HBO’s Succession is about many things: power, privilege, family, kinky May/December relationships, metaphorically laden bed-shitting. But a parody that’s currently going viral on Twitter elegantly boils down the Shakespearean comedy-drama to one simple premise: at the end of the day, everyone just wants a taste of Daddy’s M&Ms.
In the clip — which has garnered more than 7,700 retweets as of publication — Los Angeles-based stock trader Ben Cahn reimagines the ruthlessly ambitious Roy family members, who constantly clamor for their distant tycoon father’s affections. Instead of money or acceptance, they’re all vying for a taste of his yummy chocolatey treats.
Featuring the show’s trademark dramatic camerawork and surging orchestral music, the clip expertly nails all of the Roy children’s affectations: Kendall’s baritone obsequiousness, Roman’s squirrelly nature, Shiv’s constant lip-pursing (see it once and you can’t unsee it ever again). Cahn’s pitch-perfect rendering of Marcia, Logan’s soft-spoken yet ruthlessly aggressive French wife, is also spot-on.
Cahn, who is a full-time stock trader in Los Angeles, said he got the idea to do the video after “walking around my apartment trying to make myself laugh” by impersonating Kendall (Jeremy Strong), the spiritually broken eldest failson of Waystar Royco CEO Logan Roy (Brian Cox).
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He started seguing into Shiv’s bumbling fiancé Tom (Matthew MacFayden), then sent the resulting impressions via voice memo to his friend to see if they were any good.
“To come up with the premise of the sketch, I was thinking, ‘OK, what could they be doing? Obviously they want something from Logan,’” he says. “So I decided to break it down in the most childish way possible, because they behave like children sometimes, and what’s more childish than wanting candy from your dad?”
After enlisting his friend Shane McAvoy to help write and shoot the video, and heading to the L.A.-based hat store Lids to procure the “Daddy’s #1 Candy Baby” hat featured in the ending, Cahn shot and edited the clip on Friday, making sure to keep it within Twitter’s two minute, 21 second time limit for videos. He made sure he waited until the season finale on Sunday to post it, then didn’t check his notifications for a few hours until he finally looked at his phone “and freaked out because I saw Mike Birbiglia retweeted me.”
Cahn celebrated his viral success in true Succession fan fashion: by going to a finale watch party and cheering on (spoiler forthcoming) Kendall as he foiled his father’s plan to throw him under the bus by exposing him on live TV. “We all cheered Kendall. We were very proud of our #1 boy,” he says.
He sums up the appeal of the show thusly: “It’s family drama and for those of us who have shitty family members there’s a lot to identify with: the gaslighting parent, the manipulative siblings,” he says. “We can identify with each character in our own fucked-up ways” — whether you’re Daddy’s #1 Candy Baby or not.
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