It Is A Drama, Not A Sitcom - The Office Season Nine

 

For eight seasons, The Office was a comedy sprinkled with drama, which is why it can be so off-putting to watch season nine. Without telling anyone, show runner Greg Daniels decided the final season would flip that script and become a very special drama with little in the way of humor. And once you understand this basic fact, The Office’s swan song starts making a lot more sense. The story Daniels decided to tell is a familiar one – what happens to us as we approach middle age? It is possible, although I cannot say it for a fact, that Daniels was particularly interested in this idea because he turned 40 during that final season, but it is clear, from the very first talking heads of the season premiere, that Jim, Pam, Dwight, and Andy would be the avatars through which Daniels explored this existential question.

The setup is unsubtle. For Pam, middle age is something to be embraced, not feared, whereas for Jim the opposite is true. She is settled into life as a wife and mother, attending ballet recitals and decorating the walls of her child’s room with her artwork. As she comments to the film crew, with two kids at home, nothing interesting is going to happen in their [her and Jim’s] lives for a long time, you can see Jim stiffen as she speaks. This is because the domestic bliss she welcomes feels like a death sentence to him. While Jim was never super excited about being a paper salesman, it hits home even harder when he learns that a college roommate has taken an old idea Jim had to start a sports marketing company and done so two hours away in Philadelphia. By the end of the episode, Jim has gone behind Pam’s back and contacted his buddy to express his interest in coming aboard. While Jim may have surprised Pam in the past, it was to do things like ask her to marry him or buy a house that they could move into as a married couple. But this choice was teeing up a heel turn that would find Jim acting in ways wholly unfamiliar to die-hard fans of the show.  

Dwight has a different problem - he is adrift as he approaches middle age. His professional ambition to be regional manager and his personal goal of marriage and fatherhood have been thwarted but he is at a loss as to how to change things. At work, he sees Clark (colloquially referred to as “New Dwight”) as a threat and feels the need to prove his manhood via a bizarre stunt that almost gets him killed while in his personal life Angela has married and had a child. While Dwight approaches middle age with uncertainty, Andy wants nothing more than to live in the past. His identity is frozen in time, when he was a “freaking rock star” in his college a capella group, while the present-day affords him little to do other than juvenile pranks like dubbing fart noises into a video of the staff playing softball. But that changes when his father bankrupts the family and absconds to South America. Suddenly, Andy must make capital A adult decisions and in response, after selling off everything the family owns, he decides to go on a months-long boat trip to escape reality.

To be sure, all of these feelings are ones people go through as they age – is this all there is? Am I happy with my life or do I want something more or different or new? It is just that having these characters, on this show, ask them, came out of left field considering the low stakes they tended to traffic in. When you understand what Daniels was going for, the entire season snaps into place. Jim and Pam become increasingly estranged as they fight over what their future will be. He increasingly sees it as one where she pulls up stakes and moves to Philadelphia so he can focus on Athlead full-time while she digs in her heels and insists that her life is in Scranton. As they struggle to reconcile these conflicting desires, their bickering escalates into fighting, which escalates into a standoff where neither is willing to meet the other halfway. And throughout, Pam is holding their family together while Jim lives a bachelor life in Philadelphia, where he rubs elbows with sports stars and has a rented apartment. If it doesn’t sound funny, it’s because it is not, but more, it pulled the rug out from viewers who were told over and over again that these two people were soul mates. While you could argue it was defensible to show a few cracks in that armor, Daniels’s almost pathological desire to tear them apart (he had to be talked out of having them divorce mid-season and then reconcile in the finale) showed a tone deaf understanding of the dwindling fan base that was still watching.

And while the Halpert marriage was disintegrating, Dwight seems to reach a point of acceptance that the initial path he saw for himself was not to be and tacked to a different course. Having been passed over for the regional manager position and then blowing his one shot, Dwight understood that no matter how many white whale clients he landed, if Andy could peace out for three months and still keep his job, he needed to recalibrate his expectations. This is where I thought the writers did good work showing Dwight, in his own oddball way, becoming the office’s heartbeat. He had no desire to leave the safety of Dunder Mifflin, he was Dunder Mifflin and whether it was his Christmas party or hiring of a junior salesman, Dwight was committed to his work and making his workplace a home. Similarly, when Angela rejected him once and for all by reaffirming her commitment to the Senator (even though their marriage was a sham), Dwight sought out Esther with the intention of marrying her instead.

Andy lacked that decisiveness. The three month boat trip was followed by a rash decision to pursue celebrity, the kind of thing one might do right after college and not right around the time your 15-year reunion is going to happen, but again, the impending creep of middle age makes people do weird things. If you squint hard enough, you can see this decision as being one similar to Jim’s attempt to reach for a new career path, but while Jim had at least established a solid track record as a salesman, as Phyllis says in a talking head about Andy, “there is just something there you do not want to watch.” And, like someone unfamiliar with adult decisions, Andy has not saved any money to pursue this dream, he just got more overdraft protection from his bank.

In a TV drama, any, or all of these story lines would make perfect sense because they track what happens in real life. Marriages do splinter, spouses grow apart or want different things out of life, professional ambition is sometimes thwarted, love is unrequited, family tragedy occurs, but for a show that was built on the banalities of the modern workplace and opted to illustrate it through the sale of paper, the most basic of office products, this was an enormous leap. For viewers accustomed to the comfort of a breezy situation comedy with a heart, suddenly being asked to ponder the meaning of life with little in the way of humor to leaven it was a very strange choice.

The ratings bore out the point. Although the show had been in a steady decline after Steve Carrell’s departure, they went into a free fall in season nine. The season nine premiere had an audience roughly half that of the season eight premiere and held at about that level until midway through the season when they dropped another 20-25 percent until the finale. In short, viewers were not buying what Greg Daniels was selling and while the numbers tanked, Daniels tacitly acknowledged the error of his ways. In a scene I like to refer to as the deus ex umbrella, as Jim is preparing to leave (yet again!) for Philly, he forgets his umbrella at his desk. Pam rushes out to the parking lot to give it to him and in that moment (coupled with a quick hitting montage of some high end “Jam” soul mate-ness) Jim realizes how wrong he has been and bails on Athlead to stay in Scranton full-time. The briefly introduced “Brian the Boom Guy” who we met several episodes before and was lingering as a potential shoulder Pam to cry on is never heard from again and all that marital strife that viewers were pummeled with for twenty episodes magically disappears.

It was a clumsy, albeit necessary corrective that very much does not reflect how marital discord normally resolves itself, but Daniels belatedly understood he had substituted his own story telling preferences for what the audience wanted. With the show nearing its end, splitting up a couple people were so invested in made absolutely no sense. Whether by design or luck, the other major storylines gave everyone the happy ending they deserved. Andy’s decision to quit opened up the manager’s seat for Dwight, who also ditched Esther when Angela and the Senator split up. Andy did not find fame, but got to live a college-adjacent life by moving to Ithaca and working in the Cornell admissions department. As for Pam and Jim, having reconciled and spent a year back in Scranton, they could now move on (and out to Austin). Life is rarely this neat and tidy, but the finale’s enduring popularity suggests that viewers understood the difference.  

And What Is Going On? The Office Season Eight

 

While The Office may have technically been an ensemble cast, there was a clear first-among-equals: Steve Carrell. For more than 140 episodes, Carrell’s portrayal of regional manager Michael Scott anchored the show. When Carrell announced his departure before the show’s seventh season, the writers were left with a massive challenge: how do you replace your show’s biggest star? Their response, to elevate a mid-tier character into a major role and introduce a new character completely at odds with the show’s well-established aesthetic, was a disaster. Ratings plummeted and critics panned the show’s eighth season. So what went wrong? In this post, I am going to examine that question.

