When the fate of the country depends on a rich boy’s childhood trauma, we’re all doomed.
This story contains spoilers through the eighth episode of Succession Season 4.
After a night of dirty politics, the authoritarian-leaning presidential candidate Jeryd Mencken (played by Justin Kirk) dares to speak of purity: “Don’t we long, sometimes, for something clean?” he asks while giving his all-too-presumptive victory speech in the latest episode of Succession. Hours earlier, activists (possibly his supporters) had set fire to a voting center in Milwaukee, destroying 100,000 ballots. Looking to take advantage of the confusion, Mencken agreed to kill the Mattson deal in return for ATN prematurely calling Wisconsin—meaning, eventually, the election—in his favor. Succession’s America is set for an extended period of confusion and strife that might make our own timeline’s electoral disputes—Bush v. Gore, “Stop the Steal”—seem quaint. But for stressed-out voters, Mencken has an easy solution: Turn off your brain, squelch your ideals, and acquiesce to the strongman.
The “clean” line also feels directed at Succession’s viewers. Until now, the show’s storytelling has been brilliantly messy, a splatter painting of moral and narrative ambiguity. Characters have churned and burned through schemes, goals, and ethical dilemmas, moving in a hurry but never accomplishing much of consequence. The “idiot kids,” as Logan once called them, behave so venally and inconsistently that it’s easy to write them off as dilettantes of no importance. But as the show nears its end, a strange, almost distracting clarity is emerging.
