This week on Succession … Ken takes a dip, Roman sends a pic, and Shiv smokes a cig. And now, the Power Rankings:
1. Logan Roy (last week: 1): You can knock out any boxer but clowns are a different story. You do not negotiate via emoji and you need to know if Matsson is just some run of the mill social media panty flasher or a serious businessman. And while Roman reassured you he was the latter and not the former, his accidental text is now giving you second thoughts. You know things and you have been able to turn a buck for half-a-century by trusting your gut, but your radar is now unreliable. And in that moment, maybe a deeper reality hit you. For all your business acumen, all the musings about life being a number on a piece of paper or a knife fight in the mud, you cannot avoid the fact that you created four defective humans who watched you treat marriage as transactional, the law as irrelevant, and people as disposable. Is it any wonder you have reaped this whirlwind? You have three sons. The eldest is embarrassing himself by proposing marriage to his rent-a-girlfriend. The middle one drove a car off a bridge and left a young man to die. The youngest is sending pictures of his penis to your interim CEO. Your lone daughter is so damaged she thinks it is funny to ridicule her husband for the sin of loving her even though she does not love him. So, when you put your faith in these broken toys to give you business advice, do not complain about cleaning up dirty diapers when you never taught them how to wipe their own asses.
2. Lukas Matsson (last week: 3): You are at a level of wealth that requires someone to take a plane, helicopter, car, and boat just to see you and can afford to buy every mattress on Earth to figure out which one feels best on your body, and yet you possess that special flavor of Swedish ennui that manifests in shit posting on Twitter and sleeping on a mat instead. Do you really want this deal or are you just fucking with the old man to see if teasing him arouses any feeling in your deadened soul?
3. Siobhan Roy (last week: 6): Mother/Daughter relationships can be complicated and yours is no different. But if you look past the casual cruelty in Caroline telling you that motherhood might not be your jam, her observations about the family dynamics were spot on. For one, you inherited your father’s sadistic streak. After all, what is Tom but a dog you keep kicking to see if he will come back? You asked for an open marriage on the eve of your wedding. You encouraged him to let your dad know he was willing to go to jail if it would make the cruise line scandal go away and then rolled your eyes into the back of your head every time he tried to vent about his fear of prison. If all that was not enough, you are toying with his desire for children, kicking the can down the road like a minor work issue you would prefer to deal with at a later date. For another, you do tend to get your way. Sure, you have been on the outside looking in as Roman led the GoJo acquisition, but you pounced as soon as he sent that wayward dick pic, telling your dad Roman has a problem and submarining Gerri for good measure. You suddenly look like the safe option as Logan considers his next move.
4. Caroline Collingwood and Peter Munion (last week: NR): The marriage of a woman who told her only daughter she would make a lousy mother and a man who specializes in making a profit off old age homes by firing nurses is truly a match made in heaven. Caroline fears a dotage living off macaroni and memorial services (never mind the eight figure freshener Logan gave her last season) and Peter needs a steady stream of revenue for the ex-wives, child support, and shell companies he juggles while trying to avoid a fourth bankruptcy. It turns out there is a lid for every pot.
5. Roman Roy (last week: 2): We are reluctant to drop you too far down the Power Rankings if only because it is Gerri, not you, who will suffer the worst consequences of your texting faux pas. The hired help can always be fired, but you are family. You may be right to fume and try to shrug it all off as harmless shenanigans. I mean, is Logan a hypocrite by labeling your desire for an older woman “disgusting” but his dalliance with a much younger woman totally acceptable? Of course. Should Gerri fear for her job when Logan told you he does not want her hanging around like frozen piss? Also yes. For now, you are just going to have to take your lumps, hope your dad does not second guess every piece of advice you have given him this season and try to get the GoJo merger over the finish line.
