[Warning! Spoilers within!]
What’s your favorite Connor Roy out-of-touch with reality moment?
- Thinking that polling at 1% equals 4 million people?
- “You don’t hyperdecant? You’re just doing regular decanting?”
- “Connor, do you know what they do to rich people in jail?” “Yes. They let them out early to mitigate the risk of litigation.”?
I vote for “it goes unsaid” that he’s the best option for CEO of Waystar.
In fiction and myth, the oldest son’s story often develops in one of two ways.
In the first archetype, the oldest son is the talented, honorable and admired heir apparent who is unexpectedly toppled by tragedy.
In the second archetype, which I’ll call the “Fredo” (the reference alone is enough for most of you to skip this paragraph), the oldest son* does not inherit his father’s appetite for battle or his intelligence, and thus falls embarrassingly short of the patriarch’s expectations. Remember Connor’s first appearance in the series? He gives his father a gift – a sourdough mother. Could the writers be more on the nose? Connor is Fredo.
The major plotline in “Succession” is, well, the succession. Who will Logan choose to carry on his legacy?
I’ve written in previous articles that the dialogue and acting are so well-developed in this series that we can use the Communication Comfort Zones model to show how communication style influences who Logan chooses.
The Communication Comfort Zones model is about :
- learning how others perceive our strengths and weaknesses when they observe our verbal and non-verbal communication
- understanding how that perception (more specifically, the judgement of that behavior) can change depending on the observer’s preferred communication style.
The model measures the way we are most comfortable communicating across two independent spectrums, called responsiveness and assertiveness. Combining these spectrums creates a matrix with four quadrants representing the Communication Comfort Zones: Analytical, Driving, Expressive and Amiable.
In previous articles, we’ve explored the characteristics of Logan’s Driving style, Roman’s Expressive style, and Kendall’s Analytical style. Connor represents the zone yet to be covered: Amiable.
How do we know Connor falls into the Amiable zone?
The Amiable zone is characterized by ask-assertive and emotive communication. Expressive and Amiable zones wear their emotions on their sleeves, instead of controlling them like the Driving and Analytical types. Emote-oriented zones understand instinctively that inspiring or earning trust with people is the key to their success. In contrast, control-oriented zones tend to underestimate how much they need other people’s emotional buy-in to achieve desired results.
In particular, the Amiable zone seeks to influence others by learning what they need and working to satisfy those needs above other goals. Being trusted and liked is the best way for this zone to get needs met. Each zone contains a distinct primary motivator. For the Amiable zone, the motivator is personal security.
Of the Roy siblings, Connor is the only character who endeavors to meet others’ needs. In Season 2’s “Austerlitz” episode, Logan assembles the family at Connor’s New Mexico ranch for a PR stunt under the guise of family therapy. Connor is visibly excited at the prospect of having his family’s attention and presence. But Shiv quickly sees the ruse and then bails, the therapist turns into a Jack-o-lantern after an ill-advised pool entrance, and Kendall crashes the “FAMILY! THERAPY!” after a mega-bender (seriously how many substances did he combine?), resulting in one of the most emotionally vicious scenes in the series.
With his family bonding fantasy obliterated, Connor turns to meeting others’ needs. He sends Shiv and Tom off with “I’m sorry…you know…it wasn’t great. But you had some fun, right? You had some fun? You’ll come back and see me?”
Even in Season 4’s excruciatingly fantastic episode 3 “Connor’s Wedding”, we see him put others’ needs above his own. After his siblings finally realize half an episode later that they need to tell Connor about their father’s death, he responds with “Oh man. He never even liked me.” We see Kendall and Shiv recoil and hesitate, wanting to reassure him but unable to lie. Connor senses the awkwardness and defuses with: “You know what, I’m sorry. He did. He did.” It’s clear his words are targeted at comforting his siblings, not himself.
While conflict exists among all Communication Comfort Zones, and even within them, Logan and Connor’s dynamic reveals a common challenge when zones are completely opposite on the matrix: Amiable and Driving in this case. Tension arises from the difference in both responsiveness and assertiveness. They influence others completely differently and they are influenced by others completely differently. They look alien to each other. Without the benefit of the Communication Comfort Zones model, Logan can’t understand or respect Connor and Connor can’t trust or understand Logan (and eschewing indoor plumbing won’t suffice).
And so Connor never really fights for his right as the first born son to succeed his father. Instead, acquiescing provides the harmony and peace that Connor wants for his family. It’s how he’s able to deliver this priceless line “Shiv, you know I don’t like to take sides. But I’m on your side.”
But a word to the wise about the Amiable zone: acquiescing should never be read as forgiving. We need to talk about “extreme” backup behavior to get to why.
Backup behavior is what we observe when people feel tension, and each Communication Comfort Zone has a favored way to try to reduce or release tension. Analytical zone = avoidance, Driving zone = autocratic, Expressive zone = attack and Amiable zone = acquiesce. But while this behavior can reduce individual tension, it doesn’t solve the problem that caused the tension. In fact, it can make the tension worse by triggering it in others.
As tension increases, each zone will borrow backup behavior from the others. The tendency is to resort first to the backup behavior of similar (neighboring) zones. For example, Amiable zone individuals will try attacking, like the Expressive zone, or avoiding, like the Analytical zone. As a last resort, if nothing else works, it’s necessary to become autocratic, which is the first level backup behavior of the exact opposite zone: Driving. When tensions get this high, it feels completely awful and uncomfortable. It’s the last place they want to be.
We see a glimpse of Connor’s extreme backup behavior in his cold-butter-ripping-the-rolls tirade in season 1’s “Sad Sack Wasp Trap”, but he goes there most deeply in Season 4’s “Rehearsal”.
Connor is at his highest stress level. He believes Willa has left him at the altar. His request for sibling companionship is obliged but provides no comfort (instead they treat him like they are the Beatles and he’s “won drinks with us at an auction”). His attempt at forcing a pre-wedding reconciliation with Logan and his siblings ends in insults.
He becomes completely autocratic, not with others, but around his own feelings:
“The good thing about having a family that doesn’t love you is you learn to live without it… You’re needy love sponges. And I’m a plant that grows on rocks and lives off insects that die inside of me.”
Connor’s story ultimately reveals that character issues beyond his communication style drive Logan to pass him over (most bitingly captured by Shiv’s “first pancake” reference).
But after watching a scene so gut-wrenching, I find myself hoping 4 million Con-heads do actually emerge at the polls.
For more on the Communication Comfort Zones model, visit https://www.communicationcomfortzones.com/
To determine your own zone, click here
*I know Fredo is not the first born son…but he is the oldest after Sonny suffers his brutal fate.