Last night I finished the Season Four finale of Succession. The number of TV shows I have watch from start to finish is very low, in fact I think I have only ever done it with Breaking Bad. That’s not to say there are good shows out there, but the unusually fall away in quality too much to keep me interested. It helps that all episodes were available on United flights, that certainly helped me get through the slog of Season Three.
Spoilers from here on, be warned.
In the final episode, Shiv ends up quite literally shivving her brother Kendall in the back, and ensuring the family business is sold out. It isn’t clear why, although she does end up winning, ever so slightly, when her (ex?) husband is made CEO. The final minutes show an absolutely disconsolate Kendall and Roman.
It’s a sad ending. By the end I was hoping that it would work out for Ken, but after doing some more thinking on the matter, I realized that he actually HAD been CEO before. Once when his father was ill, and then he co-ran the Hundred briefly with his siblings, and for quite a while he was a successful COO. Evidently that wasn’t enough, although it seemed as though he didn’t get much joy from those short lived escapades.
Logan Roy, his father, wasn’t a particularly nice person, but he was a smart one. At one point, he outlines to the three of them that they are “not serious people”. I think that sums it up nicely; they are not. They have some ideas that might work, but it is evidently clear throughout the entire show that the senior executives disdain the children, and know that they’re only there for nepotistic reasons. The idea that Shiv for example would be able to run a giant company with near zero experience is absurd, and while Roman was a skillful guy, he wasn’t 100% right. His tears at the funeral really put a nail in the proverbial coffin, right next to the real one. And Kendall just didn’t have it in him. I don’t know if Tom is the right man for the job, and with no season five planned, we will never know.
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