"Succession" is back!

My favorite show of all time is entering its final season, and over the next ten weeks, I'm going to write about it.

Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, and Kieran Culkin in Succession | Image via HBO

Succession is my favorite television show of all time. I sometimes try to pretend that this is not the case: I’ll make the argument to myself that The Sopranos has the richer, more mysterious characters, or that The Wire has the the weightier, more substantially tragic sensibility to its season-long arcs. However much I try to make these cases to myself, I know that they just aren’t true. Succession is my favorite television show of all time. And over the next ten weeks, it will come to an end.

I’ve reviewed the occasional television series here on this blog, though I have put far less emphasis on that medium than I have on cinema. That’s by design. I’m much more of a movie person than I am a TV person, and though I try to keep up with both, there is just too much TV out there to consume. A single season of television is typically over ten hours long, and when you compare that to the standard two-hour movie experience—there’s just no contest. Writing in-depth reviews of a season of television is far more laborious than doing so for a movie, and as someone who struggles mightily to write a good article in a short period of time, I have, at least for the most part, chosen to write about the movies.

But, guys: Succession is my favorite show of all time. Created by comedy writer Jesse Armstrong, Succession is the tragicomic tale of the Roy family, a vulgar, bickering, backstabbing clan of shallow billionaires squabbling to gain control of their family-owned media corporation. Logan Roy (Brian Cox)—an octogenarian, Rupert Murdoch-esque patriarch—is the man at the top of the company and family hierarchy, consistently doling out lies and abuse to his four children. Those children are Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin), Siobhan “Shiv” (Sarah Snook), and Connor (Alan Ruck), each of them middle-aged silver-spooners with a penchant for placating their abusive CEO father. Also present are Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), Shiv’s husband, and “Cousin” Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun), both of whom struggle from lower power rungs than the Roy children.

Watching these characters scratch and struggle to the top with Jesse Armstrong’s signature brand of operatic profanity is but one of the show’s many pleasures, pleasures that have only grown more palpable over the course of the show’s first three seasons. Succession feels less a show borne of our present era of Peak TV than a relic from a slightly older time—specifically, that early-to-mid-2000s era that has often been referred to as “The Golden Age of Television.” During that era, writers pushed the boundary of television into far more complex and intricately serialized territory than the medium had ever seen, leading to rich character studies in shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men—the kinds of shows that you see showing up regularly on “Greatest TV Shows of All Time” lists.

In its fourth and final season, Succession feels in many ways like the culmination of (or perhaps a coda to) this transformative era in TV history. It has the production values, sophisticated serialization, and richness of character that you’d expect from a show of this kind, without any of established-IP blockbuster nonsense that leads to things like House of the Dragon or The Last of Us—good shows, but non-original ones. Succession, by contrast, is an original, creator-driven series that manages to be both entertaining and have something to say about the times we live in, becoming the rare instance of a show that genuinely earns the title of Prestige Television—that ineffable moniker which implies quality, elitism, and Serious Subject Matter in the same breath.

And I just love this show. It’s bad criticism to reduce everything down to saying “OH MY GOD IT’S JUST SO GOOD,” but: oh my god it’s just so good. I love watching the Roys and their toxic network of trickle-down abuse, from horrifying Boar-on-the-Floor setpieces to the beautiful rom-com bromance that is Tom and Greg, and I can’t wait for more. Armstrong and his team have proven more than capable over the past three seasons of delivering. Individual episodes that are themselves both wildly entertaining and emotionally devastating, continually building on top of one another to create tense, panic-attack finales that leave you reeling.

I have far more feelings than just these, and to better explain them, I’m going to try something new over the next ten weeks. I will be recapping and reviewing each episode of this show’s final season, adding my own two cents of critical fandom to internet discourse week by week. Being HBO’s current flagship drama series, episodes will be airing in the primetime Sunday night slot (the season premiere airs in a little less than two hours), so I’ll be trying to publish my written reviews by the following Tuesday. (If I’m doing really well, you might even get them by Monday—who knows!)

It’s something of a cliché, but I do genuinely feel as though we are living through a moment of cultural history with this show, and I want to be a part of it. Rather than sit back, I am going to participate in recap culture through this tiny little blogging venture that I have come to love. If you’re a fan of Succession, and will be watching this final season with any inkling of the hype that I have, then I invite you to join me here on Airplane Mode for one final go of the Roys and all their self-destructive glory. I have never been more excited for family toxicity than I have today.