Review: Succession, “America Decides” | Season 4, Episode 8
Election night at ATN generates an electrifying episode that turns into an electrocution
I think I speak for many of us when I say that Succession snuck up on me. While the first two seasons aired, I kept up out of professional obligation: Peeking at the screeners when I heard there was a new HBO show with a Thick Of It pedigree; checking back in first when I got word that it was getting better, and later when it was doing an episode that provided a startlingly accurate snapshot of digital media turbulence circa 20191.
Those first dozen or so episodes kept me at arm’s length because the satire came across as too glib for how real the show felt—and it wasn’t just the depiction of my profession’s fading fortunes that made me feel this way. It was a joke from the pilot: At Logan’s birthday party, we see Connor talking to Roman’s Chuck Cunningham’d daughter, Isla. Connor is elaborating on all the land he owns out West, and all the water that’s beneath that land, which he also owns. “And it's very important because someday water's gonna be more precious than gold…