归乡》，曹禺的《雷雨》，温特伯格的《家宴》，这些典型的家庭悲剧，或者我愿称之为悲剧的悲剧，披露的并不是我们熟悉的，因意外或事件或宏观意义上的变故而引起的悲剧，而是掩藏在家庭表皮之下的，暗流涌动的、生生不息的、无法遮掩的、犹如火山爆发的悲剧能量。罗伊家庭，或者其他任何处于爱之不可能性的家庭，书写的是爱的反面，家庭的另一维度，以及作为人类所能体验的最悲惨的古典式悲剧。
洛根死后，剧集将故事核心分散开，运用人物导向手法，勾勒出罗伊家庭四个子女的故事线：康奈尔彻底退出继承游戏，与妻子维拉一起投身政界，过着甜美的二人生活；肯道尔得知自己被父亲任命为继承者后，分秒之内抛弃过去活在父亲阴影之下的自己，正式成为洛根在第二季结尾口中所说的“killer”（狠角色），一步步计算所有人，策划最终的胜利；罗曼无法面对父亲死去的现实，他一边暗暗哀悼父亲的死，一边逞强钻进过去父亲的行为模式——冷漠待人，严厉处事，他试图为自己勾勒过世父亲的形象，却成为了罗伊家庭里的第二个纳克索斯，沉迷于镜子中的自己，无法自拔；希夫不满肯道尔与罗曼联手上位CEO，与购买方卢卡斯携手暗自盘算自己的围棋游戏，同时，沉湎于与汤姆的爱恨纠葛，她痛恨汤姆但又无法离开汤姆。洛根的死，在一层面上让他们进入另一个空间，一个脱离于继承之战具体形象的空间，即一个没有父亲存在的抽离状态，这时的他们由过往的经度发展转变为纬度发展，他们依赖着彼此，感情相依，让彼此成为家庭里爱的支撑；但在另一层面上，他们同时踏入了另一个空间，即一个完全独立、绝对自我、彻底自由的环形空间，在这个空间里，他们眼里、脑里、心里只有自己和自己的权益和地位，爱再次被抛弃，成为不可能之物。不幸的是，他们进入的正是这样的的环形空间，至此，爱彻底消失，剩下罗伊四子女相互残杀。
到了这个阶段，洛根的爱或认可已不再重要，重要的是这场战役最终的王位。《继承之战》故事的高明之处在于，它将洛根的死设置在剧集前端，而非结尾，如果放在结尾，那么最终所引发的必然是洛根死后的直接结果，即谁被任命为继承人，但当被放在前端，故事的戏剧性大大提升，人物的可塑性再次拓宽，四位子女角色的自由度和他们之间关系的张力被放置在一个更广阔的空间里，任由他们自己发挥，生长出一个又一个“后洛根时代”的康奈尔、肯道尔、罗曼和希夫。
此时，他们与前三季截然不同，他们被迫（在故事情节上则是主动）进入一个前所未有的世界，自由探索角色的未知性。他们更加大胆，他们同时也更加胆小，大胆在于他们誓死捍卫自己作为罗伊家庭一员应得的一切，胆小在于他们怨恨在父亲临死前最后一秒没有亲耳确信地听到父亲最爱的是谁，他们感到父亲那庞大的影子从未消失，在这影子之下，他们掩饰着内心的脆弱与贫瘠，强迫自己伪装成“killer”，忽略因为父亲的爱的不可能性所受的创伤。在第四季第六集里，“后洛根时代”的他们在希夫与汤姆的争执中暴露无遗，他们的真实面目终于被赤裸地悬挂在空中，被无情地欣赏：
“你夺走了我本来可以与爸爸在一起的最后六个月”，希夫对汤姆说。
“并不是我让你爸爸没有认可你，这不是我的错。我给了你无限的认可，但那都不够，因为你的内心是破碎的”，汤姆说到。
汤姆，或Jesse Amstrong（《继承之战》主创兼编剧）再次揭露“后洛根时代”的孩子们的核心——孩子们并没有成长，父亲的死没有消散，罗伊家族如往常一样，以一种无意义的、空乏的、虚无的状态发展，直到这爱的不可能性被下一任继承者替代。
资本的不可抗拒性
如果洛根的爱的核心是认可，那么他的爱的延展则是权力，即他的爱的第二个维度。在这个维度里，洛根的爱不再是一种情感安抚，或精神认可，而是一种经济意义上的，带有政治性质的认同。当他的爱被独立划分在继承这一命题下时，他的爱仅仅是这场继承游戏中最大的筹码。他利用这份爱与孩子们进行交易，你一笔，我一笔，他尝试以最小的代价获得最大的利益，自始至终，洛根在这场游戏里扮演的是资本家，而不是父亲。他以资本家的眼光审视他的小孩，每一个人在他的眼里只是一件商品，他仔细地测量每件“商品”的条件和价值，精心揣测哪一件商品究竟是他做交易的最优选。
冥冥中，洛根和他子女的关系不再是父亲与子女的亲情关系，而是一种畸形的、带有荒诞意义的、侧重较量和输赢的市场交易关系。最好的例子则在第三季季终集结尾出现：当肯道尔、罗曼和希夫准备联手阻止洛根与Gojo（卢卡斯的科技公司）进行交易时，洛根却早早地做好计划（虽然有汤姆告密在先），从公司层面和资本家层面出发，不顾三个子女的利益和继承权，决定与卢卡斯做一场利益最大化的交易。当肯道尔、罗曼和希夫与他争锋相对时，他大声地说“我他妈还是赢了”。所以，在他与子女的关系中，无论他对他们的爱有多深，最让他无法忘怀的是谁是资本的最终赢家，以及谁获得了终极权力。
