What will we watch when it’s over?
This question has come up lately whenever I encounter a fellow fan of “Succession,” which begins its fourth and final season tomorrow. We confess to anticipatory grief, pre-missing the despicable, irresistible Roy family, only 10 episodes to go.
I wonder if this intensity of emotion isn’t only about our love of the show’s storytelling. The two years between the end of Season 2 (October 2019) and the beginning of Season 3 (October 2021) coincided roughly with the first two years of the pandemic, when we felt the absence of our pop-cultural security blankets acutely. The beginning of a new “Succession” season feels like an exhalation, a reprieve.
The show as “event,” as cultural phenomenon, a mixture of actual audience enthusiasm and marketing hype, is a curious thing. You can buckle up and go for the ride — marking premiere dates on your calendar, setting the DVR or planning a viewing party, dissecting each episode on group texts — or you can, thanks to iron will or just not caring about the show at hand, sit it out.
When you’ve opted out, the fuss seems amusing but trifling. I skipped the ongoing event that was “Game of Thrones” and was unmoved by the distant din of “can you believe this person vanquished/slept with/slayed that person/dragon?” that followed every episode. There was comfort in being indifferent, in conserving my curiosity and energy.
When you’re all in, it’s a different story. I’m basking now in the electricity that crackles between me and a fellow “Succession” enthusiast when we discuss our predictions for the new season. I love reminding people that the premiere is this weekend and hearing their sighs of relief, of “Finally!” I’m a completist, hoovering up all the profiles and behind-the-scenes gossip and podcast interviews. (I recommend this video of the 10 things the actor Jeremy Strong can’t live without from GQ and Hunter Harris’s on-location dispatch from Tuscany before last season, from New York Magazine.)
Of course there will be other good shows to watch. (“Couples Therapy,” a very good show that’s not what you think if you think it must be cheesy or tawdry as I did before getting totally engrossed, returns on April 28.) Even if many of the offerings on hand seem like thin broth compared with the nutrient-dense stew of “Succession,” we’ll find something else to feast on before long. Mourning a show’s imminent end is a bittersweet element of being a fan, as nourishing as preseason excitement and post-episode rehashing.
And if the prospect of saying goodbye forever seems too painful, there’s always this. In a recent interview with The New Yorker, the “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong kept hope alive: “I have caveated the end of the show, when I’ve talked to some of my collaborators, like: Maybe there’s another part of this world we could come back to, if there was an appetite?” he said. “Maybe there’s something else that could be done, that harnessed what’s been good about the way we’ve worked on this.” A spinoff? A reunion? A one-off holiday special some day in the future? A fan can dream.
For more
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Catch up with a Season 3 finale recap.
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“It’s a weird thing, the grief when you finish a job. It’s sort of awful and heartbreaking, but at the same time, there’s a slight relief — a complicated mélange of feelings.” Sarah Lyall spoke with Matthew Macfadyen, who plays Tom Wambsgans.
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“They’re both interested in substance, and neither of them needs to be the center of attention in a room, and nobody is smarter than either of them in a room.” J. Smith-Cameron’s husband, the writer and director Kenneth Lonergan, on what his wife has in common with her character, Gerri Kellman.
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From 2021, how Nicholas Braun elevates Cousin Greg.
THE WEEK IN CULTURE
CULTURE CALENDAR
📺 “Yellowjackets” (Sunday): The first season of this series — which jumped back and forth in time between a team of female high school soccer players whose plane crash lands in the Canadian wilderness and their traumatized, present-day selves — was a minor sensation. That was partly for its stellar cast (Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci, among others), partly for its ’90s nostalgia-on-overdrive soundtrack and partly because it was creepy as hell. Season 2 starts this weekend on Showtime.
📚 “Crying in H Mart” (Tuesday): Michelle Zauner, the lead singer of the band Japanese Breakfast, is now probably as well known for this critically acclaimed memoir, out in paperback after two years riding the best-seller list, as she is for her music. As David Marchese wrote, “H Mart” is “about food and memory, the confusion that can come with biracial identity, Zauner’s fraught relationship with her hyper-demanding Korean mother and then her grief at losing her mother to cancer.”
RECIPE OF THE WEEK
Spring Minestrone With Kale and Pasta
There’s no better way to conjure spring at mealtime than by piling green things on your plate — or with this soup, in a pot. This is the moment each year in which I go wild with asparagus, kale, peas, dill — anything that banishes the blasé gray of a New York winter. Kay Chun’s fast spring soup does this brilliantly, with the thrilling addition of fresh ginger.
REAL ESTATE
What you get for $250,000: A Craftsman bungalow in Kaukauna, Wis.; a rowhouse in Philadelphia; or a midcentury ranch house in Florence, Ala.
Cost calculator: Where is it cheaper to build than to buy?
The hunt: A couple wanted to swap their home in Pennsylvania for a California rental. Which one did they choose? Play our game.
LIVING
Luxury gyms: Where exercise requires an approval process, and monthly fees of up to $2,750.
ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER
Sanity from storage containers
It’s prime spring cleaning season, which can be as daunting as it is inspiring. I recently finished some house projects, and my garage looked as if a tornado had swept through it. The solution was simple storage containers. In Wirecutter’s guide, our experts tossed 32 bins down stairs, left them to soak in rain and stuffed them full to find the best ones. I used a mix of the Iris Weathertight Totes and HDX Tough Storage Totes, but our guide includes additional options to manage your mess. — Daniela Gorny
For step-by-step advice on how to keep everything in your home squeaky clean, sign up for Wirecutter’s Clean Everything newsletter.
GAME OF THE WEEKEND
March Madness: By Monday evening, both the men’s and women’s N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments will be down to their final four teams. The UConn women’s team, which had struggled this season with injuries, is back at full strength and looks capable of winning it all; UConn plays Ohio State today (4 p.m. Eastern on ABC). On the men’s side, Florida Atlantic, a small school in Boca Raton that had never won a tournament game before this year, plays Kansas State tonight for a spot in the semifinals (6 p.m. on TBS).