At a basic level, the biggest failure was squandering the time the show runners and writers had to map out what they wanted the show to be after Carrell left. Although Carrell’s departure was announced in advance of season seven, he still appeared in more than twenty episodes and the writers had ample time to think through the show’s future and yet it does not appear much work was done in this area. Rather, much of season seven was devoted to fan service, from Michael’s reconciliation with Holly to a screening of Threat Level Midnight and so much in between. It is as if the writers focused all of their attention on giving Carrell a proper send-off (which, in fairness, he deserved) without pausing to sketch out what they wanted to do once he was gone.

The biggest decision they had to make was who would take over as regional manager and, by extension, become a primary focus of the show. This was no small thing. Over the years, the show revolved more and more around Michael, conditioning the audience to think of the regional manager as the main character in the story. There were a couple of logical candidates – Jim or Dwight, but each was bypassed. The former had a brief run as co-manager at the beginning of season six (The Promotion), while the latter was given a one-off, one episode chance immediately after Michael’s departure (Dwight K. Schrute, Acting Manager). Darryl was another deserving applicant but was ultimately skipped over as well.

Instead, the writers made an understandable, but key mistake. If you read through books that have been written about the show, you know that the decision to pick Ed Helms’s character Andy Bernard as the new regional manager was based on the attention he received from his role in the movie The Hangover. Much like Steve Carrell’s star turn in The 40 Year Old Virgin, which gave the writers a chance to reboot Michael’s character (and for people to give the show a second look after a tepid, six-episode first season), the writers thought Helms’s newfound celebrity would keep longtime viewers watching while attracting new viewers based on Helms’s movie performance, but the opposite happened. Why?

I think there were a couple of reasons. First, “in universe” as they say, elevating Andy made little sense. He was, at best, a middling salesman and certainly not on par with either Jim or Dwight (not to mention Stanley) and never exhibited much in the way of leadership. All he had going for him was an Ivy League degree. For whatever Michael’s shortcomings, there was never any doubt he was a great salesman and, in his own way, a strong leader. Andy, on the other hand, was neither of these things but instead of leaning into his country club preppiness and making him into a villain out of a 1980s John Hughes movie, or, perhaps more provocatively, having him come out as gay, either of which would have been in keeping with who we know Andy to be, the writers made their second mistake.

When we first met Andy, he was portrayed as a sort of bizarro Dwight, the office suck-up in Stamford given a phony title to make him feel better. But after his anger management issue in season three, he became nothing more than a bland WASP with a touch of entitlement (did you know he went to Cornell?) and little in the way of sales skills, but in order to make Andy a counter point to new addition Robert California (about whom we will have more to say later), the writers decided to do a massive, almost overnight reboot of his character into a plucky underdog with unresolved daddy issues who we were supposed to root for. And it just did not work.

It is one thing to transform a character over time, as the writers did with Michael, allowing him to grow, make mistakes, and ultimately, change for the better. They could do that because the “bad Michael” of Season One was a blip, a six-episode maniac whose personality changed organically, and through emotional growth, over the following six seasons. Greg Daniels’s famous edict beginning in season two that no matter how badly Michael behaved or was treated in any given episode, he must also get a small “win” allowed for this evolution. Andy, on the other hand, was an established character with about 100 episodes under his belt as a rich kid dilettante who we were suddenly supposed to feel bad for because he did not live up to his parents expectations. The shift was too abrupt. It is hard to get behind someone who openly admits they don’t know what they are doing, as Andy did on multiple occasions early in season eight, especially when other people were clearly more qualified. Had the writers leaned into this white male privilege not as a sign of insecurity but of unearned bravado, it might have been interesting; instead, they asked us to sympathize with someone who had everything in life handed to him.

Gone too was the subtlety used in humanizing Michael’s character. To take one example, in season two’s Take Your Daughter To Work Day, Michael shows an old video from when he was a child and appeared on a kid’s TV show. When he is “interviewed” by a puppet on the show and asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he says he wants to be married with 100 kids who can’t say no to being his friend. It is a quietly devastating scene that does not require further comment. By comparison, consider season eight’s Garden Party. Andy hosts the event to impress his parents, but has a meltdown because his father prefers singing a duet with Andy’s brother.  The two have a heart-to-heart where Andy’s dad dismisses Andy’s job at a “rinky dink” paper company and tells Andy to stop seeking his approval. The message was as subtle as a sledgehammer, lacking the nuance and pathos that came with seeing Michael’s vulnerabilities exposed. It was almost as if the creative team believed all the characteristics that made Michael Scott such a compelling character could simply be transferred over to Andy, as if these were traits unique to the job of regional manager, not the person who sat in the chair. 

And maybe all of this would have been salvageable if the other big gamble the writers took had paid off, namely, Robert California. I am not a reflexive “RC” hater. To the contrary, a few of his lines are not only the best of the season, but among the funniest from the entire series, and again, on paper, the idea of injecting a character who vibrates at a different frequency than the rest of the cast was not a terrible idea, but the execution was awful. Originally cast as a one-off applicant for Michael’s job (Search Committee), the writers were apparently so pleased with James Spader’s interpretation of the Robert California character as a sort of shaman with Jedi-mind trick powers, that they decided to bring him on as a full cast member for season eight.

The problem, or at least one of the problems, was that Spader was unwilling to commit to appearing in every episode, so instead of making him the regional manager, the writers contrived an idea where he accepted the job but then backed out, somehow convincing the company CEO to give him her job instead and then promoting Andy to Michael’s position. Left unanswered was why Jo Bennett willingly gave up her job, why the (new) CEO of a company based in Florida spent so much time at the branch office of one division within the entire corporation and, as the season wore on, why he picked someone he so clearly disliked.

That aside, like a spice that can enhance a dish but overpower it if too much is used, Robert California worked less as a character the more he was incorporated into the storylines. Glib one lines like “sometimes the flowers arrange themselves” (Get the Girl) worked nicely to emphasize Robert’s eccentricity, but when they devolved into lengthy, and often incoherent monologues like the one delivered at the end of that season’s Halloween episode (Spooked), blank stares, not just from the cast members, but the audience as well, were the result.

As the season wore on, you could see the writers struggling with what to do. Robert devolved from an inscrutable mystery man to a run-of-the-mill bad boss, who used drugs and alcohol liberally and preyed on his female underlings. Perhaps this was done to get the audience on Andy’s side, as he had been a constant punching bag for Robert all season long, up to and including their post-Tallahassee blow out that resulted in Andy’s firing, but like so many other things that season, it all felt rushed and a bit forced.

This mess at the top was compounded by the fact that there was so little to work with among the other main characters. Andy and Robert became the equivalent of load bearing walls carrying too much weight. That was in no small part due to the fact that Pam, Jim, and Dwight, all of whom featured prominently in the early seasons, were given less and less creative runway as the show focused more and more on Michael. For example, while the early seasons were loaded with Pam and Jim will-they-won’t-they content, that storyline resolved at the end of season three. Subsequent seasons saw little for the couple to do. They got their two, two-part season six episodes celebrating their wedding (Niagara) and birth of their first child (The Delivery) but otherwise it was pretty much a dry hole. Yes, Pam toggled between jobs and had a New York mini-arc and Jim had a brief flirtation with middle management (The Promotion) but compared to the intense focus on them in the show’s early seasons, it was thin gruel. Similarly, Dwight, after spending the show’s early years as Michael’s loyal sidekick, was also left with little to do since his only objective was eventually succeeding Michael. His vibe was a little too weird (sorry, individualistic) to lead the office, leaving him in his own on-again-off-again storyline with Angela. And while the two were well-matched based on their own idiosyncrasies, to maintain a frisson of tension between them required a revolving door of other partners (Andy and the Senator for her, Isabel for him) to keep things interesting.  

For Dwight, the best they could come up with was continued frustration over being denied the top job (his one attempt at vengeance being the season’s sixth episode, Doomsday) resulting in his making a play for a management position in Florida. But in order to sell this idea, we were asked to suspend belief and erase from our minds the fact that Dwight was a beet farmer in Pennsylvania who never gave any indication of being willing to pull up stakes and head south.

