Tom Wambsgans And The Eventual Rise Of The “F*cking Empty Suit”
I am gonna write most of this article as if you, a potential reader, knows a little bit about the now-concluded HBO show Succession. If you don’t know much, it’s basically a fictionalized version of the Murdoch family, even though no one will openly admit it. There’s a dad, Logan, who ultimately dies in the final season, about three episodes in. The entire run-up to that death is a jockeying for position among three kids (and maybe four if you count a politician son by the dad and a different woman). Eventually, none of those three offspring become the CEO. Instead, Tom — who was often called “the most pathetic character on the show” — becomes the U.S. CEO of the company after it’s acquired by a tech bro from Sweden played by Skarsgard, who is a long way from Big Little Lies in this show.
After Game of Thrones had a rough final season and gave the title to Bram, I think a lot of people thought maybe HBO executives like their shows to do zany stuff, so the Tom thing was a possibility. Greg, who is an even dumber understudy to Tom, was also a far-fetched possibility. In the end, Tom got the reins, but in reality he didn’t. He was still going to just be a suck-up to Skargard’s character, Lukas. Tom is married to one of the three siblings (the only woman), and she even told Lukas in the final episode, “Tom will suck the biggest dick in the room.” (To which he replied: “Love is in the air.”)
Eventually, as the biological kids of the titan founder are out of the country, Lukas and Tom finally have a meeting. Prior to this, and a few different occasions to boot, Tom had been referred to as a “fucking empty suit.” You’ve probably worked with at least 2–3 of these guys, as they are everywhere in corporate. They look good (mostly), they keep their head down, they play by the rules (even if the rules change every six months), and they keep getting ahead even though they’re not really that good at anything specific.
When Tom sits down with Lukas to talk about the future of the company and the potential acquisition, he nails almost every trope of this type of guy. He opens by saying that he “cuts cost and juices revenue,” which is literally what every founder and executive wants to hear…
