As I began writing this, Succession was not yet over. But I had just seen what may be its best, most harrowing episode. “America Decides” is one of the most stressful pieces of television I’ve ever seen -weirdly, as it revolves around the night of a fictional U.S. presidential election as covered by a fictional mainstream news network. And yet its reality is terrifying, the choices made that bring about its outcome are frightfully authentic, and the entire situation itself, in which a fascist GOP nominee is proclaimed the winner under dubious circumstances entirely because his victory is beneficial to a single powerful company, utterly plausible. It is how things work in our world, just as it is in Succession.
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If you are late to the party as I was, coming to it only last year, Succession is a “prestige” HBO comedy-drama created by Peep Show’s Jesse Armstrong about the family in control of a massive media empire, how their business of acquisitions, mergers, controversy control, and downsizings are navigated and impact the American populace; as well as their considerable political influence -all power stemming from a small group of people with deep-seeded psychological issues and complexes as a result of an abusive patriarch and a lifetime in the 1%. Logan Roy (Brian Cox) is that patriarch, initially a pastiche of Rupert Murdoch -a fiercely profane and intimidating firebrand celebrated as the groundbreaking entrepreneur and founder of multinational Waystar Royco. His children are Connor (Alan Ruck), uninvolved in the family business but with delusional aspirations for the presidency (it should go without saying given their background of extreme wealth and privilege that all of the Roys lean to the right politically), Kendall (Jeremy Strong), the socially clumsy, validation-craving heir apparent to the company and the show’s de facto protagonist, Roman (Kieran Culkin), the insecure immature youngest son with a penchant for irresponsible remarks and never taking accountability, and Siobhan “Shiv” (Sarah Snook), the ambitious, ruthlessly business-savvy, but frequently overlooked only daughter. Also important to the show are Shiv’s fiancé-then-husband Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), a disrespected buffoon desperate to please, and his only subordinate Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun), a flaky, incompetent Roy cousin nonetheless determined to work his way up the family’s hierarchy.
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From early on, Succession was a show able to strike a remarkable balance of illustrating opaquely the cutthroat practices and unscrupulous ethics permitted by the beneficiaries of out-of-control late-stage capitalism, while also rendering these same beneficiaries in empathetic, humane ways; awful people, but awful people with their own traumas and vulnerabilities that you can relate to –and being played by really extraordinary actors to boot. But always the show’s critiques come first, and its unwavering astuteness to the billionaire and conglomerate-dominant world that we must live in. Several times the show has commented on very real and current events, none more-so than in this season which happens to coincide with the shake-downs at Fox News and the increasing profile of one Elon Musk -both of which have fairly direct analogues in the Roy’s sphere of business.
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And what makes Succession’s commentary so potent compared to other media about the ultra-wealthy and powerful is that it is uncompromising and genuine in the kinds of direct ways that the general neoliberal establishment of western politics and media would rather not comment on. It is open and harsh about the ways corporations and the handful of rich people who run them assert and exert control over a vast socio-political landscape. The explicit fact that money is at the root of every decision made, that making more of it and staying on top is the most important thing –even to people who already have every material thing they could possibly want. When confronted with controversy, politics, or a major scandal, Succession accurately shows that what matters to Fortune 500 companies is only the narrative.
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Early in season one, a major sexual abuse scandal going back decades is uncovered within Waystar’s Cruise division, the repercussions of which play out over the next couple seasons, but the fundamental priority when it comes out is how the Roys will maneuver public relations and protect their bottom line –with of course mere lip service paid to the actual victims, who the show makes clear they don’t actually care a lick about. A deceased central perpetrator is identified, whom everyone posthumously severs ties with, and Tom –the appointed head of that division- is internally scapegoated as the guy made to handle it. Seeing these characters squirm their way through the optics of this and callously try to cover their asses (especially once Kendall goes rogue in season three and alleges Logan knew of the misconduct for years) is very entertaining –but it is always underlined by the sobriety that it is conveying. One of the most damning moments in the show is when Shiv, who on some level truly believes she does care, intimidates a whistleblower into silence for the good of the company’s reputation –assuaging her with a settlement and the shallow assurance that Waystar will root out the abusers. It is maybe the most strikingly brutal and literal illustration of the ways in which our culture pressures women to not speak out, and is a showcase of how even self-identifying “feminists” in positions of authority can be mere tools of patriarchal control –a conversation no other mainstream American show or movie has really had the guts to address.
