In the last two years, millions of Americans and critics around the country have celebrated HBO’s Succession, the drama series about the battle between the Roy family to take over the communications company Waystar, run by eighty year old Logan Roy (Brian Cox). While I will admit to a certain fascination by the brilliance of the performers, I have never understood why so people are enraptured by a group of truly horrible and unlikable characters behaving badly. Indeed, millions of fans seem to actually love the series because of those very reasons as a recent New Yorker article detailed. And I’ve been baffled why so many awards shows seem determined to give recognition to these performers and writers rather than series such as The Crown, This is Us and Better Call Saul – which also have complicated characters, but generally have far fewer choices than the Roy family have – and will acknowledge it over more brilliant series that are better written and directed. (I was particularly irked in 2020 when the show knocked out series like Big Little Lies and Mr. Robot which were infinitely better written and performed.)
I was planning to write a more complicated article about what Succession about the nature of America that it claims to repudiate the rich and powerful yet basically hangs on every word of the Roys, who are basically everything that people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have spent the last decade raging against. Then it occurred to me that reason so many people love this series is actually simpler and more basic than that.
Consider: Succession is a series about a very wealthy family and all their associates who spend every minutes of every day trying to manipulate each other to positions where they will have more wealth and powers than the others and creating brilliantly creative insults as they do. Does this sound familiar to any of the older viewers in the audience? Anyone? Fine, here’s the answer class: this is the fundamental setup for any of the popular 1980s broadcast hits: Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and Knots Landing…you name it.
Wait a minute, the Succession fan is saying. But this is a far more cultured series, dealing with issues about how utterly out of touch and clueless the rich and powerful are! Isn’t it pretty to think so. I admit the writers do occasionally bring in some more relevant issues, but let’s not consider them for anything more than what they are: plot devices. That’s all what the climax of Season 2 really was: an excuse for Kendall to betray his father instead of fall on his sword. It may have seemed more elaborate than sleeping with your sister’s husband or whatever else the Ewings and Carringtons were up to, but a betrayal is a betrayal no matter how well-scripted or acted.
But the critics love this show, the fan would say. Not entirely true; I vividly remember an Entertainment Weekly review panning the series more than halfway through the season, and I would remind you a lot of fans hated it for much of the same reasons they now claim to love it. As for the awards show recognizing it, do I even have to explain how so many of them follow rather than lead.
And honestly, what’s the difference between Succession and Dallas or Dynasty? Basically, the fact that insults delivered by the former series have more obscenities. It’s basically a series where a bunch of rich white people insult each other and struggle for power. Actually, I’d argue that makes Succession look worse in context; so many of the 1980s series were admonished for having next to no minority characters. The fact that an HBO series – particularly from the network that brought us The Wire, Insecure and Lovecraft Country - clearly looks like a step backwards for the.
So if all of this is obvious at first glance – and second, and third – why hasn’t anybody picked up on it? For the same reason so many men in their youth (like me) hid the real reason we watched Cinemax late at night and the same reason so many women for decades were afraid to admit they liked soap operas: guilt and shame.
Reader, a confession: when I was teenager I never missed an episode of Melrose Place. I knew at the time it was utterly unrealistic even by the weak standards of ‘90s soaps and was so ludicrous in its plotting that one my very first attempts at writing criticism was about how sloppily it was written. None of this stopped me from watching it all the way end and reruns for more than a decade after it was written. At some level, I found the pure trashiness of it fascinating and dare I say, enjoyable. Even as my tastes have improved, a part of me has always had a place in my heart for trashy TV – hell last year I actually advocated for Fox’s Filthy Rich, a series with absolutely no redeeming values. Because I feel that there has to be a place for guilty pleasures in this world.
The thing is, in the era of Peak TV, so many viewers can’t bring themselves to admit that like TV for its pure soap opera qualities. If we did, we’d have to explain why we were spending so much time watching Scandal instead of The Americans. So for that reason, too many creators try to put value and meanings behind series that clearly have none. There are reasons people want to watch a series like Empire or Bridgerton – they’re just not the reasons the creators want to admit. So their creators will say that the show is talking about some kind of deeper values or more historical ones rather than the simple fact: it’s a soap opera, pure or simple. Or that The Mandalorian has some deep story values; no it’s a live action Star Wars video game. Or that Outlander is a rich, lyrical story about history and love; pfft, its high class porn.
And I don’t blame these creators or viewers for wanting to have a higher purpose. I’ll confess that I’ve fallen victim to it myself over the years. I spend an unforgivable amount of time trying to justify my fascination with Desperate Housewives when it was really just Melrose Place not even bothering to take it self seriously. There’s no reason to be ashamed for liking trashy TV. And some trashy TV actually is good enough to merit awards – hell Desperate Housewives got a lot of them before the Emmys felt guilty about what it was doing and stopped nominating everybody involved.
All that I ask from everybody who loves series like Succession – stop pretending there’s some more elevated reason for liking the show. It’s a glorified soap opera – that’s fine. I don’t judge. But stop pretending that series like these – and Bridgerton and far too many others – are works of art. It’s acceptable even in a world where there’s too many great series to keep track of to want to watch something where you can just turn your brain off. Hell I’ve spent my life loathing Shonda Rhimes but I loved Private Practice even though it was hated by pretty much everyone. Sometimes you do just want to watch actors you like even if it’s in subpar projects. Just don’t confuse it for art, and don’t try to convince the rest of us it is.
Author’s Note: For those Succession fans out there convinced I’m deluded, watch Season 3 of The Crown and the most recent season of Better Call Saul. Then take as many words as you want to explain exactly why Brian Cox and Matthew MacFayden deserved Emmy nominations over Josh O’Connor and Bob Odenkirk for Best Actor and Jonathan Banks and Tobias Menzies for Best Supporting Actor, respectively. Then watch Season 4 of This is Us and make a similar argument for Justin Hartley and Chrissy Metz over MacFayden and Snook. I hold grudges longer than the Roys.
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