Good morning.
Ross!
You can’t make a Tomelet without breaking some Gregs.
Gotta break some Gregs. Team Tom for the win! Woo!
Oh, Tom. You know he’s not going to last long in that job. [THEME MUSIC]
For “New York Times Opinion,” I’m Michelle Cottle.
I’m Ross Douthat.
I’m Carlos Lozada.
And I’m Lydia Polgreen.
And this is the “Matter of Opinion” “Succession” special.
Last night was the final episode of HBO’S “Succession,” or should we call it the Max show “Succession“? I don’t know — well, the Max show, “Succession.”
So Max.
So we’re here to give Waystar Royco a proper send-off in a bonus episode of “Matter of Opinion.” This was a family saga about American wealth, about global media. And at the center of it was, no surprise, a succession battle. It was a show about marriage. It was a show about siblings. It was a show about how we, the viewer, how we, the people, feel about obscene wealth and inequality. And in the end, it came down to — spoiler alert — none of the children winning the top job and Tom, the child-in-law, succeeding as the perhaps temporary C.E.O. of Waystar Royco. So who had Tom in the office pool?
I was totally rooting for team Tom. Team Tom was the only way to go.
I think Tom — I think there were two ways that the show could end, and this was the right way for it to end. There was a way where the show ended that it kept sort of telegraphing that it was going to do as dramatic misdirection where Kendall Roy, “the eldest boy” —
So sad.
— as I think he described himself —
That is so sad.
I’m the eldest boy!
— in that hysterical end game, that he was going to be — that this was going to be a kind of “Godfather” scenario, where he became his father, became ruthless enough to outmaneuver his siblings, outmaneuver the Swedish tech lord, and, at the end, closed the door on us Michael Corleone style. But that was clearly not what the show was doing for its entire arc. The show was showing you over and over again that the children of Logan Roy had been sufficiently damaged by their father and were sufficiently weak and early-21st century failed children on their own terms that they couldn’t possibly take over. And to me, as a viewer, the dilemma had been Tom Wambsgans, the much brutalized spouse of Shiv Roy, the daughter, had seemed like the obvious person to outmaneuver all of them. But he also had never seemed capable enough and bold enough to actually do this on his own. And so the mechanism the show came up with, where he didn’t outmaneuver them on his own, he became the sort of natural figure chosen by a much more ruthless entrepreneur in the form of Lukas Matsson, I thought was perfect and necessary and just — I thought this was one of the most successful series finales I’ve honestly ever seen.
It was perfection.
If you think about where each of the protagonists was in that very first episode, it’s Kendall trying to step up and failing. It’s Tom trying desperately to ingratiate himself with a more powerful man. It’s Shiv kind of playing all sides, not able to commit to anything. Is it politics? Is it the company? Is it Tom? And it’s Roman knowing that he was completely wrong for it all and even saying in that first episode, “this is all bullshit,” when Kendall’s trying to close the deal with Vaulter. And he said the same thing in the final episode in that dramatic scene outside the boardroom, except he says, instead of all of this — meaning the company, the thing — being B.S., we are B.S. We are nothing. There was no growth. There was no growth. They were exactly who they were at the beginning of the show as they were at the end, just more so.
And in that first episode, Tom specifically says to Greg, stick with me. I’ll take care of you. I mean it. And in the end, he puts one of the stickers from the Roy family — [LAUGHTER] estate dispersal — on Greg’s forehead. But yes, it all came full circle.
Did you all follow on social media the last couple of days this whole thing about the baseball player?
Yes.
Yes, Wambsganss.
Wambsganss.
. So it turns out that there was this baseball player by the name of Bill Wambsganss with two Ses rather than one.
[LAUGHING] I did not follow this.
He was a second baseman for Cleveland from 1914 to 1923. And he was just kind of a nobody. And I don’t know anything about sports, so I’m going to totally butcher this. But he executed some never-done-before and never-since-repeated play in which he eliminated three opponents at once.
Yes, the unassisted triple play.
