Succession is about Climate Change. Kind of. Why You Should Watch

This video is sponsored by Nebula and CuriosityStream. Watching you people melt down is the most deeply satisfying activity on planet Earth. We, uh, we aim to please. Succession is the best show on television. It's a masterclass in writing, acting, and poetic profanity. This was supposed to be choreographed. That's about as choreographed as a dog getting fucked on roller skates. But, like its characters, the show is kind of hard to pin down. And as great as Succession is, it's kind of hard to come up with an elevator pitch for the show that does it justice. On paper, it follows the political intrigue of the obscenely wealthy Roy family, owners of one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, Waystar Royco. Cool. Yeah, that does sound kind of boring. I've had a friend suggest Arrested Development with Mad Men vibes. By the way. Kendall is Michael, Roman is Jobe, Shiv is Lindsay, Thomas Tobias, Greg is George Michael, Connor is Buster, and Logan is a combination of George Sr. and Lucille. If you're saying I play favorites, you're wrong. I love all my children equally. I don't care for Jobe. That description is closer, but it still leaves a lot of the show's most exciting elements on the cutting room floor, and, crucially, doesn't address what might be the biggest hurdle for anyone that this show has no one to root for. You know, Waystar? Waystar Royco? We do hate speech and roller coasters. The Roy family is a group of out-of-touch billionaires who use their enormous wealth and power to make the world their playground, with no thought for the people they use or exploit along the way. And I'm afraid I have to inform you, you are all dismissed. Yeah. You're all fired. And it's asking us to invest in them emotionally. I mean, in anything less than the deftest of hands, that could easily end up sounding like that crackpot motivational speaker Gary V. I'd rather have zero than a hundred million. People that have zero are like, this f***ing guy's an idiot. That's because you don't talk to trust fund babies. I do. I talk to trust fund babies. They DM me. I meet them in real life because of my business career. They're f***ing sad. I'll go on, cry me a river. Get the f*** out. There's an old playwright adage that goes, drama is about people changing. Comedy is about how people never change. Wise words. But somehow, Succession is both. It isn't just satire. It's also downright authentic in the way it's able to finagle empathy out of us for these trash bag human beings. But how? What is it that makes this show so compelling? What is Succession really about, underneath it all, that makes us relate with such unlikable characters? Well, the answer is going to take a little bit of time to explain, but, um, the headline is, Succession is about climate change. Kind of. Oh, come on, man. F*** off. Okay, I know that sounds kind of out there, but just humor me. Because while Succession is about a lot of things, from family to money to power to the best way to enjoy a glass of wine, You should hyper decant. You can age your wine five years and ten seconds. Succession is, at its core, about the end of the American century. About an impending collapse and, well, climate change. But I think the headline needs to be, f*** the weather, we're changing the cultural climate. Let's start by talking about the show's central antagonist. Stop me if you've ever heard this in a video essay before, but, it's capitalism. Logan is a walking personification of capitalism and greed. Money, and more importantly, the power that comes along with it, is everything to Logan. Prized as not just his top priority, but as his only priority. Have you told the others? The others? The kids. No. Is there an advantage? While the Roy family is obscenely wealthy, traveling on helicopters and yachts to different properties around the world, Succession avoids ogling wealth in the way that other media often does, and usually frames the servants who make it all possible. A montage of a beautiful banquet is immediately followed by a shot of the staff throwing out all that extra food, a picture of waste. Roman taunts a child in the first episode by dangling a million dollar check in front of his face. Logan berates a contractor and refuses to pay him, and Kendall doesn't even give his house staff Thanksgiving off. Where do we keep the f***ing coffee beans? Logan, and by extension capitalism, is a corrosive force that melts down any institution because, well... Money wins. Political power and even the law are no match. Logan makes the President of the United States wait on the phone and uses his massive media empire to take cheap shots at Bernie Sanders' lookalike, Gil Evis. As Tom, Shiv's husband, puts it, Look, here's the thing about being rich, okay? It's f***ing great. Okay? It's like being a superhero, only better. You get to do what you want, the authorities can't really touch you, you get to wear a costume, but it's designed by Armani, and it doesn't make you look like a prick. While