There are many things Succession landed right on the jaw. The ranks of writers and executive producers brought with them great experience of many areas central to the show: politics, finance, five-star hospitality and, of course, the media. So no doubt the concept of the day five contrarian hit piece will be familiar to them.
I come not to bury Succession – maybe to even praise it a bit – but all the hype around this show has gone too far. On Tuesday morning, after watching Shiv, Ken and Romey zing at one another one final time I felt like that rogue dude in The Lego Movie. Everything about Succession, it seemed, was awesome. Not only that, it was insightful. The characters were multifaceted, many-layered scum that you would also really miss. It was the show that caught the spirit of our time, and all from the perspective of those ambling on to a private jet.
Meanwhile, I was trying to work out what had actually gone on in that last episode. Why had sister Shiv decided to deny the number one Roy boy, Kendall, at the last? She had started out the episode decidedly opposed to him, but then she had apparently experienced a moment of profound reconciliation in the Caribbean sea. Why had she chucked that in? From what I could understand, she refused to give Kendall the vote that would have made him CEO of Waystar Royco because, well, “I don’t think you’d be good at it”. Like, dur.
That’s the biggest beef I have with Succession – the plotting. Just like Logan’s plane after he carked it mid-air, it’s been in a circling pattern for a long time (since season two, perhaps?). First it was the patriarch teasing then spoiling, selling out, then buying back. This season it was the siblings spending 20 minutes an episode trying to work out whether they really felt comfortable doing something they then decided not to do, only to do it again, often based on a shrug of the shoulders.
The finale also triggered another pang of disappointment about the show in general: the failure to properly articulate why the children remained in thrall to their father. Logan Roy brutalised his offspring, mocked them, betrayed them and played them off against one another. He did so relentlessly, with any affection shown either plainly insincere or used to manipulate. All three children acted to distance themselves from him when alive, but after his death they fell in line behind his memory, and I never understood why. The sentimental scene where the kids well up at a video of Logan singing a Robert Burns ballad not only left me nonplussed but made me suspect it was just an excuse to give us some more Brian Cox.
When the writing is as rich as it is in Succession, there is enjoyment to be had from watching the same thing over and over again, or to have characters take a valedictory turn. Sometimes the writing was so good, though, so full of allusion and wordplay that it actually acted against the propulsion of the drama. When Roman spits at Kendall and Shiv – “Stop ganging up on me like you’re Lennon and McCartney and I’m George. I’m John, motherfuckers” – by the time you’ve spent 30 seconds reacquainting yourself with the internal dynamics of the Beatles (why John and not Paul?), everything else has moved on.
I wasn’t enamoured of the no-doubt hard-earned performance of Jeremy Strong, though making your protagonist a charisma void is a distinctive move. I felt I had seen enough of Sarah Snook’s sarcastic face. There were simply too many characters to actually get deeply involved with, even if they weren’t people with zero redeeming features. The one exception was Tom Wambsgans; a total shit, yes, but somebody who at least appeared open to the possibility of genuine human emotion – ie loving his wife (and, in Matthew Macfadyen, the best acting performance of the lot). So go on Tom lad, you deserve everything you got.
I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that the show felt a bit in love with itself by the end. Who wouldn’t be when you have the metropolitan elites blowing white smoke up your papal chimney the entire time? Related to this sense of self-satisfaction, I think, was the way Succession began to wallow in luxury.
This final season seemed as interested in setting up the next glamorous outdoor location as it was in thinking about why anyone would want to inherit the crown. “Quick, each and every one of us has to go to the Geirangerfjord for a picnic.” “See you the day after the election at the church where Jackie Kennedy had her funeral.” “We’ve got an extra 30 minutes for the finale, let’s take a trip to the tropics.”
The truth is, I loved that stuff. Ever since the sort-of orgy thing in season one, the one with the free food and drink piled up everywhere, I have positively inhaled the experience of vicarious 0.1% living. In fact, I think it’s the thing that kept me watching till the end. There’s nothing wrong with that. Yet I suspect it’s telling all the same. Of the few people I know who have actually spent any time in the world of the super rich, they didn’t find Succession convincing. Yet for those of us a few rungs down the ladder, it was the wasp’s nips. That we all took such pleasure from peering inside the windows of our apparent superiors, and subsequently rhapsodised about that fact, perhaps says something about ourselves.