Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/HBO/Getty
This episode of Succession might be one of, if not the, hardest to watch. The parallels between “America Decides” and the 2020 election are harrowing, and ultimately, reflect a version of America we could’ve been living in had the results not swung a different way on that fateful election day in November 2020.
Though there are only two candidates really in the running—democrat Daniel Jimenez (Elliot Villar) and republican Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk)—the most noteworthy President-wannabe is Connor Roy (Alan Ruck). Roman’s (Kieran Culkin) job was to push Connor off the map, but he failed to account for his brother’s stubbornness. “So glad I didn’t drop out,” Connor says to Willa before the polls start to close. “It just makes everything more interesting.”
Offering Connor a government post in Oman in exchange for dropping out of the election wasn’t enough—until Connor starts to lose every state. Then, without missing a beat, Connor comes crawling back to Roman, begging for a new position in a smaller country, articulating his request with a bizarre rhyming game: “Organize a little coup in old Peru. Put me in a van down to Kazakhstan. Couldn’t I just be our fun guy down in Uruguay?” Shocking no one, these rhymes don’t work. Connor does manage to walk away from the election with ambassadorship in Slovenia, a country with a population lower than that of Houston.