Succession's 10 best moments: from Boar on the Floor to excruciating phone sex
Succession manages to combine the two key quarantine trends of 2020: insanely rich people acting in their own horrible self-interest, and really nice houses that you wish were yours. As such, it has been nothing short of a tragedy that we haven’t been able to watch the show in the UK while under lockdown, since it fell off the streaming services some time after season two aired.
However, miracle of miracles, this error has now been rectified. As of today, both seasons of Succession – our Fleabag and Chernobyl-beating best show of last year, remember – are available to view again. If you haven’t seen it, you should close this page now and steam through every episode as a matter of urgency as there are spoilers ahead. But if you have, let me whet your appetite for a rewatch with a list of Succession’s best moments.
The car crash
The first season of Succession had to accomplish a lot. Not only did it have to introduce you to some of the worst, least sympathetic characters ever seen on television, but it also had to make you care about them. When the season finale managed to do this, it was like watching a magic trick. Kendall Roy – the closest thing the series has to a lead – involves himself in a fatal Chappaquiddick-style car crash. In the immediate aftermath, he finds himself being sucked back into his father’s toxic orbit, and his total helplessness in the moment is enough to smash your heart into dust.
The Roy family softball trip
How unlikable are the Roy family? Glad you asked. We get a good idea of their complete awfulness in the first episode, when the family take a spontaneous trip to play a game of softball; an operation that involves fleets of helicopters and luxury cars. But when they find themselves a player short, Kieran Culkin’s smarmy Roman approaches the young son of some onlookers and promises him a million dollars if he hits a home run. The boy fails, Roman rips up the cheque in front of him and you have a brand new worst enemy.
The Vaulter headlines
In season two, though, Succession hardened its gaze. It wasn’t just the Roy family in its sights any more; it was the entire online-content industry. One subplot involved the acquisition of Vaulter, a vaguely Vicey/Buzzfeedy/ Gawkery website that was kept afloat on an empty wave of pure clickbait. The headlines that ran on vast screens in the background were perfectly judged – “Wait, Is Every Taylor Swift Lyric Secretly Marxist?”, “This Tinder for Pedophiles App Sounds Like a Really Bad Idea”, “5 Reasons Why Drinking Milk on the Toilet Is Kind of a Game-Changer” – even if they did hit a little close to home for a man currently employed to write a listicle of TV show moments for the internet.
People often call Succession Shakespearian, and nowhere was this more evident than with Boar on the Floor, a game instigated by patriarch Logan Roy in season two. The rules of the game are simple: you pick your emotionally weakest dinner guests, and force them to them crawl around on the ground making pig noises while you throw sausages at them and chant: “Boar on the floor”. It’s both a power move and a Guantanamo-level act of total humiliation. When lockdown lifts, try it with your friends.
Logan in Scotland
A genius move on the part of Succession was to fold in elements of Brian Cox’s life into his character. For instance, in the second season it became apparent that Logan Roy, like Cox, was Scottish. An entire episode was set in his hometown of Dundee. In most shows, this might be an attempt to humanise a monster, but not here. In one scene, Roman reveals that he has bought the Scottish football club Hearts as an ostentateous show of love and loyalty; Logan responds by telling him that he actually supported Hibs, and the wedge between generations becomes even bleaker.
Roman and Gerri’s phone sex
The characters on Succession are all so broken that even romance ends up rotten and curdled. In the episode Safe Room, Roman rings his father’s counsel, Gerri, to complain about nothing in particular, and they quickly fall into a bout of excruciating phone sex. “You disgusting little pig,” she tells him as he masturbates on his bed. “You are a revolting little worm.” Just to compound the awkwardness of the scene, Roman later proposes to Gerri.
Logan Roy screams at a car
This is why you hire Brian Cox. At the end of the second season’s sixth episode, Logan learns that a skin-saving multi-billion-dollar deal he has long been angling for with his rival Nan Pierce has fallen through. For most of the series, Logan is the gruff puppet master. But as the rug is pulled from beneath him and he realises that he cannot talk his way out of it, he loses control and erupts in an orgy of genuinely frightening anger. “We haven’t finished! We haven’t fucking finished!” he screams at Nan’s car as it leaves, with such intensity you assume it will end in a heart attack. The man deserves all the awards going.
Kendall’s rap
“Bitches be catty/ But the king’s my daddy / Rock all the haters while we go roll a fatty / Squiggle on the decks / Kenny on the rhymes / And Logan big ballin’ on Hamptons time / L to the OG / Dude be the OG / A-N he playin’ / Playin’ like a pro”. In years to come, this will be the moment that Succession is remembered for. In the meantime, it just appeared on Spotify.
Tom eats the chicken
Tom might be the best character on Succession, an outsider who married into the family and simply cannot keep up with all their craven behaviour. In the season two finale, set aboard a comically extravagant yacht, he finally regains a scrap of control. Scared for his job and publicly humiliated, with his marriage in tatters, Tom (played by Matthew Macfadyen) sits down next to Logan and – without saying a word – grabs a handful of his food and rams it into his mouth. “It’s so batty and odd and so Succession, that moment,” Macfadyen said after the episode. “Tom’s really at a low ebb. He thinks, Fuck it, you know?”
The press conference
Finally, here’s the moment that will vault Succession into the future. The season two finale ended with Kendall decisively breaking away from the clutches of his father, by holding a press conference where he finally told the world the truth about all of Logan’s wrongdoings. On its own, the moment was utterly explosive. But then we cut back to Logan, watching the conference from the yacht. His unknowable smile – maybe pride, maybe contempt, maybe excitement at finally having a worthy foe – could send Succession in any direction whenever it returns.
• Succession is available on Sky and the streaming service Now TV
fold by suggesting they represent versions of superheroes from alternate universes (explaining away in a foggy instant why Matt Murdock no longer looks like Charlie Cox).
Some of these heroes might end up continuing in the MCU – Marvel certainly needs a new Tony Stark at some point – while others might be making short-lived cameos. Just as the original Secret Wars comic inspired gazillions of sales of tie-in Mattel toys because it finally brought all the world’s favourite Marvel costumed titans together for the first time in one comic, a film version based on this concept would surely zoom to box office glory. The studio could even play on the random nature of the Beyonder’s battle picks to bring back big-name actors such as Ian McKellen (Magneto) or Patrick Stewart (Charles Xavier). Or it could even restore Wesley Snipes as Blade. The nature of the Secret Wars concept is that all options are open.
That, in itself, is a concept that seems alien to Feige and his team, who have built their comic book movie universe on the comfortingly immovable premise that each superhero is played by a single actor up until the point they are written out of the script. And yet Marvel has already begun to push the boundaries of this essential rule by bringing Robert Downey Jr back as Iron Man (not to mention Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff) in the upcoming Black Widow.
Even if that movie is a prequel, there is a sense that the MCU is finally prepared to shake things up a little and fully explore the full, nutty depth and breath of the comic books it is adapted from. The cosmic portals of potential have suddenly been opened, and it only remains to be seen into what madness they now lead us.