Succession Season 2: Generating an Advanced Series Engine
In this podcast, we’re going to take a look at the Season 2 pilot episode of Succession to learn a little more about engine.
Last year, I did an in-depth podcast on the structure and engine of Succession and how the show is built.
But one thing we haven't talked about on this podcast is how to build an engine season after season and how the season engines, not just the episode engines, of a really complicated series work.
Looking back on Season 1 of Succession, the engine is quite simple. Engine begins with character and character begins with want.
What do the characters in Succession want more than anything in the world? Every character wants the company, their dad’s love, and a chance to succeed their father.
The father, Logan Roy played by Brian Cox, needs a successor, but he doesn’t want one. Logan thinks he is never going to die and he doesn’t want to let go.
The series is a beautiful mash-up. If King Lear met Rupert Murdoch, that’s Logan Roy. And every character wants to succeed their dad. Some think they can, some think they can’t, but everybody wants this company and Logan Roy doesn’t want to let it go.
That’s the structure of the pilot in Season 1; it’s very simple. You’ve got four children who want the company and none of them deserve it. Kendall Roy is the next in line. He’s the closest thing there is to a golden child and, while he isn’t exactly golden, he’s getting the company.
However, what ends up happening in the pilot is that on the day Kendall is supposed to inherit the company, a very complicated mind game begins between Logan and Kendall. It starts to become clear to both father and son, and all the other children, that a power play is underway and Kendall isn’t getting this company.
This power game drives the whole season. The siblings are played against each other and themselves by their very complicated father as Kendall tries to save the family from Logan, while also trying to solidify his own power. What proceeds from this is a tragedy of Shakespearian proportion.
By the end of Season 1 -- and there is a spoiler here -- Kendall, who may be the only person who actually loves Logan Roy, has lapsed back into drug addiction because of the pain caused between him and his father which began with that power game.
Kendall tried to take over his father’s company with the help of his father’s worst enemy. He has betrayed everybody in his family and accidentally driven off the road and killed a young man. He finds himself crawling back to his father for protection so he doesn’t get punished for the horrible thing he has done.
So, as Season 2 of Succession begins, we have a problem. How do you restart that engine? How do you get the series moving again when the original story that moved it is gone?
There is absolutely no way, after everything that occurred in Season 1, that Kendall Roy can inherit the company. Because Kendall has already played his hand and tried his best to do everything he can to get the company, because his relationship with his father is so fractured at this point, and because Logan has survived every attempt Kendall used to overthrow him, there’s a feeling of, “Where do you go from here?”
At the top of Season 2, Kendall has basically become a puppet for his dad. In fact, he is physically becoming a puppet. Every single time he’s asked why he changed his mind, because he can’t tell the truth about the young man he killed, he keeps repeating what he was told by his father, “I saw their plan. My dad’s plan is better.”
This is what he says to the competitors, to newspaper interviewers, and to his sister.
