“It's a heartless show, and that is maybe what I hate the most about it.”

I hate Succession.

obviously. ty HBO

I know I’m supposed to like Succession. There’s this prevailing whiff of compulsory appeal that radiates from every scene — it’s not quite desperate, but it is unrelenting. It’s thirsty, this burning desire to be adored like a passive god. It’s a bit cheap, like an Instagram post of a slice of trendy pizza, where the pepperoni is expertly placed just so in order to trigger an all-too-predictable craving. I know I’m supposed to like it, but I just don’t really fucking like it. 

Here’s the thing. I didn’t watch Succession  when everyone else was watching it, not because I was too good for it, but because I was busy watching Monk for the 700th time in a row. (I like Monk more than I enjoyed Succession. I’m not ashamed of telling anyone that, but I am afraid of telling everyone that). I waited until the spring of 2024 – a season of new growth and opportunity – to watch Succession for the first time, after the sun had set on the Roy family and the live reacts on Twitter stopped hitting.

Succession is fine if you just want to watch TV for the meme fodder. It’s like if the self-identification ethos of  “she’s just like me fr” were struck by lightning and turned into a real boy. The show is primarily an elaborate comedy showcase, and that’s fine, I guess, if you don’t know about YouTube compilations of Veep insults.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; Amidst its four season-run, Succession It offered one of those rare cultural moments where, if you logged onto the right social media platform at the right time, it would change your life.

I wanted to really like it. After all, you’ve got Alan Ruck, the good Culkin and Jeremy Strong going full Daniel Day-Lewis just to play a man who seems like he tried to get verified on the Jeremy Renner App. I get that they’re playing all bad people, and they all hate each other, that this is a show about wealthy white people you’re not supposed to like. It’s a show about craving the meat of the rich — do you hate them while also secretly aspiring to be like them? Lifestyle content as old as time!  

But if you cut out the participatory fun of the buzz and fandom, there’s simply not much left. How anyone watched that first episode and decided that this was the thing we were going to turn into a cultural movement is beyond me. (There’s this idea of the laundry test: how long will it take you to start thinking about the laundry while reading, watching or engaging in any given thing? Like ten minutes into the pilot, I actively started to think about folding socks). As for the rest of its run, it only ever felt exceptionally…fine? 

I kept waiting for it to hit, and then I realized I was just waiting to see the context for memes I half-remembered get filled in (a problem shared by the Barbie movie, another property that turned out to be overwhelmingly just fine). More people need to admit that this is the central viewing experience of Succession: you were either waiting for a good moment to screen grab and turn into a meme, or you are now watching to understand the deeper meme lore.  No one actually talks to each other in this show, every sentence is delivered like a bitter slap in the face. Oh, we’re not supposed to like any of these people? Yeah, I think I got that. 

There’s something in the supposedly groundbreaking portrayal of flawed people who exist in dioramas of privilege that ultimately rings hollow. Succession banks on pointing out the well-trod irony of an upper class that enjoys unbelievable privilege while remaining no more interesting because of it. Everyone is flawed and damaged and broken and hurting and lashing out, loudly announcing every slap. Everyone wants something, but we never really know why, and we’re not really supposed to ask, because wanting more wealth and wanting more everything is the whole point of already having everything. Don’t you get it? I get it. I get it. I just fucking don’t like it. 

I won’t  question why Succession gets all the praise that many other shows deserve (cough, media groupthink, cough), but there are far better pieces of culture giving us portrayals of flawed and imperfect people who don’t all sit around in “quiet luxury-coded” spaces that actually just look like upscaled IKEA showrooms.” I’m sure that, by the end of the show, the various members of the Roy family feel a tiny bit more  fleshed out and real. I just never got there, because I couldn’t bring myself to care!

It's a heartless show, and that is maybe what I hate the most about it. It’s a piñata spree all the way down; once you scrape all the jokes off, it’s clear that Succession never feels the need to  question what it might mean to need something beyond hollow validation and meaningless wealth. Like its characters, the show is so self-hating that it gets tedious, fast. I hate it because I’m supposed to like this, but it’s just not actually interesting enough to keep my mind off the laundry. 

—Kerry Castellabate 

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