Yes, the only triple play in the World Series, right? And so somebody unearthed this. And it went viral on Twitter. And there was a lot of discussion of it. And that, I think, was very amusing and increased my conviction that it was going to end up being Tom. But I also think that there’s something about succeeding a business legend that’s just very, very difficult. And Tom is the only one who really fit the bill. And you could tell in the way that he pitched himself to Matsson that he sort of knew it. He says, I have an excess of vigilance and a high tolerance for pain. And Matsson tells him, I need a pain sponge, which is really, really pretty wild. But if you think about it, the successful C.E.O.s — the successful successor C.E.O.s — don’t try to replicate the original. They don’t try to get to these operatic heights. So it makes a certain kind of sense that it’s a little bit of a nobody who ends up with because — but I do think that there’s a real question of how long that’s going to last. The ending felt a little bit unstable to me.
We need a spin-off just featuring Tom and Greg.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
No spin-offs.
Don’t mess with this. The beauty of that — that conversation between Matsson and Tom was so exquisitely painful and awkward when he, just to kind of test Tom, he says that he wants to sleep with his pregnant wife and to see how much abuse this guy will take. And what I love about Matsson saying he needs a pain sponge is that Tom has been a pain sponge for four seasons. And so he’s very comfortable with the pain sponge role. And the writing has been so great in the show, there were just a few moments this episode when I thought things were a little bit too much on the nose. And maybe that was inevitable as they were wrapping things up. One is the pain sponge, which, yes, of course, that’s Tom. That’s the definition of Tom in this show. The other is when Shiv is having it out with Kendall and says, I love you, but I can’t stomach you. And that is exactly how I feel about this family. I have come to love this saga so much. But I just — I can’t stand them. I can’t stand any of them.
Well, the perfect encapsulation of the show for me was when I saw the trailer coming into this season. Before any of the episodes had aired, they had the line from Logan, which is, “I love you, but you are not serious people.” And that is the entire series. It is the story of three entitled, damaged children desperate for Daddy to express some love and confidence in them and just they’re coming to the awful realization — well, perhaps not Kendall, but at least the other two — that no, they’re not worthy. And Daddy wasn’t going to anoint any of them. And it’s just all falling apart.
They do get, in this finale, one vision of the siblings without the toxic dad. You do get the ridiculous scene of them in their mother’s Caribbean kitchen making Kendall a celebratory, disgusting shake to drink to crown him king.
Meal fit for a king.
A meal fit for a king. And it was a sign that maybe they could just love each other straightforwardly in a world where they just took their billions of dollars. I mean, this is the backdrop of all of this is that in losing — in losing — this state, they merely walk away as billionaires.
I think that there is — that whole scene at the mother’s house is extraordinary. You know, lady Caroline, what a character for the ages — extraordinary. And I think that we sort of get this — she’s very chilly. She’s not maternal. The fact that she really doesn’t feed them when they go to her country estate in England and there’s this bird that’s full of — this tiny pigeon that’s full of bird shot. And mind how you go, not much to eat. And then when they arrive at her Caribbean house, she says —
well, it’s very hot, so I didn’t think that you’d really want much to eat. And she says, it’s going to be hearty fair but modest rations and then pawns off some heels of bread to them. So it’s really striking to me that she’s actually the one figure who seems to give them truly good advice, which is let this go. Live your lives. And of course, they don’t take it. They charge ahead.
One of my favorite moments with Lady Caroline is when Kendall is saying that he might have to leave early because he has a big board meeting. And she’s like, oh, I’ve never heard that one before in my life — an important board meeting. [LAUGHTER] But I think she kind of has a point in a sense that I got a little bit of blowing up the Death Star again vibe when the big culmination is a board meeting, which was the big culmination of an earlier season at another moment when Kendall tries to take over and, again, fails. And so that was just a tad disappointing for me that it had to center around yet one more board meeting. But in a sense, it doesn’t, also. Because “Succession,” the title of the show, it was never about who would get to run Waystar. It was about who would get chosen by Daddy to run Waystar. So in a sense, none of them could win after Logan died.
