The True Power of ‘Succession’ Comes From Writing Inside the Box

Over the five years that HBO’s Succession ruled Sunday night television, countless pixels have been spilled in praise of its writing. Here, though, Katie Baker celebrates the show’s culmination by laying bare exactly what it is that makes the writing so incredible: an unshakeable devotion to the way people actually communicate.

The other blending that Succession manages to pull off is the mix between its characters’ hyper-articulate moments and the frequent moments when they’re at a loss for words. One minute Kendall is name-checking Zadie Smith, the next he’s “just here to say: ‘yo.’” One minute Shiv is smooth-talking strategy about the India numbers, the next she’s having this simple conversation, to devastating effect:

Shiv: Yeah, you are not the most important one.

Kendall: I don’t think I am.

Shiv: Yes, you do. You do. You do. You fucking do. You do.

It’s a kind of verbal version of the way stylish people can pull off high-low fashion mixes, like Kristen Stewart pairing Chanel with Vans, and it’s a duality that the Succession writers can understand: They may love language, but that doesn’t mean they can always command it on cue.

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Have Assisted Dying Laws Gone Too Far?

“Tarra Carlson’s plan for her old age is simple: to die before her husband.” This statement might seem like a light-hearted joke, but Carlson is deadly serious. Should her husband pass before her, Carlson plans on choosing a medically assisted death in Canada to avoid living in poverty while trying to navigate a crumbling healthcare system as a person living with a disability.

“I’m petrified of growing old with a disability,” she says. If her husband dies before her, she may have no way to access financial support. She’ll lose her biggest advocate and support system—and her home. She’s worked in long-term care facilities and never wants to live in one. Applying for disability support programs, such as home care, can be cumbersome. There’s no one-stop shop for disability services; they’re spread across government agencies and ministries. Wait lists are long. Paperwork can be complicated. Carlson doesn’t think she’ll be able to understand how to navigate social assistance programs without her husband to explain them to her. But if she dies first, she reckons, she won’t have to.

Compared with disability support, medical assistance in dying, or MAID, seems relatively easy to request. Written applications differ by province or territory but are fairly straightforward; most are only a few pages long. For some of them, to confirm eligibility, an applicant simply has to sign and initial certain statements—for example, that they have an irremediable and grievous medical condition and are in a state of advanced decline. If any more health conditions were to crop up on top of her disability, eroding her independence completely, says Carlson, she’s pretty sure she’d qualify for MAID. “It’s a one-way ticket,” she says, “because you have no choice.”

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How to Hire a Pop Star for Your Private Party

Evan Osnos somehow manages to take a peek under the cover of an industry normally shrouded by NDAs — private gigs. The days of being regarded as a “sellout” for taking on a private party are dwindling, with stars increasingly embracing the ludicrous money that can come with playing songs about strippers at a Bar Mitzvah. Osnos tags along with Flo Rida for a couple of these events, and it’s quite the ride.

It wasn’t all that different from Flo’s big years; it’s just that the audience was smaller and the fee larger. Seven years after his last Top Ten hit, the crowds still get loopy when they hear a song from their high-school prom, and some of the erstwhile club kids are now entering middle management, with the power to book the entertainment for the holiday party.

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Lost Illusions: The Untold Story of the Hit Show’s Poisonous Culture

This excerpt from Maureen Ryan’s new book, Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, goes deep into what went wrong in the Lost writers room. The beloved hit changed TV as we knew it, with a diverse ensemble cast and incredible writing. But a toxic workplace brewed offscreen: bullying, inappropriate comments, and racist and sexist remarks. Drawing on years of conversations with sources close to the show — actors like Harold Perrineau (who played Michael), writer-producers including Monica Owusu-Breen and Melinda Hsu Taylor, and even showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof — Ryan reveals an uncomfortable and grueling environment.

