by Don Hall

I had been asked to participate in roasts before this one. While not a stand up comic, I could pull off the derisive meanness of the occasion successfully. The balance of speaking insulting truth but keeping it funny was usually solid. Except that for this specific roast, I had an axe to grind.

It was a roast of my former employer and friend who had fired me for standing my ground against an entitled Chicago super-producer who wanted one of my stage managers fired for doing her job. It was fresh, the organizers knew it, they anticipated I would be more than necessarily vicious, and they were right.

It was less funny and more just mean-spirited. It sounded like a roast, the construction of language was in the form of jokes, but the tone underneath and permeated throughout was nothing less than acid reflux vomited upon my beleaguered friend. People laughed in the first half but stopped laughing by the end. I believe that it must've been like the scene from The Untouchables where DeNiro (as Capone) is talking baseball. Lots of good natured guffaws until he takes the bat and bashes the man's skull in.

It was supposed to be funny but it decidedly was not.

I like roasts. The old Dean Martin Friar's Club roasts were fun, funny, and demonstrated the good natured ball busting of friendship in an earlier age. The Jeff Ross Comedy Central roasts miss out on having actual friends knock each other's nuts around but mostly get funny people to do the cookery. Once in a while, though, Ross books someone who doesn't quite understand the humor and it feels off.

Edward Norton roasting Bruce Willis is a perfect example. Norton is a more serious guy with a few issues of his own. I'm certain he had legit joke writers pen his insults but his delivery felt strange and uncomfortable. It flopped but in a way that you can't quite look away like seeing a decapitated head roll out of a Honda after an accident with a huge grin on the face.

Imagine Seinfeld performed by Christian Bale as Jerry, Edward Norton as George, Cate Blanchett as Elaine, Daniel Day-Lewis as Kramer.

JERRY: So three dates and she still won't let me play with her toys.

KRAMER: That's interesting. You know someone mentioned to me you were not very happy with your toys growing up.

JERRY: Yeah, that was me.

KRAMER: Oh, that's right, right, right. And uh you mentioned that uh, you didn't get a G.I. Joe. You had.

JERRY: An Army Pete.

KRAMER: Right.

JERRY: He was made of wood and in the rain he would swell up and then split.

KRAMER: And we all know how painful that can be.

ELAINE: Jerry

KRAMER: Oh, Elaine Benes. Well, this is quite a thrill, yes. Come on sit down. Yes.

ELAINE: Well, I'll tell ya, this sidler guy is really chapping my hide.

KRAMER: Excuse me yeah. We're talking ... this way.

ELAINE: Well, he's getting credit for work I did! He's gonna sidle me right out of a job.

KRAMER: Now, for those of us who don't know, uh, sidling is what?

ELAINE: Kramer, what is wrong with you?

KRAMER: What do you mean?

ELAINE: Well, for starters, you're looking at note cards I'm gonna have to give that guy a taste

of his own medicine, so, I'm going to sidle the sidler.

JERRY: You, sidle? You ... you stomp around like a Clydesdale!

ELAINE: Not with these honeys. ... Wrestling shoes!

KRAMER: Only in New York. ... ha ha

GEORGE: Jerry?

KRAMER: Oh! Well, ladies and gentlemen! It's our good friend, George Costanza! What a surprise!

Yeah, sit, sit, sit.. Weeell!

GEORGE: Well, it happened again.

JERRY: What happened?

KRAMER: tut tut , I'll ask the questions. What happened?

GEORGE: Well, I just stomped some pigeons in the park. They - they didn't move.

KRAMER: All right, let's change the subject. Now, uh you and Jerry dated for a while. Tell us ... what

was that like? That was the wrong card.

GEORGE: I I don't get these birds! They're breaking the deal. It's like the pigeons decided to ignore me!

JERRY: So they're like everyone else.