Jenna Fischer’s real-life pregnancy necessarily limited what the writers could do with Pam in the early part of the season, but their decision to introduce Kathy Sims not just as Pam’s temporary replacement as office administrator but a possible romantic interest for Jim made no sense. Like asking us to believe Dwight would leave Scranton for Tallahassee, the idea Jim would cheat on Pam (and particularly for the sole reason that she was pregnant) ran counter to everything we knew about these two people, whose relationship we were told over and over again was the embodiment of soul mates coming together. The end result were unbelievable story lines that petered out limply; Dwight skulks back to Scranton without a promotion, Kathy disappears, with no explanation for what happened to her or where she went when the team came back from Florida.

In the end, the writers partially corrected their mistakes. Robert California was written out of the show, never to be seen, heard, or mentioned ever again. But instead of moving on from Andy as regional manager, they made the bizarre choice of returning him to the seat in a ham fisted (and truncated) cribbing of the Michael Scott Paper Company storyline from season five. Unlike that multi-episode arc that grew out of an explicable story line, the writers wedged Andy’s return (and Robert’s departure) into a rushed ending in the season’s final two episodes, with Robert closing a branch and losing a major client that Andy scoops up and then leverages to pitch David Wallace on the idea of buying back Dunder Mifflin and rehiring Andy. This decision would foretell even worse mistakes in season nine, but that is a story for another blog post.

 

TV Review: Charlie Hustle and the Matter of Pete Rose

Does Pete Rose belong in the baseball Hall of Fame? That is the question at the heart of HBO’s four-part documentary Charlie Hustle and the Matter of Pete Rose. At this point, Rose’s story is well-known (if you follow sports). Rose was a sure fire, first ballot hall of famer who retired as the game’s all-time hits leader only to be banned in 1989 when an investigation concluded (among other things) that Rose placed more than fifty bets on the team he managed at the time, the Cincinnati Reds. A few years later, and right before Rose was eligible to be put on the Hall of Fame ballot, the organization that runs the Hall determined that any player banned from the sport was ineligible for consideration as a member. And that has been the state of affairs ever since.

The documentary traces Rose’s life, from his childhood in Cincinnati to his days playing for (and leading) his hometown squad to two World Series titles, his later career adding a third ring with the Phillies and his return as player-manager (and ultimately just manager) of the Reds. Interspersed throughout are interviews with people who knew him, played with him (or against him), and the assorted cast of characters who knew the seamier side of his life.

But the hall of fame question looms over the entire enterprise and with it, broader themes of repentance, forgiveness, and punishment. I don’t know that the doc will change many minds. On the one hand, it is completely defensible to argue that the integrity of the game requires a bright line rule that getting caught gambling on a game’s outcome must result in a lifetime ban. After all, if fans think the game is rigged, it is no longer a sport, it is professional wrestling. Supporters point to the 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal as proof of the need for such a draconian penalty, even if it means exiling Hall of Fame players like Shoeless Joe Jackson. Rose bet on baseball while he was the Reds’ manager, therefore, he must be banned.

On the other hand are people who basically say that Rose has been punished enough. That the now 35-year ban from the sport is sufficient punishment for the crime he committed and that he deserves a second chance. They point out he has publicly admitted to gambling on baseball and apologized for doing so. There is also the matter of baseball’s decision to embrace gambling, or at least partner with legal bookmaking companies, as being slightly hypocritical viz a viz their stance on Rose, not to mention the fact that the Hall itself has enshrined at least some former players who were hardly choir boys.

And that is where the documentary is a sort of choose-your-own-adventure. Because Rose is still alive and agreed to be interviewed for, and granted access to, the producers, you can draw your own conclusions about whether you think Rose understands why he was banned, whether he actually feels remorse over what he did, and grapple with who he is as a person in deciding what you think; there is plenty of evidence supporting each side’s position.

After watching all four episodes, I do not think Rose thinks his gambling was that big a deal (he repeats at several points that he only bet on the Reds to win, not lose, as a way of showing he was not trying to fix games) but rather, is angry that because he gambled, he was levied such a stiff penalty. At one point, he says he would have been better off doing drugs or beating his wife because those crimes are treated less severely than gambling. At other points, Rose makes snarky asides about gambling, as when he attends the opening of a casino in Cincinnati and jokes that the Commissioner’s office is probably not going to like it. And he still gambles, albeit far less than he used to and will literally sign baseballs “I BET ON BASEBALL” (while pocketing a fee for the effort).

To the extent Rose has attempted to make amends, thereto he has been his own worst enemy. He privately admitted to then-Commissioner Bud Selig that he had bet on games but then profited off the admission by publishing a book (which was released the day of that year’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony) instead of doing a press conference for free. When the league granted Rose permission to attend a reunion of the 1980 Phillies team that won the World Series, he embarrassed himself by belittling and insulting a female reporter at the event. At other points, the producers catch Rose in simple lies about people he claims not to have known or actions he clearly took; the conclusion one draws is that this is a man who is unwilling to accept that he did something wrong and deflects, obfuscates, or lies to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths.

But if the people who can decide Rose’s fate watch the documentary, they might realize that Rose lives in a sort of living prison that merits parole. Rose is exiled from the thing he loves most. The ban he agreed to prohibits him from entering clubhouses or going out on the field for pre-game rituals like batting practice. His attempts to lobby MLB for reinstatement have failed, but the Commissioner points out that the Hall could simply reverse its decision to keep blacklisted players off the ballot and let Rose receive an up or down vote. The Hall responds that if MLB lifted its ban, Rose could be considered for membership. It is Kafka-esque, to say the least.

Meanwhile, the player whose signature move was sliding head first into a base now shuffles along, limping noticeably. The million dollar smile that once hawked after shave and frozen dinners now has gaping holes where teeth no longer exist. The shock of brown hair that would fly back as his batting helmet flew off has thinned considerably and is usually hidden under an ill-fitting Reds cap. Yes, he is profane and inappropriate, at one point using curse words when addressing a young boy who looked no older than 12, at another, commenting on a friend’s wife’s breasts, but there is something sad and pathetic watching Rose sit in a salon chair getting his hair dyed or doing Cameo greetings because he needs the money. If Bart Giamatti and his successors wanted to punish Rose, they could not have done a better job.

The once vibrant man who played the game at full speed every day is now a shell of who he once was. He is 83, a withered old man who will not change. For those expecting some additional, and perhaps more convincing show of contrition, it will not come. Indeed, when discussing his plea deal on tax evasion that netted him a five month prison stint, Rose admits telling the judge he sought counseling for his gambling addiction solely to garner sympathy and a lighter sentence. In the final minutes of the documentary, Rose appears embittered but also resigned to the fact that he may never make it to Cooperstown, whether he understand why, remains a mystery.

My Favorite Columbo Episode

“Logic,” Col. Lyle Rumford intones to a cadet under his charge, “is the battlefield of adulthood.” The year is 1974 and Rumford has a problem. With the country’s involvement in Vietnam winding down, “nobody wants to play soldier anymore,” William Haynes, chairman of the board at Haynes Military Academy, where Rumford serves as commandant, tells him. The proof, Haynes points out, is in the school’s enrollment, which hovers at 1,100 even though the campus can accommodate more than five times that number. To solve this problem, Haynes, with the support of the board of trustees, plans to convert the single-sex military academy into a co-educational junior college. For Rumford, this not only means the loss of his job but, in his mind, another sign of the nation’s military and moral decline. With a final vote on the conversion in the offing, Rumford is prepared to take extreme measures – murdering Mr. William Haynes.