congressional hearings are certainly threatening, it's more because they might impact the votes of shareholders, rather than provide any real consequences. The political realm isn't the only institution to kneel to capitalism, either. Wealth conquers family as well. For Logan, the concept of family exists purely for its utilitarian value to him. He knows that he wields a unique power over his children as their father, and that makes his children especially useful soldiers. He's quick to invoke family when it comes to asking people to sacrifice for the business. Most things don't exist. The Ford Motor Company hardly exists. It's just a time-saving expression for a collection of financial interests. But this exists because it's a family. We are a family. Waystar Royco is a family. We're a family. You're my boy. You're my number one boy. I mean, tell me you haven't heard this from a boss at some point when they're asking you to work overtime. But when it comes to sacrificing the business for his family, well, then… Time for a blood sacrifice. The Roy family wields their power against political influence, law, the nuclear family, and they even have the power to crush language. ------- words. These characters are afforded so much freedom from their wealth and power that their words are completely untethered from the meaning of those words. Yeah, it was words. Words are just, what, nothing. Complicated air flow. Succession's distinctive style of dialogue, and even insults, are often an exploration of empty words. What people in power use when the act of speaking is required, but saying nothing would be more advantageous. It's something that's a mainstay of political and corporate jargon, for eating up airspace. Every minute you're speaking, you are stealing from them and their horse ----. Eat, eat, eat those dangerous ******* minutes. This guiding philosophy leads to some of the show's most iconic moments. From this eulogy… When a man dies, it is sad. All of us will die one day. In this case, it is Lester who has done so. To this congressional testimony… Correct? Yes. Yes, if it is to be said. I'm sorry? If it is to be said, so it be- so it is. Succession's characters, from the secure perch that wealth and power provides them, levy language that avoids accountability and truth altogether. If you want a more in-depth breakdown of language in the show, the Nerdwriter did a great video In the shadow of Logan and the Roys, even the inherent value of human life hardly matters. The Roy family and their company is fond of the acronym NRPI, which stands for No Real Person Involved. They use it to dismiss the lives of women sexually assaulted and or murdered on their cruise line, so long as they weren't important. That means it's a sex worker or a migrant worker at a foreign port, not involving a guest or a permanent member of staff. No real person involved. Money always wins, bending everything to its will. It commodifies everything in the pursuit of profit, politics, law, family, and even language and humanity itself. Why? Because my dad told me to. But there is one thing that money can't beat, and this is where we get back to climate change. Unsubscribe. Look, I know that this is kind of an absurd premise, but listen, there's one space on succession that money can't bend to its will, and that's health. Logan suffers a stroke in the first episode, and for a brief moment, his wealth is rendered irrelevant. What is this part of the hospital? Is this the best section? Excuse me? Doctor, is this the best part of the hospital? Sorry, we need to know. The ICU is the ICU. This is the best place for him. Is this where you would take your father? Throughout the show, characters are repeatedly failed by their bodies. Logan pees in an office, Kendall shits the bed literally, Roman can't have sex with his girlfriend, and Greg gets a tummy ache from drinking gold. I think too much edible gold hurt my tummy. In her excellent piece The Bodily Horrors of Succession, The Atlantic's Megan Garber points out that despite being a show about extravagance and excess, Succession spends a lot of time with the disgusting elements of the natural world, from a dead animal stinking up a beach house to infestations of sand mites. And I think there's something maybe living in it? Like perhaps thriving in the sand? Like sand mites, maybe? As Garber writes, quote, Nature, in Succession, is both the victor and the spoils. Bodily health is a constant anxiety in the show, which begins with Logan's stroke and even after his speedy recovery, offers multiple hints that his vigor remains in jeopardy. Logan's body is a vulnerability. Do we want to order some food? Food? Swallow. We're on saliva and adrenaline here. No local foods. I get the shits, we're fucked. These characters want to play God, but their wealth can't save them from their bodies. Nature is the great equalizer, whether that's the bodies that house these capitalists, or the planet that houses capitalism. I don't think it's a huge leap to draw a parallel between the Roy family's relationship with