Succession is essentially a game of Monopoly

The Atlantic

"If Season 1 was Kendall’s season and Season 2 was Shiv’s turn as heir-apparent to the Waystar Royco fortune, Season 3 seemed to be Roman. He was the one who was closest to his father," says Sophie Gilbert. "But after the well-crafted and beautiful Season 2, I found Season 3 frustrating through the first seven hours just because it seemed like nothing was happening. But what I’ve come to realize after the finale’s Monopoly-board scene is that this show is essentially a game of Monopoly. We’re just going round and round the board. People go up and people go down, and people go to jail and people come out. It’s the perfect metaphor for what this show is trying to do. And I do still kind of hate that they leave all the great emotional drama and pathos to the finale every single season. But at the same time, it’s so powerful when it comes. Kendall is one of the great TV characters of all time—and we can talk more about Jeremy Strong and his Method later—but, to me, he is the bloodied, beating heart of the show. And at the end of the penultimate episode, when Kendall seemed to sink into his pool lounger and possibly drown, I was fascinated by the idea of what that kind of disruption might do to the show. How his death might realign in the sort of drama that it would introduce. And then ultimately, the show feinted away from that."

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• Succession and Jesse Armsrong's previous British series Peep Show together have a creeping, overarching worldview: "Each sets its characters in looping environments where it’s rare for them to face lasting consequences," says Alex Norcia, pointing to similarities to Armstrong's Peep Show, which ran for nine seasons between 2003 and 2015. "Instead, they are constantly humiliated by their own desires — and then, even more so, by the fulfillment of those desires." Norcia adds: "What makes Succession a variety of sitcom is the way it, too, relishes this vision of the afterlife. The Roy children’s battle for status mostly immiserates them, yet they can’t abandon it. Each time they help save the family empire, their father lambastes or humiliates them for their trouble. Even Logan’s death scares repeat: It’s as if he literally can’t perish, as if hell cannot exist without the devil. As the show’s third season ended, we saw his children scramble once again to maintain family control of the company — to remain in the very cycle they’ve all toyed with escaping. They failed. But can there be much doubt that the situation will reset, as it has in the past, just as surely as a sitcom character’s new adventure will resolve itself in 30 minutes, leaving things right where they began? In Armstrong’s hands, character flaws are not simply quirks to be blithely repeated for our amusement. They are anchors that are constantly degrading the characters’ own lives. Peep Show let that degradation sit, awkwardly and hilariously, on the screen. Succession finds the tragedy at the heart of the sitcom form, the structure whose characters can never break free of it."
• Season 3 finale's Kendall-Roman-Shiv scene has been compared to Renaissance art: "Sunday’s twist ending isn’t the moment that seemed to resonate most with fans," says Paula Mejía. "Instead, it was an intimate frame depicting three Roy siblings, Roman (Kieran Culkin), Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Shiv (Sarah Snook), united in their misery as it dawns on them that their father really is selling their birthright. In the scene, they sheepishly attempt to comfort one another as their worlds unravel. This unusual intimacy is brought into sharp relief by the blistering midday sun hovering above them, the angles of a rectangular building that frames their figures, and the low, wide-angle perspective. The camera lingers for a discomfiting few seconds while the three of them silently fall apart together. It’s as though we’re huddled in the fetal position next to them. The scene is a notable departure for Succession, a show frequently shot at eye level and in an observational style, often at a remove." As director Mark Mylod explains, "we have a very specific role that the camera plays, which is, for the most part, a combination of being as invisible as possible whilst at the same time helping sell the idea that the camera is barely keeping up with the events that are out of our control. And we have to document them and capture them on the fly, with all the imperfections that go with that.” Although the dynamics in this particular scene played out spontaneously among the three actors, the intention behind it involved using “the location so that (Shiv) could effectively walk upstage, remain in the shot, and come back and grow into the three-shot again,” says Mylod. “There was an element of geometry to that.”
• Is Jeremy Strong a bad art friend?: "The actor, acclaimed for his Emmy-winning role as Kendall Roy, the tragic, brooding golden-boy-turned-black-sheep of the family in HBO’s drama Succession, has flown relatively under the radar as himself — until recently," says Aja Romano. "Earlier this month, a well-timed New Yorker profile of the actor went viral. In it, writer Michael Schulman portrayed the actor as mirroring his character’s intensity and self-centered focus in real life. Highlights include the time he nearly bankrupted a Yale theatre club in order to fete Al Pacino, famous friends (like Matthew McConaughey) calling Schulman for character references at Strong’s request, his stint following Daniel Day-Lewis around like a puppy, his penchant for quoting philosophers, and the repeated implication that Strong is the only Succession actor who doesn’t get that the show is a dark comedy. The profile garnered the kind of reaction you’d expect: Social media users boggled at Strong’s behavior, especially what Schulman depicts as his pretentious, pseudo-method-acting process, which includes everything from spontaneous script ad-libs to refusing to rehearse with his scene partners in advance. While some embraced Strong’s affectations, many online seemed to feel that Strong’s all-or-nothing personality would be insufferable to have to deal with on a regular basis, on-set or off, and that his behavior toward colleagues was particularly egregious. The conversation was especially fierce on Twitter — as in 'Jeremy Strong' trended on the platform for a full week — which is somewhat fitting, given that Succession seems to be in a constant dialogue with the kind of overtly performative viewers who are, like Kendall, in New York media and on Twitter, and obsessed with both. But if the worst thing that anyone can say about a guy is that he’s really intense, or maybe even annoying, perhaps that’s not worth the extended social media critique that Schulman’s profile generated. The backlash raises a question: Is “acting normal” something we really want from artists? Is there really no room for eccentricity?"
• How director Mark Mylod turned the Italian countryside into the Roys’ personal hellscape: "It starts from the writing," he says. "The road map emerges from the writers’ room. And therefore, obviously, we know where the season starts. We made the choice a long time ago that we would begin the story of season three moments after season two ended. And we knew that we would build to a point where Matthew (Macfadyen’s) character, Tom, betrayed Shiv. And that Kendall’s efforts to bring the siblings together in episode two would fail. And that through this extraordinary arc, eventually he would — or rather Shiv would — actually bring the siblings together. Despite that terrible betrayal of Shiv by Tom, you could argue that, in a way, she had that coming because she’s treated Tom so badly. Being double-crossed by her parents, the brutality of that … it’s all just a lot. Oddly, I come out of the season finale not quite full of hope but with hope. Because for the first time, I think, in many years, the siblings are genuinely united. They understand family in a positive sense."