Succession and Vanderpump Rules is the same.

Why Vanderpump scratches the Succession itch, and a blog about Crusader Kings 3.

Hello again, friends.

I wrote something new at The Verge, about the tricky user interface of Crusader Kings 3.

While the point of the game isn’t to nest tooltips within tooltips, it sometimes feels like a visualization of going down the rabbit hole that is Crusader Kings 3. It’s a game that will always have to ask its players to deal with a little bit of friction to understand it, but navigating that friction makes the payoff of finally knowing what everything means all the more satisfying. The deeper your understanding of how each element of the user interface works, the more powerful of a player you become. Still, smoothing out some of the rougher edges of the game’s user experience does broaden their audience and also helps the developers at Paradox keep this game as sophisticated as it’s always been.

I had lots of fun writing this one, and I really think Crusader Kings 3 is one of the greatest video games of all time. Play it, even if you think it might be too much for you. It’s easier than you think it is, and more accessible than ever.

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Right now when I sit at my desk to do work, more likely than not I am watching Vanderpump Rules. It’s a reality show that I’ve described to my friends as a reminder that true human evil does actually exist in the world. Ostensibly about waiters in Los Angeles working for the restaurant SUR, which stands for Sexy Unique Restaurant, it’s actually chronicles the datings lives of perhaps the most selfish people on Earth. Especially in the early seasons, where cast members Stassi, Jax and Kristen had not yet been fired for racism, Vanderpump Rules is mostly a show about people who are dating each other but cannot stop cheating and lying about it. If these people were dying and offered a glass of water on the condition that they had to stop cheating on their spouses, they would all die of thirst.

My incredible partner, David Grossman, does not understand why I like Vanderpump Rules. When I try to tell him why I like watching a show about terrible people treating each other cruelly he looks at me as if I’ve suggested that he swallow a glass full of live wasps. Yet, I can’t look away. I know that Dave’s criticism of reality television, that it’s exploitative of its subjects and designed to cut writers out of the process of making televsion, are correct. And yet, I am already of the third of ten seasons of Vanderpump, texting David’s sister about all the Scandoval updates.

The only other television show that reaches the dramatic heights of Vanderpump Rules right now is, of course, the final season of Succession.

Succession is a show that came out right after the end of Game of Thrones, and is more or less Game of Thrones: Business Edition. It’s a succession crisis, but instead of taking place in a medieval pastiche, it’s a pastiche of the Murdoch family. In this show, the Roy family, led by patriarch Logan Roy, are an obscenely wealthy and dysfunctional group of people, and as Logan grows older, the children compete with each other to take over the family business. It’s a comdedy.

As one of the most popular and critically acclaimed television shows on the air right now it probably doesn’t need much introduction. Watching this show as it airs is always painful for me. I’m so anxious to see the twists and turns of the story, even as it careens through well worn emotional dynamics between the characters. What I’m finding, to my surprise, is that in between episodes, Vanderpump Rules scratches the Succession itch.

It’s true that Succession is a show where where rich white folks argue and see who is going to get a kiss from Daddy. It’s about class, and also a very particular, elite echelon of class. While the Vanderpump cast members no longer pretend to be working as waiters, their level of celebrity and cultural power is nowhere near the level of the characters on Succession. Still, the emotional cycle of the cast members of Vanderpump feels incredibly familiar when I watch the show. What are they doing other than arguing with each other and then begging for a kiss from their mommy, Lisa Vanderpump?

In the third season, one cast member, James Kennedy, is actually fired from his job at the sexy unique restaurant. As firings go, this one is pretty deserved and also not something that would be difficult to bounce back from. Kennedy is already a DJ, there are many restaurants in Los Angeles, and he was only working as a bus boy. Yet, instead of applying to literally anywhere else, he writes Lisa Vanderpump a letter and begs for his bus boy job back. When Lisa actually asks him why he doesn’t just work somewhere else—his new girlfriend’s ex also works at SUR and it would just be less complicated to go elsewhere—he tells her there is nowhere else he wants to work. It has to be at SUR, even though SUR frequently makes him miserable.

Sometimes I tell David that both these shows feel like modern adaptations of Sartre’s play No Exit. The play tells the story of various people trapped in hell, and is the origin of the phrase “hell is other people.” The most interesting moment of the play to me is late in the show, where a door opens in the blank room where all the characters have been trapped. The characters regard it, but don’t leave. They could leave, but they also know that really, they can never leave. They need each other—need the ways that they make each other miserable.

What really makes me laugh in every episiode of Succesion is that all the kids need to do to be free from their father is give up his money. They all already have so much more wealth than they know what to do with. Connor, who doesn’t compete for the family business but still wants his father’s approval, has built an elaborate compound in New Mexico and is able to dump money into a frivolous presidential campaign and has only started to run out of money now, late into his life. Each of the children would just be happier without the scrutiny that being executives at WaystarRoyCo puts them under. Kendall could possibly get sober outside of the public eye, Roman would be free to explore his sexuality, and Shiv could create space in her life to be vulnerable. They could be fine—but they will never be able to give up the power and privilege the money gives them.

Vanderpump Rules contains much of that same kind of drama but within the much lower stakes of restaurant. Hell, it turns out, can be created anywhere.

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Thanks for subscribing and reading my irregularly documented musings. I’ve got a few longer term projects in the pipeline, and I’m hoping to be able to devote more time to blogging in the future (newsletters are blogs). Right now I’m looking forward to the new Notes feature on Substack, you can also find me in a little Substack chat room, asking my subscribers how they’re doing.

Later,

Gita