Today's the series finale of Succession, which I just watched. On Tuesday it'll be the series finale of Ted Lasso. Just last month it was the end of Picard.
(For good measure, it's also the end of Leicester City's tenure in the Premier League, but perhaps that's thematically the odd man out here, so I guess I won't be talking about it)
There are some spoilers after the jump, probably, so beware.
I'm left with some ambivalence at the end of Succession. I think I was expecting/hoping for more fireworks, but what I got was a relentless see-sawing back and forth as the GoJo acquisition was first on, then off, and then on again. There's a feeling that the bad guys won this one, though as I reminded myself during the episode, I don't really know why I should be rooting for any of these characters.
The season as a whole has had some amazing moments: Logan's death, for one thing, since it came off-screen and so suddenly. I read a lot of reviews talking about how good it was that they didn't show him clutching at his chest and keeling over, which is fair. We're rarely there at that moment to see the death of someone so towering in our lives, rather, it happens off our own personal solipsistic stage and we hear about it from someone else.
The election episode (two episodes ago! It feels like such a long time) was another. That's part of the funhouse mirror of the world of Succession, where we see how it might have looked in real life on Election Night of 2016. At the very least I recognized the shell-shock on the faces of all the characters as they realized Jeered Mencken was going to win, and I listened queasily to his creepy victory speech.
In the end, Tom becoming CEO felt like a bit of a letdown, though also thematically right. He's been there all four seasons, creeping up on power bit by bit, including when he sold out the three Roy siblings at the end of last season. So, when Matsson was looking for a non-Roy CEO, Tom was there to scoop that up too, and to fuck over his wife... maybe not for a final time, because from their last shot together, it looks like he'll be fucking her over for a long time to come. But this is probably the most important time he fucks her over.
Again, the fireworks between Tom and Shiv felt kind of muted here. Their relationship has been a grind for me to watch, even before I had a bad breakup in the middle of Season 3. Their conversation on the beach in the Season 2 finale, for example, still sticks out in my mind as one of the most heartbreaking I've watched on TV. But the stuff they said to each other earlier in this season just felt so explosive that their interactions here so muted, by comparison.
It feels ungrateful, but somehow the board vote going against Kendall doesn't feel as dramatically powerful as so much else we've seen this season. I never watched all of Six Feet Under, but I've read how they ended that, and I've read opinions calling it the best ever ending. I suspect I'd have liked to see Succession go for broke like that - this just feels a little detached from the consequences.
Though I don't want to give the wrong idea, because the other tab on my browser right at this moment is set to the HBO Shop, where I'm seriously considering buying one (or more than one) Waystar-Royco branded fancy notebook. Partly this is my own crazy manifesting, since I can't resist those types of notebooks, but also, it feels like it'd be awesome to have that memento. At $30 a pop, I'm trying to remind myself that it's not something I, y'know, need, but the flesh is weak, as they say. So, so weak.
I'm hoping for some fireworks from Ted Lasso this week, as well.
(This is a thematically appropriate transition, because Harriet Walter essentially plays the same character in both shows, though perhaps a smidgeon nicer on Ted Lasso).
In contrast to Succession, I've been finding this final season a bit lacking in big dramatic moments. Colin's sexuality was a nicely played subplot, but it's just faded into the background, though my understanding is that he's only come out to the team, not the world, so I guess it's fair that it hasn't made more waves.
I also liked the subplot where Sam gets into a Twitter tussle with the Home Secretary, since it dovetails so well with what happened with Gary Lineker. I'm wondering how far ahead they were working, since this season must have been written before Lineker's suspension, but I liked how timely it felt - though again, I wish it had had more staying power. They've teased stuff like it for a while, and it's unfortunately an evergreen topic, since racist abuse is everywhere in the game in real life.
My guess for the finale is that Ted is quitting the team to return home, and that Nate's going to get the job as Richmond's manager. Those are probably the things that have to happen, especially since everything's been leading up to them, but I'm still hoping for a curveball along the way to a satisfying conclusion that wraps up the show. The show has felt like it was drifting a bit, so I won't be too heartbroken, but I'd still like to see it stick the landing.
There's also a part of me that's marveling at the fact of shows ending at all, of course. I'm old enough to remember when a show set out its premise in its pilot, and then ran for as many seasons as it could. Ted Lasso and Succession represent two different poles of the same wave of prestige TV (sorry about the mixed metaphors there), but both are coherent, single stories told across multiple seasons, and like all stories, now they've come to an end.
That's something you never really got in TV until prestige, serialized shows like Lost and the Sopranos came out, but now it's kind of the norm. It's nice to see that there's room for these kinds of finite stories, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the next shows will be that take the place of Succession and Ted Lasso.
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