'Succession' Finally Moves Forward

When Jesse Armstrong, the creator of HBO’s “Succession,” revealed that he’d chosen to make the show’s fourth season its last, viewers reacted with variations on “Are you kidding???” Why voluntarily end a series so successful and Zeitgeist-defining, the rare program that could still monopolize our collective attention each week? I had a somewhat different reaction: I hoped that the show’s impending end might finally make it more watchable. For a long time, I’d been keeping up with “Succession” mostly so that I could understand the endless references made online and in my various group chats. I’d found very little pleasure in it, but people would often tell me that the lack of pleasure was the point—that “Succession” was a satire of the vapidity and moral corruption of the very rich, and that I probably just didn’t get the dry humor and cutting wit on display.