OPEN SEASON

The rising popularity of polyamory.

- JENNIFER WILSON

On Season 1 of HBO’s “Succession,” the telecom heiress Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook) shocked her social-climber partner, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), by sharing her misgivings about monogamy—on their wedding night. “I’m just wondering if there’s an opportunity for something different from the whole boxed-set death march,” she confesses, still in her gown. Committed to marrying up, Tom pretends to be down with the whole thing, but, a season later, he backs out of a threesome aboard the family yacht, and out of the arrangement altogether, claiming that Shiv “shanghaied” him “into an open-borders freefuck trade deal.”

A brief scan of popular culture will tell you that Tom, save for his critique of laissez-faire capitalism, is behind the times. Marriage has been drafty lately. Everywhere you turn, the door couples close behind them when they enter the sanctum of matrimony is being left ajar.