Succession started under the Trump era. There was much to dive into for those who make entertainment and those who watch it. We’re a divided country so there is no longer shared entertainment. Awards shows take a side. Sports shows are leaning in that direction. Succession never was a show for everybody, that’s for sure. It was a show that criticized Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, all the Fox News hosts, all Republicans. But then Joe Biden won. Now, the power has flipped dramatically and the show was, I thought, losing steam as a result.
Now, going after the Right seemed pointless and even kind of petty (in my view). I wasn’t looking forward to the hammer finding the nail and banging it as with everything we see now in entertainment. We get it. You have them. We get it, you think you’re better than half the country. We get it. One-sided entertainment is boring, no matter which side it comes from.
Back in the day, before cable, before streaming, they had to appeal as broadly as possible to get the ratings, which is why you often had shows that lampooned the overall human experience, not just one side. Those shows were at their best in the 1970s, the last time we were similarly divided. The same thing has happened with movies, of course, as we moved away from reliance on the free market and more toward relying on hive minds on social media.
So I wasn’t very excited about this season of Succession. It was played out, I thought, and time to turn the page. Well, that’s exactly what they did last night. They turned the page. I am not a Succession obsessive so this isn’t going to be a deep dive into the symbolism or the inspiration for the show (King Lear?) but rather a layman’s impression of what we saw last night.
This is the spoiler alert if you haven’t been following social media and you haven’t yet watched Episode Three. Don’t read beyond this point if you haven’t and you want to be surprised.
Last night’s episode started the usual way. A hilariously awkward and terrible wedding for poor Connor (Alan Ruck), the eldest sibling and biggest loser who is now marrying his bought and paid-for bride Willa (Justine Lupe). The four sibs are now fractured from their father and competing with him to control various enterprises. The point isn’t the “what” but the “why.” Succession has never been about the business, at least not to me. It’s about family dynamics and our country’s politics.
Right in the middle of the witty banter, the awkward exchanges, the comedy and the tragedy, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) suddenly gets a phone call from a plane en route to Sweden. It’s from Tom (Matthew MacFadyen) telling him that is father is “sick” or almost dead. From then on the show becomes about the family slowly coming to terms with the sudden death of their father, Logan Roy (Brian Cox).
No one expected this, or at least not as far as I knew. HBO had done a great job keeping it all under wraps such that all of us watching last night were just as surprised as the family and maybe almost as sad, considering Cox was such a strong character on the show. Interestingly, though, once he was gone, the other characters began to brighten and stand out more from behind his enormous shadow.
The writing (Jesse Armstrong), directing (Mark Mylod), and acting of episode three were so good it could have been a stand-alone play or short film. How closed-off, competitive people deal with grief, how they must keep their positions within the company, how they now must talk to each other, and where this is all going was riveting. For a show that was already among the best television has ever produced, it didn’t seem like they could top themselves but they did.
Last night’s episode was unexpected because it stopped being a show to make a point politically, to sneer at the people we’re all supposed to hate, which was its only weakness. For the first time, all of the characters seemed like real people. In its own way it was reminiscent of Archie Bunker dealing with the death of his wife Edith, which felt so raw, so real his humanity was exposed not really for the first time for that character but in a way that was something all of us recognize, regardless of what we believe politically.
The thing I love about humanity is just that: our humanity. The thing I hate about human beings is just that: our hatred. Now, I’m not saying Succession is about to pivot and reach out to “the other side.” Almost no one in Hollywood has that kind of courage. This is a town, a political movement and an ideology that is about certainty and self-righteousness. Thus, anyone not on board will be punished. At HBO, as with everything else, they will serve their audience with certainty that all are on the right side.
At the point of Edith’s death, the storyline was getting to that point where the story had been played out. They couldn’t just keep the jokes going. It wasn’t working. They were about to start another phase with Archie Bunker’s Place.
Jean Stapleton here discusses the conversation she had with Normal Lear who could not bring himself to kill off Edith on the show. She said to him, “she is only fiction.” And he said back to her, “to me she isn’t.” It was an incredibly brave choice and it made for one of the best scenes in television history, at that time anyway.
Television and art can take us to places that are universal. That is why we need storytelling at all. In their suffering, these characters we’ve come to know for so many years, there was a shared grief, even in the ways they are still who they are, irredeemable perhaps, the small moments made last night’s episode one for the ages.
Like, Roman (Kieran Culkin) reaches out to Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), and when she walks away from him–what else would she do after almost being fired by him–he lays his forehead on the wall where no one else can see, totally and completely alone in his misery. He has money and power, perhaps, but he has no one to really comfort him in such a time of grief.
Like, Tom calling Greg (Nicholas Braun) and finding enough trust in their friendship to finally break down, “No, I’m not okay” he says. What a scene that was. The only person he feels he can trust with his emotions is Greg, a guy he abuses and toys with most of the time.
Like, the shot of Kendall and Shiv (Sarah Snook) barely holding hands as they walk back into the wedding to tell Connor that his father, who didn’t even bother attending, had died on his wedding day. And then Connor says, right after hearing the news, that his father never liked him.
It’s just dazzling, absolutely brilliant writing. What made this show so great is that the writers had free reign to make them unlikable and complicated because they were “bad” people. They could say anything, no matter how politically incorrect, for dark humor. Such freedom is rarely afforded the usual aspirational characters who always have to be seen as good.
Now, the show suddenly seems incredibly interesting as we watch how this whole thing will unravel. Probably it will be siblings going after each other. The whole point of last night’s episode, though, was to give the characters uncharted territory. What would happen if Logan Roy suddenly died? It’s far more fascinating than watching them use an entire season to tell us why Fox News is bad.
Last night’s episode easily secured them their third straight Emmy win for Best Drama. Here’s hoping the rest of the season can live up to episode three.