As someone who has
spent much of the past three years railing at Succession for being one
of the most overrated series in history, especially when it has come to taking
awards away from series that I think are infinitely better, I may have been one
of the few people who greeted the news that the upcoming fourth season will be
the series last. My biggest fear right now is that it will what it has done in
2020 and 2022 and take a lot of Emmy nominations and awards from the extraordinary
final season of Better Call Saul.
Over the next
several months, there will be much writing about the final struggle for power
between the Roys for Waystar, whether the inevitable winner was the right one,
and the series place in the great pantheon in television history. Critics and
fans will no doubt be judging where Succession deserves to finish based
on the final season and the final episode. I’m probably going to have to write
about it in some regard going forward, but since we’re almost at the end, I’m
going to make one last major effort to file a minority opinion as to why all of
this is a wasted discussion.
As I have said,
over and over, while the performances and the writing of the show are
brilliant, it does not change the fact that all of it is done in the picture of
one of the bleakest and most unlikable series in the history of television. And yet paradoxically, all of the things that
have caused critics to rant against other series for these actions – the fact
that entire seasons go by with no consequences for any of the characters, the
fact of all of the characters are fundamentally unlikable, the fact that it
took three seasons to go by before the Roy family to really do anything
against their father – seem to be arguments for it greatness in the eyes of many.
People raged against The Sopranos where nothing seemed to happen or the slow
pace of series like The Wire or Deadwood in their later seasons.
But the fact that somehow nobody seems to have really taken an action against
any of the powerful figures doesn’t seem to work against Succession.
I think because of
the superb level of the acting – and make no mistake, the entire cast is
brilliant given the fact that they have to make something out of characters who
go through entire seasons without doing anything other than yell creative
insults at each other – the viewer seems to genuinely think that Succession is
something more important than it actually is. Which is why I intend to write
two different articles explaining some of the more fundamental flaws in the series
that nobody seems willing to accept: the kind of show they’re actually watching
and why the fundamental basis of this series that everybody claims to be caring
about has always been a moot point.
I’m going to start
the first article in this with a theme I actually used before in an article two
years ago: that Succession is not, in truth, modeled on some great Roman
or Greek epic as Jesse Armstrong claims in his previews or even some fantasy
power struggle like Game of Thrones. Instead, it is very clearly modeled
on something that has basically vanished from broadcast television in the 21st
century: the prime-time soap.
For those old
enough to remember (I barely qualify) the 1980s and 1990s were filled with
prime time soap operas based on the sagas of rich and powerful families who
spent hours on end struggling for power against rival companies and each other.
These series were among the most popular in the 1980s, including Dynasty, Knots
Landing and Falcon Crest, but by far the most successful was Dallas..
It’s original run was more than eleven seasons, it inspired several TV
movies and it actually had enough interest to spark a revival series on TNT in
2012 with several members of the original cast and some new actors playing
characters who had appeared on the series before. In many ways, the Ewings were
the Roys well before Jesse Armstrong came up with the idea and had he tried to
pitch it a decade earlier he might have called it ‘Dallas meets the Murdochs’. Because I
think there are far more similarities between the two series (and I actually
think that extends to the revival) I will use it as the model for the comparison.
And let’s start
with one clear difference: at no time did the writers of Dallas have any
illusions that they were making art. Even the cast and writers would be more
than willing to admit that at its peak, Dallas never deserved to rank in
the realm of L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues or St. Elsewhere which
would dominate the Best Drama awards throughout the eighties. The series did
win the occasional Emmy of course, and was occasionally nominated for Best Drama,
but that may have said more for the quality of TV at the time than that of Dallas.
Millions of people may have watched every week for over a decade, but they
weren’t doing that because of quality television.
I would like to
make clear upfront that as a critic, I don’t have a problem with that. Not
everything that any medium produces is high art. There have to be some shows
that you watch because you can’t take them seriously even if they’re ostensibly
serious. I’d actually argue that one of the problems with Peak TV is that it
has more or less killed off the ‘guilty pleasure’. We can’t admit we’re
watching a series because it’s got a lot of sex or ridiculous plotting; there
has to be some kind of higher value to it. Shonda Rhimes is by far the most
guilty practitioner of it in Peak TV; I would be far more inclined to
appreciate Scandal or How to Get Away with Murder or maybe even Bridgerton
if Rhimes would just say that this isn’t supposed to be high art. But because
she believes that everything has to have artistic merit, Rhimes and showrunners
like her insist that their shows are deeper than they are. And while critics are more than willing to
call out some shows on it, they will not do so for Succession.
Because to be
clear, the Roys are little more than the Ewing clan except they’re struggling
to take over their father’s company because they each think they deserve too.
If Armstrong and his writers would commit to the campiness of the entire, I might
actually enjoy Succession more. Because no one on Succession really
deserves to be talked about in the same way that so many of the other
characters in Peak TV do – and honestly, I think if the Ewings ever were
involved in a hostile takeover bid of Waystar, they could manage it in two episodes, maybe
three. Here’s why.
J.R. Ewing was the
most legendary character in Dallas and indeed TV history. Part of this
was because of the superb performance of Larry Hagman as J.R. who was, to be
clear, everything that the Roy family and most critics are convinced Logan is.
He’s not. If J.R. had come across Logan early in his career (not impossible based
on the timeline of Roy’s rise to power) J.R. Ewing would have been able to
destroy the Roy family before any of Kendall, Shiv or Roman were even born. No
question. It would have been a knockout in the first round.
