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.

Important Office Episodes: Secretary's Day S6E22

Introducing a new character to a long-running, well-established sitcom can be challenging. An ensemble cast with 80+ episodes under its belt is like a stable atom and the appearance of a new cast member can ruin that chemistry or come across as a sign of desperation[1], which is what makes Secretary’s Day, the twenty-second episode of the sixth season of The Office, so important.

When we first met Erin Hannon[2] toward the end of season five, it was as Pam’s replacement as the office receptionist after Pam left to go work for the Michael Scott Paper Company. When Pam returned to Dunder Mifflin as a saleswoman, Erin kept her job but the writers did not do much with her for the next twenty episodes other than to establish 1) that Michael saw her as lesser version of Pam, who Michael saw as a sort of emotional woobie but was busy getting married, being pregnant, and learning her new job and 2) as a potential love interest for Andy (and the two do in fact start dating just prior to this episode). In other words, she was a bit of a cipher, not well-defined, and adding little to the show overall.

But that all changed in an episode that gave Erin a chance to shine. There is a B plot involving a parody video transposing Kevin’s voice onto Cookie Monster, but the episode’s main focus is on Erin, who is taken out to lunch by Michael to celebrate secretary’s day. She is, as Michael notes during a talking head, weird, and that energy manifests itself in a variety of random non-sequiturs: Erin takes a picture of Michael asking her to lunch (weird). In the car on the way to lunch, she asks him in what decade he would have wanted to be a teenager (very weird) and then tells him she would have picked the 1490s because that was when Columbus discovered America (even weirder, and also not factually accurate). The bit goes on at lunch, where we learn Erin’s prior job was at a Taco Bell Express but she quit when it became a full-blown Taco Bell because she could not keep up (?) and, out of nowhere, asks Michael how many pillows he sleeps on (??). Part of what makes these lines so funny is Kemper’s wide-eyed innocence. To her, these are completely normal questions to ask as casual chit chat with a co-worker whereas Michael recoils at the bizarreness of it all, looking at her like she has three heads when she asks him if he has a favorite age or month.[3]

Naturally, when the two do engage in what most of us consider normal conversation, things go completely off the rails. Michael asks her how things are going with Andy (normal) and when she asks Michael to tell her about him before they met (also normal) the reveal about Andy’s prior engagement to Angela sends Erin spiraling. Her line reading of a simple phrase - “uh oh” - should be studied by actors. Four little letters but delivered as a warning sign that this character knows when she is about to melt down – which she does – before dropping what might be the oddest line in the show’s history: “in the foster home my hair was my room.” Like, WHAT? Kills me every time.

When Michael and Erin return to the office[4] for cake with the rest of their co-workers, Andy singles out Angela for planning a great party as Erin seethes in the background before absolutely nailing him in the face with a huge piece of cake and confronting him about why he never told her about his relationship with Angela. Here again, Kemper really delivers, accusing Andy of sleeping with other members of the office (possibly together?) before storming out as the camera pans to the cake with her smiling face on it. She then gets some great one-on-one moments, first with Angela, who attempts to upbraid Erin for embarrassing her in front of everyone, to which Erin replies “take it up with the chief of police” (another odd, but hilarious comment) and then with Pam, who attempts to console Erin by sharing her own experience of having been engaged to someone else before she and Jim got together. At first, Erin assumes it was Andy (?) and then, after Pam tells Erin that sometimes the heart does not know what it wants, she misreads the comment entirely, assuming Pam is talking about herself and wishes Pam well in finding what she (Pam) is looking for.

It is a lot to cram into a single episode (much less one plot line within it) but in these brief scenes, Erin delivers an all-time comedic heater capped off when she and Andy have a private conversation in which she questions whether his real name is Andy Bernard or Lionel Frankenstein. It is just so … weird, but the timing, the mannerisms, the line delivery are all spot on, showing (not simply telling, as Michael did early in the episode) that this character is vibrating at a different frequency than the rest of the gang.[5]

The only critique I have is that the writers failed to capitalize on this bravura performance. After this brief moment in the sun, Erin mostly reverted to being a background player involved in a revolving door of office romances (Gabe, Andy (again), Pete) where the writers never seemed sure whether or not to turn her and Andy into a will they/won’t they Pam and Jim 2.0[6] and an effort to make Michael into a quasi-father figure to her (which never really landed). The series finale did offer a nice grace note – the pitch perfect casting of Joan Cusack and Ed Begley, Jr. as her birth parents, with a heartfelt reunion and some synchronized dancing at Dwight and Angela’s wedding that confirmed her parents were just as odd as she was.

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[1] Indeed, more than a few “jump the shark” moments are attributed to such a decision (e.g., cousin Oliver in The Brady Bunch).

[2] Real name Kelly, but due to the other Kelly’s attempt to get Charles Minor to notice her, changed to her middle name, Erin, so as to avoid confusion.

[3] While Michael has no answer, hers is April when she was seven (also weird!)

[4] Shout out to Steve Carrell for giving an ALL TIME eye roll you miss if you are not paying attention.

[5] With the possible exception of Creed, who is, as Ryan would say, on the freaking moon.

[6] Her Season Nine relationship with Pete had the most chemistry, but was treated like it never happened in the series finale.