If there is one Columbo episode that explains the lieutenant’s genius (not to mention the idiosyncratic way the show tells its stories), Dawn’s Early Light is it. Watching Columbo for the first time can be a bit disorienting. Unlike most crime procedurals on TV which focus on who committed a murder, Columbo focuses on how a murder is committed, as the rumpled detective utilizes his observational skills and deductive reasoning to solve the case. And in Dawn’s, Columbo uses the power of logic against a man who worships it.

Like many Columbo villains, Rumford thinks he has planned the perfect murder. First, he tampers with an artillery shell that will be fired from a cannon as part of the Academy’s Founder’s Day celebration, removing the blank powder charge and replacing it with a powerful plastic explosive. Next, Rumford stuffs a cleaning rag used to polish the cannon down its barrel, which will result in a backfire when the shell is discharged, killing Haynes. With the trap set, all Rumford needs to do is wait for Haynes’s arrival on campus. The two get into an argument about the school’s pending changeover and, (as Rumford surely predicted) Haynes asserts his power over Rumford by deciding he, Haynes, and not Rumford’s second in command, Captain Loomis, will preside over the day’s events, including firing the cannon. Minutes later, Haynes is dead.

But setting up Haynes is only half the plan. Rumford also knows the police will come out to investigate what caused the explosion and he thinks he has that figured out too. The cannon is a World War I relic used every day so the logical conclusion will be that the misfire was caused by the cannon’s age. But Rumford has a fallback if that does not satisfy the police in the form of a patsy – Cadet Roy Springer. Springer, you see, is a troublemaker with two suspensions and a long list of demerits on his record, but, not coincidentally, is the cadet responsible for servicing the cannon, a job Rumford gave him. If the police figure out the barrel was clogged and Springer tries to deny it, Rumford will point to his past history of bad behavior as evidence that he carelessly left the rag in the barrel, resulting in Haynes’s inadvertent demise. The police, left deciding between the words of a malcontented student and an upstanding military commandant will surely side with the latter, Rumford assumes.  

In the wake of the explosion, Rumford’s meticulous planning seems to work. Police officers mill about the parade grounds, disinterested in doing any work; one even tries to console the Colonel, telling him not to blame himself because the old cannon just gave out. So far, so good. But one variable Rumford did not account for was the presence of Lieutenant Columbo, who applies his own version of logic to every crime scene he encounters. Columbo is rarely the first officer on scene, which ends up working to his advantage. The cops who greet him provide a preliminary assessment of what they think happened, which almost always lines up with the explanation the killer hopes for, and that gives Columbo the jumping off point to begin his own analysis. Here, they have quickly settled on the “gun gave out” theory, but Columbo is never willing to accept things at face value. While everyone else is eager to wrap things up and go home, Columbo paces the parade grounds, locating a piece of thread lodged in a broken piece of the barrel and a charred piece of the cleaning rag that had been placed in the barrel. He also overhears an offhand remark by an officer that the blast was heard in a town eight miles away. Taken separately, these clues may not mean much, but with Columbo, they become puzzle pieces he tries to fit in their right place.

These little bits of information were there for all to see yet Columbo was the only one who noticed them. Once in hand, Columbo can test the “cannon blew up” theory by speaking to Col. Rumford. Rumford, who had mistaken Columbo for a trespasser upon first seeing him, is caught off guard when Columbo questions him during an impromptu memorial service in the chapel. First, Columbo locks Rumford into important testimony, confirming with him that the artillery charges the Academy uses are “blank,” made up of sodium nitrate and cotton wadding. He then gets Rumford to identify the cleaning rag. By doing so, the “cannon gave out” theory is gone. The remnants Columbo discovered are inconsistent with the material used for blank charges and the char on the rag confirms it was in the barrel when it was fired. Moreover, Rumford’s description of the material in a blank charge will also come in handy later.

But Rumford is not concerned. When Columbo asks who is responsible for cleaning the cannon, Rumford hands up Roy Springer, demerits and all, on a platter. And, in Rumford’s mind, this should be the end of it, even after Columbo speaks with Springer and accepts Roy’s denial that he left the rag in the cannon. Columbo tells Rumford that Roy immediately identified the rag, something the perpetrator would not have done. Rumford parries with his vaunted logic – Springer was in charge of cleaning the cannon, the rag was found in the barrel, and Springer is a poor-performing cadet, ipso facto, he is to blame.

But that does not satisfy our wily lieutenant. Restless, he awakens at three o’clock in the morning and calls the officer who mentioned the blast being heard so far away. Why Columbo wonders, if the cannon is fired every day (another fact he picked up in his conversation with Rumford) has no one ever complained about the noise? Irritated, the sleepy officer tells Columbo it is because the cannon never blew up before. While that might satisfy others, Columbo decides to send material from the cannon to a ballistics lab and sure enough, the lab confirms the presence of C-4, a powerful plastic explosive.

And this is the pivot point for the episode. Applying logic, Columbo first ruled out the cannon misfire being due to age because he found the cleaning rag in it, which Rumford confirmed would have caused the cannon to backfire. He then ruled out the rag’s placement in the barrel being an accident because the artillery shell itself (which Rumford also told him should have been a “blank” charge) was tampered with. Using this basic form of deductive reasoning, Columbo now knows he has a murder on his hands caused by someone doctoring the artillery shell and stuffing a cleaning rag down the barrel of the cannon. He knows how the murder was committed, but he now needs to figure out who committed it by focusing on the basics of police work - motive, means, and opportunity.

Columbo shares his findings with Rumford, and with them, his conclusion that Haynes’s death was no mere accident, but murder, “plain and simple.” This is the moment you see in many Columbo episodes. The killer, initially dismissive of Columbo based on his shabby appearance, perceived dimwittedness, and seeming focus on irrelevant details, suddenly realizes they underestimated him. He is not the bumbling fool they initially took him to be, but a dogged investigator who methodically gets to the truth. It is an experience Columbo himself described in the show’s very first episode. There, another well-organized killer thought he had covered all his bases but Columbo observed that the people he captures are not hardened criminals and have no prior experience in committing a murder, much less covering one up. They don’t realize the mistakes they make, but Columbo sees them almost immediately because he is an expert at investigating murders and they are amateurs at committing them.

Springer, who Columbo already saw as a weak suspect, falls off the list entirely when Columbo learns that Roy wasn’t even on campus the night before Founder’s Day. Even if Roy thought Rumford and not Haynes would oversee the Founder’s Day celebration, and Roy wanted to kill Rumford for being such a flaming jerk (motive), he would have needed access to plastic explosives and the knowledge of how to use them (means). Even if both of those things were true, Roy lacked opportunity to tamper with the shell because he left school to see his girlfriend.  

Instead, Columbo sets his sights squarely on Rumford, where a much more logical story falls into place. Start with motive. Another variable Rumford did not account for was what Haynes would bring with him to the Academy. When the cops search Haynes’s car, they discover a blueprint showing plans for a gymnasium. At first, Columbo is unsure what to make of it (it’s the third page of a three page blueprint, but the other two pages are missing). Even more curious is when Columbo is told by a cadet named Morgan that the existing gym is only seven years old. He finally connects the dots when he realizes the new gym has no urinals, it is designed for women. Coupling that information with his observation at the dining hall (where he supped with Rumford) that many tables were empty and Rumford telling Columbo enrollment was down, Columbo realizes that a plan was afoot to admit women. When Columbo asks about this, not only does Rumford confirm Haynes’s plan, but mentions that the school would convert from a military academy to a junior college. Although Rumford dismisses the idea that the plan would have been implemented, when Columbo presses, asking whether the board will tell him the plan was rejected, Rumford deflates, “you’ll do what you need to do” he moans, as Columbo gives a knowing look. After all, Columbo has spent enough time with Rumford to know the Colonel is a serious military man who believes the school molds the next generation of soldiers who will defend our country. Killing a man who wants to end that role is an obvious motive.