Because J.R. Ewing is
everything Logan Roy is not. He’s clever, he’s charming and he can see around
corners that everybody thinks they can. People love him even as they hate him, Bobby
might have spent years struggling with him but at the beginning of the revival
when J.R. was in a convalescent home in a coma for years, Bobby came to him and
admitted even after everything that happened, he still loved him and even missed
the fights. (Of course, because this is J.R. immediately afterward, he roused
himself from his bed, and began to make calls to try and thwart Bobby’s plan to
sell Southfork.) His relationship with his wife, Pamela (Linda Gray) was one
that was forever born out of what seemed to be mutual contempt but the two of
them were always drawn to each other time and again. JR’s son, John Ross,
despite what must have been a troubled childhood (I’m speaking of the revival)
still respected him and wanted his approval and love. And JR inspired loyalty
because of his cleverness borne out of devotion instead of fear: when he got a
certain look on his face, you knew that he was thinking and that person was in
trouble.
Logan Roy, by
contrast, has none of those qualities. Perhaps at some point he might have
actually had some kind of calculated brilliance, but Armstrong has in fact
implied that the main reason he has risen to wealth and power is because he is just
a bully and has so much wealth and power that everyone’s terrified to tell him
he’s wrong. Even when he has tanked the stock of Waystar, even when he refuses
to leave newspapers for social media, even when he is clearly leading the
company to ruin, no one wants to say no to him, not even his own children. And compared to J.R., he can’t even say
anything clever. J.R. had the ability to insult in such a way that even the
recipient might not be sure they were insulted. Logan’s catchphrase is ‘f---off.”
Now I know that Dallas took place on network TV in the 1980s and Succession
is on HBO, it doesn’t change the fact that Logan insults are basically just
calling people names. I think J.R. would do better under similar circumstances.
That’s the other thing.
For all the flaws the Ewings had (and trust me, there were a lot of them), in
times of tragedy and pleasure, they would willing come together, even just to
observe the idea of politeness. Even at the height of their hatred for each
other, I can’t imagine Bobby and J.R. taking separate cars to a corporate
meeting, let alone fly in separate private jets rather than spend even a few
hours in stiff silence.
Not that the Ewings
weren’t capable of splitting in alliances. Indeed, in the early seasons of the
revival one of the more intriguing aspects was that while the Ewings were fighting
for control over Southfork, the breakdown did not come down on generational
lines, but rather by pure family. J.R. formed an alliance with his son, John
Ross (Josh Henderson) while Bobby formed one with his son Christopher (Jesse
Metcalfe). Many of the alliance that formed were based out of family loyalty
more than corporate. By contrast, the Roy family spent the better part of three
seasons refusing to ally with any of their siblings rather than lose the possibility
of holding power later on. The only true loyalty the Roy family ever had is to
the bottom-line. In a third season episode, Kendall tried to convince his
siblings to join him against his father, but while they all saw the wisdom of
doing so, they were all terrified of their stock losing value. It’s worth noting
the only reason that the three younger children are now working together
against their father is not because they suddenly want to take him down but
because Logan is selling the company to someone else and they all now fear that
they will lose the power they’ve had all this time. The Ewings were not good
people, but you often got the sense that it was them against the world. The
Roys have the world and are only willing to fight each other.
And its not just
that the Roys are horrible people to each other in private. I may not know this
one way or the other because I haven’t watched the show enough to care, but do
any of the Roys have friends or even someone that loves them other than Connor (who
to be clear, his fellow siblings don’t seem to real consider one of them)? I
don’t know enough about Kendall’s marriage or him as a father to know if he
cares about either of them more than the company. Shiv told Tom on their
wedding night that she didn’t believe in monogamy. Connor seems to pride
himself on isolating everyone he meets. Logan’s second marriage essentially
broke up on his eightieth birthday and his brother holds him in contempt. The
Roys mother had no problem betraying them in the third season finale and Cousin
Greg had no problem betraying his cousins. The only relationship people care
about on the show is Tom and Greg and Tom clearly holds Greg in contempt. Gerri
Kellman says in one of the trailers that ‘they can’t go against their father…he’ll
crush you..” I don’t think for a minute it’s because she cares about them even
after working with the Roys for decades or even because she’s on Logan’s side.
The only thing she cares about is the company and I don’t think any of the other
people we see around the Roys would be near them if they weren’t the Roys.
One of the most
famous cliffhangers in TV history occurred when J.R. Ewing was shot. The
episode which revealed ‘Who Shot J.R.?” was the highest rated episode in TV series
history to that point and is still among the highest ever. It is a tribute to
the work of Hagman and the writers of Dallas that a man who had so many
people who wanted to kill him got this big an audience not so much to know who
the potential murderer was, but because that they wanted to see if J.R. lived. (This
was a soap opera, after all, and lead characters are killed on soap operas all
the time, even in the 1980s when it was rarer.) We should have been rooting for
who pulled the trigger, we might well have been in a later era, but people
watched because they gave a damn about J.R.
No one will give a
damn if Logan Roy or indeed any of the other characters end up dying in the
final season of Succession, and if they do, it’s only because they are
under the belief as to how it will affect who ends up finally running Waystar.
That’s the other problem at the core of Succession. Armstrong has been
trying so far to get us to care who ends up in charge that he’s completely
misled on the most critical point: that it doesn’t matter one way or the other.
I will deal with how the viewer seems to have ignored that fact even while it
has been hiding in plain sight, and why that is the major reason we should not
regard Succession as a great series, certainly not in the pantheon of
great HBO dramas.
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