‘Succession’ review: Season 3 has no time for the human fallout for non-billionaires, but the show never did

I admire HBO’s “Succession” enormously, let’s get that out of the way. It’s exceedingly well-made, visually specific and brilliantly cast with an incredible musical score. And if you are powerless to resist the vicarious thrill of being inside these exclusive spaces that the show occupies — the private planes and penthouse apartments and luxury suites — well, there’s nothing wrong with that. My issue with “Succession” (and I have a few) is that it has noticeably little to offer beyond these aesthetic qualities. It is a gorgeously made box with nothing inside.

Shouldn’t we want more from this portrait of a modern day robber baron grasping at the dying light of his reign as his blundering offspring clamber for position and a pat on the head? “Succession” isn’t glamorizing the brutal elitists of the world — there’s no mistaking showrunner Jesse Armstrong’s jabs; these are deeply unhappy people! — and of course they would be oblivious to the harm their petty, ego-driven actions have on anyone lower on the food chain. But the show mirrors that disinterest as well, and that’s what leaves me feeling so empty episode after episode.

Led by billionaire media oligarch Logan Roy, the members of this family — collectively and individually — are forever toggling between defensive and offensive postures. The space between offers only apathy and boredom. This is how they connect with the world, but also with one another. There is no letting your guard down, ever, and you’re a sucker if you do. That truism continues in Season 3, with family wild-card Kendall attempting once again to take down the big man himself, while his three siblings — Connor, Shiv and Roman — scramble to figure out their play: Stick with the devil they know, or do the unthinkable and align with their brother to defang dear old dad and put an end his power games once and for all?

Last week, someone emailed me to say, more or less, that TV and film don’t need to comment on anything. That’s true. And there’s nothing stopping you from engaging (or rather, not engaging) with “Succession” this way. But stories can, and in my view should, be many things at once — stand-alone entertainment and a reflection of how we think about the world around us. Sorting through these ideas only makes for a richer viewing experience, and if you’re uncomfortable with that, I don’t know what to tell you. But the people who make these stories — the writers, the actors, everyone — most assuredly talk about their work as if it has meaning. Why wouldn’t we, as audiences, take that as seriously as they do?

“Succession” is fundamentally a story of the Roys’ dysfunction, which is predicated on undermining anyone in their path (including one another) but really only as it pertains to Waystar Royco, the fictional conglomerate at the show’s center. The company has always been Logan’s source of power, as well as the source of his mercurial moods and insecurities. But it is also the mechanism by which he gives — and his children receive — his love and this dynamic has turned his sons and daughter into self-sabotaging emotional incompetents who he alternately rejects or relies on, depending on the day. The joke of “Succession” is that the great man can’t actually organize a plan of succession without doubting himself, or somehow taking it personally that this hunk of dirt we call Earth will keep spinning once he’s dead and gone. Who wants some therapy!

The stooges in their orbit are just that, hangers-on who are bit players in the Roy Family Drama, and this isn’t a complaint about the actors, who are terrific — Matthew Macfadyen plays the sweaty married-in status of Shiv’s husband with an otherworldly level of scary comedy — but an observation about whose stories the show is even curious to explore. Sanaa Lathan joins the ensemble this season as an attorney working to advance one family member’s agenda, but the show treats her presence as little more than a blip. She’s just passing through, her private thoughts and motivations left unexplored by the show’s writers. “Succession” is intentionally insular, a hothouse of damaged people stuck in a trap of their own making, so naturally their worries and fears are all that matters. This is whiteness at work. But Armstrong & Co. rarely if ever dig into the ramifications of that. A truly disturbing scandal threatens to take the company down — there are human victims here — and not only is this of no interest to the Roys (duh), it’s of no interest to the show, which omits any complex depiction of the fallout on the non-billionaire side of things. It’s all so airless.

The performances are what make “Succession” sing, and also what distract you from its shortcomings. Brian Cox roots Logan Roy in a roiling bombast, but also finds all kinds of wonderful subtleties in this overbearing archetype. By contrast, Kendall’s awkward intensity in the hands of a singular actor like Jeremy Strong makes him a riveting figure. He also feels like the most realized character on the show. There’s a terrific scene where he and Logan stand in silence, side by side, wearing identical black baseball caps and that quiet moment of discomfort says more about their relationship than maybe any other scene in the show’s history. No one in this family knows how to talk to one another.

That reality is most obvious when it comes to Shiv and Roman. Despite terrific work from Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin, “Succession” gets far less mileage from the way these two are conceived and written. Their obnoxiousness is the point, to be sure. Every word out of their mouths is a sarcastic, rhetorical performance and I would argue this makes sense; these are broken human beings whose maladaptive coping strategies — mock before you are mocked yourself — work pretty well if you’re the scion of a billionaire surrounded by people hoping for a piece of the action. These are fundamentally ridiculous people with legitimate grievances and yet they portray such a limited scope of emotional responses. Strike and deflect; strike and deflect. The personalities of all the Roy children evolved to survive their father’s persistent disappointment. For Roman and Shiv, that manifests itself outward as a snobby-snarky projection of their insecurities. For Kendall, it’s more inward. For Connor (a deceptively cunning performance by Alan Ruck), it’s a flailing but self-assured incompetence that comes with entitlement.

When I see praise for the show, there’s often a focus on the crass verbosity that is the Roy family stock in trade, to the point where it feels like they gave everyone on the show the same linguistic personality. On one hand, it’s a canny thematic throughline — wealth doesn’t equal class, it doesn’t even equal good manners, it just means you can move through life without anyone giving you what for about your behavior or the garbage coming out of your mouth. It takes on a distinctly Cool Girl dimension coming from someone like Shiv, who is indeed a victim of sexism in her own family, but who also couldn’t give a toss about actual liberation, for herself or anybody else. Ultimately, “Succession’s” buffet of uniquely crafted artisanal profanities have the ring of desperate-to-impress schoolyard taunts. A little goes a long way and the show’s preoccupation with this kind of shock comedy has diminishing returns.

And yet sometimes the show’s writing is just so funny in the way it skewers the Big Man on Campus facade. Gearing up his fight against Logan, Kendall enlists the help of Cousin Greg (the hilariously conflicted Nicholas Braun) who is given this instruction: “Before I get my media monitoring in place, I might need you to slide the sociopolitical thermometer up the nation’s (rear end) and take a reading, OK?”

I come not to bury “Succession” nor to praise it, but to perpetually hope it will take up that messy space between paranoia and performative nonchalance. Between panic and adrenaline-fueled confidence. Between preening and obfuscation. These are people uncomfortable with their own humanity and never think twice about anyone else’s, and I often wonder about the subconscious effect of fiction that centers the point of view of the Roys of the world; even as they’re being satirized, they’re being elevated and treated with exquisite care by the writers. We laugh and cringe but also, who is being humanized? The white power brokers. How is this not a psy-op?

“There’s something about betraying our father that just doesn’t sit well with me,” Roman says semi-sarcastically at one point, and this is where the show always loses me. These people — every last one of them — are heat-seeking missiles with “BETRAYAL” spelled out on the side. Betrayal is their raison d’etre. But the show let’s a line like that go unchallenged. So around and around we go, like the melody of the show’s iconic music.

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'SUCCESSION'

2 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Season 3 premieres at 9 p.m. ET Sunday on HBO

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