A Million Dollar Home Run

I started writing this article months back in October 2023. I never finished it because, one—I didn’t know what to say or pretend like I had something to say. And two—writing “one million dollar home run" felt like a privilege when babies were dying by the second while I was trying to sound smart on paper. I thought I’d escape writing this piece, that the madness would stop—but no. I have a need to say something, but what’s there to say other than lament? Or burn oneself in the streets like Aaron Bushnell?

Succession is one of my favorite series, one I binged religiously. It is a six-season, heart-wrenching mockery of hope, set in cozy, deceitful family rooms and skyscrapers so high like the entitlement of the Roys. Succession is dirty, derogatory, painful, absurd, funny, threatening. You can laugh at them, but you can’t escape them. I knew I’d vouch for the series the moment I finished the pilot episode. It’s a tragedy written so poetically, it ends right where it starts—with the million-dollar home run.

A metaphor for our world order, where human dignity means nothing unless it’s transactional, the scene stayed with me from the first time I watched it. The bet was a party joke to Roman but a promise to the kid. The way the kid believes in the prize and runs with his life is no different from all of us running for the promised money, for the promised land. But the cheque was always meant to be torn in our faces. We’re always laughed at. Why? Because we don’t have that kind of money? And what is enough money, anyway?

Money has made the rich indebted, the sick and damaged look like geniuses, and given power like a god’s console—but still, it’s never enough. When Roman tears the cheque in front of the flustered kid, it’s ironic that Logan steps forward and offers validation: “Good effort, kid.” The one everyone craves approval from—the creator of the chaos, the children’s “dear, dear world of a father.”

As the series progresses, you realize: as detestable as these characters are, you probably wouldn’t be any better if you were in their shoes. We like to believe we’d do things differently—but would we? Our basic instinct is to protect: to protect oneself, one’s family, one’s community. We fear as much as we love that hate becomes as universal as love.

As alienated as the series looks from their private jets and digits of riches to our daily lives, the humans in it are deeply relatable in moments of trapping love, gasping for validation, playing ego games because losing is never good, even in love. Even more so, when money is involved. If love meant losing, then it was better to lose love. But the series is, at its core, a pursuit of love disguised as a pursuit of power. They are so terrified of love being used against them that they trade it for omnipotence—for a world where no one can hurt them. Because love, as they know it, hurts.

There is something revolutionary in exploring the depth of human ugliness. You start to pity them. And what is more satisfying than pitying the evil? All of this—but what are you when the lights go off and your head hits the pillow?

We have studied wars, living through a few of them, and know that they will always exist. But the wars outside won’t make sense if we won’t look inside.

They say life makes sense if you believe in destiny. But what does destiny have to do with babies washed ashore? shot 300 times? killed in their sleep? What was their destiny? Or does money laugh at destiny, too? Who gave money so much power? The patriots? Their proud medallions and puppet gods? What do the patriots know that I don’t? How are they not accountable? Is that enough money?

I imagine death is when life must get real—before we lose sight of it. I believe heaven and hell exist, but not in plump white clouds or fire-walled pits with nowhere to go. On Judgment Day, maybe God doesn’t descend from the heavens, He descends from within you. You will judge yourself in your last thought, and that thought will sentence you for eternity. Because deep down, all of us know who we really are. We’re just scared to look inside when we’re already running away from the truth. Scared of the answers it demands. So we escape, we destruct. When you kill, you kill yourself, too. Maybe this is why “soldiers” have become AI-powered precision killer drones otherwise they won’t bear themselves.

And yet, there is also power in feeling better than others, in killing somebody’s ego and proving yours is better. We all die for it. We destroy, we create, we rule, we run farther, higher, deeper than others. We try not to be “that cringy” person in the room. But deep down, we get it. We get the cringe, the obsession, the status quo behavior—because we are them. Or will we do better?

Succession is brilliant in every way—the writing, the music, the cast. Especially Sarah Snook, who has left me in awe forever by playing a deeply troubled Shiv fucking Roy to her utmost depth, like a knife that knows no mercy. Siobhan is heavy in her head like her father, smart like her father, difficult like her father—but a girl. A YouTube comment read: “The most delicious part was the irony—how in the final moments of the vote, Shiv had all the power but couldn’t use it to get anything for herself.” That’s just the way it is, in fiction, in non-fiction.

She is the only one in the family who sets iron boundaries against her father’s arrogance, moves out of the family to balance out her family’s idiocracy, who calls out her brothers’ hypocrisy. She stands by the unpopular opinion of “Let’s not be shitty people,” even if it’s a lonely job. But if you think Shiv is nice, she is not. Siobhan walks with a lot of nerve. Her dad knows she is serious enough to turn tables, so he keeps her by his side even when she is openly at war with him throughout the series but in a dad-daughter way. “Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer.” Shiv wants to walk out but just can’t.

After all his victories and aggression, Logan dies in a toilet on his private plane, off to close another deal, his children listening to his last breath through a phone. Logan wouldn’t have had it any other way- leaving forever after traumatizing his children when they think he couldn’t no more.

The series constantly draws connections between the family’s power struggle and the real-world consequences because of it. Why? Because they are “needy love sponges”.

There is so much sadness in the world, so much that we can’t help but let it figure itself out. We can’t control how hate spreads in the world, but we do control how it spreads inside us. Hating is easy—a dropped bomb, a sniper’s shot at a baby, a broken pact, an erased existence. Annihilation from a distance so as not to look at consequences in their eyes. Loving, on the other hand, is often “non-conforming”—and is often rewarding.

We are living in war times. The risk of desensitization is real. Believing that we don’t have much power- life is going to suck anyway, so why not hoard money and sulk with money? Do we succumb? Become like them? It is not normal to see live footages of people burning, homes crumbling, children starving. What can we do? We can resist in our own ways. When hate creeps into our own lives, I hope we recognize it. Bargain with it a little. Let it pass us by without ruffling too many leaves. Because whatever our problems, they are not worse than living in a bomb carpet, having your sense of life shattered.

If they can show up every day and still believe in what goodness is left for them, then surely, we can do much better. Hold people accountable. Don’t forget. Don’t look away from the lies. Fish out the right intentions. Solve your dinner conversations. Be grateful. Get up as better people. Find pleasure in truth. Fall in love with yourself so much that others want to, too. Falling in love isn’t romantic, its hard work, renouncing one’s own bullshit.

Let’s start there before sighing at the news, after judging the men on top making decisions, and hear them say worse things than a teenager. Because what would you have done if you were them?

Will you do better?