Every week here on Balls.ie, football scribe John Brewin provides player ratings for the latest episode of the third series of Succession. As ever, please note this article does contain spoilers
Of course, Logan wins. And his hapless children are never going to succeed him. Or succeed in life. “Make your own pile,” as he says. Who said they were going to take over in any case? OK, Logan has hinted a few times but trusting him with anything but the ability to crush any threat to his power is a foolish mistake.
Trying to double-cross someone of such low cunning is beyond spoiled brats growing up amid luxury. They have also fallen prey to Philip Larkin’s adage, that “they fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.”
Logan probably does want to fuck up his children and Lady Caroline, the mother of Kendall, Shiv and Roman is happy to do so if it suits her. An episode perhaps not so loosely based on Rupert Murdoch flogging much of his Fox and Sky empire and what then happened to his kids throws that cat among the pigeons. Season four will begin with Logan having made enemies of his offspring by allying with tech bro Lukas Mattson. More soon, please.
Tom Wambsgans 10/10
“Get in there quick. If Roman marries her he’ll invade France.”
Tom also wins. His reward and revenge for all those dark hours dreaming of a prison toilet is to ensure the Roy children don’t get to serve him up again, particularly Shiv. Her mistake was to forget that Tom’s main reason for being her put-upon husband was his own personal ambition. The knifing is delivered deliciously, and he even remembers to take Cousin Greg with him. In the dark world of Succession, Tom counts as a good guy, and this good guy wins. “Where do I fit in?” he asks Shiv, before deciding that for himself,
Tom pulled a Red Wedding tonight and it's like poetry it's rhymes.#SuccessionHBO #Succession pic.twitter.com/AnwQoDX677
— Matt (@mattbo_0) December 13, 2021
Logan Roy: 9/10
“Hans Christian Anderfuck”
“You want to tell this slab of gravlax to go fuck himself,” says Lukas but Logan knows he is on to a good thing. “It has to be now because I feel it in my bones,” he later says. There is a point at Lukas’s Swiss retreat when Logan looks uncertain. It doesn’t last and the uncertainty and ill health of previous episodes disappears. Perhaps it’s the maca root he is consuming to put lead in his pencil. “I have you beat, you morons,” he tells his children. “You come in here with guns in your hand and now they’ve turned to fucking sausages.” Classic Logan though his prime rant comes in a state-of-the-nation address to Lukas. “When I arrived, there were these gentle giants smelling of gold and milk. They could do anything. Now look at them. Fat as fuck. Scrawny or on meth, or yoga. They pissed it all away.”
Logan Roy: legend, bulletproof, tank man. #successionhbo pic.twitter.com/GRRWEuQLXT
— HBO Max (@hbomax) December 13, 2021
Cousin Greg: 8/10
“What am I going to do with a soul anyway?”
Having secured the arm of Comfry, though in separate beds, the family’s new answer to Don Juan is moving through the romantic gears and setting his sights on the Contessa. He plays them off each other, too. “Greg, if you marry her you’re a plane crash away from being Europe’s weirdest king,” laughs Tom, before later dealing in his young coven. Greg even shows a hint of maturity in accepting the offer to move to “the bottom of the top”. As with Tom, those Roy kids mocked him at their peril.
Connor Roy: 6/10
“I’m the eldest son and I must be considered.”
GoJo’s merger with Waystar/Royco may well have done for his presidential ambitions: “Mattson wants to de-platform guys like me". But Connor, with reluctant fiancee Willa finally saying yes, and by showing the ability to empathise with and show love for Kendall, is the most centred of the siblings. He’s certainly the happiest. By the close of the episode they are as irrelevant as him. “You need to stop trying to kill Pop,” he tells Kendall. Sage advice. They should probably listen to him more often.
Kendall Roy: 5/10
“One too many limoncellos, no biggie.”
At least he didn’t drown in the pool. The broken man instead gets broken into smaller pieces, following his brothers and sister staging a semi-intervention. But just as another opportunity for patricide arrives he revives before it goes the way of the rest. His reconciliation with his siblings comes at the cost of admitting he was responsible for the Chappaquiddick-style death of that British waiter at Shiv’s wedding. “I’ve basically been planning it since I was four,” he says as they attempt to storm Logan’s citadel, only to find he has cashed out, and left Kendall for dead once more.
Roman Roy: 5/10
“I’m not a fuckometer.”
There was no coming back from the dick pics. Even Cousin Greg is calling him a “sexual pervert”. And Dad continues to be unimpressed by that farrago, “Is it all screens and up the ass with you or what?” And Logan is even less taken by Roman boasting about his affair with the secretary. The youngest son drops back into the pack of expectant but desperate children, a reluctant but active member of the rebellion against Logan. There is a moment when he shows some sympathy for Kendall’s guilt but he finds himself similarly crushed by his dad’s last and final “fuck off”. Shiv hasn’t been getting much right but she has Roman nailed when she says, “you’re just his little rat fucker”.
NOT KENDALL HOLDING ROMAN'S HAND WHILE ROMAN CRIES I'M GONNA LOSE IT #Succession pic.twitter.com/Er7sXxtJrj
— ani 🫧 (@beaarthur85) December 13, 2021
Shiv Roy: 4/10
“I hope that your marriage is as happy and rich and rewarding and fulfilling as mine.”
“Time to rip off the Band-Aid,” Shiv says when organising the “full coup” with Kendall and Roman. That comes apart as the mother she cussed in Tuscany takes the money and run. Shiv may mock Roman’s dysfunction and has been brutal to Kendall but her pathological nature is the product of both parents lack of genuine love. Tom’s late arrival and the realisation of betrayal brings on the tears of doomed truth.
SEE ALSO: Succession Player Ratings: Roman's Epic, Epic Fail
