Embrace the Delicious Madness of ‘Succession’

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1There’s a tense yet hilarious scene early in the first season of “Succession” where Kendall Roy, putative inheritor of the family media and entertainment empire, is late for the board meeting where he hopes to unseat his father. Betrayed by events — including a terror scare and New York traffic — Kendall races on foot through the Manhattan streets, shouting into his cell phone as he argues for change at the top.Welcome to the backstabbing world of Waystar Royco, the sprawling conglomerate built by Logan Roy, a swaggering monster whose quartet of spoiled, sullen, absurdly rich children betray their father and each other repeatedly as they strive to build fiefdoms of their own. Waystar’s crown jewel is cable network ATN. (Think Fox News on steroids.)If you’re not watching “Succession,” maybe you should be. The HBO dramedy, which recently completed its first season and is therefore ready to be binged, is terrific television. It’s weird, wicked, tragic fun. On “Succession,” everybody hates the Roy family. There’s a telling bit where Kendall is trying to invest in a clever tech startup. Probably he would make the founders quite rich. But his overture is rejected, because, says one of the founders with the absurd overstatement common to our age, to do business with a Roy would be like marrying Hitler.But none of this comes off as lighthearted comedy. Despite its occasional stabs at satire, “Succession” for the most part takes itself seriously. The Roy family specializes in ambition and malice, and boardroom battles and personal betrayals are equally bloodthirsty. “Succession” is unusual in giving the viewer nobody to root for. The show lacks an antihero in the model of Walter White or Tony Soprano, someone we hope will get away with ... something. People hate the characters. Whenever anybody argues on, say, Reddit that such-and-such a character on “Succession” is lovable or noble or misunderstood, fellow Redditors fill page after page with scathing and usually vulgar explanations of exactly why that character is completely hateable. Yet viewers can’t get enough. A common refrain on social media goes something like this: “I hate them all and I can’t stop watching.” Many describe the show as “Arrested Development” with billions of dollars and control of an empire at stake. But that’s not entirely fair. True, there’s a lot of satire, but there’s also fine dramatic writing and excellent dramatic acting — particularly by Jeremy Strong as Kendall and Brian Cox as Logan.In episode seven, the clan gets together for counseling. Logan, predictably, is uncooperative, dominating the room and antagonizing his children. Later, when the patriarch goes for a swim, we see the old scars on his back, as if from severe beatings some years ago. Combine this with our discovery that he never swam in front of his kids when they were young, and we’re reminded, almost against our wills, that every monster has a past.The writers love confounding our expectations. Midway through the first season, Tom Wambsgans, a high-level executive at Waystar, discovers that the conglomerate has been burying evidence of sexual assaults on its cruise line. Tom, who is about to marry into the Roy family, knows exactly what to do. He calls in Greg, a young and eager-to-please Roy cousin, whom he’s been teaching how to be rich. (Step 1: Don’t tell people your favorite restaurant is California Pizza Kitchen.) Anyway, Tom instructs Greg to spend Thanksgiving weekend shredding the relevant documents about the coverup. Of course every viewer knows the command will come back to haunt Tom in the end — but I’m willing to bet that almost nobody guessed the context in which it would boomerang.Tom’s fiancée, Siobhan (known as Shiv), is a political consultant and, with her fierce and independent intelligence, seems to be the only Roy sibling who could earn her way in the professional world if she didn’t happen to have Logan as her father. So determined is she to escape his dominance that she joins the campaign of a Bernie Sanders-esque Democrat who’s running for president largely by attacking ATV — and Logan himself.I haven’t said a word about Roman, the youngest son, whose way of being like his father is to spew obscenities constantly, although he winds up intimidated by whoever he spoke to last, or about Connor, the supposedly peaceable eldest son, who, in order to avoid involvement in the family business, long ago fled to a New Mexico ranch that is built, he says, to survive the apocalypse. When Connor organizes a Manhattan gala, however, we discover that he’s a Roy after all. “The butter is too cold!” Connor screams at the caterer. “I’m a laughingstock!”And then there’s the “delightfully ridiculous” Greg, whose bumbling innocence in the midst of so much casual backstabbing makes the viewer reasonably wonder every second he’s on the screen whether he’s that naive or that Machiavellian, and Marcia, Logan’s third wife, whose “blood-chilling presence” keeps us guessing whether she’s a fierce protectress of her aging husband, a power-hungry schemer or both.Oh, there are flaws. There’s little racial diversity, for instance, and despite the boardroom shenanigans, nobody ever spends long weekends ensconced with hordes of lawyers and bankers. But the momentum of the storytelling buoys “Succession” swiftly past these defects.It’s become a common theme in reviews to assert that the show’s message is anti-capitalist. I disagree. The target is the foibles of some of those at the top. You can believe in the market economy and still cringe at the behavior of people with more money than sense.Besides, there are wealthy characters who do not come off as psychopaths or misanthropes. Among the most intriguing is Lawrence Yee (an underused Rob Yang), whose tech company Waystar Royco purchases early on. Yee gets lots of money plus a board seat, and he gets a nice scene telling off Kendall, but after that we barely see him again.Although buoyed by strong reviews, “Succession” has suffered from often-indifferent ratings. Nevertheless, HBO has renewed the show for a second go-round. I’m glad. There’s a lot to look forward to next season, including the likelihood that one of the children — it would spoil things to say which — will be running for president. Even if you hate politics, that will be a campaign worth watching.So dive in and embrace the madness, and if bear-hug letters and Lanvin sneakers aren’t your universe, they soon will be.To contact the editor responsible for this story: Brooke Sample at bsample1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of law at Yale University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. His novels include “The Emperor of Ocean Park,” and his nonfiction includes “Civility.”©2018 Bloomberg L.P.-->

Embrace the Delicious Madness of ‘Succession’

Embrace the Delicious Madness of ‘Succession’

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Embrace the Delicious Madness of ‘Succession’