![]() “Until we open the boxes, I’m just as much president as the other two,” he says. 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. 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. 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 berates Tom, who heads ATN, for not putting on enough coverage of him. Connor, amazingly enough, is still hanging onto the hope that he might carry a state. Reality and truth are tenuous in “America Decides.” The race between Jimenez and Mencken is tight. There’s nothing these people actually stand for they’re empty suits of skin animated only by resentment. But Succession remains more tragic than comic because its world and characters are so bleakly cynical. 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. In a slightly different light, “America Decides” would play out like a comedy of errors. ![]() It’s the most feckless kind of leadership. Perhaps most pathetically, they wield this great power while denying that they’re in charge whenever it’s convenient to disavow it. 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. Their decisions aren’t undergirded by well-reasoned strategy, even if Machiavellian in motivation. They’re not at all equipped to make calls on how electoral votes should be tallied. What’s appalling on Succession is how stupid the people in charge are. Text messages from the lawsuit revealed that the network repeatedly and knowingly allowed guests to lie about election fraud. The recent defamation lawsuit Fox News settled (for $787 million) revealed that Rupert Murdoch had been directly involved in making calls for the network during the 2020 election. The idea of a media executive personally picking a winner is no longer all that shocking. Did he actually get more votes than Jimenez? Who knows. ATN gives Mencken the backing to posture as the winner. 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. Georgia and Arizona are singled out as contentious states where the vote is extremely close. ![]() Someone sets fire to a vote counting center in Wisconsin, destroying absentee ballots. Protesters are clashing, and accusations of voter fraud fly left and right. There’s a constant thrum of civil unrest and violence in the backdrop of the episode. 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. 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. Succession is usually a little slyer about its real-life corollaries, but in this episode the references are painted in bold colors. 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. This is democracy at work: a hundred and some million Americans casting their ballots, letting their voice be heard. 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. Note: This article contains spoilers for several Succession episodes, particularly season four, episode eight, “America Decides.” ![]()
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