A Tribute To The 'Disgusting Brothers' Of Succession Season 4

This piece contains spoilers for the "Succession" season 4 premiere.

Sadly, "Succession" has entered its endgame. In a matter of weeks, the question posed by the title will finally be answered, all the chips will fall into place and this story will have its definitive ending. Until then, we'll be lapping up every single second of sweet "Succession" goodness that we have: the hilarity of its razor-sharp dialogue, the catharsis of the Roys rehashing familial trauma, and of course, the singular joy of watching odd couple Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and Greg (Nicholas Braun) share the screen. Empires rise and fall, and alliances come and go, but the kinship between Tom and Greg will last forever ... probably.

For at least a little while longer, Sporus and Nero are basically attached at the hip, with Tom as the Head of ATN and Greg as his right-hand man. Because even though Tom couldn't save his marriage when he jumped ship to Team Logan, he made sure to welcome Greg aboard for the ride.

"Do you want a deal with the devil?" Tom asked his lackey in the season 3 finale. Sleazy as that sounds, Tom's pitch also came with the promise of safety and a reminder that no one else in the traitorous Roy family has looked after Greg like he has. So there was only one possible answer for Greg to give: "What am I gonna do with a soul, anyway?" While their bond is oddly sweet, there's still something unsettling about the soul-selling aspect of their arrangement. You might even call it ... disgusting.

As always, the Tom and Greg dynamic is the highlight of the newest episode. In "The Munsters" we learn that in the months since making their deal with the devil, Tom and Greg have taken on a new moniker as The Disgusting Brothers. Hilariously, only Greg takes joy in the name while Tom rolls his eyes, brushes off Greg's excitement, and claims that it's "heavily ironized." But I know Tom-ism when I see one.

"They'll call us the disgusting brothers," sounds like the kind of giddy idea Tom might have while high on his own supply, desperately trying to suppress the misery of his impending divorce. Remember when he tried to convince everyone that swallowing his own "splooge" was fun, hip, and definitely didn't weird him out? That's precisely the kind of guy who would brainstorm The Disgusting Brothers.

And Greg? Once worried about the ethics of working for a radically conservative news organization that turns employees into human furniture and has at least one neo-Nazi on the payroll, Greg has graduated well beyond his moral dilemma days. He's all in on being a sleazebag playboy, courting royalty, suing Greenpeace and even forming his own personal P**** Posse. Except, instead of a Wolf Pack filled with socialites and actors, it's a brotherhood of only two: the now vile Cousin Greg and his only friend in the world — Tom, his depressed boss who psychologically tortures him on a regular basis. Three cheers for frat bro solidarity!

So what exactly do these Disgusting Brothers get up to? Presumably — with Tom's marriage now cracked wide open and Greg coasting off the swagger of being high up at Waystar — they're living it up bachelor-style, dating models and showing off their "moves." Or so their reputation claims. Fortunately, we know Tom and Greg pretty damn well: Mr. California Pizza Kitchen and his ortolan chomping buddy wouldn't know a good time if it slapped them in the face. Or pelted them with water bottles.

The closest they've come to partying was when Roman railroaded Tom's bachelor party to force them into an underground hipster bar. Tom unconvincingly claimed to be having the time of his life, to which Greg replied with truth: "This is nightmarish." The Disgusting Brothers is probably another Tom attempt at living in denial: a title he came up with to pretend he isn't severely unhappy about being separated from Shiv. But after hearing it repeated back for the millionth time, the joy has fully dried up.

There could be another explanation, of course. Though the nickname is first uttered by Greg himself, who strides into Logan's birthday party extremely hyped up about his capacious bag-carrying date, we later learn that their title is spreading through the grapevine: even Shiv, wholly outside of the Waystar loop, has heard tell of the so-called Disgusting Brothers. This points to another possibility.

Tom and Greg, as we all know, share a talent for mucking things up: think "we hear for you" or Boar on the Floor or congress. They stumble into trouble all the time, so who knows what they've been up to in the past few months. If Shiv knows about their nickname, then it must be widespread, so maybe Tom didn't come up with it at all. Maybe it's a name that was bequeathed upon them after doing something well, disgusting. According to Nicholas Braun, there's more info to come.

"You'll learn a bit more," Braun recently promised viewers, via TVLine. "You'll get a little bit more about why they're disgusting." He added that the nickname is less about the physical and more about "what they do with people. It's more the concept of them [being] disgusting."

How much more disgusting can they be?! In the span of a single episode, Cousin Greg defiled Logan's guest bedroom, rummaged to fruition with his date, and accidentally created a sex tape in the process. But the most disgusting detail of all doesn't happen in his pants or the darkened corners of Logan's apartment: it happens out in the open when Greg casually refers to his date as "another tick on the chart" then steps aside, abandoning her to be kicked out of the party by Colin.

Once outsiders to the Roy lifestyle, the Disgusting Brothers have spent the past four seasons trying to fit in with a bunch of elite upper-crust a-holes. Though we think of them fondly and are endlessly entertained by their antics, it might be time to accept the fact that they've finally accomplished their goal of becoming just as awful as the Roys they aspire to be. Sure, Greg may never be able to recognize a capacious bag when he sees one and poor Tom is one divorce lawyer away from being legally excised from this family, but they might just be disgusting enough to finally fit in.