When, a little over two weeks ago, White House chief of staff Ronald Klain dismissed the nation’s economic woes as “high-class problems,” conventional wisdom held that the prominent Democrat was out of touch. Perhaps so. One wonders, however, if the man simply had the return of Succession on the brain.
High-class problems abound in the third season of HBO’s masterpiece, which premiered on Oct. 17 after a hiatus of more than two years. Logan Roy (Brian Cox), the ravenous paterfamilias at the head of media conglomerate Waystar, is hanging on to his empire by a fingernail as the story resumes, having been betrayed by his son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) in a season two press conference. The tycoon’s remaining children, as well as a coterie of senior advisers, are circling the fight like hyenas, anxious to claim their share of the corpse. Though few viewers will relate to the Roys’ private jets and skyline vistas, the show’s particular genius is to cut its barely ironized consumption porn with incisive portraits of psychological warfare. It is no small amount of fun to watch the superrich wallow in their filthy lucre. Far more cogent, though, is the demonstration that daddy issues, like congressional subcommittees, have almost endless power to torment.
Picking up mere hours after last season’s finale, Succession’s newest episodes find the Roys in the throes of a typically self-involved panic. Waystar, long a den of corporate malfeasance, is under dual attack from the Justice Department and a hostile takeover bid. A crucial shareholder vote looms, the outcome of which could see the family tossed out on their stylishly attired backsides. For Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) and his sister, Shiv (Sarah Snook), the chaos unfolding on multiple fronts presents yet another opportunity for self-advancement. If Logan falls, someone else can ascend to his place. For cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) and Shiv’s husband, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), the primary objective is staying out of prison. Fresh from their disastrous testimony during a season two congressional hearing, the pair recognize that they could be sacrificed for the greater “good” at any moment.
Despite showrunner Jesse Armstrong’s mastery of his chessboard of characters, the new season’s first two episodes are its weakest, unearthing as they do a store of conflicts that have already been mined. Convening in New York in the wake of Kendall’s treachery, Logan’s children bicker along familiar lines, with each refusing to sacrifice power for the sake of compromise. The same is at least as true of their father’s early scrambling, which feels conspicuously similar to the maneuvering of previous installments. To be sure, even bottom-barrel Succession contains better and more interesting writing than nearly every other show on television. (“You’re still seen as a token, woman, wonk, woke snowflake,” a resentful Kendall tells Shiv.) Nevertheless, it is something of a relief when Armstrong and company move from reestablishing their various storylines to carrying them into new and compelling territory.
This work, which follows the Roys from the lows of an FBI raid to the highs of Republican primary manipulation, is at its best when the series broadens its scope and bounces new characters off its scheming leads. In season two, Succession benefited mightily from limited appearances by Holly Hunter and Cherry Jones, a pair of steely-eyed veterans who fit perfectly the show’s ethic of unconditional warfare. Here, effective guest turns include Adrian Brody’s performance as a recalcitrant stockholder and (especially) Justin Kirk’s rendering of a paleoconservative presidential candidate. So dynamic is the latter, in fact, that an episode six parley between his character and Culkin’s must surely rank among the weirdest and most riveting scenes in recent television history.
To be clear, this praise of Succession’s part-timers is in no way meant to denigrate the excellence of its regulars. Having won an Emmy for his season two portrayal of Kendall, Strong remains first-rate as a man who wants to do good but requires universal adulation in return. Macfadyen, long the beneficiary of some of the show’s best dialogue, is simply spectacular as Logan’s craven and deranged son-in-law, a role that demands both sociopathic glee and painful vulnerability. (“What’s good is to eradicate hope,” Tom confesses to his henchman, Greg.) Finest of all is the work of Snook as the calculating Shiv, a self-deceiving “liberal” who has quietly become the series’s most despicable figure. Convinced of her own superiority, Shiv allows herself to act in ways that would horrify a garden-variety jacka** or prig. Yet, in Snook’s hands, she is never less than fascinating, a black widow who believes herself to be a doe and evinces all of the egotism, bewilderment, and hurt feelings that that confusion entails.
Judged by this outline alone, Succession might seem to be an exercise in distastefulness, with characters stumbling from one transgression to the next in a serieswide race to unlikability. What this representation gets wrong, however, is, first, that the show is hilarious and, second, that it is the most honest satire to appear on TV in decades. Given the Roys’ similarities to the Murdoch clan, it is only to be expected that right-wing shenanigans come in for some mockery. Refreshingly, though, the series doesn’t sleep on the grotesqueries of the Left. Note, for example, the vow of Greg’s lawyer to “expose the structural contradictions of capitalism as reified in the architecture of corporate America.” Greg, as helpless as ever, is not a client to be protected so much as a pawn to be deployed. Indeed, we are all about the business of using one another when circumstances dictate.
If Succession’s third season has a thesis statement, it is precisely this insight into the depravity that lies beneath much human polish. Who are the Roys, after all, but the same graspers as the rest of us, merely cast by fortune onto a larger stage? Happy or not, this intuition does much to explain the series’s undimming appeal. It isn’t just that HBO’s drama is the best show for our fractious times. It’s that it’s hard to imagine a better one.
Graham Hillard teaches English and creative writing at Trevecca Nazarene University.
