Three shows ended their runs this week, which has to be a record. Succession, Barry and Ted Lasso all wrapped up their shows - four seasons for the first two, three for the latter. (Note: Ted Lasso isn’t officially over, but Jason Sudekis has publicly said he’s done. It’s QUITE possible there will be a spinoff of some sort. But for all intents and purposes, it’s over.)
This is not an attempt to detail each show and how the finales worked (or didn’t), and it’s also not an attempt to place any of these shows on my TV Ranks List. (Succession, previously, was 19th. It will be MUCH higher when I get around to re-ranking.)
Instead, I thought it was really interesting to see how each show dealt with the finality of what they’d built. Certainly, all of them COULD have gone on for longer - but in all three cases, I’m glad they didn’t.
It should go without saying - but I’m gonna say it anyway - that spoilers are inevitable here. Again, that’s not the intent, but I’m also not going to go out of my way to be spoiler-free. Tread carefully.
In the case of Barry, the show had transformed from a satirical comedy about a hired assassin who comes to Los Angeles for a job and realizes he doesn’t like his life, and would rather become an actor.
While the show continued to poke fun at the absurdity of Los Angeles, it became a MUCH darker show about what haunted Barry Berkman (Bill Hader), as well as those in his world, including Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg), “Noho Hank” (Anthony Carrigan) and Monroe “The Raven” Fuchs (Steven Root), among many others.
It got really, really dark. And way more interesting in very unexpected ways. It not only starred Hader, he was one of the creators. He directed 18 of 32 episodes, and wrote 12 of them as well. And the deeper the story got, the harder it was to see anything good happening.
Without a true spoiler, it’s safe to say that Barry ended in both the only way it could have - and in a completely unpredictable way that somehow fit the show perfectly. I really loved the show, but I think another season would have been hard to buy into, or it would have not involved at least one of the characters the show is presumably all about. The development of Reed by Sarah Goldberg is one of the true surprises of the show - she was so unlikable in the earliest seasons (on purpose), and we still even see a few hints of her need to be in the spotlight and receive praise in her final scene, but MAN, was I blown away by how good she was in the last few seasons. Noho Hank went from being one of the sillier, funnier characters on TV to being heartbreaking. And yet … there wasn’t that much more to see. The show takes a huge time jump in the second half of its final season, and that could have gone very, very wrong - but it also helped put a button on things that was very satisfying.
Ted Lasso was a massive phenomenon that owes at least some of its success to when it was aired. The first episode dropped in August 2020, deep in lockdown and when everyone was still freaked out, needing some joy in their lives. And man, Ted Lasso brought that in bunches. I think the first season is fairly perfect (in retrospect, I haven’t rewatched it). Things got bumpier in the second season, especially in the two episodes Apple added after the fact (the Christmas and the Beard episodes, which both felt quite out of place). It’s interesting to wonder how successful the show would have been if it had come out a few years earlier, or even dropped this year for the first season. But either way, it was great. Lasso, Beard, Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), Jamie (Phil Dunster), Nate (Nick Mohammed) and others - including a ton of secondary and tertiary characters - were so quirky and charming. (Somehow, the characters who only showed up a few times at all, like Sassy (Ellie Taylor), Trent Crimm of the Independent (James Lance), Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) and Rupert (Anthony Head) stole most of the scenes they were in.)
In the end, the show provided the good vibes we all needed (and still do). I am a huge fan of the snarky comedies, the cynical dramas, etc., but it’s nice to have a show that is about NICE people, working through the problems they and we all share.
The show got seriously unwieldly this season, trying to tell way too many stories. I’m not sure about you, but I aggressively didn’t care a whit about Keeley (Juno Temple) or her business endeavors. Lasso’s ignorance about the sport he was coaching lasted far too long (with a satisfying resolution to that in the final episode, it’s worth noting). The drama around Nate and his turning heel seems to have been a misstep, and things like adding a character like Zava (Maximilian Osinski) felt like a fun idea that should have never gotten out of the writers room.
So I was very satisfied with the finale because I didn’t want to see a show I have truly enjoyed continue to eat its own tail. It resolved itself in a way that I think was mostly predictable, but that didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. Where characters like Ted, Rebecca, Roy, Beard, Jamie and others end up is something that makes me happy as a fan of them and the show.
And it’s enough. Will the show actually avoid the bags of cash that would await a fourth season or a spinoff? I doubt it, and depending on what that looks like, I’ll probably watch. But it doesn’t need to happen, and likely shouldn’t. This was a remarkable show. Be a goldfish and start fresh.
Finally, we get to Succession. You can say a lot about the show - that the characters are unlikeable, that the show is a cycle of the same story on repeat, etc. I personally think it’s one of the best dramas I’ve ever seen, and I think had very, very few missteps. I also think even more that the finales is one of the best series finales ever.
