![]() ![]() ‘Succession’ Review: Episode 8 Makes Us Watch as the Poison Drips ThroughĪs our adorable bellwether of things to come, young Phillip (Azhy Robertson) opens the third episode with a nightmare. While that may sound voyeuristic, it’s kind of the whole premise of the story, and a key element of imagining Roth’s parallel past. ![]() Rather than wringing their hands while watching from the sidelines, the show’s central family finally experiences firsthand the discrimination they’d been talking about in the first two episodes. Thankfully, that modest goal seems attainable after the series’ third episode, which propels the Levins into the fray of the rising tide of anti-semitism. What’s left for the series to do then, in its remaining three episodes, is tell a good story. Those tricks may have worked wonders for the “The Wire,” which artfully unmasked the futility of a few good actions against a rigged system, but so far the grandiose themes in “The Plot Against America,” such as the rise of fascism and the radicalization of everyday people, feel a lot less relevant than the alliances and rivalries of inner city Baltimore. Sure, establishing the rules of an alternate historical timeline takes some thought and detail, but it shouldn’t use up one-third of your total storytelling time. In the first two parts of “ The Plot Against America,” HBO’s six-episode adaptation of the bestselling Philip Roth novel, creator David Simon took his sweet time setting up the chess board. ![]()
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