‘Succession’ recap, season 4, episode 8: ‘America Decides’

Kendall (Jeremy Strong) gives in to his true nature.

Macall Polay/HBO

The gist of it

In an excruciating hour of TV, the Roys camp out at ATN to run election night coverage. Roman is perfectly ready to interfere to hand the election to Mencken, Connor just wants to be relevant, Kendall is trying to hang on to a tiny shred of the better person he keeps telling himself he is, and Shiv doesn’t know anymore whether she cares about the country or just wants to get back at her brothers for pushing her aside. By the end, ATN has gone all-in for Mencken and the election is destined for litigation, and the siblings’ solidarity has shattered. And Succession has perhaps laid out, more clearly than it ever has, exactly what it is about.

It’s election night, and yes, it’s hard to watch

We talk sometimes about a particular movie or show being a “tough sit.” Often, that means it’s a brutal depiction of trauma or violence, just pain upon pain, and no matter how important the story is to tell, sitting through it is deeply unpleasant and might even repeatedly tempt you to just turn it off.

“America Decides” is a different kind of tough sit for two reasons. The first is that seeing an election manipulated in a way that feels so plausible — create chaos in a part of a decisive state where the split of votes is predictable, hurry to declare victory, tell everybody there’s nothing to be done, oh well, we’ve already put up the chyrons — is like an advance haunting by a malevolent ghost.

But the second is that for four seasons, Succession has been inviting the audience to hate the Roys, sure, but also find them entertaining and pitiable. Here, in the antepenultimate episode, the stakes change.

It’s in the title….