“The Poison Drips Through”: Succession Season 4, Episode 8
One of the most extraordinary sleight-of-hands a dramatist can pull is when they remind us that the antihero we’ve been following is in fact, the villain. Shakespeare was a master of this: in Macbeth, we are willing to go along with Macbeth for the first two-thirds of the play because of his inner conflict between his ambition and his morality. It’s only when he orders the murder of Macduff’s wife and children that we realize this man is a monster, turning us against him. The same thing happens to Breaking Bad’s Walter White, who crosses a similar Rubicon at the end of season 4, when we realize that he put a child’s life in danger to kill Gus Fring. And in “America Decides,” Jesse Armstrong pulls the same trick on us. We’ve loved to hate the Roys, and hated that we love them, but they are now officially the villains of this story.
It’s Election Night, Succession-style, and if you’re worried that this episode will give you a panic attack given the last couple of elections, then your fears will be confirmed. Armstrong worked closely with election pros like Ben Ginsberg and Eric Schultz to get all the details down pat so that it looks and feels as realistic as possible, and there are moments where I forgot I wasn’t watching a real election — except of course, when the touch screen stopped working and brought the newscast to a halt, because that…
