Succession

 I came late to HBO's Succession, a melodrama about a dysfunctional family of multi-billionaire siblings scheming against one another with respect to the titular transfer of control over a multi-media empire from their elderly father Logan to the second generation.  (It's rumored that the series is based on conniving heirs to Rupert Murdoch and his sinister enterprises, including Fox News.)  The premise of the show seems influenced old family TV melodramas like Dallas, although there's a post-modern infusion of snark that makes the series also seem somewhat similar to insult-comedies like Veep.  The program is in its fourth iteration and has just aired its "finale", which is not so much an ending as a to-be-continued tease.  I didn't watch the first two seasons of Succession and picked up the show mid-stream in its third series. The show has engaging actors and is well-performed and some of the situations are quite compelling -- it is sufficiently entertaining for me to enjoy watching each episode, programs that I air in the old way, waiting until Sunday evening at 8:00 pm for my weekly appointment with the show.  Succession is highly regarded critically and has many things to recommend it.  Furthermore, it's well-written (if highly repetitious) on a line-by-line basis.  But, in general, the show is very sloppy, haphazardly plotted, ridiculous, and not nearly as smart as it pretends to be:  the series is shallow, as befits a comedy-drama about a scheming dynasty of oligarchs and haplessly cynical.  When I first began watching the show, I understood the characters and their motivations, but couldn't grasp the plot -- I couldn't figure why events were occurring and what they meant.  I just assumed that this was because I had entered the action in media res and didn't know the backstory.  But this feeling of arriving late to the party has persisted now through 15 episodes and I have to conclude that my sense of discomfiture arises from the poorly designed and wholly arbitrary plot.  The reason that the show doesn't make much sense in its longer narrative arcs is that the narrative isn't well designed and information that the viewer should possess is simply never supplied.  This isn't a modernist bow toward ambiguity and indeterminacy, but, rather, simple incompetence -- the writers don't bother to provide sufficient establishing information for the convoluted narrative involving corporate governances, stock options, proxy fights and mergers and acquisitions.  In fact, the show has contempt for its audience in this regard -- it's as if the writers have concluded that the viewers are too dim-witted to be able to understand the legal machinations on offer and so explicative information is simply not provided.  In fact, the audience is spared this sort of information because presumably the writers don't understand these subjects either.

In the Fourth Series, Kendall, the eldest of three full-blood siblings -- they have an older half-brother from another mother who is a politician -- has turned against the family enterprise, a wide-ranging empire of businesses that includes a cruise lines.  Apparently, although this is never fully explained, the family is somehow complicit with sexual harassment of cruise-line staff and, indeed, may have condoned a murder.  Kendall cooperates with the Department of Justice and provides evidence as to the business enterprises wrongdoing.  This is in the context of longstanding feud between the mentally unstable Kendall and his father, Logan, the vicious and ruthless patriarch of the clan who keeps teasing his retirement from the business but refuses to make his exit.  (The overarching plot of the series is that Logan forms tentative alliances with each of his three children with his second wife -- Kendall, Shiv, and Roman.  Then, he pits the kids against themselves by promoting one of them as a favor and implying that this child will take over the business.  The strategy operates on the principle of "divide and conquer" and keeps the ambitious, emotionally damaged siblings fighting among themselves so that they are unable to oust their father from his throne.)  The family panics about Kendall's revelations and schemes to sacrifice a couple of superfluous kin to the feds -- Shiv's husband, Tom, who is handsome doofus, is offered to the prosecutors with the idea that he will be sent to jail to divert the authorities from making claims against the others.  (This cynical scheme expands to implicate Greg, a cousin, who is also a doofus and fall-guy -- if need be the family will send him to jail as well.)  The federal prosecution, after serving as the motivation for about four episodes, simply fizzles out.  The scriptwriters have the ultimate deus ex machina on hand -- Logan is a kingmaker and his right-wing media empire, a surrogate for Fox, controls the White House and can, apparently, demand favors at will.  But this deus ex machina basically means that no prosecutions will ever succeed and no wrongdoing can be punished -- thereby, rendering weirdly inert and nugatory acres of narrative.  Kendall is bipolar apparentlynd sponsors a lavish utterly over-the-top birthday party for himself.  He's planning to sing and guests enter the gala through a pink tube that is supposed to represent his mother's birth canal; there's a bower-like corridor where people walk past flunkeys hiding in the faux foliage to compliment the passers-by.  The party doesn't buy Kendall happiness; his father sends an insulting card and Kendall has a nervous breakdown.  Previously, Logan has toyed with the possibility of a merger with another oligarch, a guy with a huge mansion on an island near Cape Cod.   Before the falling out with Kendall, Logan helicoptered to the island, engaged in some negotiations -- these sorts of oligarchs basically just insult one another; this is imagined by the scriptwriters to be their style of negotiation.  Logan, whose health is failing, collapses during a long walk in the dunes, seemingly engineered by the equally nasty oligarch to put stress on the elderly patriarch. (He is, of course, too tough to acknowledge his physical limitations -- various characters assert that the old man, well into his eighties, is having sex with his twenty-year old assistant and even plotting to have a child with her.)   When the deal with the Cape Cod billionaire collapses, Logan and Roman, who is now the old man's favorite, explore a deal with a Silicon Valley internet mogul, amusingly played by the ultra laconic Alexanders Skarsgaard.  This tycoon lives on Lake Como or some place in the Alps.  After some contentious discussions, again basically just exchanges of profane insults, the internet tycoon rebuffs Logan and Roman's advance.  Films about the ultra-wealthy always feature set-pieces in which a family gathering exposes tensions in the clan and works out plot points.  (The progenitor of this narrative device is the big ballroom sequence in Visconti's The Leopard.)  All the characters arrive at a lavish estate in Tuscany for the wedding of Logan's second wife, now in her early seventies, to a nursing home magnate from London.  Kendall, who is ostracized, has a breakdown and, ambiguously, attempts suicide.  Logan, who has been favoring Roman, cuts him off cold when it is revealed that this son has been sending "dick pics" to one of the company's highest ranking female executives -- also a co-conspirator with Roman in previous efforts to unseat the old man.  When it becomes known that Logan is conspiring to sell the empire to the Internet tycoon, and, about to cut the kids out of the succession, finally, the three siblings form an alliance (they have been sniping at one another previously) to oust the old man.  They are convinced that if they form a united front they can seize the company.  They are sure that this can be accomplished and hurry by limousine to Logan's Tuscan mansion to confront him.  But Logan works some obscure maneuver, something involving proxy votes or something with his ex-wife who is getting married a few pictureseque miles away, and the kids are thwarted again.  (Thereby, setting up Season Five in which the same events will, no doubt, be reiterated -- that is, a palace coup planned by the siblngs but than repelled by the wily Logan.)  

