HBO
Each Sunday night at 9 p.m. Eastern time for the next several weeks, I will be banished from my own living room. This is, after all, the time that Succession airs on HBO, and I am forbidden from watching it with my boyfriend, as I will spend the entirety of every episode making fun of characters’ names. We are a couple that never fights, but if I start in on his favorite prestige television show, I will be shot in the heart with a glare so cold that it may as well be the icicle that impaled Sandra Oh on Grey’s Anatomy.
For one hour, I am exiled to my bedroom, like a child in time-out. But even there, in my sweet echo chamber, I’m not safe from the Succession hive. Fifteen minutes before an episode begins, and up to two hours after it ends, any Twitter user will inevitably be subjected to a deluge of tweets about Kendall, Roman, Logan, Shiv, and everyone else on this show sporting a totally fake name. You may suggest that, to solve this problem, I put my phone down and pick up a book. I suggest you get real!
I’ve already tried everything possible to avoid the endless scroll of nonsensical, character-name-focused tweets, but it’s merely a dream forever out of reach. There was a time last year when I thought, “Well, if I can’t beat them, I must simply join them.” By the pilot episode’s twentieth crash zoom, I had to tap out. Doomed to remain an outsider forever, everything I’ve learned about Succession is not by my own choice. Yet I know so, so much. Because even if you don’t watch the show, it’s impossible to not know when someone is talking about it, thanks to each and every character’s absolutely ridiculous name.