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Shiv at least has a modicum of self-awareness her father and brothers lack. Succession will often spotlight how the Roys’ blind spots owing to their privilege have shaped their personalities and worldview. Roman for instance, the closest to a hedonist in the family, is deliberately out-of-touch with the general American culture; the mask of trollish humour he uses to suppress his trauma and emotional vulnerability is often mean-spirited, off-colour, and outdated. It’s an undergraduate cynicism, a teenage edginess that especially in recent years has felt more and more reminiscent of the arrested development of those like one owner of Twitter who somehow still thinks poop emojis are funny. As in our world, the idea of someone like that harnessing so much influence is scary when you stop to think about it –which has only become more apparent this last season.
The stature of this family allows Connor to run for president, deciding to just on a whim, and though he doesn’t make it far, he does have the resources on hand to run a campaign, gain a free platform and thus supporters through vague populist rhetoric. Everything is within grasp for this family –Logan has a relationship with the current President, and acolytes in Congress he can depend on to keep the company free of oversight. Even a left-wing politician like Gil Eavis (Eric Bogosian) –evidently based on Bernie Sanders- who is highly publicly critical of Waystar and its practices, will let Shiv onto his campaign team, unable to resist the political capital she wields.
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And it is capital –it is all about the money. Every deal and arrangement, every effort at acquisition of a rival company. Armstrong understands that the show is a parable on the pitfalls of capitalist excess, something his cast have pointed out in interviews too. Sure, it’s neat to take note of how one legacy company being bought out by a slick new one resembles the Disney acquisition of Twentieth Century Fox –the negative repercussions of which are still keenly felt in the entertainment industry. But it’s another to realize the impetus behind such decisions is barely calculated, or motivated out of spite as much as anything. None of it exists in a vacuum. Front-facing Waystar tries to be stable and respected, those who represent it an image of the successful elite. But they are as fallible as anyone. Image over transparency -even the right things are done for all the wrong reasons, and those reasons are often based in ego and personal feelings. In season two a subsidiary Vaulter, that Kendall acquired in the pilot, got shut down and hundreds lost their jobs mostly because the upper brass didn’t like them. And you can’t tell me Logan didn’t decide to sell Waystar to GoPro at the end of season three because it would trip up and disinherit his children. He made a major corporate restructuring decision with far-reaching ramifications at least in part to hurt Kendall, Shiv, and Roman.
There’s something that feels so intensely honest in that, even though we can’t really know the personal motivations behind such real-world analogues. But the pressure of the market towards mergers and monopolies that makes such things almost inevitable anyways is something we can plainly see; as much as we can see how a small handful of conglomerates control most if not all of the mainstream media we consume, and are only ever working to tighten their stranglehold on a culture they aim to own the narrative on. Succession responds to that smartly as well, the difference between how the company positions itself and what its priorities actually are.
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Kendall is almost a perfect avatar of this, someone who from the start of the series aims to appear grounded and relatable to subordinates and is completely incapable of doing so. Lest we all forget his pitiful Logan Roy rap song. Nonetheless, his convictions remain solid on modernizing the Waystar brand -he launches their streaming service StarGo, insists on several new sources of investment, most of which are unsuccessful. The evolution he pursues seems good and responsible, but it is driven entirely by that need to prove himself, to both his father and the world; to demonstrate he has the business acumen and the grit to earn that seat of utmost authority. Innovation doesn’t ultimately mean anything to him. And this continues to be true when he falls out with his family in season three (for the boldness of which, earning a twisted respect from his father). All of his ideas to strike out on his own have that stink of teenage rebelliousness, down to his complete shift in outward politics -as he plays at progressive awareness and leftist posturing through mere buzzwords and jargon rhetoric -random tweets about “ending the culture of patriarchy”. It’s less that Kendall goes where the wind is blowing so much as he strategically manufactures his image and ideology to whatever is most advantageous at the time for his position relative to his father. And by the fourth season, he has succumbed to pushing a questionable Logan project “Living+”, a luxury assisted living community owned by the company that is both nakedly dystopian (and yet, look up Disney’s “Storyliving”) and out-of-touch with public interest.
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We know for a fact this is how the heads of major companies construct their images. We’re approaching Pride Month and the annual discourse around “rainbow capitalism” for god’s sake. Very few corporations actually care about LGBTQ rights, as we’ve been reminded recently by Target caving to far-right pressure; but they put on a show of it as a marketing tool, recognizing where the larger culture is at in terms of the ongoing fight for civil rights, and capitalizing on it. We saw it in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, but curiously not since then -corporate interest in promoting such causes only goes so far. Succession makes these conversations more visible by removing the band-aid, showing that every good intention by Waystar is tightly manufactured, every public sentiment focus grouped. And that vitally cannot be forgotten.
