This week on Succession … Logan makes a pick, Kenny takes a trip, and Greg makes new friends. And now, the Power Rankings:
1. Logan Roy (last week: 4): You do not spend fifty years on top of the heap without having a few tricks up your sleeve. The cruise line scandal torpedoed your acquisition of PGM and posed an existential threat not just to your control of the company, but your liberty as well. While your go to maneuver is bluster and a gruff “fuck off,” you are also not unfamiliar with the tactical retreat. And here, you played things brilliantly. You slowly but surely drew the family back into your orbit. You drowned the DOJ in a billion pages of document production knowing it will take them years to find anything. You pivoted your coverage of the President hoping he would call off the DOJ’s investigation. When the Raisin folded his tent, you got to take a lead role in picking his replacement. Now, your biggest concern is not another FBI raid, it is whether your ticker will hold up the next time you and Kerry go for a romp in the hay.
2. Roman Roy (last week: 3): Last season, Naomi Pierce dismissed you as an out-of-your-depth neophyte who thought he could buy her family’s company like he was ordering dinner from Uber Eats. Your dad sent you packing to management training, where you slung kettle corn and had to pitch ideas like you were some normie trying to work his way up to middle management, but all that work is starting to pay dividends. You have polished your deal making skills under duress in Turkey, tip toed around the delicate work of crisis management as the cruise line scandal exploded, and were in the mix when the shareholder vote hung in the balance. You were paying close attention when your dad said he did not care about ideological purity in picking a presidential nominee, he simply wanted someone who gets it and pops on TV. And so, when Jeryd pinged your sadism g-spot with some flirty chat about summer camps with beatings, displayed a heterodoxy that is capacious enough to include Saint Thomas Aquinas and Travis Bickle, you saw his telegenic good looks and willingness to fight as the right fit for a new version of ATN heavy on e-girls taking drags off vape pens in between promoting conspiracy theories. Of course, you may think there is no price to pay when you expand the Overton Window to include neo-fascists with a Hitler fetish, but once you let that genie out of the bottle, it will be awfully hard to put it back in.
3. Jeryd Mencken (last week: NR): You came into the Freedom Forum Summit as a dark horse and walked out with the endorsement of a man you described as no longer relevant and his news channel as a pudding cup for nursing home residents largely because you seduced Logan’s youngest son into believing you can sell your racism and xenophobia as populist solutions for white people. What you might lack in traditional Republican policy positions you make up for in understanding the internal dynamics of the Roy family. Bring dad a Coke. Flirt with one of the kids. Show your fangs, but let them know you will play ball and voilà, the road to the White House is paved with sriracha, bone broth, and dick pills.
4. Kerry Castellabate (last week: NR): The Power Rankings are not the morality police, so if you want to sleep with your boss, we say god bless. Just know that the heady air of corporate jets, horning in on meetings with high ranking government officials, and chiming in on important decisions has an expiration date and when it arrives, you are done.
5. Shiv Roy: (last week: 2): You were in politics long enough to do a quick analysis of the men who would be king. Mencken? A YouTube provocateur. Boyer? Yesterday’s news who will get blown out on a change message. Connor? Yeah, no. So you tried to push Salgado as the best of a lousy bunch even though you actually think the political winds are blowing in the Democrats’ direction and ATN should pivot accordingly. But your instinct for compromise is out of step with your dad’s bull-in-the-china-shop way of doing business. You look for middle ground, he doubles down. Your consultant’s gig was dismissed as running a DC lemonade stand and your dad does not do gold stars, even if you did save the company. If you were not so deep in your own feels, you might even notice your husband is withering on the vine and an alternative play is one phone call to the self-styled puppet master away.
6. Connor Roy: (last week: 5): Your hype man referred to you as a fighter with a brand name, a war chest, and populist appeal. Your siblings know you as the family dipshit who pisses away money on curios like Napoleon’s shriveled penis and pipe dreams like your fake girlfriend’s off-Broadway play. And yet, you were in a Final Four of sorts pitching yourself as a legitimate contender for leader of the free world. That European cable gig is a nice consolation prize and who knows, Willa might actually learn how to write while you are there.
7. Cousin Greg(ory): (last week: 9): Your physical length allows you to reach, but suing Greenpeace for liking an internet comment about you is a bit much. We get it, obsessing over whether Ken is going to burn you has an icy grip on your innards and the idea of another man wiping his backside on your pillow case is not something any of us would want to think about. Here’s the thing, Greg. Your gramps told you to start taking yourself seriously, but all you keep doing is looking for ways to avoid responsibility.
8. Kendall Roy (last week: 10): If you put the same amount of effort into figuring out how to wrest control of the company from your dad as are you in planning your 40th birthday party, you might not be holding clandestine meetings at a greasy diner in the middle of the night and then acting like a jilted lover when a guy looking at prison time rebuffs your request that he switch sides. While your dad is playing kingmaker, holding court in his hotel suite for potential nominees for President of the United States, you are trying to get the family bottom feeders to flip via text message and looking quizzically at Tom’s fluency with the DD’s menu. That press conference looks more and more like a fleeting moment in the sun before your inevitable crash and burn. You are flailing around focusing on all the wrong things. There is no grand plan, just a guy who misses the irony in the historical references he cites, is more concerned about the guest list at his birthday bash then how it looks when he fires top notch legal talent, and has spent this entire season becoming less and less relevant.
9. Lisa Arthur (last week: NR): You thought Ken wanted a lawyer who would give him wise counsel and help navigate the treacherous waters of negotiating an immunity deal, but he really wanted a DJ who takes requests. Your withering after action analysis of his interview with the DOJ revealed your legal acumen, but sharing it openly to someone with Ken’s level of insecurity suggests you do not read people nearly as well.
10. Tom Wamgsgans (last week: 7): We admire the attention to detail, Tom. You have done a deep dive into the prison blogs, learned the finer points of fermenting toilet wine, and you even retained your very own prison consultant. You are now taking things to a whole other level, getting invaluable tips like the barter value of mackerel tins and prepping your gastrointestinal system for the never ending diet of salty gym mats and camel’s labia that will clog your colon and make you pine for the biodynamic funk and earthy notes of that spätburgunder you and Shiv sampled in your hotel room. You have lost all hope, are letting baubles of corporate malfeasance dangle from your branches, and we are pretty sure Shiv will be looking for some stray cock while you are gone. Are you sure you do not want to wriggle?
Not Ranked: Marcia Roy. Willa. Ewan Roy. Gerri Kellman. Hugo Baker. Jess Jordan. Ron Petkus. Dave Boyer. Panhandle Pete. Maxim Pierce. The Freedom Forum Summit. Glyn, The Brexit Pervert. Caroline Collingwood. Peter Munion. Martin Van Boring. Zadie Smith. Chuck D. The Fuck Fuck Donkey Gang. Antibiotic Resistant Super Bugs. Plato. Hamilton, The Musical. Señor Dickless, Captain of the Tampa Bay Cuckaneers. Dr. Honk, The Man Who Could Talk To Cars. The Griddle Hero with Double Hash Browns (fully loaded) A Plain Waffle and A Large Glass of Room-Temperature Water.
Complete Season Two Power Rankings
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