Succession Finale Gave Its Audience What it Craved: Moral Superiority

Great writing and directing can't escape what so much of the Left has become

(I didn’t have time to record my own voice, so the recording of this is AI generated)

When HBO’s Succession launched, it was the Summer of 2018, deep into the Trump years and the #resistance. The show was loosely based on, or so everyone said, the Murdochs - a wealthy, powerful family full of cold-hearted “killers” — ruthless sociopaths out for themselves. But there was a lot of Trump in there, too, because of course, there was.

At the time, Trump was seen as the ultimate evil. His rise was laid, at least partly, at the feet of Fox News. They “normalized” racism, is how people in the #resistance saw it.

A tweet like this, for example, shows just how easy it is for people on the left to dehumanize anyone who would have voted for Trump as racists:

The tweet by Greg Pinelo that says, “Another BS analysis that ignores the giant elephant of racism sitting in the corner.” The tweet refers to a Washington Post story with the headline, “Women who support Trump cite party, economy over sexual misconduct.”

Ultimately, that delusion would play out in Succession as the network platforms an actual racist/anti-semite/fascist/dictator. They try hard to make the distinction between Trump and Jeryd Mencken, but still insist that is what defines the GOP, Fox, and the MAGA base. It is so sad and repulsive by now. But this is what happens when you wall yourself off from the rest of the country and exist inside an insular feedback loop.

By Season Three I almost gave up on the show. Season Four has been uncomfortable for me to watch, since I am allergic, by now, to false representations of our recent past. The last thing I wanted to see was this great show start in with yet another agonizing lecture about the “lesser” people they share this country with.

Here is a headline from The Atlantic, “It’s Just a Fascist President, Kendall; How Bad Could it Be?”

Thankfully, those references were kept at a minimum, but there was enough of it to validate its viewers’ own Trump pathology, which is largely why they loved the show. They have always assumed there is ONE TAKE of what we’ve all just lived through and theirs is the correct one. Just make us the better side, they plead.

Here is a headline from Rolling Stone that says, “Succession Makes us Relive Trump’s Presidential Election Episode Eight of the HBO hit’s fourth and final season sees the Roys maneuvering on election night, where far-right candidate Jeryd Mencken’s running.”

Since they call everyone from Matt Taibbi to Glenn Greenwald “far-right,” it’s hard to know what they mean here, but the show is overtly illustrating the collective fear of today’s Left.

The #resistance wasn’t all of Succession’s audience. Plenty of Conservatives watched and enjoyed the show for its great writing, directing, and acting — because, trust me, in today’s media landscape, it is a unicorn.

A big night for the show would draw roughly 2-3 million views. It’s never been as popular as The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, or even Mad Men, none of which could even be made today - can you imagine? But it’s good enough to sit in the pantheon of the best television shows of all time, in my view.

A headline from the New York Times, “Succession is Over. Why did We Care?”

The last season of Succession took a dark turn when they killed off the Rupert Murdoch character, Logan Roy (Brian Cox) in episode three. The three children (the oldest, Alan Ruck as Connor, was never a consideration) would have to decide who would be next in line to take over the company, Waystar/Royco, loosely based on the Fox corporation.

In the series finale, Waystar/Royco is lost to a new company called Gojo (apparently based on Fubo). Tough negotiations meant that the three Roys - Shiv, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) would go to war with Gojo to keep the company in their family.

Shiv’s husband, and father of her unborn child, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) was on the other side, and ultimately prevailed in the fight for Waystar/Royco and was named its CEO. Shiv betrays her siblings, ultimately sides with Tom, and thus wins the game of Succession.

Shiv’s name literally means a weapon fashioned out of something ordinary often used to kill people, not the most subtle clue to how her character would turn out.

But since Shiv was the only Hillary voter on the show, many expected redemption. In its own way, that might be the show’s subtle reference to the Democrats selling out just like Fox News has - in the end, they’re all the same in the corruption game. And for that, they get a tip of the hat.

The trick of Succession has always been that it made those at the top of the food chain feel like what the Left used to be - the underclass, the anti-establishment, the outsiders. That version of the Left no longer exists. But Succession gifts them with the illusion that it still does.

By “The Left,” I mean what Orwell would call the “inner party” and the “outer party,” which would be the intelligentsia of the progressives who influence what the majority on the Left thinks. Obviously, not all people on the Left or even those who vote Democrat are included here, but it’s just easier to say.

If audiences showed up in the 1930s to watch rich people on screen as a vicarious fantasy out of the misery of the Great Depression, now, the #resistance watched Succession as a vicarious fantasy that they will never be like the people on the screen. They’re better. They’re in on the joke and can laugh at all of the corruption, greed, and betrayal.

But unfortunately, they have run out of ways to demonize anyone other than Trump supporters by now. And since the majority of Trump supporters are what Orwell would call “Proles,” meaning working-class Americans just trying to participate in our Democracy and our economy and have some access to the American Dream, there is something grotesque and unseemly about this kind of mockery.

To me, the Left has morphed into your typical 1980s high school villain, a James Spader-like snob for whom no one and nothing is ever good enough. That is the main reason almost everything they write now rings hollow. They can’t connect to the ordinary American anymore, thus they can’t tell stories that resonate beyond their own utopian diorama. It’s all become too insular, too elite.

Most of those who watch Succession probably would never make the connection with the film The Menu, which satirized them. The Menu, written and directed by Succession’s Will Tracy and Mark Mylod, is about a chef on an island who only serves the richest people on the planet.

The Menu’s message, which is a good one, is that once you eliminate cooking and food for the majority, you lose something essential. What is the point, the movie asks, of making the best food for the people at the top? They can’t ever be satisfied anyway; none of it seems to be based on feeding hungry people the food they like. It’s based on status and wealth.

Can there be any real fulfillment when you are preaching to the choir?

Ratatouille makes a similar point, but lays it at the feet of critics:

One of the reasons Succession was a standout, along with the White Lotus series on HBO, is that the characters are allowed to be complex and complicated. The characters can say things, make jokes, and behave in such a way that is politically incorrect because they’re already bad.

In fact, the worse they are, the more their viewers love it. Because Trump was in office for much of the series, they could trick themselves that it was about people with all of the power.

They only indirectly refer to the dynamic that played out after Trump won (protests here and there), but as yet, no one in Hollywood - as far as I can see - really got it. They see it from their own perspective, which is limited by their position in society. It’s become like a Royal Court, which means authenticity and truth has to be in short supply. We bow to the Royals and that is all.

With Trump out of office for the last season, the show lost some of its footing. They had nowhere to go because, by now, even they must realize that the Left owns everything and that trying to pretend otherwise comes off as artificial.

Storytelling no longer exists as it once did, not since Hollywood married politics.

To be a thriving industry, Hollywood will have to divorce the Democratic Party so they can produce subversive content again. As it is, they must continue to limit themselves to please activists - and all are tentacles of the same beast, the same church, the same religion. That, by now, has become boring.

I don’t know about you, but I've overdosed on sanctimony, GOODNESS, on self-righteousness, none of which has any place in art. Succession was great because they had permission to hop off that train and allow their characters the freedom of the complexity of being “bad.”

Every great writer knows that once you lose touch with the struggle of everyday life you end up with nothing to say.

We need more courage in Hollywood. We need more people willing to escape their fear bunker and get to know people outside of it.

Amarillo, Texas, 9:30am