Succession's fourth season will be its last. Photo / HBO
Succession's fourth season will be its last. Photo / HBO
Opinion by Wenlei Ma
OPINION:
Sometimes you become so seduced by its world of glass and steel high rises, azure blue seas surrounding the superyachts, and the complete lack of cost-of-living concerns, that you forget that Succession should be a cautionary tale on how not to be.
Most people have mused at some point in their life, “What if I won $100 million in the lottery? How much easier would life be? What will I say to my boss when I quit? Which superyacht can I buy?”.
Well, the answer to that last question is none. It is the perverse truth of our world that $100 million will not buy you a superyacht. You need three times as much for a proper superyacht, the kind that sails for the likes of Jeff Bezos and Roman Abramovich.
If there’s one thing Succession, which returns for its fourth and final season on Monday on Neon, has given us – and it’s given us a lot – it’s the brutal reminder that obscene wealth really is obscene, and that obscenely wealthy, unhappy people are dangerous.
Everything in the past three seasons of the series about the battle to control a media empire is leading to what should be a heart-pounding climax in the showdown between patriarch Logan Roy and his four adult children, all entitled, out-of-touch and deeply damaged.
Creator Jesse Armstrong and his team of writers have breathed propulsive life into this incredibly incisive, sharp-witted and uproariously entertaining show examining power, privilege and family.
Through the flirtatious rhythm of its writing and dialogue, the curious explorations of its camera and editing, and its slick overall packaging, Succession has taken us into a very specific world.
But it didn’t always get everything right. The revoltingly rich are so removed from the rest of us that, of course, a group of TV writers needed a wealth consultant after a few faux pas in the first season, according to a Guardian article.
For example, the onscreen staff were dressed in maids’ uniforms when they should be in polo shirts and chino pants, and there would never be napkin rings on a table. “That’s so gauche and poor,” writer Georgia Pritchett explained. The characters shouldn’t be dressed in coats because they glide from cars and jets to the building, rarely exposed to outside elements.
There was also a line from Marcia that she would cook a turkey for the holidays when in reality, someone of Marcia’s wealth would never have done that herself. She wouldn’t even know where the kitchen is. Knowing the layout of one’s own home is for normies.
Logan apparently loves his kids. Photo / HBO
But Succession is weirdly relatable because it is, at its darkest of hearts, a family drama. While the material stakes are higher, the emotional stakes are familiar. Logan’s treatment of his kids – pitting them against each other, expressing his clear disappointment in them and manipulating them – and the clear hurt from Shiv, Kendall, Roman and Connor when he does, is recognisable in a lot of family dynamics.
Humanising the characters makes them complex and full, it makes them compelling and not caricatures. And when there’s that much money, spoofing them and that world is far too easy.
It’s much harder to ask audiences to emotionally invest in people they should find abhorrent, maybe even ask them to back a winner when they’re all villains. That’s the genius of the show. Deeply flawed humans with every material advantage are far more dangerous than cartoon baddies.
And the economic, social and political structures that enable them, to allow them to “thrive” at the expense of everyone else, are even worse.
What’s coursing through Succession’s veins is the uncanny ability to tease the audience with all the riches – the helicopters, summer homes and intoxicating holiday spots – while casting it in a glaring, severe light.
Look how concentrated wealth and power exploits and corrupts, it’s whispering – and shouting.
Every rich person on Succession is condemned, not just the Roys. The Pierces, Sandy Furness, Lukas Matson, Josh Aaronson – none of them are the good guys,
Succession season four is coming March 27. Photo / HBO
Season two’s infamous “boar on the floor” game was inspired in part by Joseph Stalin and how he would hold dinner parties where he would get everyone drunk but abstain himself, taking advantage of everyone else’s vulnerable states to manipulate and emotionally abuse them.
Of course, bullying and abusive behaviour is not confined to the upper echelons in the same way that it’s not a marker of the lower class. It’s, unfortunately, rampant across all tiers, in homes, workplaces and especially in the town square of the internet.
But perhaps what’s more pernicious about what the Roys – and by extension, the world’s billionaires do – is that they have so much more in terms of resources and influence to be more injurious.
So, a regular person’s backyard drinking game becomes “boar on the floor” in a lush hunting lodge in Hungary. And the participants, victims even, then channel the abuse they’ve suffered back into the world, in the spheres where they hold sway over hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of other people’s livelihoods, votes and attitudes.
You wonder if Elon Musk ever had a Logan Roy figure in his life – and whether the formerly respected tech baron’s increasingly mad rantings and petty grievances could be traced back to that person.
Money is clearly not the silver bullet for happiness or even contentment, nor is obsessively yearning for it or worshipping those who have it. Just ask all those lotto winners who regretted ever striking it rich.
