Nothing succeeds like "Succession"

Like a lot of folks out there in TV land, on Sunday evening, I was glued to the final episode of Succession, a brilliant series about an enormously wealthy family all jockeying to take the reins of their mega right-wing media empire from the hands of the empire's founder, leader and paterfamilias. 

I haven't enjoyed any series as much since The Sopranos faded to black in 2007.

If you know anything about Succession, it's likely that Logan Roy - founder, leader, paterfamilias - is brilliant, cruel, and ruthless. And that Logan Roy's offspring - Connor, Kendall, Roman, and Siobhan - are mostly incompetent, cruel, and ruthless. And generally, although they all talk a good game, clueless.

Although there are occasional - make that rare - glimmers of decency, empathy, and integrity, pretty much all of the main characters are god-awful: immoral, amoral, unmoral, anti-moral. You have to go down a few tiers to find a character who's even vaguely sympathetic or likable. (This is so unlike The Sopranos, where most of the characters were immoral, amoral, unmoral, anti-moral, but somehow sympathetic and likable.)

For the final season, the creators took Logan Roy out early - he died of a stroke, on his private (of course) jet while heading to do the big deal. Thus the season was given over to the siblings (minus Connor, who's cluelessly focused on his weird non-starter of a political career) conniving near and far to seize control of waystar/ROYCO, the family biz.

Let the schemers scheme; let the games begin.

We knew all along that Kendall, who wanted it so badly it was palpable, wouldn't succeed, yeah? 

And it really wasn't all that much of a surprise that in the end Shiv betrayed Kendall, and threw in with her husband Tom who, like his wife and in-laws, is thoroughly immoral, amoral, unmoral, anti-moral, incompetent, cruel, and ruthless - although, because Tom wasn't raised by wolves and has more of a sense of what work means, and has an occasional glimmer of competence, he's marginally (slimly marginally) less all of the above than the Roy sibs. (Not that I'm any good at predicting this stuff, but my sister Trish and I had figured Tom for the win.)

All in all, I found Succession brilliantly written and acted. The locations were fabulous. (Who doesn't want to spend time on a mega yacht off the coast of Croatia, even if it's only vicariously?) And in its portrayal of such dreadful 0.0001 percenters, Succession was often downright funny. 

I enjoyed watching this series, but I can't say I'll miss it - or any of the characters. Just such awful-awfuls. Meanwhile, Tony Soprano, and Carm, and Meadow, and Sal, and Ginny Sac, and Janice. Big Pussy, Little Pussy, Olivia, Uncle Junior. Dr. Melfi. Christopher and Ade. Them I still miss.

On a more positive note, Trish and I had also figured that they weren't going to leave us thinking that Mencken, the fascist candidate for president that waystar/ROYCO was trying to tilt the scales for was going to win. Looks like, once they count the mail-in ballots, Jiminez will snag Wisconsin and will be the next president. Phew.

My bottom line: nothing succeeds like Succession. Unless it's The Sopranos.

Bad-a-bing!