Unlike the prior two shows, if you had told me before this season started that I was going to get TWO more seasons, I would have been happy. BUT, I would have also been apprehensive. Because the first few seasons were basically about the name of the series - who will succeed Logan Roy (Brian Cox) as the head of Waystar Royco, the conglomerate that built the billions of the Roy family? The pilot starts with his son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) rapping in his Town Car as he heads to the meeting where he is, presumably, going to be named the successor - only to find out that his father has decided to “stick around.” And over the next three seasons, we see Kendall, his brother Roman (Kieran Culkin) and his sister Shiv (Sarah Snook) try to elbow their way into the head of the table, all while Logan outmaneuvers them at every step. To some degree, as a viewer I wondered how this could possibly resolve itself. Could Ken outwit his father? Doubtful. Could I stand to watch him step on a shovel one more time? Maybe.
What happened in the final season was the perfect capstone to all of this. Flush on the thought that they’d finally gotten one over on their dad through an acquisition of his rival Pierce Media, he tells them (in what is the last thing he ever says to them):
“I love you, but you’re not serious people.”
The kids think that what their dad wants is for them to prove they ARE worth the crown, but we realize he’s already assessed them and found them lacking. And maybe … he’s okay with that? In the final episode the three kids see a home movie where he’s been socializing with his oldest son Connor (Alan Ruck), who has never wanted to run the company and is otherwise living a life of wealthy leisure (until his self-funded run at President). They all, to some degree, break down - possibly because they miss their father (spoiler, he dies early in the final season, sorry) but also because they didn’t have that memory because they chose to fight their father instead.
It’s impossible to talk about Succession without addressing the immense talent involved. Not only the five actors mentioned above, but Matthew Macfadyen as Tom Wambsgams, Nicholas Braun as Cousin Greg, James Cromwell asUncle Ewan, J. Smith-Cameron playing Gerri Kellman Alexander Skarsgard as Lukas Mattson and SO MANY OTHERS. Characters like Stewy Hosseni (Arian Moyayed), Karl (David Rasche), Hugo (Fisher Stevens) and Frank (Peter Friedman) were not only ridiculous but believable. We viewers may not play in the same arena as these guys, but we’ve met people just like them.
What’s brilliant about the finale, and the final season in general, is that it was incredibly satisfying and wrapped up virtually everything we wanted to know. As a podcast I listened to said, this wasn’t Lost, we don’t need to know the details of the Pierce merger, or whether Stewy is made whole. But in terms of answering the “what happens after Logan?’ question, it did so masterfully. I wouldn’t say it’s satisfying because almost NOBODY is happy (even a winner like Lukas or Tom). Perhaps we see Roman finally shedding the weight of his father and his legacy as he sips a martini at the bar and smiles. He realizes, unlike his siblings, that they are NOT serious people, as their father stated. (He sums it up in a more Roman way, by saying, “We’re bullshit.”)
This by Harpers Bazaar sums up why it had to end like it did:
The only impossible way that Kendall, Roman, and Shiv would keep Waystar Royco in the family was to build a united front, and that was never going to happen. Every moment of genuine sibling unity throughout the show has been fleeting, and it’s devastating but not surprising that the group’s bond crumbled at the final, most necessary moment. Shiv’s about-face was sudden in the moment, but she had already spent half the season being pushed out of decision making by Kendall. Her fury at Tom’s latest betrayal didn’t propel her all the way through the vote; it weakened enough for the echo of doubt in Kendall’s trustworthiness to push through. Then, when Kendall tried to walk back the strongest moment of solidarity the trio had throughout the whole season, both Shiv and Roman were faced with the fact that Kendall would do anything and push over anyone he needed to grab the ring.
Succession is a tragedy, first and foremost, and also a sendup of the worst parts of capitalism. While it did spend some time showing the benefits of such (the yachts, the private jets, the massive homes), it also leaves us aware that the wealth does very little for the majority of the people we care about. Those who do seem to get it are on the margins - but Ken, Shiv, Roman - and even Tom, Logan and Greg - the money isn’t making them happy. It’s keeping them in the life they desperately crave (or, in the case of the Roy children, the only life they’ve known). I have thought a decent amount about the finale and really can’t think of anything that didn’t land. It’s a tremendous achievement and should serve as a model of way to tell your whole story.
It strikes me that each show really took a different approach, but each was true to the genesis of the show. Ted Lasso gave everyone - literally, almost every character who’d ever appeared in the show - one last bow, and a resolution that, in most cases, is exactly what viewers rooting for a happy ending would have chosen. Barry blew most everything up where the characters we liked or disliked had endings that conflicted with our hopes. And Succession reminded us exactly of what show we’d been watching, having somehow the most realistic and brutal ending we’d have dreamt up if we’d been able to think that far ahead.
What did you think of these shows? Or other series finales that went right or wrong?