This week on Succession … Ken sings a song, Shiv cuts a rug, and Tom does some drugs. And now, the Power Rankings:
1. Logan Roy (last week: 1): Your return to the helm of the Good Ship Fuck Off is, for all intents and purposes, complete. There are just two loose ends to tie up: a not insubstantial check to the U.S. Treasury to make the cruise line scandal go away once and for all and a much larger one for your now-shunned number one son to do the same thing.
2. Roman Roy (last week: 2): You are, as the kids say, smelling yourself. The buzz from your bravura performance at the Future Freedom Summit had not worn off before your dad looped you into a side deal to buy out Kendall and get him to fuck off from the family business. So it is not surprising that you thought your Bootleg Logan shtick would work when you leveraged your way into some one-on-one time with Lukas Matsson and assured him that an acquisition by Waystar would still give him free reign to work wherever he wanted while dealing with you and not the old man. But you may have misread the situation. When someone asks when you expect your father to die and then literally pisses on your company’s phone app, you might be confusing flirtation with disdain.
3. Lukas Matsson (last week: NR): It is nice to be wanted. You get access to the VIP section at exclusive parties. Your every whim, be it privacy, pussy, or pasta is taken care of. You can demand your suitor’s competing app be burned and their servers dunked in an acid bath. And at the end of the night, once you have relieved yourself on Roman’s phone, you can keep your options open, simply agreeing to a meeting without any guarantee you would sell GoJo to Logan.
4. Comfry Pellits: (last week: NR): You long ago realized Ken was not going to be an ally for female empowerment, yet you kept cashing that check even as you had a ringside seat to his self-immolation. But the final straw for you was not his ill-advised decision to appear on The Disruption, branding his birthday party by name checking the post-World War I German government that preceded the Nazi takeover, or even his plan to hoist himself up on a cross to do an ironic karaoke version of Billy Joel’s Honesty, no, your breaking point was a much more pedestrian concern familiar to any New Yorker – square footage. You are going to spend the next month on eBay selling off that floor-to-ceiling collection of 1980s lunchboxes that are sucking up all your living space so there is room for you and your (freakishly tall) boyfriend to bang.
5. Connor Roy (last week: 6): You lost that Norwegian wool coat at a fusion restaurant in Vancouver so IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR COAT ON, YOU ARE GOING TO KEEP YOUR GODDAMN COAT ON, GOT IT? But please Connor, you are at one percent in the polls. Maybe pump the brakes on the exuberant celebrations until you have won something, no?
6. Shiv Roy (last week: 5): Working in politics offered you the best of both worlds. You could benefit from the wealth generated by your father’s company without compromising your liberal ideals. But when forced to choose between an uncertain path to the White House with Gil Eavis and the possibility of running the family business, you chose door number two, threw in your lot with a gang that will send goons to stalk your niece, nephew, and their nanny, and have been erasing and redrawing the line of what you are willing to do ever since. You explained away the cruise line scandal as some bad acts by some bad apples long ago. You leaned on a victim whose confidence was wobbly so she would not testify publicly and torpedo Waystar for good. You torched Ken in an open letter, airing his dirty laundry in public for all to see. You even stood in a photo with a guy you dismissed as a wannabe fascist who would lead the country into a Russian Berlusconied Brazilian Fuck Pile because your dad told you to. And for all that (not to mention cutting that last minute deal with Sandy, Sandi, and Stewy to save the company) the thanks you get is the man club getting together and telling you to grab your knitting needles and have a seat in the corner. With Tom in the clear, you can’t even get some strange on the side. Tough week, Siobhan.
7. Cousin Greg(ory): (last week: 7): Perhaps Ewan was wrong. Maybe your life is a bagatelle because no matter how badly you fuck up, nothing seems to stick. Beneath the clumsy exterior and the awkward delivery, you are a human tapeworm who has fed on the Roy family (quite successfully!) while avoiding any accountability for your actions and yet, you are not going to prison and even though Ken tried to erect a church/state separation between his employee and your love life, you bagged yourself a drinks date with his do-it-all press flack.
8. Tom Wamgsgans (last week: 10): Had your week ended with that meme-worthy release of pure joy at finding out you would not be the trout Logan had to clonk on the head and send up the river, you might have found yourself a bit higher in this week’s rankings. But you committed a classic party foul and messed up the sequence of your illegal drug consumption, turning your happiness into surliness and ruining what should have been a good time. Stick to that chilled glass of white wine after work and steer clear of the nose candy, ok Tom?
9. Willa Ferreyra (last week: NR): Dressing down Comfry when she got a bit too pushy and telling her to put some respect on your man’s name because he is running for President of the United States goes beyond standard sugar baby duties, but we liked it nonetheless.
10. Kendall Roy (last week: 8): The Power Rankings did not grow up around money so perhaps our reaction to being handed a birthday card that effectively had a $2 billion check inside it would have been slightly different. But we get it. All that money cannot fill the Logan-sized hole in your heart because money has brought you no happiness. All you have ever wanted is your father’s approval and his curt message – CASH OUT AND FUCK OFF – along with a sterile one-page term sheet sends you out on an iceberg, forever removed from the family business. So your anger is understandable as you wade through a mountain of birthday presents you do not care about, slag your girlfriend for her lousy birthday present, and pull the plug on your ridiculous performance. When you first met Naomi at Tern Haven, it was you pitching her on the idea that taking the money Waystar offered would allow her to be free of the family business and start anew. Now, offered the same opportunity, you see betrayal, not liberation. Her assessment of you that first night appears more and more trenchant – a little nothing. You are just a broken boy curled up in his A-Team sleeping bag, hoping someone will make everything better.
Not Ranked: Marcia. Rava. Gerri Kellman. Hugo Baker. Karolina. Shakespeare Frank. Kerry. The Tiny Wu-Tang Clan. Shitty Jesus. Reece. Barry Schneider. The StarGo App. He-Man Lunch Boxes.
Complete Season Two Power Rankings
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