The episode plays out as such:

George (Norton) is accidentally massacring the pigeons who, for some reason, are breaking “the deal,” Elaine (Blanchet) is creeped out by a new employee who keeps sidling on her so she decides to sidle him, and Jerry (Bale) is upset that the woman he’s dating won’t let him play with her incredible toy collection so he drugs her. It all goes from bad to worse when Norton runs over a squirrel and spends a fortune to save its life, Blanchet’s plan to sidle the "sidler" backfires causing her to give him some noise-making Tic-Tacs which annoy Peterman, and Bale keeps drugging his girlfriend so that he, Norton and Blanchet can play with her toys. Unfortunately for Bale, Kramer (Day-Lewis) exposes him on his show, now in the format Scandals and Animals. Meanwhile, birds get revenge on Norton when a hawk attacks him and his new pet squirrel.

The intent is funny but the delivery is off. The tone shifts and the inhumanity of sociopathy rears up in full force.

I grew up with Dallas, Knots Landing, Dynasty. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. There was a fascination in the eighties with the high drama of fabulously wealthy people doing shitty things to one another. This wasn't new—Shakespeare made his bones with plays about kings and queens fucking each other over for pleasure and power. We plebes on the lower end of the American caste system seem to eat this up with plastic cutlery, the gravy of lust and intrigue set in Tuscany villas dripping from our chins in huge dollops.

I was never much of a fan but I'll admit to being sucked in a bit by this half worship/half disdain for those in the upper crust cutting each other's throats. Live a lifetime and the fascination fades like ocean sounds from a sleep aid box.

Then I caught an episode of Billions.

Paul Giamatti as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Chuck Roades versus Damian Lewis as Peter Thiel tech billionaire Bobby Axelrod with writing that stinks of lofty Shakespearean ambitions, this was some fantastic television.

With spectacular lines like:

"Deflating like a Tijuana breast implant."

"I miss him like the case of crabs I had freshman year."

"Dumping like a drey horse on an all taco diet."

I couldn't get enough.

So when Adam McKay was said to be producing a series about the Roys (a proxy for Rupert Murdoch's tabloid kingdom) I was hesitant but interested. Like so many of the most popular things on television, I waited while the breathless masses consumed it, tweeted about it, wrote thinkpieces about it, all while casually avoiding spoilers in general.

Two months ago, I thought "What the hell?" I dove in to the putrid waters of Succession.

I hated it. I loved it. But I really hated it. I loved the score (especially the opening which I ended up watching every single episode because the music is so ridiculously Punch Drunk Love perfect). I hated every character, every scene, every moment. 

Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy, the heir apparent but struggling so hard to be a badass with a hip hop soul I wanted to run from the room every time he appeared. Sarah Snook as Siobhan "Shiv" Roy, the daughter who I thought might be the one decent person in the family but who is as sucky and conniving as the rest. Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy (yes, that Kieran Culkin) the fuck up brother with an acid tongue. Alan Ruck as Connor Roy (yes, that Alan Ruck) the only child from Logan Roy's first marriage.

Brian Cox heads the whole thing as Logan Roy, the old school villain in charge.

This series is like King Lear if Shakespeare decided to write a thirty-hour version that simply kept repeating the basic plot line over and over. The three seasons are thin as rice paper in terms of plot: Logan is looking for a replacement from one of his three children, all spoiled, entitled morons (thus the name of the series), Kendall tries to kill him and fails, Shiv tries to ingratiate him with her sub par knowledge and unwarranted savvy, Roman cracks wise and sucks up to get ahead, and Connor is sidelined but fine with living off the teat of privilege just as long as the milk never runs dry.

There are no redeemable characters in this. Everyone from cousin Greg to husband Tom to wives, girlfriends, compatriots in business, reveal themselves to be completely devoid of any human capacity for empathy or self reflection. This is an entire show devoted to the most cutthroat, broken whores in existence.

Should be a barrel of laughs, right? I mean, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell are co-producers, right? Cue the laugh track and the slight mugging.

But, no.

The script reads like a Seinfeld episode but the actors play this straight as an arrow. The disconnect in style, in tone, makes it bizarrely interesting. Interesting enough to keep me glued to every word, every glance, every stupid dick pic sent by mistake as if these awful people could really be this horrifying in life and not be murdered by the help in two episodes.

Succession is a bowl of olive-flavored ice cream. The contrast between what you think you're getting and what you inevitably put in your mouth creates a cognitive dissonance that can't be dismissed. You keep eating it because you are in denial that it looks like chocolate mint but tastes like a pimento loaf.

I can't wait for season four.