Scorpion Party

 

"As with the best TV series, a larger spirit enters the proceedings as the seasons progress and the worms begin to turn. In Succession, you start to realize that they have all, in a manner, been talking to themselves, and now action must take place. It’s like Hamlet fed on the Nasdaq and Oreos, with a disquieting pinch of digital unreality. At the center of it all, the trials of the young Roys never seem imposed on them from the outside, either by the writers, the actors, or even their circumstances. Each sibling’s disaster bursts from their character and conscience like fungus from a healthy tree. Kendall is just not very good at what he does with his life; he has no gift for planning, no strategy, and is a wonderful portrait of a realityimpaired child who can’t get over it. (“I think the headline needs to be fuck the weather—we’re changing the cultural climate.”) As dragon slayers go, they’re all pissants, spooked by every release of smoke from their father’s nostrils, while each of them slides into their own miasma of personal uselessness. "

READ THE ARTICLE BY ANDREW HAGEN

  Illustration by Tom Bachtell