These revelations explain a lot—namely, why a show promising an inclusive, globe-trotting adventure ended up being, in its final season, about a small group of men on interlocking epic quests. This is not a critique of the show’s reliably excellent actors; this is about who got the onscreen focus and why. Of course, characters of color had notable or heroic moments, but over time, they were generally shipped off the island or killed off, and white male characters like Ben Linus and the Man in Black became ever more vital. The showrunners’ “cold” treatment of Michelle Rodriguez and her character certainly stuck with Gretchen: After Rodriguez was arrested in a drunken driving incident, “instead of having empathy or sympathy for her situation, they were just like, ‘Well, we’ll just get rid of her.’ ”

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Michael J. Fox Looks Back on Hollywood Triumphs, Setbacks and Why ‘Parkinson’s Is the Gift That Keeps on Taking’

It’s been a difficult few years for Michael J. Fox; in this profile, he shares his challenges with Brent Lang with honesty and self-awareness. There is a heavy focus on Fox’s Parkinson’s disease — but this represents the reality of living with a condition that affects so much.

‘I’m still happy to join the day and be a part of things,” he says. “I just enjoy the little math problems of existence. I love waking up and figuring that stuff out and at the same time being with my family. My problem is I fall down. I trip over things and fall down and break things. And that’s part of having this. But I hope that, and I feel that, I won’t break as many bones tomorrow. So that’s being optimistic.’

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Inside the Christian Legal Campaign to Return Prayer to Public Schools

What place does religion have in public schools in America? The U.S. has a long history of battles over prayer in schools. Currently, religious minorities and atheists in Bossier Parish, Louisiana, have become uncomfortable and fearful with the way religion is promoted in classrooms and public gatherings, like sports events. Wertheimer examines what’s happening in Bossier Parish, and how the community could represent a harbinger of what’s to come in schools across the U.S.

In Bossier Parish schools, parents, teachers, and students told me, the court order stalled, but didn’t entirely stop, Christian prayer. Now, with a Supreme Court friendly to school prayer, educators and state lawmakers around the country are testing the limits of the strict separation of church and state written into the Constitution. In a handful of states, including Kentucky, Montana and Texas, lawmakers have recently proposed or passed measures attempting to promote faith in schools. In Kentucky, for example, the legislature passed a law in March that would allow teachers to share their religious beliefs in school. A Kentucky lawmaker who sponsored the House bill told local television station Lex 18 that he hoped the measure would “embolden these Christian teachers” who may have been afraid to express themselves in public schools.

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Seeing Beyond the Beauty of a Vermeer

Serene. Precise. Beautiful. These are the kind of glorifying words typically associated with the light-filled work of Johannes Vermeer, best known for his painting “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” Reflecting on the largest Vermeer exhibition in history, now on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Teju Cole points to the violence in the artist’s work and questions the dogma surrounding his aesthetic legacy:

But let us find the trouble now. All through Vermeer’s oeuvre are objects like those in “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter” that remind us the world is large. This was the world that was emerging after the protracted struggle by the Netherlands for independence from Spanish rule. During the 80-Years war and in its immediate aftermath, the Dutch established trading posts in Asia, Africa and in the Americas. An efflorescence of capitalism at home and overseas followed, and with it the beginnings of a colonial empire. Their own experience of subjugation did nothing to temper their desire to subjugate others. The Dutch East India Company dominated maritime routes and its shareholders raked in profits. The Dutch West India Company, meanwhile, was a significant force in the trade in enslaved people. Ordinary Dutch citizens grew wealthy from these criminal enterprises. With a renewed sense of who they were in the world, they filled their homes with rare objects and far-fetched finery. You could have luxurious things, and you could also have them depicted in paintings. The paintings were helpful reminders that you were mortal, yes, but also that you were rich.

In his perceptive book “Vermeer’s Hat” (2008), the historian Timothy Brook draws out some of the global provenances of the things we see in Vermeer’s paintings. He suggests, for instance, that the silver on the table in the “Woman Holding a Balance” could have had its origin in the notorious Potosí silver mine, a hellish place run on the labor of enslaved people in what was then Peru and is now Bolivia. The felt lining the hat of the soldier in “Officer and Laughing Girl” almost certainly came from beaver pelts sourced by French adventurers from the violent trade networks of 17th-century Canada. Brook traces a connection between this lighthearted genre scene and the bitter history of the “starvation winter of 1649-50,” when European greed for pelts led to expulsions, wars and the mass deaths of Huron Indian children.

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