Cousin Greg winning 'Succession' is the only way to make watching all these billionaires worth it (SPOILERS ALERT)
"Jesse Armstrong, you mean to tell me that I sat through this haunting exploration of class, trauma and media ownership for it just to be exactly like real life??????????" - me, if Kendall wins
This week, there was a brief shining spot where my Twitter timeline was just ‘Succession’ and ‘Padam Padam’. Then Rolf Harris died aged 93 - who I thought had already pegged it - and it rightly turned into a ‘that man is going to hell’ posting fest.
Anyway, that internet Camelot radicalised me into the theory that Gregory ‘Cousin Greg Hirsch is the man that will succeed at the end of the HBO show. It is the only option. Like, any other outcome is like, ‘Well, what was the point of that then?’ It is the only option.
The show’s mission statement has been, ‘See these three spoilt babies? They are all useless idiots and nothing like their father. They are too pampered and have none of the grit, the drive, the post-war Dundee childhood their father had.’
They are, as mask-off Logan rightly said in the karaoke bar at Connor’s makeshift bachelor party, “not serious people.”
Logan might be the worst person in the world, but a point was made! His offspring Kendall, Shiv and Roman (and Connor, but he knows it and just wants to have a good time sowing division) are complete fools. Broken by their parents’ fine-tuned cruelty, their tanks run on hubris. Victimhood cannot be applied to them either, as they are too resource-rich to rely materially on this commitment to aiding a fascist to the White House (even if you were poor not ok). Still, like, they have everything aside from self-awareness.
Greg, while a div, does not have a monopoly on this. His ascension to the corporate throne makes sense, unlike in a natural way, because you know it would be Kendall in real life, but it's not. It’s a television programme that is supposed to be funny because ‘Succession’, while also a drama, is a COMEDY. Greg brings most, not all, of the giggles in this rather emotionally brutal show. He is the catalyst for the laughs, but he must be more because what else is the point of him? Seriously, he’s not that funny….
If Kendall, a man oddly lionised by teenage girls on the internet, wins, I’ll be mad. I COULD HAVE JUST WATCHED THE NEWS! We don’t need fake Murdochs along with the real Murdochs! If he does, it will be like the ‘Game of Thrones’ was. As Lindsay Ellis said in that hours-long, two-part video essay I watched in a lockdown boredom haze, the dragon show’s ending was wrong. After all, the writers got annoyed because people guessed the end. After all, GOOD WRITING MEANS YOU CAN GUESS THE ENDING!!!!!!
People call it hacky, but Greg, the character you are supposed to find the most relatable, getting crowned as CEO makes sense dramaturgically. This bumbling mumbler from the poor side didn’t grow up with his cousins. He didn’t spend Christmas with them or go that gauche McMansion in the opening credits. His grandfather Ewan has a strained relationship with his brother due to his general being one of the most evil-doers in the world.
See in the pilot, Greg, on his mother's instruction, who is capable of having a plan up her sleeve, attends his great-uncle, the media magnate billionaire Logan Roy’s 80th birthday party. The affair is intimate and relatively low-key, and he is very out of depth. Greg, who witnesses a little boy offering a million dollars to hit a home run, claims he just wants his job back at the Waystar-owned theme park. He ends up with a better one and morphs into the show’s bumbling hanger-on.
Greg has hung on for dear life and the past four seasons…. *drum roll*….. BEEN INVOLVED WITH ALL ATTEMPTS TO CHANGE THE STATUS QUO! A change of leader in the air? Little Greggy has been there, ready for antics like the messy bitch who loves drama he is. After proving, “You can’t make a Tomlette without breaking a few Gregs”, time and time again, he aided Kendall’s failed attempt to bring down Logan. Greg, who, unlike Tom, has some semblance of birthright entitlement, is treated so abysmally that he cannot actually like this, like enough to be here still and not seeking a better gig, WHICH HAS BEEN HIS OBJECTIVE THE WHOLE TIME!
My reading of Greg, who deserves no excuse and is objectively evil, is wrong, but he is less IN it. He could quickly do something else if he doesn’t have something up his sleeve. Yes, the trappings of wealth are alluring, but he would have just bounced by now. Maybe, I’m too Greg-on-top-pilled, but why would you stick around if you didn’t have sinister dreams to fulfil? HE HAD A 250 MILLION INHERITANCE BUT THREW IT AWAY AND TRIED TO SUE GREENPEACE!!!!!!!
If he wasn’t piped for the top job, why would he not just go off and be his grandpa’s golden grandchild?
If I’m wrong……
If James Cromwell, the star of ‘Babe’ and an all-round top bloke, doesn’t win an Emmy for performing that eulogy, which was simultaneously beautiful, damning, fair and loving, there is no hope left!