I think that one of the brilliant things about the way that this season was written is that so much of what we thought was going to be the drama was drained out. Logan Roy dies in episode 3. We knew that, ultimately, Logan Roy had chosen Lucas Matsson as the person who was going to buy his family company. And so all of this was really, how are the kids going to maneuver and navigate around this? Because the only option, once Logan was left, would be to prove that you’ve bested him by thwarting the thing that he wanted, which was the sale of the company, which was, no question, the absolute right thing to do. I did have a question, though, for you all. What do you think — why do you think Shiv did what she did?
Because a lot of this is about owning each other. They have spent their entire life fighting over their father’s affection. He was completely withholding. And in the end, they couldn’t get that. But they could get one up on each other. And it was just such a damaged family dynamic. I mean, not to make everything about the current political system, but it reminds me so much of Trump, where he would have the kids competing against each other on the ski slope and making it clear that you’re a loser if you don’t come in first on everything. There’s just a kind of weird family dynamic in this show that was about not just getting Daddy’s approval but also getting one up on all of your siblings who were trying, as well.
Oh, I don’t know. I think Shiv — I don’t want to say it was an unselfish move, but I think it was — for one thing it brings you to Carlos’ point, full circle, back to the beginning of the show when, at the beginning of the show, Shiv was outside the family business. And in her relationship with Tom, they explicitly imagined Tom ascending to run Waystar while she was out of it. But also, yeah, she was sort of offered a choice between Tom as C.E.O. and Kendall as C.E.O. And she made the right choice. Just moral issues aside, Tom is going to be a better C.E.O. than Kendall, no question.
I thought it also connected to the earlier conversation in the episode between Shiv and Tom, when Shiv is getting on the plane to fly to meet Roman. And she basically is asking him, is there anything left between us? Can we make this work? And Tom says, oh, I see you- you’ve finally fallen in love. You’ve fallen in love with scheduling opportunities. Because they’re going to have a kid together, and things would be simpler if they’re together. Because she’s seen what it’s like when they’re not. And so I saw those things connected. I saw it, also, as not just Tom will be better at this job than Kendall, and I can wield more influence with Tom. I also saw it as a way to making her choice to keep whatever version of a family she can have together.
Well, there’s an argument that’s online about the show that basically takes the darkest possible view of where Shiv ends up and says, look, she’s recreating her mother’s dynamic where she’s going to be the emotionally withholding wife of the powerful C.E.O. trapped in an unhappy marriage — or not trapped at some point, but that she’s just going to do to her own child what her mother and father did to her. I think that’s a totally plausible reading. I do think there’s a slightly more optimistic reading where — Tom and Shiv’s marriage was founded on this fundamental inequality where she was marrying him because she thought he was beneath her and that that would make her feel safe and powerful, and she’d never have to worry. And the story of the last two seasons on the show has been Tom, in his slippery, slimy, ridiculous way, gaining power at her expense in a way that equalizes the marriage.
Yeah. No, I think that’s right. And there was this moment in season 1 where Logan says to Shiv, you’re marrying a man fathoms beneath you because you don’t want to risk being betrayed. But actually, he betrays her not once but twice.
Yes.
And so I think there’s really something to your theory here, Ross, that by hurting each other, they sort of come together at this level. And there’s something incredibly mysterious about that last shot when they’re in the limo together, where he extends his hand, and she puts her hand on top of his. And they’re not holding hands exactly.
They don’t hold, yeah. No, it’s balanced.
How do you — how did you interpret that moment?
That scene was extraordinary. Because even from the angle in which it was shot, it was kind of below them, looking up. And when Tom — first, he puts his hand in the center. And then he pauses. And then he turns it over. And it is such a — and his chin seems to go up a little bit. It becomes this kind of regal look that Tom is lowering himself to offer a hand down to Shiv. And she pauses and waits and then puts it there. I didn’t see that as a moment of equality or of unity. I saw it as a complete power grab, Tom saying, this is the deal now. I’m in charge. Here’s my hand. You better take it.
Yeah.
I’m kind of with Carlos. I don’t think this is about balance. I think they just switched places. With the current deal, yeah, she’s super rich, but they just cut the legs off from under all those kids. They basically just put him in charge now. So they’ve just swapped places.
