Waystar Royco's holdings, including Hollywood studios, cruise lines, newspapers, amusement parks, and a king-making right-wing news channel, make Ewing Oil look like a franchise gas station. It's vaguely known how Logan Roy built his empire, but it was made possible in part by media consolidation and antitrust deregulation that began during the Dallas/Reagan era. It allowed his real-life analogues like Rupert Murdoch to build their own mountains.
Meanwhile, declining television viewership in the cable and streaming era has allowed “Succession” to thrive as a more specific, niche form of entertainment. Three network-era series needed to appeal to tens of millions of people just to stay on the air. “Dallas” needed to provide crowd-pleasing barbecue. “Succession” includes rare and decadent treats like the whole edible songbird Ortolan, which featured in a memorable Season 1 meal.
“Dallas,'' like its followers from “Dynasty'' to “Empire,'' was in the tradition of populist melodramas that entertained audiences with the struggles of the wealthy. The characters were just like us, jealous, envious, and heartbroken, only with more money and less happiness.
“Succession” also has universal elements that please the masses. Logan was a charming brute who could pack as much emotion into a two-word curse as a Shakespearean soliloquy. Roy's children, Kendall, Roman, Shiv, and half-brother Connor, develop a survivor bond and the ferocious instincts of a survivalist. One arm participates in a group hug and the other holds a dagger. Fundamentally, the family theme of this series is as simple as a talk show. It is said that “hurt people hurt others”.
But the voice set by author Jesse Armstrong is arch and informative. The details require a lot of knowledge, or at least a willingness to Google. As Logan rests in the mausoleum he bought for $5 million from a dot-com pet supply giant (his last cold, expensive home), Shiv jokes that he's “the Ozymandias of cat food.”
