Its media critique bears consideration, but there’s more to the show than that.
Its media critique bears consideration, but there’s more to the show than that.
O n Sunday night, the hit drama/dark comedy Succession returned to the small screen for its brilliant, feel-bad finale. Throughout its five-year, 39-episode run, the series has woven together a compelling tale of power, family, and media manipulation that left no viewer unscathed. Delivered through the lens of the fictional Roy family, owners of the global media and hospitality conglomerate Waystar Royco, the show chronicles their ruthless power struggles, exposing the underbelly of their own media world. While the show’s characters and plot are fabulistic, the writers clearly drew inspiration from Rupert Murdoch and his family, resulting in an unflattering portrait of right-wing media and specifically the show’s Fox News equivalent, ATN. In part for this reason, the show has become the darling of the mainstream press.
However, despite its inherent trolling, we shouldn’t dismiss Succession as an oversimplified critique of conservatism in America. There was much more to this show. Take the story of Kendall Roy, the once-favorite son of family patriarch Logan Roy, a character whose journey is marked by ambition, hubris, and a tragic quest for validation. Kendall’s story — his struggle for power, eventual downfall, and embrace of an identity he could never truly claim — transcends the political. It is a Shakespearean tragedy of a man striving for a vision of success that will always elude him.
To watch Succession is to plunge into the raw, often unsettling interplay between media and high politics. It was invigorating.
As for its commentary about conservative media, the series does force the viewer to consider some uncomfortable realities. Much as the fictional Roy empire spins narratives to maintain power, we’ve seen some in conservative media perpetuate the baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. As conservatives, we pride ourselves on our commitment to truth, liberty, and the power of individual thought, on the market of ideas unfiltered by censorship. Yet Succession raises a disconcerting paradox — have some of the outlets that were built to extricate conservatives from the information echo chamber of the mainstream media undermined these values?
It being entertainment, however, the show simplifies the complex nature of political decision-making into a game of chess, in which a powerful ruling elite manipulates the board at will. The political moment in which we find ourselves remains a far cry from this cynical depiction. If anything, the democratization of information over the last few decades has made our politics more egalitarian — in some ways more toxic, too.
Donald Trump’s rise to victory in 2016, aided not just by the attention of Fox and other mainstream networks but by a groundswell of popular support in the primaries that ignored the disdain heaped on the candidate by those in power, challenges the Succession-favored notion that a select few control the narrative. The show’s media critique can and should be applied across the political spectrum as well. Succession reveals how narratives can be crafted, spun, and sold to serve vested interests; ATN/Fox does not have a monopoly on that practice.
Yet for the viewer, including those of us who are right-of-center, the series should challenge us to question, to scrutinize, to seek out diverse sources of information, and to hold those who deliver our news to high standards. To demand better, for instance, than the morally malleable Tom Wambsgans.