Gerri and Roman have some kind of sexual relationship—that much we can all agree on. Away from the prying eyes of her employers and his family/employers, they roleplay, she as a motherly abuser who scolds and berates, and he as the nasty little pervert that’s so richly deserving of her lip-curled disgust. In an especially memorable scene from season 2, she sends him to the bathroom and humiliates him to orgasm, safely solo behind the door.
This, to me, is sex. (How is it not?!) But it is not sex to everyone. “Succession, just let them fuck! Or don’t,” begged Vulture yesterday in a very handy timeline of the duo’s so-called “sexual tension.” But they have fucked. As I recently threaded about, the “consummation” of Gerri and Roman’s relationship has already happened (see above). Any other reading of the text not only misunderstands the diversity of human sexuality generally—and Roman’s in particular—but the driver behind audience interest in the fate of these star-crossed lovers.
The will-they-won’t-they is a pliant narrative device, its limits long stretched by sitcoms and soap operas. The longer the timeline of the will-they-won’t-they, the more likely we’ll need to revise what it is that we’re waiting for. We oblige the show’s writers as they knock down their psychosexual dominos, going from traditional sexual consummation, to the revelation of the relationship to friends and family, to a marriage proposal, to a successful walk down the aisle, to, often, the birth of children. Once one has been attained, we begin our anticipation of the next; sometimes there is backtracking, short-cuts, and dalliances; sometimes a relationship ends on one stage or another. 90s: Ross and Rachel on Friends, Maxine and Kyle on Living Single. 2000s: The L Word and Gilmore Girls, from what I hear (couldn’t get into it). 2010s: New Girl, Community. (There’s more, I don’t have to supply them for you, and quite frankly, I don’t feel like it.) From the 90s on, we even saw the introduction of the enlightened man-woman friendship, which had the very occasional “benefits” that neither damaged the relationship nor led to romantic attachment—Jerry and Elaine on Seinfeld, Frasier and Roz on Frasier.
It’s this will-they-won’t-they model, approximately, that people want to apply to Gerri and Roman. Now in season 3 of the series, we are impatiently waiting for them to hit the first milestone of a “real” relationship; that is, we are waiting for them to “fuck” for “real.” But as I said, they have already fucked. What’s more, I think that their sexual interaction is not only fucking because sex is, as it turns out, not something limited to PIV intercourse between a cis man and a cis woman of roughly similar ages (cool and not perverted if the man is older, though, of course)—it’s also fucking because, as we know from watching Roman conduct his other sexual relationships, as it were, it is the only way that he can fuck at the present moment1.
So what’s keeping us interested? If they have already fucked, as I maintain they have, then what is it that we are waiting for? Why is it that Gerri and Roman’s relationship feels so drawn out, like it’s building toward something (besides more sex, of course)? Per my thread, two thoughts:
We enjoy Gerri and Roman because theirs is the most pleasureful sexual relationship on the show. Form aside, it's passionate, it's horny, it's romantic, and most important of all—it's consensual, a rarity in Succession’s distasteful history2.
The will-they-won't-they is built around cultural mores like state-recognized legal commitment and childbearing, but in straight and mainstream culture, these are often conflated with emotional intimacy. What I am waiting for with Gerri and Roman, personally, is the speaking of that which has heretofore been unspoken, an exchange between them that isn’t couched in fantasy or dirty talk, but which makes explicit the genuine attraction, feeling, and horniness between them that isn’t cynical, two-faced, or prepared to betray itself. I don’t believe either of them, especially Roman, is capable of this, but I hope against hope, don’t I?
Speaking of the unspoken, in yesterday’s thread, I also touched on Roman as a sort of fool figure who speaks the truth in slant, cunning, and sometimes unconscious ways (I’m not the only one have referenced Shakespeare in this regard). This misreading of Succession’s most spicy entanglement is an excellent illustration of normative language’s limit when we talk about sex, romance, and desire (in English, anyway), which I’ve written toward before in my series on the transphobia of so-called “genital preference.”
So, the question before us is the same one that preoccupies the vicious little narcissists that have made Succession so popular: Will we, the audience, get what we want?
David tweets at @k8bushofficial. Their second novel, X (Catapult, 2022), is now available for preorder!!!!
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I have written at length but, admittedly, a little obliquely about my strong feelings about straight men whose sensibility has resonance with stone butch lesbian sexuality. I invite you to revisit some of that work here and here, if you’re interested. Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) is on my list. Someday!
Someone on Twitter disagreed with me about this because Gerri is an employee of Royco and expressed disgust at Roman’s initial advances. I think that while it’s absurd to believe that strategy, manipulation, and the tensions of gendered, filial, and corporate power imbalance don’t factor here, to call their relationship nonconsensual (as in, Roman is getting his rocks off without Gerri’s consent, in the context of the show) is also absurd.
David Davis