By Namrata Menon
The first draft of this article started like this: nothing happens in the third season of Succession. That was before the devastating finale. It might be more accurate to say that nothing changes in the third season of Succession. This is by no means an insult.
The Roys are ferried – in lavish modes of transportation – from event to miserable event. There is a shareholder meeting, a (slightly Oedipal) birthday party, a Republican convention, and a wedding in Tuscany, where the show is at its darkest and most delightful. Rather than furthering the plot, these lush settings are backdrops for an endless dance of power; characters come out on top in increasingly loathsome ways and fall from grace immediately after. The manic energy that followed the season two finale’s fateful ending has all but faded away and the cruises scandal is hardly a scandal anymore. Throughout the season and until the last twenty minutes of the final episode, I had the feeling the stakes weren’t as high as before, which gave the familial rancour an even more tragic quality. It is clearer than ever here how broken the Roy siblings are, and how they will – in terms of moral depravity, if not personal success – become their father. In an especially caustic scene in the penultimate episode, Shiv, Roman, and Kendall’s mother offers a moment of clarity amid all the vitriol – “[Logan] never saw anything he loved that he didn’t want to kick, just to see if it would still come back,” she says. Again and again, we see his children do just that.
It is also the funniest season yet. The snark is at an all-time high, Cousin Greg offers frequent comic relief through a feud with Greenpeace (among other things), and there is a truly perfect sequence involving an imaginary cat. I thought I was being particularly original when I first noted how similar this all seemed to Arrested Development (2003-2006). Seeing twenty other tweets that expressed the same idea quickly put that thought to bed, as did all the think pieces on the show as comedy, or drama, or comedy-drama.
Ultimately, though, Succession is a tragedy above all – resembling the final act of King Lear more than any sitcom. There is a moment in the opening credits when a young boy (who I imagine is Kendall) smokes a cigar and glares defiantly into the camera. It comes off as more pathetic than cool, which is a recurring theme in the Roy siblings’ actions. In scenes with their father, Brian Cox’s physical presence is overpowering, reducing his children to their younger selves and laying their trauma bare. Much has been written about patterns of abuse in the dynamics between characters; the cast expresses this in subtle and heartbreaking ways – a flinch here and avoided eye contact there.
It is a testament to the writers’ talents how smoothly any moments of sympathy on the viewer’s part are punctured by knowledge of how odious the characters are. Vulnerability is regularly expressed in laughable business cliches and receiving cruelty is followed by dishing out worse. This is backed by a cast in consistent top form – in particular, Matthew Macfadyen embodying the strangest of downward spirals and Jeremy Strong, who in a single confessional breakdown, made all the actor profile discourse worth it (the less said about that the better). Over the final two hours, Kieran Culkin flexed an extraordinary range of iconic expressions and Sarah Snook made my loyalties shift like sand. My only issue with this season is how much of it was spent with the main characters (and the fraught chemistry between the actors) separated, but the way it’s going, season four will likely offer a lot more picturesque family holidays from hell.
A criticism I’ve heard levelled at Succession is that the characters do not seem like real people, cloaked as they are in obscene wealth, corporate doublespeak, sexual insults, and scathing wit. Every so often, these carefully curated masks slip. The results are brutal.
Hi, I’m Namrata! I’m from India and I study PPE. I write mainly about TV, film, and literature (I’m currently into Fiona Apple, Vikram Seth, and The Sopranos!). If you want to discuss one of my articles or just talk about music/art/movies/books, you can find me on Instagram (@namrataamenon) and Twitter (@nammenon), or email me at n.anil-menon@lse.ac.uk.