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Perhaps the principal tool in their arsenal is ATN, a conservative-leaning news network that is a blatant stand-in for Fox News, both in its cultural significance and in its sickeningly hyper-polished aesthetics. The show wisely chooses to largely refrain from depicting the network programming itself, instead focusing on the behind-the-scenes efforts of managing it, a task that ultimately falls to Tom. Back in season two, the network had to deal with an anchor who was a Nazi sympathizer –ultimately resorting to firing him. Four years later, amidst a scandalous court case, it’s real-world analogue chucked its own top-rated Nazi presenter. Throughout the series ATN faces pressure to tone down its right-wing bias, which is at times attempted, until the money talks. The news is just another commodity, and much like we would find out eventually about Fox, even the people in charge at ATN don’t actually believe the bullshit they spout. In season three, a deal is struck between the Roys and a neo-fascist presidential candidate Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk) to give him favourable coverage via ATN, which contributes heavily in the success of his campaign over the following season.
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There is where things get scary. One of the marks of season four that sets it apart as the best season of the show (and maybe one of the best seasons of television!) is how it seamlessly moves from being a mirror of our corporate-controlled hellscape to being a forecast. Through his presidential run, we don’t actually see much of Mencken or hear his specific rhetoric. But we know he is an online provocateur, that his are extremist views that uproot core tenets of American democracy, that he sustains both a strong, violent base of support (which would implicitly be even stronger if not for Connor’s campaign) and a hefty vocal opposition from both the left-wing and the establishment. He is well-spoken, methodical, competent in a way that makes him in no way analogous to Trump –no he is far more sinister and dangerous. Mencken is Succession’s image of what is coming from the American GOP, made possible through a mix of liberal complacency and a distinctly far-right –that phrase again- control of the narrative.
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It is not Mencken though who is the real monster threatening American democratic stability. In “America Decides”, the eighth episode of season four, Kendall, Roman, and Shiv watch from the ATN offices as election results pour in, where it is very close between Mencken and his Democratic opponent Daniel Jiménez (Elliot Villar). Their concern with the race is largely predicated on their business interests. Mencken has agreed to back Waystar’s agenda including a nullification of its acquisition by GoJo, run by obnoxious CEO Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), whom neither Roman nor Kendall -current Waystar co-CEOs- likes. Shiv however is in her own alliance with Matsson, her interests aligning more with a Jiménez victory -while also being genuinely concerned about the broader implications of a Mencken win. The episode plays out the results up till a polling station in Milwaukee is firebombed by Mencken supporters, leaving that state’s electoral college uncertain. Against an accurate vote tally, Roman pushes ATN to call Wisconsin for Mencken, and as it is debated it becomes the crucial point in securing Mencken’s win. Kendall, whose daughter was the day before bullied by Mencken supporters, ultimately makes that call -which he does out of spite upon learning of Shiv’s betrayal. A major news organization prematurely calls a presidential election on a partisan basis over that organization’s business relationship to the nominee. The consequences for a country and people plunged into chaos don’t matter. “We just made a night of good TV” says Roman.
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Succession did too. “America Decides” is exceptionally written by Armstrong and directed with thorough intensity by Andrij Parekh, but it’s effectiveness lies in the way it reads the current American corporate and political climate and draws a very genuine conclusion. All the pieces are in place for something like this to actually happen in 2024, for consensus to be subverted by partisan capitalist interests -look at those red state politicians limiting voting rights, legislating new powers and conditions for their electoral colleges to discount certain results -all with the backing of oil barons, gun lobbies, and in some cases media companies. Waystar stands in for several media conglomerates over the course of the show, most obviously NewsCorp, Disney, and Time Warner -the latter of which ironically is the parent company that owns Succession, and so long as it continues to rake up cultural popularity and awards, it doesn’t much care what the commentary there is. But from its place within that system that it cannot reach any kind of a mainstream audience without, Succession warns of the dangers of mass corporate media consolidated in the hands of just a few likely ill-adjusted uber-wealthy individuals. In its last episodes especially it argues fairly brutally for the reigning in of these potentially tyrannical forces and their wide theatres of influence.
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Succession is about the people who shape our media, through which they aim to chart the direction of public discourse, far-removed from public life though they themselves may be. Indeed, the wider ramifications of the Roys’ actions play out almost entirely in the background of the show, but they do have a sustained impact. The penultimate episode “Church and State” addresses at least in part the fallout of Kendall’s call, both publicly and personally. And that’s good. These figures and entities cannot be insulated from consequence, we must do all we can to assure that (like supporting the WGA strike for example). Corporate interests prioritized over the will and the needs of the people is a fundamental tenet embedded in the fabric of capitalism. It’s vital the people be aware of that and be vigilant. Succession has done a great service in pulling back that curtain, revealing who our corporate overlords are, what they think and why they are dangerous. It does so in such uncompromising terms that the show becomes essential because of it. Watch Succession folks! So that we can be prepared for whatever bullshit the Roys of our world have in store for us.
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