But what of means? Here again, Rumford is nothing but helpful. Columbo locks in a statement from Rumford, who agrees with Columbo that he (Rumford) is an expert in explosives. More importantly (and you can see Rumford squirm when he is asked) Columbo wants to know who has access to the arms room on campus where the cannon shells were kept. As it turns out, only three people have keys to that room – the cadet in charge of cleaning the cannon, the officer of the day, and Rumford himself, who confirms no one could have taken his keys. In other words, Rumford knows how to use plastic explosive and had access to the room where the shells were kept. Check and check in the “means” department.

Which just leaves opportunity. Columbo is helped by something we see over and over on the show: the killer cannot help but be who they are. Normally, it is a know-it-all who thinks they’ve outsmarted Columbo, but here, Rumford’s undoing is being a stickler for Academy rules. In the early morning hour when Rumford stuffed the rag in the cannon, he noticed a large jug of alcoholic cider dangling out the window of a bathroom in one of the dormitories, a clear violation of the school’s code. After Haynes is killed and while Columbo and Rumford are talking, Rumford interrupts their conversation to give Loomis a dressing down over the presence of the cider jug in the dorm where Loomis stays and directs him to investigate things tout suite. Rumford harangues Loomis throughout the episode for failing to apprehend the culprits to the point where the two do a surprise inspection in the middle of the night hoping to find the verboten hooch.

When the search comes up empty, the boys (including Springer and Morgan) do not understand how their contraband was not discovered. As it turns out, they have Columbo to thank. Although Loomis was hapless, Columbo cracked the case in about 10 seconds when he noticed some debris in one of the sinks in the dorm bathroom. Looking up, he realized the cider was hidden in an air duct in the ceiling. And this is where another signature Columbo move pays off. The lieutenant reads people well and he rarely passes judgment. He knows petty criminals and misdemeanants often make good informants just as well as military cadets who skirt the rules. Once Columbo assures the boys he is not going to turn them in, he asks them to tell him everything about the jug – who was responsible for it, when they hung it out the window, when it was pulled back in; once they share this information, the final puzzle piece snaps into place.

The boys tell Columbo the first time they hung the jug out was the night before Founder’s Day and it was removed before reveille the following morning at 6:30. This time frame allows Columbo to corner Rumford once and for all. Loomis goads Rumford into meeting him on the parade grounds under the pretext of having cracked the cider mystery. When Rumford sees the offending jug dangling out that same bathroom window, he order Loomis to bring the cadets out to be interrogated. But Rumford has walked into Columbo’s trap. As Rumford starts questioning the boys, Columbo interrupts to ask Rumford when he first saw the jug. Rumford lies, saying it was a few days before Founder’s Day. If that is the case, Columbo wonders, why did Rumford, who runs such a tight ship, wait all that time before asking Loomis to investigate? Rumford dodges, suggesting it might have been a different day, but Columbo is having none of it. The cadets (clearly on Columbo’s side) confirm that the jug was first put out the night before Founder’s Day and brought in early the next morning. Given this evidence, and Rumford’s prior statement that he had been in a staff meeting that night until 10 pm and then retired to his quarters and slept until reveille, Columbo points out that Rumford’s story is a lie. After all, even if Rumford had walked the parade grounds after the staff meeting it would have been too dark to see the jug and he could not have seen it after he woke up because Roy had already taken it down. No, Columbo says, the only time the jug could have been visible is in the early morning light right before Roy plucked it out of the window.

Check mate. And unlike other Columbo episodes where the lieutenant resorts to gimmickry to get a confession or incontrovertible evidence of guilt, Dawn’s is pure deductive reasoning, applying the facts to the evidence at hand in order to reach the logical conclusion. It is no surprise then that Rumford grudgingly acknowledges Columbo’s skill, while being unapologetic for the crime he committed. Two men met on the battlefield of adulthood, and it was a rout in Columbo’s favor.

Book Review - Nuclear War: A Scenario

Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it is fair to say the threat of nuclear war has receded in the public’s mind. Sure, regional wars have broken out, terrorist attacks have taken place, and missile launches in the Korean peninsula raise the diplomatic temperature from time to time, but the existential, build-a-bomb-shelter-in-your-home level of fear that loomed over the world during the Cold War no longer exists. But if you long for the days of “stop, drop, and roll,” Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario is here to remind you that civilization as we know it could end in less time than it takes to watch a Columbo rerun.

The scenario of the book’s title is not far-fetched. A paranoid North Korean dictator sends a lone ICBM missile hurtling toward the United States. That act is the jumping off point for Jacobsen’s book, which proceeds in a tick-tock manner of minutes and seconds, jumping across time zones and countries, putting us in the rooms where decisions are being made, be it the White House, Pentagon, military bases across the globe, the Kremlin, or the capitals of our NATO allies. It would read like a high tech thriller if the stakes were not so high and the actions so possible.

Jacobsen has done her homework, the book is littered with interviews and quotes from the men and women who have been at the highest levels of government, the military commanders who have led strategic planning for a nuclear war, and the soldiers whose fingers have been on buttons that would send millions to their deaths. In other words, when Jacobsen puts words in the mouths of presidential advisers bickering in front of the President as to what protocols need to be followed or calls to be made as a nuclear missile bears down on the U.S. at Mach 6, she is not pulling these ideas out of thin air, but rather, using the input she has received to inform her story.

And it is a grim one. As that lone missile speeds toward Washington, D.C. in an attempted “decapitation” of our government, the President orders a retaliatory strike with more than 80 nukes, but as he is departing the White House, a second, submarine-based missile launches, its target a nuclear power plant in California. Things spiral quickly. Both bombs hit their marks. The President is taken out of action when he bails out of Marine One and suffers life threatening injuries, civilian and military leaders who attempt to alert the Russians we are not preemptively attacking them fail to do so, and a Russian counter strike results in a domino effect of the other nuclear powers launching their missiles in a “use them or lose them” strategy that erases much of humanity in a scant 72 minutes.

There is more, and Jacobsen is not stingy with the gory details. Bodies vaporized, buildings turned to ash, modern telecommunications eliminated, the sheer magnitude of the destruction is difficult for the human mind to process or envision, it truly is the stuff of nightmares. Underlying all of this is the futility of so much of what we have done to avoid this ending. We may comfort ourselves in the fiction that abstract ideas like the presidential line of succession or the use of special codes to launch these weapons will somehow save us (or at least protect us) from the worst case scenario, but the book makes clear that is not the case. To take one example, when the President parachutes out of Marine One and is seriously injured on landing, the military and civilian leadership who make it to some place called Site R (which is a real place and is in fact an underground nuclear bunker built into the side of a mountain in Pennsylvania) cannot locate him and do not know if he is alive or dead. While others within the line of succession may still be alive, one, the Secretary of Defense (fifth in line if you care) is on site and by default is determined to be the Acting President because decisions have to be made. In the end, does it matter? No, but the point is that policies are just abstractions when life and death decisions about the fate of humanity need to be made on the fly.  

Worse, Jacobsen makes clear (although does not explicitly say) that the trillions we have spent on defense can only do so much. *One* nuclear missile launched by the North Koreans evades any attempt to knock it down, triggering our response. The “red phone” between Washington and Moscow fails to keep the nation’s two leaders in touch to mitigate the risk of civilization-ending escalation. Even the consequences from the fact that the trajectory of our missiles, which breach Russian air space on their way to North Korea, appear not to have been considered in real life, yet that flight pattern is what convinces the Russians they too are under attack and poof, humanity ends shortly thereafter.

Jacobsen may have more accurately subtitled her book a worst case scenario because hey, it is possible our missile defense with a 50 percent failure rate might knock down an incoming ICBM or the President might be able to track down his Russian counterpart to assure him we are not preemptively attacking his country. Cooler heads may prevail and “only” a few nuclear warheads might deliver their lethal blows, but even those scenarios are hardly comforting. Little has changed since the 1983 movie War Games concluded that the only way to “win” the game of nuclear war is not to play it.

