[Successions idea of a media executive personally picking a winner
is no longer all that shocking. The recent defamation lawsuit Fox
News settled revealed that Rupert Murdoch had been directly involved
in making calls for the network.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

SUCCESSION’S ELECTION NIGHT PAINFULLY SHOWS US HOW CABLE NEWS IS
MADE  
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Whizy Kim
May 14, 2023
Vox
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_ Succession's idea of a media executive personally picking a winner
is no longer all that shocking. The recent defamation lawsuit Fox
News settled revealed that Rupert Murdoch had been directly involved
in making calls for the network. _

In the eighth episode of Succession’s final season, a tight
presidential election sows confusion and chaos. , Macall Polay/HBO

 

Whizy Kim is a reporter covering how the world's wealthiest people
wield influence, including the policies and cultural norms they help
forge. Before joining Vox, she was a senior writer at Refinery29.

Part of The Vox guide to HBO’s “Succession”
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_NOTE: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR
SEVERAL _SUCCESSION_ EPISODES, PARTICULARLY SEASON FOUR, EPISODE
EIGHT, “AMERICA DECIDES.”_

The eighth episode of _Succession_’s final season is called
“America Decides.” It’s election night at ATN, and “America
Decides” is exactly the kind of hokey slogan one would see on a
major news network as the votes are counted. This is democracy at
work: a hundred and some million Americans casting their ballots,
letting their voice be heard.

That’s quaint, says _Succession_. It’s the Roys who decide, not
voters — the scions of an infamous media mogul are in the ATN
newsroom in this episode, shaping the narrative of who and what a
nation wants as its leader. _Succession_ is usually a little slyer
about its real-life corollaries, but in this episode the references
are painted in bold colors. ATN mimics Fox News, stoking distrust in
the election while also twisting the results whichever way suits the
Roy siblings — never mind whether calling a state for one candidate
could come back to haunt them
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The election at hand, between ultra-right Republican candidate Jeryd
Mencken (Justin Kirk), Democrat Daniel Jiménez (Elliot Villar), and,
yep, Connor Roy (Alan Ruck), is just as fiery and ugly as the most
recent US presidential elections. There’s a constant thrum of civil
unrest and violence in the backdrop of the episode. Protesters are
clashing, and accusations of voter fraud fly left and right. Someone
sets fire to a vote counting center in Wisconsin, destroying absentee
ballots. Georgia and Arizona
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singled out as contentious states where the vote is extremely close.
In the end, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) — with
a big assist from Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) — all but appoint Mencken
as president, once he has basically assured them that he’ll help
block the sale of Waystar to GoJo, as the two CEOs want. ATN gives
Mencken the backing to posture as the winner. Did he actually get more
votes than Jimenez? Who knows. And more importantly, who cares?

The idea of a media executive personally picking a winner is no longer
all that shocking. The recent defamation lawsuit Fox News settled
[[link removed]] (for
$787 million) revealed that Rupert Murdoch had been directly involved
in making calls
[[link removed]] for
the network during the 2020 election. Text messages from the lawsuit
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that the network repeatedly and knowingly allowed guests to lie about
election fraud. What’s appalling on _Succession_ is how stupid the
people in charge are. They’re not at all equipped to make calls on
how electoral votes should be tallied. Their decisions aren’t
undergirded by well-reasoned strategy, even if Machiavellian in
motivation. Instead, the Roy siblings squabble pathetically over which
president they would prefer based on which outcome would make
themselves look better, though they put on a flimsy pretense of caring
about truth, democracy, and virtue. Perhaps most pathetically, they
wield this great power while denying that they’re in charge whenever
it’s convenient to disavow it. It’s the most feckless kind of
leadership.

In a slightly different light, “America Decides” would play out
like a comedy of errors. Most of the series would. Swap out Nicholas
Britell’s elegiac score for a wry narrator and suddenly
it’s _Arrested Development_, another show about a wealthy, terrible
family constantly undermining each other. But _Succession_ remains
more tragic than comic because its world and characters are so bleakly
cynical. There’s nothing these people actually stand for; they’re
empty suits of skin animated only by resentment.

