Allegedly, Succession was inspired by the Murdoch family. It was the rare show that got better and better for four consecutive years and then pulled the plug at its heights.

The main characters’ greatest flaws all reached a crescendo in the final episodes. Tom admitted he loves money and thinks about it all the time. Tom and Shiv detailed what they most hated about one another. And Kendall intimated he might die if not put in charge of the family empire after the patriarch’s death.

Three of the patriarch’s children desperately tried, but failed miserably, to emulate his business success. Psychologically, the fourth, an eccentric who separated himself and dabbled in politics, fared better.

Viewers liked the depictions of extreme wealth. I found the second generation’s psychological maladies more interesting. How do you overcome largely absent, uninterested, uncaring parents? Childhood trauma. In Kendall’s, Rome’s, and Shiv’s case, you don’t.

Yesterday, I mowed the lawn with someone who is in the process of overcoming not just absent, uninterested, and uncaring parents, but abusive ones. Stephanie Foo, author of What My Bones Know.

Foo’s book in short.

“By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD–a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.”

Foo has severed all ties with her birth family and is fashioning a new one of choice consisting of close friends who love her, her partner, and her soon to be child.

The Roy’s probably would’ve been better off following Foo’s footsteps. But they couldn’t resist the lure of their family’s wealth, status, and power. And had they gone full Foo, it wouldn’t have been nearly as good television.