the natural world to capitalism's. Climate change is the reckoning for capitalism, the consequence of decades of unbridled growth for the sake of growth. Logan's physical mortality looms over the show, the inevitability of his fall present in the minds of everyone. A spooked board, we could- My only concern with that, it might actually kill him. Succession thrives with this feeling of impending dread. As successful as the Roys have been, and as powerful as that wealth has made them, the show is fueled by this feeling that the end is near. Waystar's business model is outdated, they have tons of debt, and they're under attack from enemies of their own creation. It's clear that there's something rotten at the core of the Roy family, something that its wealth has protected them from, but for how long? And this impending dread is all over the show. Characters find new and more cringeworthy ways to embarrass themselves. Is he about to strip? I think he's going to masturbate on stage to a photo of dad. There are so many acts of violent humiliation that you know that the next one must just be around the corner, that any dinner party can turn into a game of boar on the floor. And perhaps most fundamentally, these characters are so flawed that we know their self-destruction is sown into their very DNA. Kendall will self-destruct because it's his favorite, and this all fades the **** away. They'll hurry a rocket launch that ends in disaster, speak out of turn, be loyal to the wrong person, or they'll go into a drug bender and accidentally kill a waiter in a car crash. We know that these characters are doomed to some extent. We just don't know how bad the fall is going to be yet. This is like O.J., I mean except if O.J. never killed anyone. Who said I never killed anyone? But there's also the dread of knowing that this empire is about to fall, that the Roys are nearing their end. And in the same way, I think there's a growing sentiment in America, and especially in my generation, that this isn't working, and that the rent is going to come due soon for capitalism. Big picture, we're at the end of the long American century. Our company is a declining empire inside a declining empire. Amen, brother. I think climate change is the epitome of this dread, a catastrophe of our own making as we seek bigger and bigger profits. I mean, we know that oil companies knew about global warming as early as the 1970s and launched a massive campaign against it in order to preserve profits. In terms of the lives that will be lost by his whoring for the climate change deniers, there's a very persuasive argument to be made that he's worse than Hitler. So far, America and the Roy family have been able to stave off the consequences of their empire. The lands we've exploited and turned into oil swamps are far away, and America's wealth, which was built on the industry that that exploitation fueled, has protected us. But I think that we have a growing understanding of the tragedies that American capital has brought to the rest of the world. We are the greatest historical contributors to CO2 emissions, and that's a price that has mostly been outsourced to the global south. But with each new UN report and each new once-in-a-lifetime weather event, we become painfully aware that this cannot last, that we're riding a high and the crash is inevitable. Yeah, and now it's a part of us and our sickness, and we have to take responsibility because we knew. Uh, okay, well, I didn't know. Sure, whatever, but yeah, you did. Still, Succession is way less preachy about this than, uh, I am. Part of that is the show's humor, but a decent chunk of it is that its characters largely aren't heroes or villains. They're just people. They might know about the bad stuff they're covering up, but these aren't criminal masterminds. They just have enough money to pull it off sometimes. That was the only two-hour period in which you did not send an email to Mr. Hirsch with the title, The Roys may be well-off, but it's because of that wealth that they are shells of people. With language crumpling under the weight of their wealth, they've been robbed of the ability to express real emotions to the point that genuine displays are mocked. You mean, talk about the big ----? No, we can't talk about the big ----! We can't talk about our feelings! Doubted. I think you're a super talented superstar, and I love you. Oh, you're such a ******* bitch. Or met with overwhelming shock and surprise. When you have as much wealth and power as the Roys, everything loses its value. It's all reduced to a zero-sum game of power. It's not just enough to have money or power or status, you have to have more than those around you. It's a mindset that corrupts everyone it touches. Even Greg, the initial outsider, can't help but fall into this disease of more. It's a rosé, it's not my favorite. You got a favorite champagne now. Well, you can't help noticing. It's fine, I'll drink it. It's just not my favorite. Succession reflects our own conflicted feelings about ourselves, our country, our global system