‘Succession’ Is Already a Mount Rushmore Show—Whatever Happens in the Finale

Prior to the beginning of its final season, HBO’s Succession was lauded as the latest in a long line of iconic television shows, spearheading the new generation of TV’s golden era. It was looked at as a natural successor— if you will— to other sublime shows of the last two-plus decades (The Sopranos, The Wire, and Breaking Bad, among others).

Like other great shows, Succession eclipses the realm of a regular drama, where a focus on action-based plots take a backseat to epic dialogue, emotional turmoil, and the sad absurdity of the human condition. It’s more of a Greek tragedy or a Shakespeare play than its drama contemporaries, camouflaged by the struggle for a successor in a media empire. For every classic plot twist or suspenseful moment you might see in a show like Lost or M*A*S*H*, there’s ten several-minute monologues that use words like “corpuscles” and “geysers.”

A commonality in all of these shows is also elite writing. We root for murderous hit men, DEA agents and Donald Trump Jr.-inspired nepo babies, not because we like them but because good writing makes us feel things and sympathize with these characters on a flawed, human level. As it turns out, dramatic lifestyles provide a wonderful canvas for telling the story of life as we know it, on a level that makes sense and resonates with us.

Read more at The Daily Beast.