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Let me take a step back here and ask this question.

Is Succession a satire or is it a drama?

A bit of both but when I’m watching it I frame it more as a satire

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:Let me take a step back here and ask this question.

Is Succession a satire or is it a drama?

Drama. It's only trying to be funny sometimes and I don't think humor is the driving purpose of the show, unlike say Veep - and even that is still just a comedy (vs satire). I wouldn't say anything is being satirized.

It's a pitch-black dark comedy. The guy who created it worked with that dude that made Veep on his UK show, wrote In The Loop, worked on The Peep Show and a lot of other UK comedy. Adam McKay and Will Ferrell EP-ed it. They hired a bunch of comedy writers esp Jon Brown and Georgia Pritchett and Tony Roche who wrote for Veep. They cast the guy from Ferris Bueller and Macauley Culkin's brother and the schoolmaster from Rushmore.

It's supposed to look like a drama and it has all the trappings--the run time, the high budget, the lifestyle porn, the score--but it's actually a dark dark dark comedy about Roger Ailes. And probably a little more about the Trumps that Roger Ailes. It's a comedy that tricks us into believing it's a drama.

Vulture:

But it’s weird to see Succession nominated as a drama, because, in so many ways, Succession is a comedy. While the Television Academy now categorizes shows by format rather than genre — meaning that, as far as the Emmys are concerned, there’s no such thing as an hour-long comedy — Succession’s drama nomination points to something fascinating, subtle, and productively uneasy at the center of the show. Trying to define its genre gets at questions not just about its fundamental identity, but also at the way viewers see it, something that’s particularly thorny for a show that teases us about whether we should love or loathe its characters, whether we should root for them or hope that they fail, whether we should find their fears and anxieties sympathetic or pitiful. The answer is that while we can feel for the Roys, while their lives are tragic and their anxieties are real, Succession’s core identity comes from satirizing them and their hyper-privileged world.

The great sleight of hand of comedy is that at its best it comes from a dramatic choice. Watch Tim Robinson's The Characters episode on Netflix. The 2nd sketch with the King of Slams. Robinson does nothing slapsticky, he just makes true emotional responses to what happens around him and it's remarkably funny. The sketch conceit is: guy thinks his mom isn't really dead that she's alive and screwing his boss. Nothing funny about deceiving a slow daddy's boy into believing his dead mom is alive and adulterous. But Tim's response is so true it's hilarious. That's what he taught kids when he did workshops for improvisers: find the thing you want, grab on to it, and don't let go no matter what.

Mods can you clip all the Succession stuff and move it to the Succession thread?

I think I'd land on not labeling it at all, because it hits me in the ways both a comedy and a drama would. It's the kind of show that I don't think belongs in either awards category.

33anda3rd wrote:Mods can you clip all the Succession stuff and move it to the Succession thread?

That's a lot of work, and many of you (ahem) haven't paid up your tabs on your GRB All Access Premiumpalooza accounts.

heyzeus wrote:

33anda3rd wrote:Mods can you clip all the Succession stuff and move it to the Succession thread?

That's a lot of work, and many of you (ahem) haven't paid up your tabs on your GRB All Access Premiumpalooza accounts.

just put it on the wade boggs account

Where's the Yelp! page for this joint?

i was inspired to restart Mindhunters after reading this thread and glad i did.

i plowed thru both seasons in about 2 weeks. so damn good.

i was reading they want to do 5 seasons and i really hope they do. It's so well done for a tv show.