 

 

TV Review - Elsbeth

In the 1970s, Peter Falk’s Columbo perfected a specific form of TV murder mystery: the so-called “how” (as opposed to “who”) dun it. In today’s media environment, where shows like True Detective create byzantine, multi-layered storylines designed to keep viewers guessing about a killer’s identity, the idea that a show could be compelling and popular when we, the audience know “who” done it from the start is a radical idea. After all, how interesting can it be to watch the detective figure out what we already know?

But that is the genius of Columbo. Each episode started the same way: by establishing the relationship between the killer and the victim, the motivation for the murder, and the ways in which the killer tries to cover his or her tracks. After the deed was done, Columbo would make his rumpled entrance, cigar dangling from his mouth, a five-o’clock-shadow clinging to his jaw, and a skepticism that whatever explanation his fellow police officers came up with to explain the dead body was probably wrong. And then Columbo started to, in the parlance of our times, “cook.” It might be a clue at the scene of the crime everyone else missed or a stray comment by someone Columbo quickly sized up as a potential suspect, but whatever it was, he would methodically pull at that little thread until the entire case revealed itself to him. That Falk could make a foregone conclusion so compelling was a testament to his ownership of the role (one that garnered him multiple (and well-deserved) Emmy awards.  

In true TV fashion, what’s old is new again, and CBS has revived the “how dun it” with its Thursday night offering, Elsbeth. The surface similarities are obvious – like Columbo, Elsbeth’s first act is spent briefly establishing the relationship between murderer and victim, the crime itself, and the killer’s attempt to stage the crime scene in order to draw attention away from themselves. Also like Lieutenant Columbo, Elsbeth Tascioni is a bit of a fish out of water. Whereas Columbo could be mistaken for a civilian nosing around a crime scene, Elsbeth is a civilian nosing around a crime scene (albeit under the auspices of being a consent decree monitor for the NYPD) and has a sort of manic pixie girl all grown up and with a sleeker wardrobe vibe even as she is weighed down by the massive tote bags she slings over each shoulder. They are both a little pushy and detail oriented and are not put off by ignoring social cues or conventions. In the end, they get the goods on the killer and everyone (other than the victim) lives happily ever after.

And that, friends, is where the similarities end. While Elsbeth is a decent Columbo knock off, it falters in a few obvious ways. The primary reason is that while Columbo episodes typically ran anywhere from 65 to 85 minutes, Elsbeth must resolve her cases in a scant 42 to 44. That matters enormously. Everything about Columbo unfolded at greater length and with heightened tension – from the murder to the investigation, allowing suspense to build before the inevitable conclusion. Elsbeth just does not have that luxury, so everything seems slightly hurried, the visual equivalent of listening to a podcast at 1.5x speed. This matters because so much of the enjoyment you get from Columbo is the slow burn of the Lieutenant methodically working his way to the killer by deep diving into the evidence, catching the killer in small lies that lead to bigger lies to cover the smaller lies until finally, having cornered his prey, Columbo pounces. And while Elsbeth does engage in a similar form of investigation, the more limited run time simply does not give the story enough time to breathe.

Adding to this problem is that unlike Columbo, which focused solely on investigating the murder of the week, Elsbeth has a side kick (a beat cop named Kaya) and a B story (allegations that the precinct captain where she works is corrupt) further eating into the time the show might otherwise use focused on her murder investigation. The B plot does not add anything (at least not yet) and while the presence of an informal partner is fine, the other problem is that the device through which Elsbeth is getting to these crime scenes – the consent decree monitor – is a little clunky and probably escapes the casual viewer. In this way, the show is more like Monk, who was on retainer to the police but was understood to very much not be part of law enforcement. Elsbeth, on the other hand, lives in a murkier gray area resulting in her doing things that very much look like police work even though she is not one.

The other thing that made Columbo exceptional was the not-so-subtle anti-elitism written into its scripts. Columbo was often underestimated because he looked like he just rolled out of bed and appeared dim witted. His adversaries were smart, rich, and/or influential, and routinely turned up their noses at someone who they saw as lesser. Columbo would use their dismissiveness to his advantage. By the time he had pieced together the solution, it was too late for the killers to recognize Columbo used his intelligence, gift for observation, and dogged work ethic against them. But most (if not all) of that is missing in Elsbeth. She is a wealthy, successful criminal defense lawyer who decided to switch sides late in her career. Yes, she comes across as quirky and the cops and criminals alike roll their eyes at some of her behavioral tics, but it never gets much beyond that. Moreover, the whole “country mouse in the big city” vibe the first few episodes have leaned into (the touristy upper decker ride, the foam Statue of Liberty headwear, etc.) does not make a lot of sense considering her prior place of residence was Chicago (hardly a small town), so her awe and wonder at New York seems over-the-top.

All that said, Elsbeth is not without its charms. It nicely incorporates technology (the pilot episode involves a pilfered SIM card) and pop culture (the third episode focuses on the murder of a reality star modeled after The Real Housewives franchise) into its stories and Elsbeth is played with a lightness and whimsy that fits into the idea of New York as a place of unique characters. It remains to be seen whether Elsbeth will mature into the kind of show whose re-runs will air on a daily basis 55 years from now.

So THAT Is What It Is Called

Just add on constant anxiety, and this has pretty much been my life for as long as I can remember, or at least the past several years but getting people to understand what it is like to live like this is almost impossible. 

Why I Hated The Succession Finale

It may be crude (although I think Roman would approve) but when I think of the Succession finale, my mind immediately goes to something called a “ruined *rga*m.” For the unaware, a ruined *rga*m is when a woman manipulates a man right to the edge of climax and then withdraws the source of stimulation, thereby denying him the pleasure of a happy ending. And, much like the frustration I imagine one feels when this is done in the bedroom, so too did Jesse Armstrong tease Kendall Roy’s ascension to the throne only to pull his hand away at the last second, depriving us of the release we so desperately craved.

The show’s ending was particularly frustrating because the rest of the show’s fourth season was outstanding. There were no wasted episodes, much less wasted scenes and the storytelling moved at an often frenetic pace. From Logan’s shocking death to a disputed presidential election, and the tug of war over GoJo’s attempted acquisition of Waystar, it was exceptional entertainment, and Kendall was at the center of it all. The tragic figure we had watched try, over and over, to reach the top rung of the ladder finally found his mojo. Whether it was his powerful eulogy at Logan’s funeral or his charismatic performance when pitching Living+, it appeared our number one boy would finally “win,” giving us the satisfying ending viewers (or at least *this* viewer) long sought.

Instead, Armstrong pulled a last second switcheroo by having Shiv, who had agreed to back Kendall and block the company’s sale, switch sides in a moment of boardroom skullduggery that landed her husband, Tom Wamgsgans, in the big chair.[1] There were two problems with this. One is superficial. The ending was lazy insofar as it recycled a plot line from Season One when Kendall attempted to remove Logan from power and was stymied by a single vote, except there it was Roman, not Shiv, who double crossed him. The other, and the focus of this essay, is more substantive. Simply put, the ending did not make sense within the universe Armstrong created.[2]

The show was called “Succession” not “Three Kids Don’t Know How To Share One Toy” which is basically how it ended. From the very first episode, the audience was conditioned to believe that one of Logan Roy’s children would, um, succeed him as head of Waystar – a point reinforced time and again. Most of that season (and season three) focused on Kendall’s attempt to force his way into leadership, the season two premiere included scenes where both Shiv and Roman pitched their vision of the company’s future hoping to be named their father’s successor[3], and the codicil to Logan’s will reflected his wish that Kendall take over upon his passing.[4] That one of the kids was in line to lead the company after Logan’s passing finds further support in the fact that when two non-family members – Rhea Jarrell and Gerri Kellman – held the CEO title, their reigns were incredibly short, with one leaving in disgust (Rhea) and the other dismissed as a mere place holder (Gerri).

