It’s Just a Fascist President, Kendall; How Bad Could It Be?
When the fate of the country depends on a rich boy’s childhood trauma, we’re all doomed.
This story contains spoilers through the eighth episode of Succession Season 4.
After a night of dirty politics, the authoritarian-leaning presidential candidate Jeryd Mencken (played by Justin Kirk) dares to speak of purity: “Don’t we long, sometimes, for something clean?” he asks while giving his all-too-presumptive victory speech in the latest episode of Succession. Hours earlier, activists (possibly his supporters) had set fire to a voting center in Milwaukee, destroying 100,000 ballots. Looking to take advantage of the confusion, Mencken agreed to kill the Mattson deal in return for ATN prematurely calling Wisconsin—meaning, eventually, the election—in his favor. Succession’s America is set for an extended period of confusion and strife that might make our own timeline’s electoral disputes—Bush v. Gore, “Stop the Steal”—seem quaint. But for stressed-out voters, Mencken has an easy solution: Turn off your brain, squelch your ideals, and acquiesce to the strongman.
The “clean” line also feels directed at Succession’s viewers. Until now, the show’s storytelling has been brilliantly messy, a splatter painting of moral and narrative ambiguity. Characters have churned and burned through schemes, goals, and ethical dilemmas, moving in a hurry but never accomplishing much of consequence. The “idiot kids,” as Logan once called them, behave so venally and inconsistently that it’s easy to write them off as dilettantes of no importance. But as the show nears its end, a strange, almost distracting clarity is emerging. As it turns out, what these billionaire dummies do really does matter—and way too much.
“Tonight, my digestive system is basically part of the Constitution,” Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) tells Greg (Nicholas Braun) in a bravura comedy scene that lays out the episode’s serious subtext: The fate of the world is, at times, hitched to a few people’s guts. Millions of lives can be shaped by individual physiologies—note the episode’s attention to consumption, like when Tom welcomes an Election Night diet of spaghetti and cocaine. What’s worse, petty motives determine matters of unbelievable importance. When Kendall (Jeremy Strong) raises doubts about the scheme to help Mencken, Roman (Kieran Culkin) fires back with childhood resentments about his older brother always getting to pick what the family had for dinner. “So because we had so much chicken when we were kids, I have to like the fascist?” Kendall replies.
Oh, that’s right—they’re electing a fascist. Even Mencken’s steadfast supporter Roman uses synonyms for that word to describe him. (Lukas Mattson, played by Alexander Skarsgård, provides the catchiest nickname: “Mr. Scary.”) Succession’s Republican bogeyman is more coolly snakelike in affect than Donald Trump is, but he stokes the same violent impulses that led to January 6. Kendall justifies his support with familiar collaborationist logic: “He’s a guy we can do business with.” Roman alternately downplays and acknowledges the candidate’s creepiness, but his ultimate position is, “Nothing matters.” This nihilism is informed by a billionaire’s invulnerability to consequences, and by his father’s brutal realpolitik. Logan once, Roman says, toppled a government via fax machine—so what’s the big deal?
The political satire here, it must be noted, is a bit overwrought. (Did your 2020 ulcer return at a newscaster’s advice to “ignore the narratives early on and just realize that we’re going to be in for a dogfight for a late night in those last couple of states”?) The show has begun leaning on its female characters to be the didactic voices of conscience: Shiv (Sarah Snook) expresses disgust at Mencken that appears genuine even if it can’t be separated from her self-interest; Kendall’s estranged wife, Rava (Natalie Gold), emerges as a correspondent from a somewhat less insulated reality; Jess (Juliana Canfield), Kendall’s assistant, wiggles her eyebrows in horror as Greg executes malign orders. The overarching narrative feels a bit cartoonish too: A Rube Goldberg machine of selfishness and unresolved daddy issues elects a new Hitler, oops!
Yet although the story may have taken on the tidiness of a sermon, the characters are more specific and idiosyncratic than ever. This season’s typically stellar writing and acting came with extra helpings of physical dramedy in this episode: Roman checking his phone while Greg pours lemon water into a journalist’s wasabi-streaked eyes, a drug-addled Tom huffing around ATN with an oddly delicate gait to his walk, Kendall giving a sarcastic thumbs-up to a stammering Shiv upon discovering her betrayal. These hilarious monsters feel believably like the real-life media bosses and amoral business executives who might help destroy our democracy. Hopefully, the episode’s fable won’t become a prophecy by 2024.