Neal Justin: 'Succession' and 'Barry' finales stick their landings

If you haven't yet watched the series finales of HBO's "Succession" and "Barry," stop reading now. I'm going to drop spoilers — and there are a lot of them.

Anyone who gambled that the Roy children would put aside their differences and come together should be barred from ever entering a casino. Inevitably, the three would-be heirs lost out to Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) and his new best pal Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), primarily because three of them couldn't stop behaving like children battling over the remote control.

Creator Jesse Armstrong upped the bickering for Sunday's finale, even including a fight between Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin), minutes before the board voted on their company's fate.

In the end, it made perfect sense for Matsson to tap Tom as the company's public face. He's always been the strongest character, if only because he's the most heartless.

"I'm not looking for a partner, I'm looking for a front man," Matsson tells Tom over dinner. "It's going to get nasty, so I need a pain sponge when I'm under the hood doing what I love."

Those who wished that Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun) would somehow come out on top were bound to be disappointed. Plus, that would have been ridiculous. But Greg had his moments.

After seasons of being abused by Tom, he struck back — literally and figuratively. After hatching a sabotage scheme, the smartest move he's made in the show's four seasons, he got up the gumption to slap his mentor across the face.

Alas, Greg eventually succumbed, as, it appears, did Shiv (Sarah Snook), who resigned herself to being the king's consort rather than Kendall's lady in waiting.

It was hard to feel sorry for Shiv — or anyone else. Every character is so despicable, they shouldn't run a home owners' association, let alone an influential company.

But the finale delivered on what fans really love: Nasty insults.

Almost all the daggers thrown in the 90-minute conclusion were too vulgar to repeat here, but they were among the wittiest in the series' history. There was even a comical truce between the kids, although their idea of bonding is forcing Kendall to choke down a disgusting cocktail topped off with Shiv's spit.

There were almost no laughs in the final episode of "Barry," a series that started as an absurdist comedy about a guilt-ridden assassin and slowly morphed into one of TV's darkest dramas.

Bill Hader, who wrote and directed Sunday's episode, had his title character killed off by one-time mentor Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) a hammy acting teacher framed for one of Barry's murders.

In a twist, Barry is remembered as a hero, while Gene rots in jail. Not exactly a barrel of laughs, but for a show that determined to prove it was not a sitcom, that seemed fitting.

Both shows deserve credit for each exiting after just four seasons. In the end Armstrong and Hader decided great storytelling was more important than collecting paychecks for more episodes.

That may be the most unexpected, and gratifying ending of them all.