The kingmakers have turned the cameras on themselves.
The stokers of palace intrigue are the palace intrigue. That’s “Succession.”A Shakespearian game of thrones of a craven, tawdry media empire that become subjects of their own craven, tawdry drama – a taste of their own medicine.
While the Hearsts, Bancrofts, Pulitzers and Murdochs make spectacle of our reality, they guard themselves from spectators of their reality. The Roy family gets no such protection. Watching HBO’s marquee show of the last five years has been pure schadenfreude; we get to invade the lives of the most invasive humiliators on the planet during their most humiliating moments.
What better show for our time, when media conglomerates day after day top billed a reality show star president in the most prurient and cheaply entertaining reality program on TV – cable news. What if the reality show was about those guys who made the damn thing? Nevermind betrayal, sex scandals and death in the White House. Let’s see what happens with the people who choose who gets to be featured in the Oval Office.
And we did, for five seasons of brilliant television. It came to a crashing end when one of their own decided to pull the plug on Roy Reality TV.
Of course it had to end in a board meeting. Of course it had to end with familial perfidy. Of course it had to end with the last of the Roy bloodline (although there is an in utero prince on the way) booted.
The scene where Siobhan decides to vote for the buyout, thus dashing her brother’s bid for CEO, couldn’t have been a more perfect finale for the show. We see the siblings at their most desperate and hysterical. Shiv has a panic attack, Roman throws down his arms and sulks in the corner and Kendall throws a temper tantrum. It could’ve been a scene out of a Roy family vacation in the Hamptons when they were all in grade school. We just watched a blowup, juicier than any cat fight on E! And then the show ends.
Shiv canceled “Succession.” She rides off in her limo chariot with her cuckold king Tom, who will reign as puppet king, tertiary character in the next reality show. And Kendall, as a nonmember of the exalted C-suite, sits on a park bench in Manhattan like a regular chump.
Maybe it’s for the best. I suspect reality television isn’t the healthiest platform for its stars to air their family quarrels. Perhaps they could heal away from the limelight. But that’s easier said than done for addicts, addicted to the very thing they push to the average American viewer. The thing is, we’ll never know what happens now that the cameras are off.
Show over folks, in the most debased and satisfying way.