True or false

Reality and truth are tenuous in “America Decides.” The race
between Jimenez and Mencken is tight. Connor, amazingly enough, is
still hanging onto the hope that he might carry a state. He berates
Tom, who heads ATN, for not putting on enough coverage of him. The
votes are in, and many polls have closed — how would coverage at the
11th hour change the tide for Connor? But still, he deludes himself
that it’s not over. He compares the situation to Schrodinger’s
cat, a famous thought experiment in quantum theory about a cat that is
alive and dead at the same time. It was meant to highlight the
absurdity of two contradictory realities existing at once, but Connor
uses the metaphor to claim that the truth is still in flux. “Until
we open the boxes, I’m just as much president as the other two,”
he says. That’s not how it works, of course; sticking your fingers
in your ears doesn’t change the fabric of reality.

But ultimately, certainty is irrelevant for the Roy siblings because
their money and the fact that they helm ATN, the lone source of news
for many Americans, means they have the ability to declare what the
truth is. The struggle to be the first to do exactly that heats up
after a fire at a Wisconsin vote count center leaves a gaping hole of
roughly 100,000 lost absentee ballots. Roman argues that the state is
clearly going to Mencken, and the burned ballots don’t matter (it
was an “antifa firebombing,” according to him); Shiv (Sarah Snook)
insists that by state law the Wisconsin vote can’t be certified
until all absentee ballots are counted, so ATN can’t give it to
Mencken — and, she notes, the state usually goes blue.

The truth is just so easy to manipulate for everyone in this episode,
and it doesn’t even really exist until they decide on its shape.
Mencken (who is clearly a stand-in for Donald Trump), fairly early on
in the night, sees that he might very well lose and calls in Roman. He
wants ATN to prepare a positive narrative for his possible loss. Even
if he loses, it should be presented as a “huge victory.” Rome
understands what Mencken wants: implications of fraud, that the throne
was stolen from the rightful monarch, riling up an already aggrieved
fan base. “Even if you’re not going to be the president, you’re
going to be our president,” Roman says.

When the Wisconsin fire happens, Mencken’s team asks Roman if he can
help with the narrative — a term used throughout the episode to
describe the “truth” they’d prefer to present to the world —
on ATN. The goal is to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the entire
election. Twice in this episode, Roman calls something a “false
flag” — the language of QAnon conspiracy theorists. Then ATN
anchor Mark Ravenhead (Zack Robidas), who is basically this world’s
Tucker Carlson, goes off-script, speculating that Jimenez supporters
saw they were falling behind in Wisconsin and decided to stop the
count by setting the vote count center ablaze. He adopts an
anti-establishment tone, railing about powerful people telling
ordinary Americans what to do and think. It’s funny because it
quickly becomes clear that Roman, the very powerful co-CEO of Waystar,
has likely told Ravenhead to produce this rant.

Later, Roman unilaterally orders the network to call the state for
Mencken despite the protests of a top ATN producer. The night spirals
from there: With Wisconsin’s electoral votes going to Mencken, when
Arizona is called for him, too, it gives him all the electoral votes
needed to win. He’s the president — at least by ATN’s
accounting. They’re the first to call it for Mencken, and it’s
unclear if any other networks have done the same. Tom immediately gets
blasted by critics for the decision, but it doesn’t really seem to
matter to this family. The truth can always be litigated in court.

ATN’s election night coverage nods to the post-truth world where the
core mission isn’t to deliver the latest news, but to make up the
most entertaining story. _Succession_ is explicit about the
complicity of a ratings-obsessed media industry in spreading lies and
anointing false idols. Throughout the series, the Roy family is
anxious about their aging media empire — even on election night,
social media is nimbler about sharing information, photos, and videos.
But “America Decides” also affirms that legacy media remains a
powerhouse: It’s one thing to read some unsubstantiated rumor on
Twitter, possibly spread by a troll. It’s another to see a president
announced by the authoritative cadence of a news anchor on broadcast
television. There are flashes of worry, and maybe even regret, from
the Roy siblings (and Tom) in the aftermath of the election —
they’ve just done something monumental by altering the outcome of a
presidential election. But they wave these flickers of guilt away.