6. Connor Roy and Willa Ferreyra (last week: 5 and 9): When this whole thing was just your routine ~ mutually beneficial arrangement ~ where Connor got some appealing eye candy (and what was surely unenthusiastic (and sporadic) sex) and Willa got a deep pocket to fund her dream of becoming a playwright, you could pretend you were not using each other for your own selfish purposes. But when you decide to make a run for President of these United States, a much different reality sets in. The Power Rankings believe that what happens between two or more consenting adults behind closed doors is no one else’s business, but the click bait merchants at Politico are not as libertine and want to do some basic vetting on a potential future First Lady. Putting a ring on it will not legitimize Willa’s murky past and she is smart enough to know that when it comes to your sugar hustle, discretion is always the better part of valor.
7. Cousin Greg(ory) (last week: 7): They say a man is only as loyal as his options, but that $40,000 time piece on your wrist is not a substitute for the game needed to flirt with another woman while your girlfriend lingers nearby. We are not unimpressed with your shamelessness Greg, but if you are going to reconsider your dating options every time “phone stuff” pops up for a woman under the age of 35 in today’s world, you are going to be a lonely man.
8. Gerri Kellman (last week: NR): Way back in Season Two, we noted our concern over the risk you were taking in helping Roman work through his kinks. And yes, we know you found yourself a solid (if stolid) age appropriate ~ companion ~ in Laurie and told Roman time and again that he needed to get his nut elsewhere. But you have worked for the Roys for long enough to know that they do not follow the rules and now you see exactly how messy things can get. The color draining from your face as Shiv gave you that little lecture on the sidelines of the banker meeting was an obvious tell it might be time to update the old résumé. For someone with a unique ability to avoid stepping on land mines, you walked right into this one.
9. Kendall Roy (last week: 10): You arrived in Tuscany with a fresh new buzz cut, a swagger in your step, and a plan to take your dad up on his offer to CASH OUT AND FUCK OFF with two billion (and a chunky asset) for your troubles. But like most situations in your life, your confidence was eggshell-thin and chipped away at from the moment you arrived. First, it was your mom telling you politely to make yourself scarce so as not to be in the presence of your father. Then, your PR flack mentioned some two-bit podcasting Woodward and Bernstein who are sniffing around the family’s dirty laundry and might discover how Andrew Dodds really died. Next, your younger brother physically blocked you from approaching Logan and acted as a half-assed intermediary for your one-on-one dinner. Finally, your small gesture of contacting Logan’s doctor to make sure your chef prepared a meal keeping with his dietary restrictions was met with suspicion, with Logan using your own son as a food taster to make sure you did not try to poison him. So it is no wonder that after all those body blows a cri de coeur spilled out of you about the world being corrupt and your dad being evil and monetizing black bile for silver dollars. While you belatedly realized you were no knight in shining armor, when you tried to get up on your high horse and claim you are better than your dad, he knocked you on your ass with a quick reminder of the blood you have on your hands. And now, it looks like you have reached the end of the road, resigned to a similar fate as that poor waiter, fished out of the bottom of a pool instead of a creek, another in a long list of rich scions who met untimely ends.
10. Tom Wamgsgans (last week: 8): Just when things were getting back to normal, when you could tease Greg about being a thirsty man criticizing the mineral water and delete all those prison blog bookmarks, a bit of dirty talk in Sex Vegas has you shook because it confirmed a thing you have long suspected – YOUR WIFE DOES NOT LOVE YOU, TOM. The stuff you want out of a marriage – mutual support, love, kindness, a family – are just simply not on offer, so the choice is yours: stick around and revel in the lifestyle afforded to you by dint of being married to a Roy child but suffer constant emotional abuse or pull the plug and go back to farm country.
Not Ranked: Marcia Roy. Iverson Roy. Sophie Roy. Shakespeare Frank. Hugo Baker. Karolina. Karl Muller. Maxim Pierce. Comfry Pellits.
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What It Takes
Retired Janitors of Idaho
Lion In The Meadow
The Disruption
Mass In Time Of War
Secession
Complete Season Two Power Rankings
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