How do you even begin to follow a triumph like “Succession”?
It’s the kind of problem that only the most rarified group of showrunners have ever faced, and virtually none of them have found a good answer. For every “Better Call Saul,” there are five misfires like “The Romanoffs,” and it sometimes feels like the smartest move is to pull a David Chase or Jerry Seinfeld and simply not try at all. Creating a television show that captures the zeitgeist the way “Succession” did requires endless amounts of talent and resources at every level of the filmmaking process — and you still have to catch lightning in a bottle on top of that.
“Succession” Season 4 erased all doubts about Jesse Armstrong‘s writing abilities (that is, if anyone was inexplicably harboring any after watching Seasons 1-3), but it’s hardly reasonable to expect him to snap his fingers and recreate the magical cast chemistry, iconic music, political timeliness, and endless quotability that made his masterpiece such a cultural phenomenon.
So when “Mountainhead,” Armstrong’s first post-“Succession” project, debuts on HBO this weekend, fans around the world will be asking it to live up to an impossible set of standards. And it disappoints in a way that feels like destiny: it’s equally competent from a production standpoint, with an A-list cast to boot, but far less magical. The inevitable comparisons aren’t helped by the fact that it bombards us with “Succession”-like imagery from the get-go. We immediately see private jets, shiny black Escalades, and an opulent mansion with nameless staff members laying out lavish spreads of food that any Armstrong fan knows will go untouched. When a TV screen shows a Fox News chyron, you have to do double take to confirm it’s not ATN.
In many ways, the premise of “Mountainhead,” which Armstrong writes and directs, could be ripped straight from a hypothetical “Succession” Season 5: A group of four billionaire manchildren gather for their annual poker retreat in a stunning alpine mansion while the outside world crumbles due in large part to the dealings of their own tech companies. Venis (Cory Michael Smith) is the Zuckerberg-esque mogul behind Traam, a monopolistic social media company that has just rolled out a new generative AI model that can produce deepfake images and videos with unprecedented accuracy. It’s so effective that violent uprisings are breaking out around the world thanks to an onslaught of doctored footage of leaders saying and doing evil things. Seemingly every third world country without guardrails like strong legacy media outlets appears positioned to collapse overnight.
There’s only one person on the planet with a potential solution, and he happens to be one of Venis’ poker buddies. Fellow billionaire Jeff (Ramy Youseff) has his own AI model that’s the greatest bullshit detector the human race has ever seen. It can scrub through endless amounts of data to separate deepfakes from real photos, and it’s sophisticated enough to detect sarcasm, so it can flag truly dangerous comments without disrupting the user experience for everyone else. It’s a panacea for the problem of content moderation that should theoretically satisfy both sides of the aisle, and every tech company is dying to get its hands on it.
Acquiring Jeff’s model would make all of Venis’ problems go away, but these poker games have three ironclad rules: “No Deals, No Meals, and No High Heels.” Nobody is allowed to conduct business, there’s no food that would require the presence of on-site kitchen staff killing the vibes (because these guys cooking for themselves is out of the question), and women aren’t welcome. But even as he tries to give the illusion of compliance, Venis never stops thinking about his dream merger.
He’s not the only one showing up with a hidden agenda. Randal (Steve Carell), the elder statesman of the group, has been battling cancer for years. The best doctors money can buy have told him that a cure is out of the question, advising him to focus on treatments that could buy him another ten good years before the disease wins. But such a blatant acknowledgement of mortality is an unreasonable ask to make of a man who always gets exactly what he wants. He’s already looking ahead to a future where Venis’ AI makes it possible to upload your consciousness to the cloud forever. Venis expects the technology to be ready in 15 years, but claims it could be done in five if he’s able to merge his own model with Jeff’s. He promises Randal that he can be the first human being to try the procedure (once they test it on “ten morons” to make sure it’s safe), which incentivizes the dying man to try and make sure the deal nobody is allowed to talk about goes through.
The three men descend upon Mountainhead, the Ayn Rand-themed Utah mansion that Souper (Jason Schwartzman) recently stretched his means to build. Though his real name is Hugo, their comparatively poor friend got his nickname because he can never quite get his net worth into the billions. With mere hundreds of millions at his disposal, he’s forced to wear a ladle around his neck in all of their group photos because he’s the most likely to end up in a soup kitchen. Souper’s insecurity about his wealth is palpable, and he’s determined to validate his own material possessions by showing his guests a good time. But as nations are overthrown and panicked calls from the White House begin to come in, the weekend of partying succumbs to tense negotiations between men who clearly view the entire world as mere territories to be acquired in a massive board game that they suddenly have complete control over.
“Mountainhead” is a clear extension of some of the themes Armstrong explored in “Succession,” namely the idea that our fates rest in the hands of broken, narcissistic rich kids who are so shielded from reality that they have nothing better to do than play power games for their own amusement. But it never comes close to achieving the high-wire act that enshrined “Succession” in the pantheon of great TV shows: making us like those characters.
The Roy children and their orbiters had such compelling backstories and biting senses of humor that we often couldn’t help but root for them before remembering what they were actually doing. Hearing someone bemoan the noxious influence that Fox News had on American democracy in one sentence while explaining why they’re #TeamKendall or #TeamRoman in the next was a perfectly normal occurrence during the show’s run. Perhaps Armstrong thought that level of nuance was obscuring his message and made a conscience choice to break from it, as “Mountainhead” does nothing to humanize its protagonists. These four poker buddies are so crude and callous that it’s hard to imagine any viewer succumbing to the temptation to root for one of them. They’re probably a lot closer to what real tech billionaires act like behind closed doors, but that makes them a lot less fun to watch.
That might be because the world Armstrong sees around him is a lot less fun than what he was dealing with when “Succession” debuted in 2018. There’s a deeper sense of evil running through “Mountainhead” as these tech bros openly consider the possibility of using AI and social media to stage coups and shred the world order as we know it. While “Succession” was all about delusion, with the Roy children cluelessly thinking the family business needed them while everyone maneuvered around their childish stunts, “Mountainhead” is all about the cruel intentionality of men who actively choose to burn down our world and just might have the competence to do it.
For all its aforementioned faults — not to mention some outlandish twists that are too easily wrapped up — “Mountainhead” still left me feeling bullish about whatever Armstrong does next. Directing a one-off HBO movie is a good way of shedding the insurmountable expectations he placed on himself after the brilliant “Succession” finale, and this project will be a lot easier to follow. And the external similarities to “Succession” should teach him that he can’t go home again. There’s no improving on perfection, so here’s hoping Armstrong’s next big project sees him take his talents in an entirely different direction.
Grade: C+
“Mountainhead” premieres Saturday, May 31 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will stream on HBO Max.
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