在这样的交易关系中，无论是洛根、肯道尔、罗曼还是希夫，主导他们的只有资本和权力。在这一命题下，故事不再围绕家庭这条轨道运转，而随着资本的地心引力自由落体至一个更广大、更虚无、更荒诞的轨道上——即福楼拜口中的“一种资产阶级的普遍心态”。福楼拜在《情感教育》中写道：超越本阶级，追求奢侈享受，这种现代欲望是万恶之源；资本如水一般，润物细无声，透过每个细缝流经现代社会的每个缺口，堵住每个可能的人性出口，将现代人囚禁在一个深不见底的、被资本环绕的黑暗空间里，久而久之，被囚禁的现代人已习惯资本所带来的黑暗，甚至视这种黑暗为一种新型的舒适。
资本和权力所营造的黑暗与现代人习以为常的舒适形成一种只属于当下的荒诞，这种荒诞并非加缪笔下诞生于人性虚无的荒诞，而是一种因客观条件而起，诞生于庞大的、无法逃脱的资本市场和资产阶级的现实主义荒诞。在《继承之战》片头，资本市场的主体随处可见：纽约的高楼、印刷出厂的纸币、新闻业连续不断的报道、奢华的餐厅、古巴的上等雪茄……这些存在于罗伊家庭环境中的要素不仅仅是个体的，它们同样属于全人类共同体，它们以商品或者砝码的形式支配着罗伊家庭，延展开来，它们也支配着纽约、伦敦、托斯卡纳和斯德哥尔摩。这样的设置回到19世纪的现实主义，即福楼拜、卡夫卡、契诃夫、莫泊桑笔下的社会和人物，在他们的世界里，浪漫与现实形成对比，现实主义世界里的人物以一种天真浪漫的形式对恶臭的资本磕头作揖，他们在救赎当中出卖自己的灵魂，在膜拜当中丧失自己的德性，登上一个纯粹的、现实与荒诞并行的山巅。在罗伊家庭里，洛根便是这座山巅，肯道尔、罗曼和希夫争前恐后地向上攀爬，他们在努力获取爱的认可的同时，已经忘却作为父亲的洛根的爱，唯独铭记在心的是作为资本家的洛根的爱。
当然，罗伊家庭只是荒诞世界的一个缩影：汤姆爱希夫，但他更爱希夫的姓——罗伊，他为了权力和资本背叛自己的妻子，转身投靠洛根，在第三季季终集中，汤姆问到格雷格：“你想和恶魔做交易吗”，殊不知，在与恶魔（洛根）做交易的途中，他自己已蜕变为新的恶魔；初来乍到的格雷格，远方亲戚家的格雷格，愚蠢无能的格雷格，格雷格的存在对于罗伊家庭而言是一个笑话，但在所有人物中，格雷格代表着荒诞中的明晰，他仅存的德性在他被资本和权力碾压的时刻无数次提醒他：不要这样做；不过格雷格这个人物的精彩之处在于，编剧为我们呈现了一条不受控的正比线性函数，即他如何一步步出卖自己的灵魂，加入罗伊家庭，踏上资本的山巅；玛莎，这位不受待见的来自法国的继母，洛根的第三任妻子，她拜金，好比《蒂凡尼的早餐》中的蒂凡尼，她的所作所为仅仅是为了攀登上这座山叠，婚姻和性只是她掩耳盗铃的最佳筹码；在第四季第九集中，肯道尔问到雨果：“我们的关系不是合作的关系，你会做我的狗，你明白吗？”，随后雨果自如地答到：“汪，汪”。
在《继承之战》的群戏中，这些角色只是冰山一角，但通过他们，编剧为我们塑造了一个脱离于罗伊家庭的世界，换而言之，一个存在于现实社会的世界，一个以资本和权力为基石的荒诞世界，在这个世界里，人不会是赢家，唯有资本和随资本诞生的权力是最终的赢家。在这样一场人与资本的较量中，资本的不可抗拒性摧毁了人最基本的德性，人的欲望总臣服于资本的诱惑，人的坚定总被资本的魅力所动摇，人原始的、与生俱来的自我定力也总被资本攻击、诋毁、侵略，最终占为己有。这成为了一场没有结果的较量，一种先定论的较量：人无法胜利。人在大自然前的渺小与人在资本前的渺小逐渐划上等号，一种生命性的渺小和一种社会性的渺小犹如两场雪崩，将人压在地底，不得动弹。毕竟位于纽约之巅的罗伊家庭都已丧失他们的德性和人性，作为处于社会阶层中间地段的其他人，更无获胜的可能性。
在第四季第三集（洛根去世）里，康奈尔得知洛根去世后，他不禁感叹：“天呐。他从来没有喜欢过我”，随后，当肯道尔、罗曼和希夫在邮轮的一个房间里急忙地与汤姆沟通、了解情况时，康奈尔在邮轮上与维拉完成了他们的婚礼。洛根死后，肯道尔、罗曼、希夫争前恐后地为王位争斗，康奈尔却在政界拉拢人脉，为他和维拉夺得一个去阿曼或者南斯拉夫的政治机会。四季过去，康奈尔终于过上他期盼的生活：和他心爱的维拉在一起，过着小型共产主义生活，即便维拉告诉他，她爱他的一部分原因是他上亿的资产，他也不在乎。
他退出了和兄妹之间的继承游戏，因为（在第四季第二集的KTV争执中）他知道：“有一个不爱你的家庭的好处就是，你学着如何自己一个人过”。
他明白了洛根爱的不可能性，他体会了资本的不可抗拒性，他知道兄妹之间的关系永远只存在于交易之上，因此，他学会了如何获得可能性的爱，他也自主地选择离开，离开这个古典深渊，离开这座荒诞山巅。