Moreover, the show’s ethos emphasized the cutthroat environment Logan created. We were told, in various ways, that Logan gauged the mettle of his children either by how much abuse they could take[5] or which one could assert dominance over the other.[6] His leadership included sadistic games like “boar on the floor” and he explained to Kendall that business is like a knife fight in the mud. In other words, Ken, Shiv, and Roman were all raised to believe in a Darwinian worldview where the only objective is winning, regardless of what needs to be done to achieve that goal.

And Season Four (until the board room) affirmed that philosophy. While the kids were working together on a project after being expelled from Logan’s kingdom, once he died, the knives came out – as Logan had raised them to do. After Ken and Roman were named co-CEOs, Shiv immediately started plotting against them, looking for her own way to run the company by partnering behind their backs with Lukas. When Roman tapped out of the competition, incapable of processing the havoc he helped create with Mencken’s tainted victory, a final battle between Ken and Shiv was teed up, except when Greg’s handy intel confirmed that Lukas had no intention of appointing Shiv as Waystar CEO, her reaction was not to line up behind Kendall (and concede his win) but rather, to stab him in the back and support her husband, who she despised,[7] never mind the fact that at Logan’s memorial service, the kids agreed one of them should run the company. In other words, not only did Armstrong go against the show’s moral philosophy (winner take all), he did so in a way that was not even consistent with his own storyline!

This is particularly true because Kendall’s arc in season four so clearly reflected his growth into Logan’s logical successor. Prior to Logan’s death, there was always an air of insecurity around Kendall. He could get rattled easily in meetings and always seemed to be either second guessing his own decisions or thinking about how Logan would react to them. But after his father’s death, all that washed away. The old Kendall, who melted under the lights, was replaced by a new Kendall, self-assured in front of crowds whether he was pitching a retirement community, praising his father from the pulpit, or standing up to Lukas’s schoolyard taunts.

In addition to his public facing glow up, Kendall was also deft at working angles behind the scenes. When the company snoops learned that Lukas’s subscriber numbers were made up, it is Kendall who sweet talks Ebba into revealing other unsavory things about him. On the PR front, Kendall leveraged embarrassing information on Hugo to get him to dirty up Logan (post-mortem and off-the-record) with reporters, simultaneously giving Kendall a more positive public image. He also recruited Colin to join his inner circle, knowing it is invaluable to have an enforcer who can also keep his mouth shut. Time and again we got confirmation that Kendall embodied Logan’s dark energy and people took notice, be it the Waystar brain trust or the President-elect of these United States. In short, Kendall did all the things within the universe Jesse Armstrong created to “win” but instead of giving him that victory, the writers decided that Shiv would deny him the job because she could not have it.[8] Huh?

Defenders of the finale might argue that Logan was dismissive of his children and none was qualified to take his seat. Indeed, the last time he saw them face to face, he ridiculed them as not being serious people, to which I would respond in two ways. First, ok, but if Logan thought so little of his children, why did he keep handing them high level positions within his company?! But more seriously, his analysis was both ungenerous and inaccurate and also ignored his own failings as a leader. To be sure, as business executives, the three had their failings. Kendall overpaid for Vaulter, the satellite launch Roman led literally went kablooey, and Shiv sat by quietly when her father decided to cut Ken loose and make him take the fall for the cruise line debacle knowing it was her husband who was at least partly to blame.

But for all the ink that was spilled writing about Succession, you would be hard pressed to find anything with the title “Are We Sure Logan Roy Is Good At His Job?” It was a question that was never grappled with because of the force of his personality and ability to best his rivals (not to mention the narrative requirement that everyone else have a ring to chase), but if you get past the gruff insults and bullying behavior, you realize that Logan Roy was not that good at his job and it was his kids (the ones he claimed were not serious people) who bailed him out over and over again, all in service of showing they were capable of succeeding him!

Consider that almost every crisis at Waystar is triggered by some dumb decision Logan makes, starting at the beginning of Season One with Logan not telling Kendall (his supposed heir apparent) about a clause in the company’s debt agreement allowing its lenders to call in their notes if the company’s stock drops below a certain level. When Logan fell ill and the stock price tumbled, Ken solved this problem by bringing in Sandy and Stewy in exchange for board seats and the purchase of a minority stake in the company. Logan may have been unhappy with Ken’s decision, but was he really in a position to question it?

In Season Two, Logan’s deal for PGM is scuttled because the cruise line scandal is exposed. We learn that the person responsible for preying on cruise line employees sexually was a guy named Lester McLintock, one of Logan’s “wolf pack” cronies who the kids knew as “Mo” (“mo-lester”) and whose conduct was an open secret within the company.[9] It is left to the kids to clean up the mess. Roman is sent to Turkey in search of a sovereign wealth fund deal that would take the company private while Kendall and Shiv do damage control in Washington, D.C.; the former, by giving a full-throated defense of his father in front of a Senate Committee hearing and the latter by talking a female whistleblower out of testifying. Their efforts stop the bleeding, but the thanks Ken is given for protecting his father is Logan’s demand he take the blame for a problem not of his doing.[10] Of course, none of this would have been needed had Logan fired Mo long ago instead of sweeping his crimes under the rug. That fact notwithstanding, Logan also had the option of stepping down as Chair and CEO of the company in the wake of the scandal but threw Ken under the bus instead.

Logan’s penchant for secrecy involving his health would also come back to bite him in Season Three when Sandy and Stewy’s takeover bid[11] came up for a vote before the shareholders. During the meeting, Logan forgets to take medication for his urinary tract infection, causing him to become delirious. Shiv again steps into the breach to hammer out a settlement with Sandi Furness when it looks like the shareholder vote will not go the family’s way, yet Logan criticizes his daughter’s actions like an arsonist complaining that the fire fighter did not douse the flames correctly. In short, when the company was in trouble because of one of Logan’s bad decisions, it was his supposedly inept children who cleaned up the mess.

These defensive moves are in addition to the affirmative ones the kids made at various points to further their father’s objectives. For example, when things looked iffy with Nan Pierce, Kendall got the deal over the finish line by befriending Naomi Pierce and convincing her to vote for it. He is also the first one to see the benefit of Waystar’s acquisition of GoJo and Roman is the one who connects with Lukas at Ken’s birthday party to build a relationship with the enigmatic Swede. Long story short, the idea that the kids were failures while their father was some master of the universe is belied by the events in series itself. Logan’s screw ups were as bad (if not worse) than anything the kids did and the kids constantly swooped in to save the day when he did screw up, yet the idea they were ill-equipped to succeed him somehow become show canon.[12] 

Another defense of the show’s ending might be that Logan viewed his kids as privileged and not having had to work for their success. “Make your own pile” he spits at them at the end of Season Three when he casts them out into the wilderness. Contrast the Roy children with Lukas, who we are led to believe built GoJo from scratch (and perhaps someone in whom Logan saw a little of his younger self), and Tom, a Midwesterner who does not come from money. Aren’t those two more simpatico with Logan’s view that success is earned not inherited? Perhaps, but do either of these men hold up to closer scrutiny?

Start with Tom. He may come from humble beginnings, but a middle class upbringing is not the sole qualification to take over as CEO. Regardless, Tom did not “earn” his pile any more than the Roy kids. He benefitted from a similar form of nepotism by dint of his dating and then marrying Shiv because he literally had zero executive skill! Among his failings? He orchestrated a ham-handed attempt to destroy evidence of the cruise line scandal, gave such poor testimony in front of the Senate he was referred to as a “smirking block of feta cheese[13],” used his own underling as a human foot stool, outsourced the firing of hundreds of ATN employees to Greg, and could not even meet the low bar of getting a proper slogan for the channel. If there was a “failson” in the group, it was him! Even more, while he would have been the logical person to take the fall for the cruise line scandal, Shiv saved him from the chopping block. In fact, Tom’s defining trait was loyalty (not necessarily a bad thing) to Logan, not a high level of business acumen and yet, in the dog-eat-dog world Jesse Armstrong created, we are supposed to believe that the actual qualities most valuable in getting to the top are blind subservience and mediocre job performance?  Sorry, not buying it.

