Why I'm Insane About Succession
I miss you please come home
Every Sunday just feels so empty now.
I can't remember a show making me feel this way. Maybe it’s recency bias, but I will never forget watching it week-by-week. Specifically the finale of each season. Not once has it failed to send chills down my spine.
They already feel empty, just as existence as a 19 (soon-to-be-20) year old feels once you’ve immediately changed your whole life & daily routine. Without Succession though… there’s a very large hole in my heart.
The best shows (to me) tend to revolve around the biggest pieces of shit, and get you to root for them anyways. Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Sopranos, The Wire, basically the shows in the GOAT discussion on social media all focus on characters who are literal dog shit humans. Obviously, these are masculine-ish, generic choices, but every one of these shows is genuinely worth the praise. Succession is no different, but there aren’t really any redeemable characters. Every single person in the cast is out for blood at all times, tearing through the hearts of their loved ones and/or coworkers with clever insults and jaw-dropping backstabbing.
You think, based on the title, trailers, etc that this is some boring corporate nonsense show about a bunch of extremely wealthy white people.
Ok, it kind of is. However, it is not boring in the slightest and the actual business side of it is minimal and easily understood. There are fan-cams made on Twitter about damn near every single character in the show. Regardless of its goofiness, make no mistake, Succession is a tragedy. Compared to King Lear, some call it Shakespearean.
Characters will sometimes say things that make you realize how truly heartless they can be, then 5 minutes later something so heartbreaking will happen that you can physically see how deeply words can cut through the soul of each character.
Then right after that, some joke between characters who have this wishy-washy relationship with each other will make you laugh while fearing what’s to come. The best example of this is my favorite duo in the show and pretty much everyone else’s. They are fantastically written together and have moments ranging from Greg (played by Nicholaus Braun) questioning if Tom (played by Matthew Macfayden) is trying to seduce him whilst eating a baby chick with a napkin covering their faces at an expensive NYC restaurant, to Tom pelting water bottles at Greg in a not-so-safe-room during a lockdown, to the heartwarming and slightly erotic moments they share, including Tom kissing Greg on the forehead.
The amount of one liners they both have is endless. They have fought as brothers do, and look out for each other. It’s everything you could want in a TV duo. They have great chemistry and surely enjoy each other as scene partners.
“Logan is gonna fire a million poisonous spiders down your dickie.” Tom to Greg, season three, episode two, “Mass in Time of War”
I cannot say it enough, this show features some of the most phenomenal acting I have ever seen. The trio of Jeremy Strong (Kendall), Kieran Culkin (Roman), and Sarah Snook (Shiv) all have performances of a lifetime. Connor, the fourth sibling who has a different mother then the rest, who is the “eldest boy”, has some great scenes as well. Not to mention Brian Cox as Logan, oh and truly every single other cast member getting any screen time seemingly flips a switch and puts on their game face.
The siblings issues are only made 100x worse by the extreme lust for the approval of their father, Logan Roy. Logan is of course based on Rupert Murdoch and the Roy family is as a whole based on the Murdoch family. Logan, as Rupert does in real life, often manipulates the siblings into fighting with each other, hoping or maybe even believing a top dog to be his successor will emerge from the flames.
Personally, I feel lucky to have watched this show during its release. I have bugged my friends for so-fucking-long to watch it. Hopefully this encourages you to watch it, I promise you will not regret it.
the numerous "fuck offs" in every episode is also a plus