No one is responsible

This episode, Tom is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This is the
first election he’s running without Logan to act as the commander,
and a lot is riding on how smoothly Tom helms the ship. “Really want
to see those numbers, Tom,” Kendall tells him. “Market’s
watching. First Super Bowl — how’re we going to cope without the
king, right?”

Tom is so anxious about staying sharp that he does a bump of cocaine
and forces Greg (Nicholas Braun) to partake. He throws multiple
tantrums about his own self-importance, raging at Greg for bringing
him low-grade bodega sushi. “Tonight my digestive system is
basically part of the Constitution!” he bellows. This is the
bumbling wreck of a man in charge of determining the outcome of a US
presidential election.

Tom wanted this sort of power, as all the other main characters do
in _Succession_. It’s what all his social climbing has led to. Yet
he spends most of the episode denying that he’s the one making the
final call, passing the buck to his brothers-in-law. He’s just the
button pusher. An ATN producer asks Tom how much time the network
should spend talking about agitators — including the Mencken
supporters. Tom doesn’t make a decision. “I trust you,” he says
tepidly. Shiv and Kendall pressure him to cover the Wisconsin fire,
which he initially is reluctant to do. “We always have to choose
what to focus on, and just because something is on fire doesn’t make
it news,” he says. This sort of brilliant editorial judgment is
apparently why he gets paid the big bucks.

Shiv picks this ideal backdrop to finally tell Tom that she’s
pregnant with his child. She expects him to be shocked, for his anger
to soften. Or maybe a part of her wanted to see him finally pushed
over the edge into a full-on meltdown. Instead, he scoffs.

“Is that even true?” he asks. “Or is that, like, a new position,
or a tactic?”

Shiv is duking it out with everyone, particularly Roman over whether
Wisconsin should go to Mencken or Jimenez. Kendall, meanwhile, looks
deeply troubled, lost. Shiv looks to Kendall for backup. “I don’t
know,” he responds.

“Don’t get cynical,” Shiv warns.

For a brief moment in this episode, Kendall is tempted to do the right
thing. It weighs on him that his daughter is being hurt by ATN’s
cynical politics. He wonders if they should maybe revisit calling
Wisconsin for Mencken. He worries about being a good guy and a good
father.

Shiv, still rooting for Jimenez because it benefits her and Matsson
(Alexander Skarsgård), tells her brother they can’t let their
short-term corporate interests cloud the importance of democracy.
Mencken is a nightmare. Kendall wants to diffuse responsibility here,
too. “We wouldn’t actually be making him president,” he
protests. But how much of a gap is there between announcing someone as
president, knowing that it might not be true, and crowning someone
president? As viewers in 2023, we also know the dire consequences of
perpetuating such confusion and misinformation — shaken faith in
democratic institutions, a violent coup on the Capitol, and more.

Kendall’s dash of conscience is snuffed out, though, when he finds
out that Shiv has been secretly working with Matsson. He and Roman are
furious. Shiv tries to explain herself. “There comes a time when you
have to stand up for what you believe,” she attempts to say, but
can’t get it out fully because Roman is cruelly mimicking her
stammering. It’s wrath that finally moves Kendall — they should
give the presidency to Mencken. He had the chance to show some actual
moral fortitude, but he fails to grab it in his anger.

Not one person takes responsibility for what they’ve done throughout
election night. Roman, Shiv, and Kendall tell themselves that
they’re just reporting facts, or just doing business, or even that
they’re doing it for the good of the country — Tom is just taking
orders. In the effort to come off as worldly and shrewd, they don’t
genuinely stand for anything. There are no true believers in the
business of truth-peddling.

A part of the deep pessimism in this episode is a manifestation of
grief: Their god, Logan, is gone. “Nothing matters, Ken,” Roman
says. “Nothing fucking matters. Dad’s dead and the country’s
just a big pussy waiting to get fucked.”

Mencken’s victory speech, aired on ATN, is chilling in its artifice.
Echoing Trump’s inaugural presidential address
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he grimly bemoans that democracy has become a transaction; you scratch
my back, I scratch yours. He promises he’s different. He has been
willed by the people. The public is none the wiser about the Roys’
messy string-pulling. He asks the nation, “Don’t we long,
sometimes, for something clean?”

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