Succession's drop-off in emotional substance is a major miscalculation in Season 3

Los Angeles Times

According to Charles McNulty, "Shakespeare isn’t the only playwright shaping the new season of Succession. David Mamet has emerged as a rival god in the writers room. A strong current of cynical humor has allowed the show to toggle between genres from its inception, but the series has gone into Glengarry Glen Ross overdrive since returning from the extended COVID-19 pandemic break." He adds: "The hyperactive camerawork of the first episode works to keep pace with a script that’s written in the bing-bang-boom rhythm of a Mamet play, where the joke’s on everyone. The banter mucks around as happily in the psychological mud as it does in the corporate slime. Implicit is the notion that the game is only as absurd as its players. Mamet’s savage comedy is closer to the ethos of our Trumpian age, and Succession rubs our noses in what we’ve become. What looks like an evening soap opera often behaves like a feral satire. That’s always been part of the fun, but so far this season the ruthless amusement has been coming at the expense of a deeper involvement. Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy contains behavior far more depraved than anything dreamt of in Mamet’s philosophy. But the vision of humanity in King Lear is far more capacious than the jaded worldview pervading Glengarry Glen Ross. Darkness is visible only because of the light that refuses to be snuffed out."

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