Succession review, Episode 301, “Secession”

Succession, HBO’s heir apparent to Game of Thrones and the current best show on TV, has returned for a third season. “Secession” picks up right where the season 2 finale left off, with Kendall Roy (Emmy winner Jeremy Strong) having outed his father Logan Roy (Brian Cox) as having been complicit in a series of scandals that rocked his mega-powerful media company, Waystar Royco.

So it’s Kendall vs everyone else, at least for now; who knows what twists and turns the narrative will take before we reach the end? It’s possible that Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook) has already seceded (title alert) and gone over to Team Kendall. What’s already clear is that the journey is going to be worth watching, because she show is as sharp and incisive in its third season as it was in its first two.

Why Succession is the best show on TV

Up top I said that Succession was the best show on TV. What makes it worthy of that praise? It’s not like the show does anything particularly new; it’s just that everything it does do it does really really well, starting with the story.

Have you ever heard of a theater company mounting some Shakespeare play but setting it in modern times, and then you roll your eyes? Like Hamlet but set in modern-day New York City or something? Succession is kind of the palatable version of that. Its cast of ultra-wealthy power players is up to the minute — Waystar Royco is a pretty blatant stand-in for Fox News, and the Roys a mirror of the Murdoch family — but they’re dealing with some very classic themes: ambition, greed, rivalry and instability.

Kendall is the poster child for that last one. Can this drug addicted manslaughter dodger really take down his father and take control of Waystar? On paper the answer is no. Shiv is right when she says he’s not “on the level,” but maybe parting ways with his family has straightened him out. Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) is in his corner, but that doesn’t count for much; he’s too busy trying (and failing) to summarize the entire internet to be of much use.

Then again, he does manage to get the Gloria Allred-like celebrity attorney Lisa Arthur (Sanaa Lathan) on his side, much to Shiv’s chagrin. And Kendall is more wily than he looks; he’s unpredictable, which means he could end up on top just as easily as he could crash and burn.

Meanwhile, the rivalries within Team Logan are almost as interesting as the one between Teams Logan and Kendall. With public pressure on him mounting, Logan decides to step back from the company a bit and appoint someone else interim CEO, with him behind the scenes pulling the strings. Watching the various parties scramble for the position is classic Succession. With help from her eternally-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place husband Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), the ambitious Shiv makes a beeline for it, but is passed over when she fails to secure Lisa Arthur’s services for the company. The smarmy Roman Roy (an eternally smirking Kieran Culkin) also wants it, and increasingly looks like he’s smart enough to actually handle it. But even though Roman is growing, he may not be ready to captain his own ship yet, hence why he pushes for Waystar general counsel Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) to get the job.

And she gets it, mostly by keeping her head down, doing her job, and “avoiding mess,” as she tells Roman. Gerri may be the smartest character on the show, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her walk away in control of the company when all is said and done.

Succession is HBO’s true successor to Game of Thrones

That circles back to something else I said about Succession up top: that it’s HBO’s heir apparent to Game of Thrones. Yes, the network has House of the Dragon on the way, and I’m excited for that, but just read back through this episode summary: does the story of powerful people jockeying against each other for position and power sound familiar? It’s Game of Thrones minus the dragons and zombies, and that’s something I can get behind.

Succession also has the added layer of being a commentary on our specific age of untouchable billionaires playing their games while the rest of us work to carve out what happiness we can. It’s notable that although Waystar Royco is a conservative media company, the show isn’t concerned with any of the political rhetoric it’s espousing; the series keeps its eyes on what matters: the money and the people vying to control it. On Succession, that’s all that really counts, which cuts right to the heart of our current political moment better than any polemic against this or that side could.

It’s war. F**k off.

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