Yahoo Finance Tom Wambsgans Is Winning 'Succession'
For all of the Succession power rankings which go round each week, tracking who is on the rise and who is in the firing line, the real power player of the show is clear to see, and has been a non-mover for some weeks now. Tom Wambsgans is both the darkest villain and most compelling hero of the series, the one person you can point to and say, 'That's probably how spineless I would be if given vast wealth and unchecked power.'
In this week's episode, 'Too Much Birthday', Matthew Macfadyen's unctuous Wambsgans steals the show from start to finish. Tom's big news this week is that he will avoid prison time, an announcement which prompts him to have what will perhaps prove to be an Emmy-winning freakout, in which he overturns Greg's desk and dives onto a filing cabinet, screaming with the closest thing to joy that his emotion range will allow.
Tom has had a kicking in season three thus far: his wife Shiv is happy to throw him to the dogs and doesn't seem up for getting in pregnant in time for his release from jail, his sidekick Greg has flirted with Roy family desertion to side with Kendall's clique, and he's had to pull a pair of tights out of his dog's bum. The closest thing he's received to love comes in this week's episode, in which Logan tells him that he'll remember Tom offering himself up as the trout to be clunked on the head for the justice department's investigation, even if he isn't actually going to jail.
Macfadyen's Tom is the perfect cocktail of dejection and wistfulness; an interloper to this monied world who series writer Georgia Pritchett compared to Princess Diana for his awkward outsider status, entering a world where he's always on the back foot. "The key is to play everything dead straight," Macfadyen told Esquire in 2019. "Then the ludicrousness of the situations come out. If it's a tongue-in-cheek thing it doesn’t work." As such this season has seen him deliver some truly bleak one-liners ("What's good is to eradicate hope, they can't get you if you got no hope") with a blithe smile on his face.
When the prospect of prison time and being sentenced to drinking toilet wine are lifted from his shoulders, the release is like watching a wind-up toy that's been twisted and twisted and finally put down. Losing the plot over being granted your freedom? Extremely 2021. Naturally, the high doesn't last long, with Kendall's birthday becoming the latest in a long line of sad Roy parties. So instead of taking to the dancefloor where his wife is maniacally gyrating, Tom has a predictable reaction to cocaine and ends up morose, paranoid and stiff jawed. It's a mark of how human McFadyen makes such a cartoonish character that even when Tom is being truly ghastly, it's hard not to root for him.
Later he ventures to the compliment tunnel, the perfect feature for a party which guests enter through a giant pink birth canal. Truly, the only thing better than a walkway with actors popping out of the foliage to tell you how amazing you are is Tom's growing fury at being complimented.
This season belongs to Tom alone, or maybe Tom and his abject misery upon realising that the wine his new vineyard produces is not only undrinkable but also screw-top. Watching just Macfadyen, even in the background of the scene he's barely in, is like watching an entire series of its own. Tom Wambsgans might end up divorced from Shiv, childless, the grim reaper of ATN News and maybe even in jail after all, but he's already won Succession.
'Succession' is available on Sky and NOW on Mondays at 9pm and on demand
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