ABSTRACT
The most essential ingredient to great storytelling is empathy. For viewers to develop a relationship with a character over many episodes, there must be such a level of complexity in their character that whatever internal problems they have can be solved only through external interactions, with other characters. There’s always an aspect of judgment that hinders true empathy. It’s easy to be empathetic toward a person whom people perceive to exemplify our best qualities and/or vulnerabilities. Empathy is dependent on point of view. It’s circumstantial, and Succession achieves this brilliantly. Pride and hubris are vices of the ego, and every member of the Roy clan is corrupted, which places this satirical, funny series in the genre of family noir. A prestige TV series like Succession could not exist on a broadcast television network – today or ever.
