HelleboreBlack

Look at this guy in S1e1 - very fluffy hair, very nice. Short hair even, because he's young, because he doesn't know anything yet, not really, because he's not got his curls whispering unprincipled political careerism in his ears.

Here he is, falling into Malcolm's web (i.e. actually getting somewhere in his career) in S2e1. He is nervous, he is doubtful, he is upset, and he is human. And his hair looks a bit like he's been dragged through a bush backwards, which is always nice.

But look at him in hospital, at his most vulnerable ever this season, and HIS HAIR IS SOFT AGAIN. Yes, he's resorted to horrific betrayals in the service of Malcolm Tucker's goals (really Ollie???), and he left morals and principles several miles back, but he IS human. He is horrendous and awful and terrible and human, because evil and humanity are not mutually exclusive.

And here he is, at the end of series 4, and he's becoming the job Malcolm, and his hair is more changed than should be humanly possible, because now he's not just immoral, he's gone.

Everything about him that hurt and that pined and that cared has been ripped out of him, discarded to be replaced with ambition and ascension and insipid obfuscation, and even worse than that, he's put gel in his hair.

Seriously, the real arc of The Thick of It was the slow descent in Ollie's hairstyle quality.

A similar hair journey marks Greg's evolution in Succession: vulnerable floppy boy (ish) to slicked-back manipulator (ish).

There is only one possible conclusion: hair gel makes you evil.