I Hate Everyone on ‘Succession’ and I Can’t Stop Watching
I dislike every single character on Succession, the new HBO show that follows the terrible, rich-person hijinx of one New York family on a quest for world media domination. I hate the patriarch, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), a comically sociopathic cable TV news magnate. I hate the oldest son, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), a recovering addict desperately trying to wrest control from his father’s paws-and who bears a strong resemblance to Donald Trump, Jr. I don’t like daughter Shiv (Sarah Snook), a hard-nosed, left-leaning political operative with impossibly shiny hair, or Roman (Kieran Culkin), a spoiled, coked-up party boy who’s like Patrick Bateman with erectile dysfunction. I have nothing but disdain for Connor (Alan Ruck), who my friend Kevin calls “the older fourth goat brother” because there really is no other way to describe him. So why the hell can’t I stop watching these people?
Succession occupies a grey space between comedy and prestige drama, and its cast of horror-show characters are intent on inflicting maximum pain on each other. This often makes for extremely uncomfortable viewing. The Roy children are spoiled, entitled, and self-involved; none of them have any impulse toward altruism. They seem to derive glee from wielding their power and privilege over the less fortunate. In the first episode, Roman offers the son of a household servant one million dollars if he can hit a home run. The look in his parents’ eyes as they weigh the humiliation of their son against the desperately needed money is heartbreaking, as is the fact that no one else in the family seems to notice or care.
Because Succession also doesn’t immediately cast judgment on the Roys, many of the show’s early critics took issue with how “unlikable” or “uninteresting” the characters were. Some hinted that the show’s neutrality towards the lives of the uber-wealthy reflected irrelevance at best or tone-deaf class politics at worst. But, in the absence of sympathy, Succession elicits a different kind of investment that is potentially more useful in dismantling the mythology of the super wealthy.
Criticizing Succession for being insufficiently likeable and political is not the most sophisticated take, but it’s an understandable one. Despite the rise of the critically acclaimed prestige-TV antihero, it’s pretty rare for a show to feature so many aggressively unlikable characters. (Comedies like Curb Your Enthusiasm and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where the humor relies on the blatant subversion of social norms, are an exception to this rule.) Whether it’s The Americans, Mad Men, Game of Thrones or The Sopranos, there’s always a peripheral character whose innocence or spunkiness humanizes the antihero and throws their bad behavior into relief. Tony had Dr. Melfi. Don had Peggy. Philip and Elizabeth had Henry (if not Paige). Even Breaking Bad’s Walt had Walter Jr. Who the hell didn’t like Walter Jr.?
Much like the real world, these fictional universes can get violent and disorienting and confusing. Characters like Junior and Melfi and Peggy and Arya Stark are a warm, safe place for the viewer to snuggle up inside. While the rest of the world fell apart, you could always count on Peggy saying something adorably snarky, or Arya doing something badass. Without that moral center, the viewer feels unmoored.
Succession has no such moral center. In fact, it cleverly subverts the trope of the moral straight-man with Cousin Greg, a bumbling, incompetent but seemingly warmhearted goon. When it is revealed that Greg has tipped off a higher-up at the family company that Shiv’s unctuous fiancé Tom (fan favorite Matthew MacFadyen) plans to blow the whistle on an incriminating company secret, I was just as shocked as Tom. Prior to this moment, it would’ve been incomprehensible for Greg to exhibit such guile. But in the cutthroat universe of Succession-where fathers spite-pee in their sons’ offices-it’s naive to think that even the most naive among us don’t have an agenda.
This is an admittedly cynical view of human nature. But Succession takes a cool, dispassionate, almost clinical interest in the foibles of the rich. Were it not for the snappy, profane one-liners, it would come off as almost documentarian in its approach towards the .001 percent. (As an Upper East Side native who did not grow up uber-wealthy, but was raised among their ranks, the material trappings of the Roys’ wealth and the sense of entitlement that runs through the series like a current rang uncomfortably true.) Unlike Entourage or Mad Men, Succession makes no attempt to glamorize the Roys or their lavish lifestyle. Like a less soapy Gossip Girl or a more soapy Girls, the show depicts an ultra-privileged lifestyle with attention to detail and without moralization. The Hamptons helicopter rides, the tastefully appointed Fifth Avenue duplexes, the secret Sunset Park sex parties, the ortolan feasts: all of these things are presented not as aspirational, but as just another way for the Roys to furnish their deeply drab and miserable lives.
“Here’s the thing about being rich,” Tom tells cousin Greg. “It’s fucking great. It’s like being a superhero, only better. You get to do what you want. The authorities can’t really touch you. You get to wear a costume, but it’s designed by Armani.”
On a lesser show (cough Entourage cough) , this would play as a straight-up boast. But because we know how desperately Tom seeks acceptance from his in-laws (and that he will never get it), and because we know how indifferent his fiancée is towards him, it comes off as him trying to convince himself he is someone - confident, cool, respected, impenetrable - that he doesn’t quite believe he is. In a milieu where everyone is well-versed in the art of saying things they don’t mean, the reverse is also true. In Succession, and in real life, rich people are constantly saying what they mean without meaning to. And that, ultimately, is why I can’t stop watching it. Even though we don’t like the Roys, they reveal themselves to us.
In the first few episodes especially, Succession doesn’t make an effort to get you to like with the Roys or members of their equally amoral outer circle. (There are too many to name here, but my personal favorite is Gerri, the general counsel for the family business played by the phenomenal J. Smith Cameron, a soft-spoken middle-aged woman whose constant, owl-like expression of bemusement hides her incredibly calculating nature. Gerri scares the shit out of me.) But, over time, the show exposes how flimsy the Roy siblings’ power is in a series of debacles that are deeply cringeworthy. It's a testament to how good the show is: Even though these people couldn't be more loathsome, and their problems couldn't be less relevant to my own life, I somehow strongly empathize with all of them.
Kendall, though a competent leader and a loving father, is crippled by his desperate need for his father’s acceptance, as well as an almost pathological tendency to underestimate how far his friends and loved ones will go to fuck him over. Connor is so lonely and aimless that he hires a call girl to move out to New Mexico and pretend to be in love with him. Logan, though still fearsome, is becoming increasingly feeble-minded; his body is weakened with age and disease. When we see his wife preparing him for bed at night, it’s clear he is a shadow of his former self. And Roman, though brimming with sexual braggadocio, can’t actually get it up. (Shiv, arguably the flintiest of the crew, doesn’t have any immediately evident weaknesses, other than extreme horniness for her slimy ex.)
In this way, the show does have a strong, simple, and in a way, moral message. In the absence of character and values, even those who are best-equipped to succeed in the world ultimately end up the weakest versions of themselves.
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