None of this is presented in a way that makes any sense.  The siblings are convinced that they can oust Logan until, suddenly, there's a phone call or a text message and the whole putsch falls apart in the course of 30 seconds of frantic dialogue.  The device for thwarting the siblings is never adequately explained or foreshadowed in the slightest.  Stated impolitely, the script writers have just pulled this out of their ass to keep the narrative balls juggled by the plot in the air.  We have no idea what happened or why. (It seems to have something to do with equity in the family's business held by Logan's ex-wife who has just been married when the palace putsch is attempted.  Similarly, Kendall has a spectacular breakdown, squatting in the dust and crying that he has killed a kid.  We have no idea what he is talking about although the characters seem fully informed.  Succession is an example of Tv that doesn't stand on its own -- the show has an official podcast that presumably explains to disgruntled viewers exactly what happened in this week's episode.  The show has a very interesting cast, but the players are, mostly, one-trick ponies -- the siblings petulantly quarrel and make demands on their father which he rebuffs with cruel and obscene retorts.  The siblings, then, mimic that they are wounded by their father's selfishness, but, nonetheless, continue to scramble to seek his favor.  The show's similarity to Veep is that everyone is wholly self-absorbed, egotistical, and that the dialogue is clogged with ornate insults and continuous profanity -- some of this stuff is witty, but it becomes wearying in the long-run.  There's lots of magnificent stuff in the series, spectacular manor houses and heli-pads, drone shots over exotic resorts and grand mansions in Italy and the Alps and the Croatian Riviera.  The lawyers' offices and posh conference rooms all are accurately observed and everything has the specious warrant of veracity as to the way people dress and how they arrange their houses and offices suites.  But the subject matter is thin to the point of vanishing -- none of the characters has any substance beyond what we observe as to their contentious relationship with the old man.   Everything reduces ultimately to a competition for the favor of a vicious lout a bit like Donald Trump, although infinitely richer and more clever.  Brian Cox snarls effectively as the patriarch, but, he seems rather frail (something the TV show can't conceal) and his bark seems far worse than his capability to bite.  Nonetheless, the show has fantastic production values and is compelling, even though the plot is pure "situation comedy" -- that is, just the same thing over and over again.  And the theme music is weirdly compelling, a sort of forlorn lurching waltz that can be restyled like the plot into a seemingly infinite series of variations, but also, sounds the same.