of exploitation back at us. It shows how money always wins over everything, and then shows us the real people who find themselves at the end of that conquest. Contradictions abound in every character, things to both love and hate. Because these are fully realized characters from the very first moment of the show. Shiv is a brilliant tactician, which is also what makes her the worst, she has the moral compass of a tilt-a-whirl. Can I trust you? No. No, actually, no. Roman has grown up a lot, but it's really just made him a more ruthless businessman. This is, you know, not a nice thing to say about your son, but maybe you chop him into a million pieces and toss him in the Hudson. Kendall is the worst at the type of lying that broadcasts an essential lack of integrity, but he's also a self-destructive idiot who thinks he's leading a revolution despite being a billionaire. Are you in for this ******* revolution? Succession likens our relationship with capitalism to that of children and their abusive father. They didn't ask for this system, and for all the flaws we know it has, it's still our dad. Capitalism has given us everything, it's shaped the world around us. I mean, we live in a society. I have an iPhone. That we ended up on the winning side doesn't make us good or bad, it just makes us lucky. I was born lucky. I'm a lucky person. I realize that. And you're so ******* jealous, aren't you? You're so ******* jealous of what you've given your own kids. You can't handle it. You can't work it out. Succession isn't the only show on TV talking about capitalism and harnessing dread to critique it in 2021 either. Squid Game set itself up as a battle royale, where there could be only one survivor while making explicitly anti-capitalist arguments. The White Lotus accompanies a mystery death and an anxious soundtrack with its satire of wealth and colonialism. Obviously imperialism was bad. Shouldn't kill people, steal their land, and then make them dance. I haven't seen Made, but that seems like it's right in line with this trend too. And it's not just TV either. We're living in a moment of American class consciousness. The amount of labor strikes across the country grows every week, with workers at Kaiser Permanente, Kellogg, John Deere, and many, many others demanding better working conditions as their CEOs cash bigger and bigger checks. There's a reason these shows are all striking a chord. But I think that Succession is the show that gives us the most complete picture. It's unflinching in the way it critiques capitalism and the way it reflects our own anxieties about it back at us. But I think that the fact that the show gets us to both laugh at and care for its characters is a testament to how excellent and nuanced that criticism is. Somehow, it's able to balance both humiliation and empathy. Succession cultivates an internal conflict within its audience about each of these characters, in a way that draws our attention away from who's going to win, to should anyone, and what happens next. So is Succession about climate change? Well, it's about a group of people on the verge of collapse, having conquered everything but their own mortality, with their own greed and incompetence coming back to haunt them. So yeah, kind of. Oh hey, it's me, the skip intro himself. I know that I'm usually in these videos, but this time I wasn't. But maybe that's because I was so busy binging documentaries on this video's sponsor, CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream is a documentary streaming service that's super passionate about education. They have thousands of titles in their collection, ranging from super cool topics like history and nature to less interesting topics like science and technology. I hear some people are interested in that, but I've never gotten it. Personally, I'd recommend Apocalypse WWI. I'm a big WWI fan. You know, the tragedy of it all. But not as tragic as the next one. It uses colorized footage from the beginning of the century, which is super fascinating from both a film and from a history perspective. 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We're talking about every episode of Succession as soon as it comes out. There's a rewatch podcast where we're covering each season of The Americans and other shows in the future. There are monthly roundups of all the TV I'm watching. You get early access to videos and there's Q&As. Maybe there will even be some sick merch in the future. If you're familiar with the channel, you might know that I've been doing a Copaganda series. And if there are enough patrons over on Patreon, I will do an episode on Paw Patrol. The most Copagandiest of them all. I know that this wasn't a Copaganda video, but I needed a break. And we'll get back to that soon. But not for the next video. That one is going to be about the legacy and seeing how this person has aged. They're one of the most influential TV creators of the 21st century. And they just returned to TV with a new show. I'm, of course, talking about Jon Stewart. Thanks again for watching, guys. Bye.