‘Succession’ Season 3, Episode 6 Recap: What It Takes
Succession has needed an episode like “What It Takes” for a long time. We know enough about Waystar and ATN and the Roy family to draw comparisons to Rupert Murdoch, his children, and the poisonous legacy of News Corp, or perhaps Donald Trump and his smooth-brained fail-children. If a show like Succession referenced, say, the Trump family more directly, perhaps we would understand Don Jr. as a Roman Roy type, a pitiable simp who’s eager to please the distant, abusive father who will never love him. Such a show might only hint around the impact their familial intrigue has on the real world because it would be immersed instead in the petty, no-doubt-hilarious internecine conflicts that engulf daddy and the kids behind closed doors.
The title “What It Takes” references Richard Ben Cramer’s book about the 1988 presidential election, a classic of political nonfiction and perhaps the definitive book about how campaigns operate. The ’88 election was a mad scramble to succeed Ronald Reagan after he’d reached his two-term limit, with then-VP George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole battling it out for the Republican nomination and Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, Dick Gephardt, and a no-hope Joe Biden mixing it up on the Democratic side. There were a lot of wild twists and turns in the news media, particularly among the Democrats, that led to a nominee, but it was not as if the media itself had a thumb on the scales. As in any healthy democracy, it was decided by the people of New Hampshire.
The perverse twist of “What It Takes” is that the actual process of who gets to be president — or who gets to be the nominee on the right, anyway — is completely opaque, decided in the lobbies and suites of off-the-books events rather than campaign stops and ballot boxes. Just as Logan Roy casually considered the interim CEO of Waystar from the cabin of his PJ, he could also play kingmaker from the couch of his hotel suite, despite being the man responsible for bullying the current president, “the raisin,” out of trying for a second term. He’s looking for the next white guy that looks like the strongest contender and will agree to a hands-off approach to Waystar’s criminal misadventures in exchange for favorable coverage on ATN. These are things that aren’t supposed to happen — the DOJ is supposed to be independent of executive influence, elections are supposed to be decided by the voters — but, in the jaundiced view of Succession, do.
So who gets to be president? We’re offered four candidates: There’s the current vice president, Dave Boyer (Reed…
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