Previous Power Rankings:
This week on Succession … Kendall makes a friend. Connor drinks some port. Roman goes to the bathroom. And now, the Power Rankings:
1. Logan Roy (last week: 1): At the end of the day, after all the hoops you have been made to jump through, all the pre-meeting briefings you had to do with your brain trust, and the petty humiliation of watching your clan of big, vulgar, boisterous barbarians embarrass you in public, you know one thing deep down in the pit of your dark soul - money wins. Your company is wounded, but you have kicked the tires on Pierce and you know it is in an even more precarious state. So, when Nan goes beyond the easy asks (editorial independence, a few seats on the board, shitcanning Tom) and drifts into the no-go zone (publicly announcing Shiv as CEO-in-waiting), you pull the classic negotiating tactic of storming out - and it works. In the time it takes you to chopper back to the Big Apple, the ultimate prize is within your reach, you have brought your overly eager daughter to heel, and Sandy and Stewie’s takeover bid is on life support. Now, you’ll just have to tell Jamie you need to borrow an extra billion.
2. Nan Pierce (last week: not ranked): You played your hand masterfully. You summoned the powerful Logan Roy and his dysfunctional family to your country home and watched them self-immolate in a conflagration of over sharing, over drinking, and over excitement. And even as you were reveling in their infighting, you knew all that drama could not hide the fact that your company was in trouble and, as distasteful as it might be, accepting $24 billion so generations of Pierces unborn can comfortably sip their Brake Bumpers without fear of having to work a day in their lives was the right thing to do. But instead of just taking the deal (sweetened with an extra billion you would not be able to spend in your lifetime) and walking away, your pride got the better of you. You are still going to get your money, but you are not going to tell Logan Roy how to run his company.
3. Kendall Roy (last week: T-3): Just execute the plan, son. Sure, Logan paid lip service to keeping his number one boy clean for the weekend, but when you find a kindred spirit at the banquet table, you improvise. While the other kids were trying their dad’s patience, Kendall’s night of partying with Naomi paid major dividends. Instead of torpedoing the deal, she does a 180 after Kendall points out that the wealth she will secure once it goes through will allow her to start anew. Was this coke-infused wishful thinking? Of course. But when you live a life of such entitlement that you can literally shit the bed and have someone else clean it up, anything seems possible.
4. Rhea Jarrell (last week: 2): It did appear you had one thing right. The incompatible cultures seemed apparent. The Pierces are all old money WASP tradition - Latin phrases over the door, Shakespeare quotes, wood-paneled Jeeps and sensible, low thread count sheets. The Roys are new money immigrants - brash and loud, indelicate and offensive, consumed with the material trappings of their .0001% world. You have also hedged your bets nicely. If things go south, your fingerprints are nowhere to be found. If the deal is consummated, you squeezed an extra billion out of Logan Roy, which will fatten your golden parachute if you are shown the door.
5. Naomi Pierce (last week: not ranked): You hold a special place in Cousin Nan’s heart. You can appear earnest in public, mindlessly aping the family traditions of silver scepters and English literature, but your tongue is razor sharp. You are not impressed with an entitled little boy who thought he could order your family business like it was a meal from Uber Eats, but his older, damaged brother is catnip when it is time to drop the veneer. What you really needed was a friend, a fellow traveler who could get you to believe that money will solve all your problems.
6. Roman Roy (last week: 7): There are two ways to move up in the Power Rankings. You can either do something good or be less bad than someone above you. Professor Can’t Fuck did a little of both. He has (mostly) kept his head down, slinging kettle corn with the hoi polloi in management training, grinding away for a crumb of his father's approval. His actions at Tern Haven are a little more iffy. Glib retorts and sick burns may work against his siblings, but ad libbing your reading list to a guy juggling three books plus a memoir (you know, just to see what bubbles to the top) did not end well. His reaction to finding out that his follow-the-rules tour of duty learning the company ropes has been for naught because Shiv will be taking over was almost as bad as his attempt to have normo sex. The humiliation Gerri heaped on was just the cherry on top of the kink sundae. But at the end of the day, Shiv’s power move blew up in her face and by definition, that helps him.
7. Gerri Killman (last week: 6): You did not do anything wrong per se, but you also need to remember that if you are going to help Roman work out his sexual peccadilloes, he may not keep his big mouth shut. You may be able to brush off his indiscreet admission that he spent the night pulling his pud in your bathroom, but at some point, this is going to get messy (and not in the sex positive way you perverts may think).
8. Shiv Roy (last week: T-3): It is hard to pinpoint the exact moment your ambition got the better of your judgment. It might have been when you made an off-hand remark to cousin Mark, seemingly mocking his efforts to obtain a second Ph.D. Or, it could have been when, hyped up on adrenaline from your cuckolded husband’s pep talk, you boldly revealed your father’s succession plan publicly. But when Logan quickly acceded to Nan’s request that Tom be jettisoned while speaking favorably of your more liberal politics, the blood started to drain from your face. Your father does not like being told what to do, not by you or by the head of an acquisition target. Your presence may have merely been a way for him to make his takeover of PGM look more palatable or he may legitimately view you as a future CEO, but you did yourself no favors this week. While you are still in the game by virtue of your last name and your brothers’ weaknesses, your usefulness to Logan may be nearing an end.
9. (tied): Mark Pierce and Maxim Pierce (last week: not ranked): There is something to be said for the perfectly pleasant Pierce cousins who know from social grace and appropriate manners. While the Roy children spend most of their time seeking locations on each other’s backs in which to insert knives, the Pierces are more erudite. Mark, no longer the learned astronomer he was when he got his first Ph.D, nevertheless is working on doctorate number two, all the better to know shit twelve seconds faster than he would if he looked it up on Wikipedia. Maxim toils away at the Brookings Institute churning out white papers that will be read on the DC cocktail circuit, but this stuffed shirt is happy to compromise his ideals if you get him drunk and offer him Foggy Bottom. These guys are going to be fine.
Not Ranked: Marcia Roy; Tom Wamgsgans; Cousin Greg(ory); Tabitha; Shakespeare Frank; Willa; Richard the Butler; Marnie Pierce; The Electric Circus; His Majesty Spinach, the King of Edible Leaves; Representative Ferdinand D. Who Gives A Shit From the Great State of Nobody Fucking Cares; Mondale the Dog; Rosa; Jess; Sandy Furness (who may or may not have syphillis); Stewie; The penis cat; Teddy Roosevelt’s butler and his secret recipe for the Brake Bumper.
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