My best friend first pitched “Succession” to me as something parallel to a reality competition show.
“It’s basically just a competition for who can flop the hardest,” she said.
I put off watching the show for a while. It’s been in my cultural purview since its premiere in 2018, as my friends constantly nudged me to watch it. They incessantly reiterated that it was the best television show and that I would undoubtedly enjoy it.
I never watch TV shows people recommend to me because they require an attention span I don’t have. But I always knew there was something special about “Succession,” even when I had never seen a full episode.
I finally tuned in during the spring of 2023. The series finale was set to air within the next couple of weeks, so I made it my mission to binge-watch the show to watch the final episode in real time.
From the first episode, I was hooked.
Oftentimes in shows about business moguls, there’s an impenetrability to the characters that makes them feel distant from the human experience. They’re either too calculated, lacking in emotion or exhibit near-demonic levels of greed.
But from the show’s first introduction to Kendall Roy, drumming away in the back of a black car service to his rap music, I knew something special was on the way.
The show follows the children of disgruntled billionaire Logan Roy as he grooms them to be the successors of his media company, Waystar Royco. The plot has it all, complete with hijinks, backstabbing and family drama. The relationship between the three main siblings, Roman, Shiv and Kendall, drew me to the show.
“Succession” is intoxicating. After the first episode, I voraciously consumed the rest, barely looking up from my iPad. I watched with undivided attention as Kendall’s vote of no confidence against his father failed and as he committed vehicular manslaughter at the end of season one.
I felt the stab in my heart as Shiv was continuously spat out by her father and as Roman fought for even the slightest bit of attention from the patriarch.
Whereas many characters in the business genre of TV lack human qualities, the Roy siblings bleed humanity in every episode. Even if each of them is hateful and contentious in their way, there’s a tenderness to each of them that appeals to humanity’s deepest insecurities.
When I saw each character on screen, they were the physical embodiment of some of my worst traits: obsessiveness, ego and anxiety. The show offered me something more substantial than the story of moguls or media politics, telling a story of actual people guarded so fiercely behind buttoned vests and tightly bound neck ties.
Kendall is petulantly obsessive, letting his desire to helm Waystar poison him from the inside out. Shiv is fractured beyond repair: a victim of her family’s misogyny that ultimately drove her to be one of the show’s coldest characters. Roman is a degenerate, constantly acting as the resident clown in search of the next wave of sexual indecency.
Like Kendall, I often bury myself deep in my work. I become so entrenched in writing and the creative process that sometimes it feels better to turn a cold shoulder to people I love. Like Roman, I find a sick pleasure in the art of egotism because it allows me to completely escape from the shattered person I am under the surface.
But I regularly feel most like Shiv, even though her brothers hold a special place in my heart. She’s unapologetically callous, always on a never-ending course to self-destruction. Quite often, it feels like she and I are on the same journey. Her propensity for anger, yet deep desire for meaningful affection, felt attuned to the constant internal battle I find myself entangled in.
In the end, they all lose. The Waystar dynasty was gifted to Tom Wambsgans, Shiv’s inept and desperate husband. The media empire Kendall tried so hard to obtain fell through his fingers like water, and his narrative arc ends with him sitting on a park bench, staring dejectedly into the distance. Shiv is locked in her tumultuous marriage because she would rather kneel to Tom than give up proximity to power.
I saw each sibling as a representation of the darkest parts of myself, finally duking it out in the fictional boxing ring of corporate America. It was cathartic to see them all unwind; the ultimate reminder of the danger of indulging in the darkest parts of human emotion.
The Roy siblings were consumed by despair until it seemed like their redemption was an impossibility. Their anguished relationship with their father poisoned them until there was nothing left.
I am my own worst critic, and I fear sometimes that my self-loathing will turn me into the real-life incarnation of one of the Roy siblings.
The show is nearly two years past its finale, but I still find myself thinking about the Roy siblings daily. Like all tragic characters, they reveal a universal truth about humanity that many people refuse to admit: pain can crystallize until you become wretched.
The Roys’ fatal flaws live inside me, whether I want to admit it or not, but the show’s raw depiction of their humanity makes me feel far less alone. The Roy siblings are reflections of the innate flaws of humanity, the ones that live within us all at one point or another. They live within all of us in varying capacities, and there’s a special relief in that fact.
Be the first to comment