Late to the Party: Succession, Season 2
Oh, Succession. Where to even begin?
I watched the first season of Succession over the winter holidays in 2019/2020 because I was dog-sitting for a friend of mine who is also an actress and is in the first few episodes of Succession. I, as a rule, don’t watch something just because a friend of mine is involved (sorry @ any of my friends reading this) because there isn’t enough time and sometimes my friends are in things that are scary or otherwise not something I want to be spending my time watching. But I decided to give Succession a watch because the buzz was good, you know?
I got through the first season pretty quickly but didn’t prioritize jumping into season two because I couldn’t really make up my mind about the show. To be honest, I still can’t. It also was a very hard left-turn coming off of a pretty intense binge of Schitt’s Creek, a wholesome show about wealthy people who lose everything and, even though they can be snobbish or insensitive, are fundamentally good people, to jump into season two of Succession, a not at all wholesome show about exorbitantly wealthy people who are evil, no caveats.
If binging Schitt’s Creek last weekend felt like popping M&Ms and reaching the end of the bag and not knowing where they all went and wishing I had more, watching Succession over the course of this week felt like making sure to get in my serving of cruciferous veggies every day. Don’t get me wrong, I love cruciferous veggies. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, the whole family! But I can’t eat that much of them in one sitting. They’re very filling.
It felt like to-do list television, a show I had to watch because I know it’s good and a good chunk of the writers room and creative team are playwrights (Anna Jordan, Lucy Prebble, Susan Soon He Stanton, Lucy Kirkwood etc) and I want to support their work, and the acting is impeccable and I love nothing more than watching good actors interpret excellent writing, especially on television, which is an actor and writer driven medium.
(To answer your question, film is a director driven medium and theatre is a playwright driven medium, I don’t make the rules!)
Even though I think Sarah Snook is a criminally underrated actress and Kieran Culkin somehow makes the horror show that is Roman Roy funny and Matthew Macfadyen and Nicholas Braun are a dream comedic duo and Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong are out there delivering master classes every episode… I still really struggle to watch something where I hate every single character and don’t want any of them to succeed, even if that is the point of the show. At the end of the day, Succession is a show about bad people who do bad things, and the dramaturgical sensibility of the writing as well as the camera/audience gaze do not shy away from that. This isn’t a show with anti-heroes or so bad but so sexy type characters. They’re just evil.
I think a lot of the appeal lies in watching evil people suffer emotionally, but I’m still waiting for some fundamental legal and fiscal consequences. The end of season two really throws a wrench in the storyline, so maybe someone will go to jail next season! Who knows? I, personally, would treasure a plot line where Tom Wambsgans and Shiv get a divorce and then he’s thrown in jail for the cruises coverup. Alas, I don’t think that will happen because the writers are good writers and will not do something that simple and expected, but a girl can dream.
I do enjoy a show about the evils of capitalism, but it also stresses me out to watch a show where the evilness on display is so firmly grounded in reality. I don’t know if the kind of people portrayed in this show watch prestige television, or at least prestige television portraying people like them in a pretty horrible light, but it’s not hard for me to imagine the Jeff Bezoses of the world watching the stories of Succession unfold, and think to themselves, “If I was in their position, I would do the exact same thing.” And that terrifies me.
Even though I’m coming off very wishy-washy about the show in this post, I do want to know what happens next and plan on tuning into season three whenever that gets out the gate. To be perfectly honest, I don’t super understand the business storylines, but as the show runner Jesse Armstrong said in the season finale’s Inside the Episode (@ other streaming platforms, can you do this too please? I love it), it’s probably going to be a shit show. I do enjoy a shit show.*
*I started typing shit as schitt because I literally cannot stop thinking about Schitt’s Creek.