Will ‘Succession’ End Like ‘Peep Show?’
*Contains spoilers for Succession, Peep Show, and Game of Thrones.*
As one of the most lauded television series in recent memory draws to a close, I’ve been thinking about another show Jesse Armstrong created: Peep Show. I found it curious that a lot of people’s reaction to Succession season 4 has been one of disappointment, citing, among other things, the lack of any tangible progress made by its main characters, in spite of the many (many) obstacles that have been thrown their way during the preceding seasons.
In many ways, Peep Show’s ending was ‘disappointing’, too: up until the final second, Mark and Jez are basically the same as they ever were. While both characters experience minute levels of growth throughout the show, by the final scene they’re in the exact same place they started — on the sofa, in their flat, resenting one another.
It seems Jesse Armstrong is particularly adept at this kind of tragedy; the idea that no matter our desire to improve ourselves or move away from past mistakes, we somehow just end up back there, stuck in the same rut, the same old cycle.
It’s profound on one level, deeply cynical on another. But does it make for good TV?
Well, that would depend on the kind of tv show you want. Uplifting bildungsromans, in which we follow a hero on their journey from ignorant to knowledgeable, from fearful to brave (Game of Thrones, The Good Place) provide satisfying payoffs; so too do stories that follow an anti-hero or antagonist, as they fly too close to the sun and experience a bitter, climactic downfall (Breaking Bad, The Sopranos). In both, the audience sees comeuppance: for either bravery and hard work, or punishment for wrongdoing.
But both Peep Show and Succession take place in, for lack of a better term, the ‘real world.’ And as the real world — and Succession — has shown us, there are often depressingly few consequences to aborrent actions. Whether it’s Waystar’s cruises scandal, or pre-emptively announcing the election of a fascist president, our characters operate in the exact same amoral, frequently consequence-free system that has allowed so many corrupt wrongdoers to walk free from responsibility — in corporations, governments and institutions alike.
And, back to Peep Show: how many of us know someone — or, indeed, a couple — that simply refuses to make any real changes to situations that make them miserable, because it requires them to reckon with the idea they could actually be happy? Mark and Jez might be frequently victims of each other, but they’re more often victims of their own self-sabotage — much like a certain three equally-frustrating siblings.
Maybe Peep Show would have been a more satisfying, less frustrating watch if Jez had managed to move out of Mark’s flat for good, his music career having taken off (a second miraculous call from Honda, maybe); and if Mark had, I don’t know, gone to therapy and learned what Moroccan food actually is.
But it would have been less funny. Being battered over the head again and again with just how inept Jez and Mark are at more or less everything is what makes Peep Show so genius, so endlessly rewatchable. So who can blame the writers for keeping them exactly where they are, right to the last second?
With Succession, I feel we’re in the same territory. Armstrong et al know how much the audience roots for the siblings, for better or worse; how achingly close actual happiness is truly is. Kendall, Roman and Shiv have almost everything at their disposal in order to make progress as people, divorce themselves from the idea that they have to live up to their now-dead father’s image. Shiv could buy a cabin somewhere, start scrapbooking, prepare Earth-Mother style for the arrival of her baby, replacing champagne with kale smoothies (Tom is off-script and never mentioned again). Roman could finally bag a MILF that isn’t his sister’s godmother. Kendall could take up surfing lessons in Hawaii and actually learn to be around water like a normal person, sip virgin daiquiris by the beach and work on a novel about a hard-done little rich lad called Konrad Troy.
But the audience didn’t sign up for this kind of show. They’re watching a show about the grapple for power. And whatever ‘wins’ we’ve seen so far, they’re all temporary, so minute they can barely count as wins. You watched Peep Show because you wanted to laugh. You watched Succession because you wanted to see billionaires suffer.
Perhaps the final season could have been a swelling, symphonic righting of wrongs: Tom in jail for covering up the cruises scandal, Greg in jail for the crime of being annoying, Willa leaving Connor for someone not a thousand years old, a union of the sibling trio in which they really, truly have one another’s backs. It’d certainly be temporarily satisfying. But when did Game of Thrones have you white-knuckling the sofa? I know it wasn’t when Bran the Broken was crowned King of Westeros. I doubt it was even when the Night King was killed. Sometimes — often — we’re not supposed to get what we want for the sake of what the story demands. And I think if Peep Show had solved all of Jez and Mark’s problems in its final episodes, and ended on a note that even approached the gooey and hopeful, I know with certainty those episodes would be a hard pass during one of my annual rewatches.