Although, Shiv is the one who put him there. I mean, I agree that I think that’s a reasonable interpretation. I’m just saying it’s not that — Tom betrayed them, flat out, at the end of season three. At the end of season four, Tom betrays her to some extent. But then she’s the one who decides that it should be Tom, in the end.
Although Tom tells her to do it. Do you remember that scene in Logan’s house when she finds out that it’s Tom? But right before he tells her, it’s me, he says, you might want to vote yes. You might want to move this through. And she’s saying she doesn’t get it until she realizes that it’s him. So he kind of tells her, this will be good for you. This will be good for us.
All right, so this is a clearly disgusting group of people. So why were we all so completely in love with them? Is it just the “White Lotus” thing? It’s like, ooh, look a bunch of really unhappy rich people?
That’s kind of it. I think — so I grew up watching this Mexican soap opera called “Los Ricos También Lloran” — “The Rich Also Cry” — [LAUGHTER] which is one of my favorite, favorite —
I love that. I love that.
It was a great — and this was, like, a family event. We would all gather together — grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. We would watch “Los Ricos También Lloran.” And sorry to bring it back to a book I read, but there was this book I read a decade ago called “The Good Rich and What They Cost Us” by this historian at Williams named Robert Dalzell. And his argument, which is not super novel, is that Americans have a deal with rich people. You let them do whatever they want to do to get their wealth. And as long as they kind of give it away later, we reframe them from rapacious capitalists to benevolent philanthropists. The problem is that the terms of that deal keep getting adjusted. And that is the inequality in the American economy. And so it keeps getting more expensive to have that deal. And them giving the money away is no longer enough. And so what do we tell ourselves? We tell ourselves that the rich also cry. We tell ourselves that, deep down, they’re actually miserable and that being rich sucks, which I don’t buy at all. [LAUGHTER] I would take — I would take —
Yeah, I was gonna say.
I would take the Roys’ wealth and give it a shot, see how it works out for me. But I think that’s part of it. There’s this sense that the place we’ve gotten to with inequality in America is so obscene that there’s comfort in thinking that the rich are there, bawling their eyes out.
I think there’s also just a kind of blanket joyousness to the Roys. They don’t eat. They don’t seem to enjoy these astonishingly beautiful locations that they go to. There’s just no pleasure in it at all. And it’s funny. My wife made this joke to me. She said, I just can’t believe that these people are fighting over a job. [LAUGHTER] And I think that normal people would think that.
I mean, the other, maybe too obvious, thing about what people find attractive in the show is the strong suspicion that we are going through a period as a society where we’re passing the torch from a generation that maybe screwed everything up but was also extremely talented and competent to fears that the next generation will just screw things up without the talent and competence. But I want to be clear, the people being handed off to are — are they millennials or Generation X? Because what’s actually happening is that Generation X, the last competent generation in America, is going to be sadly passed over in favor of —
Always, always.
— in favor of —
Yeah. No, they are. They’re millennials. They are not Generation X.
They’re millennials, right. Yeah, exactly. So Generation X comes out unscathed.
Connor’s a Gen Xer.
Yeah, but Connor’s not really involved at all. Connor is just pathetic.
Just for the record, Matthew McFadden, who plays Tom Wambsgans is 48 years old and, therefore, is part of Generation X.
Yep. Right smack in the middle.
So he can be Gen X.
Very much so — right smack in the middle.
It can be claimed as a Gen X triumph, just —
Finally. Finally, we get our due.
Yeah, we got our due.
I thought he was younger. He looked so much — I think it’s all the hair. He’s got so much hair.
He’s a very, very handsome man.
[LAUGHS]:
We can’t all be Tom Wambsgans, OK?
His hirsuteness just fooled me. I’m just saying he’s very hirsute.
Wow. This is really going off the rails, guys.
Woo-hoo! All right. See you guys back here Thursday for our regular episode. Bye, guys. [MUSIC PLAYING]
This special episode was produced and fact-checked by Phoebe Lett. Mixing and original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. Edited and executive produced by Annie-Rose Strasser. [MUSIC PLAYING]