Is Succession Stuck in a Rut?

If the heyday of the antihero shows proved anything, it’s that there’s a built-in trap when it comes to shows about bad people. So in practice, the recipients of our sympathies are those we actually spend time with: Tom, for instance, who has been treated with such brutal and impatient indifference by Shiv, and whose anxiety about his imminent incarceration is so relatable, that it becomes easy to forget that he favored using underlings as “human furniture.” Tom benefits from this impressionistic moral calculus by being one of the few characters we’ve seen repeatedly make offers that cost him dearly without demanding anything in return; his decision to let Greg hang his crimes on him in his capacity as Waystar-Royco’s “Christmas tree” is the latest and most moving instance of how the oppressive quid pro quos that drive everyone else can be rejected. It’s who, in any given circumstance, will reject the inhumane, soul-shredding logic of ruthless corporate chess—the logic of the “play”—and act out of sincere feeling or genuine belief. I’ve complained, for instance, that Shiv’s decision in the Season 2 finale to beg her father to spare Tom from prison—a truly radical moment for her character that amounted to potentially giving up any hope of becoming CEO, given her dad’s admiration for “killers”—doesn’t even seem to have happened in this version of Succession, even though the season picks up almost immediately after she made the self-sacrificing request. I’d suggest that this is all a little bit dramatically risky because stakes need to be at least somewhat credible to keep viewers engaged, and Succession’s stakes are so shifty that they’re approaching boy-who-cries-wolf territory.