Kendall wants to ratchet up his campaign against the family, but he’s persuaded by Frank to participate in a meeting with Josh, an investor who’s trying to decide whether to stick with the Roys or throw in with Sandy and Stewy in their takeover bid.
This season, each week, we are ranking members of the main cast of Succession based on how fast they are speeding toward moral ruin.
Which really isn’t where many of us thought they were heading at the end of last season! Now on the one hand, you could say Logan is worse because he made Kendall this way, but on the other hand, you could say Kendall is worse because he’s more self-aware; he seems to be a person who sort of has feelings and a conscience and ignores them, while Logan has neither.
When Kendall sits there listening to his father tell Josh that he loves his son, that his son is “a good kid,” and that Kendall might be the best of all Logan’s kids and the one who will one day be in charge, he knows it’s all lies.
That fact, though, doesn’t stop him from ridiculing and mocking his own father for his cognitive and physical decline, or telling Logan everyone hates him, or making fun of him for being old, or making fun of Shiv.
Kendall always seems to be the same person and it seems to be the same relationship, even as it reshapes itself over and over in response to circumstances.
His dismissal of this man’s humanity, his desire to use him as a public relations weapon against Kendall despite the man’s efforts to move on — it all speaks to the fact that Roman is a much more vicious, heartless person than he sometimes seems to be when he’s engaging in funny flirtation with Gerri or being the Roy sibling with the best zingers.
I’ve often said that it’s when the Roys collide with regular people that their cruelty and villainy really comes into focus.
It seems at times like Logan is a bit kinder to Shiv than he is to the boys, but really, it’s only that he knows exactly how to adjust his viciousness to fit the cooler temperature of her personality and the slight remove at which she’s always tried to hold the family business.
But when he reports back that Ravenhead isn’t really interested in being pushed around, Shiv finds the anchor herself and makes the pitch very explicit: We own the network, my father hates the president, you will say what we tell you to say, regardless of any claims of editorial independence you may be allowed to make in public.
She only seems to care what Tom can do for her and her family, what he owes to her and her father, and how well he executes the little tasks she gives him.
As always, Tom gets a little bit of pleasure from trying to torture Greg while pretending to also be his best pal, but even this turns out to be in vain, since Greg has started to assert himself more and doesn’t need Tom’s advice.
Having gotten the distinct impression that Kendall’s “loyalty” to him is going to last exactly as long as it’s convenient for Kendall, Greg figures he might as well scurry back to Logan, who can at least give him something.
A final note on Greg: I’m not sure the Greg who is gently ordering rum and Coke and choking on how strong it is can be fully reconciled with the Greg we met in the first-ever Succession episode when he was barfing out of the eyeballs of his costume at the park because he was so high.
Connor knows that’s just going to make him seem more unserious to the people he’s worried about, and he doesn’t take long to make his intentions clear: Shiv can give him what he wants, which is a good executive position, or she can risk that he will go public with everything he knows about Logan.
It’s also not clear what Connor thinks will happen if Shiv passes this along to their dad, with whom Connor maintains an almost entirely conflict-free relationship.
The Roys are days away from the shareholders’ meeting, and that’s the biggest question dangling over next week’s episode.
But as Stewy has pointed out in the past, the only thing the shareholders are going to decide is whether they can make a little bit more money on their investment by having Sandy and Stewy’s crew in charge instead of Logan’s.
There’s also an effort underway to settle with Sandy and Stewy — that is, to come to an agreement where the Roys would share power with them in some way, in return for the family maintaining ultimate control of the company.