The Macro
I waited until 9:01 p.m on Sunday to click on the Crave app on my smart television. I knew that at that exact time, HBO drops new episodes of its most-popular shows. And that meant I could watch the series finale of Succession.
I’ve had a tortured relationship with this show since it first aired in 2018. I loved the larger-than life characters, the melodramatic narrative of a family business in turmoil and, most of all, the corporate wealth porn: Upper West Side apartments in Manhattan that were bigger than my entire house; luxury SUVs; private planes and the glorious, glamourous exotic hotels and resorts that somehow the main characters always seemed to find.
But at the same time, the show made me feel bad. Bad about the strained relationships we have with our family. Bad about the way they talked to each other, betrayed each other, and alternatively loved and loathed each other.
It made me feel bad because, unless you are particularly lucky, there is an archetypical echo of the sibling relationships we’ve all experienced. Certainly, that’s true for me.
I am lucky to have two brothers who are both really good people. They have successful professional and personal lives. I feel no reluctance at all to speak in proud, glowing terms about them and what they’ve done with their lives.
And yet, there has been conflict. There is always conflict because, honestly, if you don’t lock horns with your siblings from time to time, then you probably don’t have any contact with them at all. And, thankfully, I’ve been able to sustain meaningful contact.
It wasn’t always that way. For a time, we didn’t really talk to each other at all. My parents broke up when I was eight years old, and the experience took a toll on sibling relationships. We all weathered that storm in different ways, away from each other, with little support from each other. I left Toronto for university in Ottawa, and then to work in Calgary and Winnipeg. We didn’t really see each other that much.
That changed when the Free Press transferred me to the national bureau in Ottawa in 1993. I was a short drive away from Toronto and my mom, dad and brothers. Family holidays became, once again, family oriented. Rough spots were sanded smooth, some historical grievances were aired, and a new understanding was born.
It hasn’t been all peaches and cream. But has my family had any experiences that approach the toxicity of the relationship between the Roy children on Succession? No, thankfully not.
But there have there been times when we’ve all been both the authors and the recipients of some cruelty, judgement or isolation. That’s partly what having siblings is all about. Even though I can say without hesitation I never deliberately conspired to deliberately screw either of my brothers out of something really important.
As an aside, I think I’ve avoided the need for a spoiler alert here largely because Succession is a show about screwing people out of the things they hold most dearly. So, as long as I don’t tell you who screws whom, I’m safe.
In brief, I will miss Succession. I will miss the snarling father figure, the toxic sibling rivalry and the glorious cruelty.
But I can assure you, I won’t be rewatching the series anytime soon.
I have to go now and jump into the group chat I maintain with my brothers and find out all the good and bad things going on in their lives. Something I don’t think the fictional Roy children will be doing much in the future.
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