![]() ![]() Kendall remains trapped within a narrative of his own creation, psychologically devastated in sight of his personal Everest. Unlike his Peep Show creations, the Roy family has a clear cut chance to break the cycle that returns them to their issues. Jesse Armstrong has form for leaving viewers to observe his characters squirming on the head of a pin. We are left to delight in the ambiguities of Succession’s ending. Desire is stimulated by what we cannot quite possess. Shiv is already gone, her deciding vote already placed and our pleasures are cut off mid-flight.īut this suspension, as Freud might observe, is what we secretly enjoy the most. Instead, we swoop in during the aftermath and observe vultures pecking the carrion. Succession neatly avoided this by not showing the moment of Shiv’s betrayal in order to make it into a replacement fantasy. Overly neat endings risk revealing the world within television shows as utopias. Jeremy Strong as Kendall in the closing scene of Succession. The expert crafting toward Kendall’s success in these final minutes, despite his complicity and weakness, fed such a fantasy. Game of Thrones wanted justice for “the North”, The Wire wanted good police. ![]() ![]() The tide quickly turned, however, and viewers squirmed, but by now we’re used to the discomfort.Ĭomplex TV shows with large ensembles often favour a general “team” which adjoins the shared fantasy between viewer and protagonist. Kendall would return to the site of his frequent humiliation to conquer.Įven the final boardroom sequence replicated this as the first three votes were in Kendall’s favour. A final moment of ecstasy was neatly ordained. Greater weight, particularly heading toward the show’s conclusion, had been placed on restoring unity between the Roy siblings. The reconciliation of the Roy siblings in Barbados – leading to Shiv and Roman (Kieran Culkin) anointing Kendall with “ a meal fit for a king” and the shared observation of their father on video in a rare moment of lightness – realigns the trio and suggests the beginning of recognition of their own traumatic past. In the final episode, there is extended pleasure before the pain. The Roy siblings after losing their father. For example, the episode of Logan’s death or that of the Wisconsin call on election night.Įxploring these moments between moments and stretching them out to transmit their texture and feeling, has increasingly become part of complex television like Succession. Part of the success of the fourth and final series of Succession has been the way in which it explores paroxysm (sudden flurries of activity and emotion) while the narrative is paused at uncertain moments. If we expected it, then why did it still affect us? And if the Roys are all so horrible, why are we so conflicted? Moments between moments Viewers are increasingly media literate and savvy. This betrayal has been seeded, foreshadowed and returned to throughout the fourth series and yet its eventuality still had the power to paralyse. And yet Shiv’s (Sarah Snook) boardroom betrayal of her apparently CEO-elect brother Kendall in his moment of triumph was chilling to watch. In oscillating between alliance and discord, Succession has conditioned viewers to expect the worst outcome possible for the Roy siblings at any given moment. Throughout its run, Succession has offered an intensified version of this idea. ![]() The Roy siblings with their mother, Caroline. ![]()
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