The Top Eight Hunks of "Succession"

 

Succession on HBO Max, a glamour-glitz-backstabbing soap opera, has received numerous awards and accolades: 48 Primetime Emmy nominations and 13 wins in the first season alone, half a dozen Golden Globes, a British Academy Award.  

But in gay representation it appears to be 20 years behind the times: there is none.  400 characters, all explicitly heterosexual.  An article mentions some homoerotic subtexts, and another discusses how the writers "pushed" for a charater to be gay in the third season, without success. Yet the Emmies keep rolling in. 

I'm going to try to make sense of the convoluted family tree, to see if Succession at least offers some beefcake.

Elderly tycoon Logan Roy has had three wives, all of whom have children, who will squabble over the "succession" of his empire.

1. Connor (Alan Ruck) from Marrriage #1.  No beefcake, unless you go back to 1986 and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

2. Roman (Kieran Culkin) from Marriage #2.  No beefcake.  Well, I guess you have to count any shirtless scene.

3. Kendall (Jeremy Strong) from Marriage #2.  When you search for beefcake images of Jeremy Strong, Chris Evans as Captain America (top photo) pops up.  Even I know that it's not Jeremy Strong, but I'm including it anyway.  

4. Shiv a girl from Marriage #2 is dating Tom (Matthew McFayden)/ No beefcake.  Why is she named after a prison knife?

5. Current wife Marcia Roy has two children from a previous marriage, including a son, Amir (Darius Homayoun).  Nice chest, but he only appears in two episodes.

6. There's also a grand-nephew running around, Greg (Nicolas Braun).  He's the one whom the writers tried unsuccesfully to get the ok on a "coming out" story arc.  "No way -- you can't have gay characters on prime time!  This is 1977!"

7. Kendall's college friend Stewy (Arian Moayed) appears in 22 episodes.  The photo is from a Broadway play, not Succession.

8. And Rob Yang plays rival CEO  Lawrence Yee in 20 episodes.

Wait -- is he in bed with a guy?  According to the Succession fan wiki, he's gay, but only appears with the unnamed boyfriend once.

I guess one in 400 is better than none at all.  Marginally better.

By the way, I went through the entire cast list, and found only two black actors: Attendant (one episode) and Zell Simmons (one episode).  Sounds like the writers need to push for more black representation, too.