I feel like this show ended the only way that it could. Horrible rich people who are capable and effective win, and horrible rich people who are incompetent ride off into the sunset with their tears and their vast inherited fortunes, and everyone else is well and truly fucked. That’s kind of what the writers were telling us from the start, isn’t it?
yup, i did. I told my wife ‘even money ken doesn’t make it out of this scene’ - she wouldn’t take the bet.
me too! I’m a little shocked they didn’t go into this a bit. All we got was one fleeting glance through glass that might have held concern and pity…
Ya. I…just dont really buy this ending. It feels very ‘we need a curveball here, so let’s go the way no one will expect!’. She has less of everything with this decision, except maybe money. Less power. Less surety. There’s no guarantee Tom actually becomes CEO, or them still being married, or her having any kind of say in the company. And that’s not to say the ‘burn it all down’ approach would be unbelievable for her, but if that were the case, I feel they really should have set it up better with some context. Literally, the night before she was laughing and having fun with her brothers and angry at getting screwed again from getting the position she wanted (and i have the timeline right, ya? They were flying back for the vote that morning, weren’t they, or was there another day between?).
Other than that though, pretty good final episode and season - and the acting was superb throughout.
Except Shiv now has billions of dollars in wealth and a significant amount of GoJo stock, much more wealth or GoJo stock than Tom will have let alone a gold digger like Marcia. Shiv still holds the power in the relationship, even if it did tilt slightly.
Ya, but she always had those things. The thing i think shiv craved more than anything else was acceptance and acknowledgement(of her skills/abilities), and this ending doesn’t move any of that forward at all. I think you could even argue that she has less power and respect now than she had before - at least then she was a board member and family. Now…she just has money.
One of the articles I read talked about how Shiv watched Kendall put his feet up on Logan’s desk and a few other similar disrespectful things. This is basically what made her realize that Ken couldn’t do the job and shouldn’t do the job and why she voted as she did.
Each of Shiv and Kendall were unable to cede any gain to the other. It’s part of the broken makeup of the two people. Roman is also a bit like that, but as the baby, he spent his life being forced to acquiesce to the other two, so that is what he does in the end. Shiv initially agrees to support Kendall only because of the shock of the betrayal by Mattson, and the desire to get back at Mattson, but in the end she can’t go through with it, because she is unable to cede anything of value — anything she wants — to Kendall.
After the deal is done, all three of them are basically in shock — they’ve lost everything: their father, their career, their company ‘home’, maybe even their country. Shiv’s reluctant journey back to Tom is the manifestation of that shock and fear of loss. She’s reaching for safety, stability, a home; something like normalcy. Of course Tom is awful, but everybody in her life is awful, and always has been, but she thinks she loves them anyway.
Tom’s awful and put about 10000x more effort into the relationship than Shiv did.
Shiv literally told Tom it was going to be an open marriage on their wedding day!
I’m not sure about that. I would think she has more influence over Tom than Kendall. Especially since she is having his kid. She is smart enough to know that power won’t be shared in her own family, proven over and over. Her vote decided the deal, so she has lots of coin with Mattson too.
She played it right in character and made the correct choice based on “what’s best for Shiv”.
I can’t imagine watching that episode and thinking “oh this character is making a rational, reasoned choice.” She just, in the end, wanted to deny her brother a win, because that is what she does; and during and afterward she’s shell-shocked by the whole string of calamities and betrayals that led her to this place.
Kendall is every bit as broken and bad, of course, and would have done precisely the same thing if the situation were reversed, for precisely the same reason.
Shiv’s final decisions along with Kendall’s and Roman’s aligned with Logan’s earlier assessment that defines them all perfectly - “You are not serious people”.
She may have more power over Tom than Kendall in a vacuum, but Tom is now basically a puppet of Matsson, and may not really wield that much power of his own.
I suppose if she was an emotional character driven primarily by feelings, but that’s not how I interpreted her through this show at all. That’s more Kendall. If anything, she is emotionally stunted from abuse in a man’s world. She doesn’t know how to deal with feelings, and logic is both her mask and refuge. People think she is smart because of this.
I don’t know, I just look at her face. To me, it isn’t the face of someone thinking I’ve just made the clever winning play here.
I don’t think she ever got beyond this. Between what she said at the funeral and the way Tom had begun to treat her towards the end of the season.
It’s more the face of I’m going to kill my brother, but the logic of me doesn’t give me any other choice.
All just interpretation and no right answer. Any way you look at it, it’s fucked up.
Ending up in Shiv’s position would be a power play for a lot of people, but it’s a total reversal of the power dynamic in the marriage at the start of the show, and for the woman in a man’s world, it is the opposite of liberation. Even the marriage is doomed–you can see it in how lightly she “holds” his hand after he condescends to offer it to her.
I agree with everything else you said, but I think there’s more to it that this. When she has to cast her vote, she has to face the fact that Kendall can’t actually handle the job (as Logan also realized). At which point she feels resentment at the idea that he might get the coveted job anyway. And then he instantly validates her impulse by becoming a privileged baby and bald-faced liar when it starts to slip away.
Yes, I see that, too. Well said.
Everytime they give kendall a speech in the show, I interpret the result as jeremy strong trying to convey that kendall is not as talented or capable as he wants to be or needs to be. His board speech was a stumbly arrogant mess and probably put shiv over the edge. She was acting on impulse and hatred against matsson when flipping over to ken, and only when it had time to sit in her mind she realised giving kendall the top isn’t in her best interest whether she gets to be the new ceo or not.
I think he final decision made total sense in the context of the show and had little to do with wanting to deny her brother a win out of spite or pettiness.
Romans reaction is key too “we are bullshit, we’re nothing.” Shiv had the same epiphany.