As for Lukas, you will never convince me Waystar was better off in his hands. For one thing, as Kendall noted, Lukas did not understand Waystar’s business. Lukas wanted to convert one of the company’s primary sources of revenue – ATN – into a “Bloomberg grey” channel that would presumably just barf out news about Wall Street (hardly a ratings generator!) Such a decision would have been particularly stupid considering GoJo was going to need all the money it could get to service the debt it surely took out to buy Waystar, not to mention the company’s stock was going to take a hit over its inflated subscriber numbers.[14] Speaking of subscriber numbers, do we really think a guy who did that is going to be a good steward of an even bigger company? And, like Kendall, Lukas is (at a minimum) a recreational drug user who gets high with his employees, but unlike Kendall, Lukas also sexually harasses his underlings, opening him (and the company) up to significant liability (not to mention lots and lots of bad PR). Finally, much of his public image is built on a lie that he is some genius computer coder, which, if exposed, might also damage his company’s brand. Put differently, Lukas engages in wonky business practices, treats his employees terribly, and is not the tech genius his minions portray him to be, and yet, this guy is somehow more worthy of “winning” in the end? Again, not buying it.

The final argument in support of the ending is the most basic and the one Shiv relied on: Ken was responsible for the death of another human being and that ipso facto disqualified him from leading the company. Now I will admit, there is something to be said for this, although I think we can all agree Ken did feel remorse for his actions. But within the Succession universe, there are a couple of other problems with this argument.

First, Shiv was every bit as amoral as everyone else on the show. She knew about the Dodds incident all the way back at Chiantishire and it did not stop her from teaming up with Ken and Roman, first to try and block the sale of Waystar and then, when that failed, working together to buy Pierce. If she was so offended by Ken’s actions, why did she suddenly get religion at the eleventh hour? It is not like Shiv had some shiny moral compass guiding her. To take one example, the first time Shiv talks one-on-one with Lukas, he’s snorting cocaine and telling her about how he sent frozen blood bricks to his communications director after their relationship ended. Shiv’s reaction was to provide crisis consulting on how to make the problem go away, not concern over Lukas’s abhorrent behavior.

Second, Shiv understood the value of blackmail. To go back to the cruise line scandal, Shiv used information about it not once but twice during the series to her advantage. The first time, she was working for Gil Eavis and threatened to use it against Waystar if ATN did not stop attacking Eavis on air. The second time was when she convinced Kara not to testify in front of the Senate by offering her money to stay silent. In neither case did Shiv care one bit about the women Mo assaulted or the Waystar employees whose deaths were never investigated.[15] No, she just cared about using incriminating information to her advantage. Since it is clear she 1) knew how to blackmail people and 2) was not afraid to do so, why would she back her estranged husband and a guy who snubbed her twice instead of her brother, who she had enormous leverage over? The chances that Shiv would have any meaningful role in a GoJo-led Waystar were zero, but all she needed to do was threaten to go public with what she knew about Kendall’s role in Andrew Dodds’s death and he would have had no choice but to put her in a senior role in the company. In other words, why bother spending 39 episodes drilling into our heads that these are the rules by which your universe operates only to decide in the second-to-last-scene of the entire series that they no longer apply? It just does not make sense.

In the end, maybe none of this matters and maybe that was the point. GoJo’s acquisition of Waystar would likely make Kendall, Shiv, and Roman billionaires[16] who would never want for anything (at least financially) for the rest of their lives. Instead, each is left staring into the middle distance, wrestling with the same questions as the rest of us – Who Am I and What Do I Want To Do With My Life? In other words, all the time we spend with these characters was supposed to tell us that money can’t buy happiness. No kidding.  

If you’re interested in what an alternate, post-finale ending might look like, check out:

Succession– Six Months Later (Kendall’s Revenge)

If you want to read my episode-by-episode recaps, they can be found here

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[1] While Tom did become head of Waystar, he would lead a subsidiary of GoJo with little actual power.

[2] The closest analogy I can think of is when Greg Daniels toyed with having Pam and Jim divorce in the final season of The Office only to back down mid-season in the face of massive fan backlash to the increasing tension in the Halpert marriage and introduction of the dreaded character “Brian the Boom Guy.” Instead, Armstrong went for an ending akin to making Bran – an important, but not central character – king at the end of Game of Thrones instead of one of the two logical choices, Jon or Dani.

[3] Indeed, the whole premise of The Summer Palace was Logan’s desire to name a successor, which he did (sort of)  – Siobhan.

[4] Yes, I know, the ambiguous pen mark could be read as an underline or a strike through, but the point, confirmed by Frank Vernon, was that sometime in the not too distant past, Logan memorialized his wish that Kendall succeed him.

[5] In Chiantishire, Caroline commented to Shiv that Logan liked treating his children like dogs and seeing how many times he could kick them and have them come running back to him.

[6] In Prague, Connor observed that Logan’s parenting philosophy was akin to pitting two dogs (again with the dogs!) against one another and then sending the weaker one off.

[7] This decision might have made sense if Shiv and Tom were happily married, but they were separated and had, less than a week before, the kind of empty-the-tank fight that couples have on the way to divorce.

[8] We will get into why Shiv’s decision making did not make sense within the show universe in more depth later, but suffice to say, her choice was particularly inexplicable considering the fact that Lukas snubbed her not once but twice (while also hiding the fact GoJo had lied about its subscriber numbers) and she and Tom were estranged. And if you claim Shiv could have been resentful about Kendall’s decision to side with Roman and call the election for Mencken, consider that 1) Tom was in on the decision too; and 2) when she met Mencken at Logan’s wake, she made clear she was willing to put aside her personal political views now that he was going to be President to allay any concerns about her leading the company.

[9] In addition to Mo’s conduct, there is a separate thread of the scandal involving mysterious deaths of cruise line employees that were never investigated because “no real person” was involved.

[10] Not only was this move incredibly selfish, it belied the fact that Ken had, per whistleblower James Weisel, cleaned up the cruise line while he was running the company. Talk about no good deed going unpunished!

[11] Another outgrowth of Logan’s poor choices. His decision to go back on his word and wrest control of the company back from Kendall in Season One resulted in Ken teaming up with Sandy and Stewy and making an unsolicited offer to buy it.

[12] It is also worth noting that the kids sniff out Logan’s plan to make another run at PGM and outbid him for the company.

[13] Due in part to the revelation that Tom sent Greg the same email (“you can’t make a tomelet without cracking a few Gregs”) *sixty seven* times in one day.

[14] While I understand TV is not real life, that the writers introduced this land mine into the story and then, in the very next episode, were like “never mind, no one thinks this is a big deal” did not sit well with me. Any company caught doing such a thing would not only see an immediate, and negative hit to its stock price (which would be particularly concerning here where a deal was on the precipice of being finalized) but an SEC investigation as well. Moreover, because the kids’ wealth was tied up in Waystar stock, depending on how the acquisition was structured, they could have taken a significant financial hit if, for example, those shares were going to be converted into shares of GoJo just as all this bad news breaks.

[15] This also reinforces the first point. Shiv is not some beacon of virtue, and excused and defended all manner of sleazy behavior by other people if it meant it helped her get ahead. That she was some beacon of virtue who could not stomach the idea of Kendall taking over based solely on the Dodds incident rings particularly hollow.

[16] I base this off the value (roughly $2 billion) Logan placed on Kendall’s shares of the family trust and am assuming Shiv and Roman had the same amount. Too Much Birthday; but see fn. 14 supra.