American TV is obsessed with crumbling empires right now

polygon.com:

A proud patriarch, lording over a massive empire of power and influence, faces old age and must decide who will take his place. None of his children seem up to the task, spoiled and warped as they are by their family’s excessive wealth. Petty grudges and delusions of grandeur mix with familial obligation and poisonous histories to spell doom for all involved.

Pop Quiz: Which series does this premise describe?

Trick question: The answer is “all of the above.” Something distinct about waning empires is brewing in the American TV zeitgeist right now, and has been for quite some time. One could trace this lineage back to the Bush-era lampooning of the 1% in Arrested Development, or even to the soapy exploits of older series like Dallas and Dynasty. But today’s TV about falling families all seem of a piece while still distinctly specific. Families that wield money and power with impunity exist all too prevalently in the real world, and their reflections in our fiction hit on the inescapable notion that the power to influence our world lies in the hands of too many people with the same last names.

There are a lot of different faces to power, and as many different ways for it to corrupt as there are people who hoard it, on TV as it is in reality. A family unit as a stand-in for a larger social structure gives writers a way to personify and depict vast systemic issues through the guise of interpersonal struggles. How so many series tackle this fact, and how they see these dynastic families crumbling or somehow surviving despite it all, informs how we might view our country’s seemingly inevitable and long-forestalled decline.

Clockwise from the top: The families from Righteous Gemstones, Promised Land, Yellowstone, and