A Butcher with a Smile
A Butcher with a Smile
Who's the Worst Character on 'Succession?'
A friend posted on whatever social media platform you prefer a Vanity Fair crumb of clickbait asking, “Who is the worst person in Succession?”
To the friend’s vexation, the comments by-and-large answered, Shiv, the only female scion of the Roy family and the only female, more or less (with possible sleeper candidate Gerri) aligned to take the reins of the family-run media conglomerate, Waystar Royco, from its late founder, Logan Roy. Her vexation originated in the femaleness of it all, that the worst person (in any story) is usually a woman, and this woman, i.e. Shiv, hasn’t moved a fascist into power or committed manslaughter (in a roundabout way) like her brothers, Roman and Kendall, respectively.
While the VF article’s opening question might not be valid (and more on that at the end), it might, in fact, warrant pondering as our world moves further, infraction by infraction, from the mid-twentieth century black and white of good and evil into the vast Moral Gray. So here, just for fun and in no particular order, a look at the Morality Grades (subjectively, of course; the only way morals can be graded) of the characters of Succession:
Kendall Roy. From the pilot, Kendall has been a lamb in wolves’ clothing. Logan tested him in that first episode, leaving it to Kendall to attend the elder Roy’s birthday or stay at the office. Kendall chose the former, disappointing his dad, a disappointment that seemed constant, perhaps interrupted only by the Season 2 press conference at which Kendall betrayed Logan and evident only in the slightest arch of a smile on Logan’s lips. Other than that, Ken has seen people as people too often for Logan to think him worthy of leading the company, pretty much kicking off these four-season “succession” tribulations. Kendall is, in Logan’s words “not a killer.” And “you’ve got to be a killer” to win. Not being a killer: good for morality, bad for business. (There’s certainly more to be said of a man who wants to eschew morals, who doesn’t seek the higher ground, but that question, for Kendall, is too chaotically tangled in familial, Jungian complexes to earn the time it deserves at the moment.) Perhaps, now, only at the end, only in the final two episodes can Kendall finally kill, metaphorically but purposely, his rivals to take the company. We see flashes of Logan in Ken as he chastises Roman, as he stares down Logan’s mausoleum, but heretofore the second eldest Roy Boy has walked a passing moral line, albeit it to his dismay. Morality Grade: B-
Roman Roy. Personally, I’ve always wanted Roman to kill his siblings and to take the company, if for no other reason than the overt nod to the Romulus & Remus story, in which the brothers were (gulp) raised by wolves, went into business together, disagreed on a business, all resulting in Romulus killing Remus and founding Rome. However, after the penultimate episode of Succession, a similar conclusion to this story may be a stretch. Roman Roy might be less of a killer than his brother, Kendall. His soft spot for Logan is even more tender than Ken’s; we saw this at the funeral, but even in Season 3 when Rome took Logan aside to ask how he was dealing emotionally with the Marcia situation, only to be told, in as many words or not, to “fuck off.” Roman’s gift is to read people. It’s what makes him great at business; it’s what makes him terrible at business. While he can ascertain that the foreign buyers are bullshitting at the end of Season 2 by their behavior, while he can tell Karl’s or Frank’s position with a simple grunt, Rome simply feels too much. He’s unable to dissociate from his empathy as much as he tries, as much as it troubles him. Yes, he helps a fascist toward the White House, but only (and this will sound shitty) because 1) he truly believes, as he said in episode 8 of this season that “nothing matters,” and 2) because he thinks it's kinda fucking funny. Misguided, sure. Amoral, not exactly. Morality Grade: B
Siobhan Roy. Like it or not, we must immediately address that Shiv is the only woman in the family with a possibility of taking the knife from Logan’s cold, dead hand. We must do this because her sex, her gender, informed who she was and how she was treated by her father, which circled back to inform who she is. In Season 2, Shiv and the would be-, could be-, wasn’t-CEO, Rhea Jarrell were asked by Logan to talk to a sexual assault accuser because they were women. Rhea demurred, last minute, but Shiv talked to the accused, using “we are women” to dissuade the accuser from testifying. It’s the weaponization of her femininity (although not in an over-sexualized Camille Paglia fashion) that has tricked many of the commenters on the VF article to choose Shiv as the worst person on Succession. But all Shiv’s Bad tendencies are mere improv. Like Roman, Shiv’s nickname has a double meaning, also, quite famously, as an impromptu knife, often in prison, formed for protection out of whatever the fuck you can get your hands on. Shiv is a master of using what lies before her to cut anyone: Her brothers. Mattson. Her political opponents. And especially Tom. Meanwhile, her politics – while we won’t broach the moral standing of the two prominent Political Parties in the U.S. – show she cares about people, that she knows things matter, that she doesn’t want to hurt unless she has to. Morality Grade: B
Tom Wambsgans. Tightrope Tommy. A name assigned Tom in passing the episode after Logan’s passing, and quite possibly the perfect nomenclature for the man from Minnesota. There’s not a moment in the series that Tom isn’t walking the line of loyalty, between characters, as well as between legalities from the moment he learns, much to the dismay of his G.I. tract, of the iniquities that “came before him” in the cruise line division of Waystar Royco. Apart from monumental missteps (e.g. at congressional hearings), Tom has walked this line with luck, if not aplomb. There’s a reason he’s where he is. He trips often, but he’s never fallen on his face, a feat that may have been easier when Logan was alive (as Tom memorably said to Ken, “I’ve seen you lose a lot. I’ve never seen Logan lose, once,” I paraphrase) but a feat that Tom seems to continue to execute as he wraps his corn-fed midwestern palms more firmly around the helm of ATN. Tom’s biggest misgiving is his desire. But enlightened Buddhists few of us are, so hard to fault Tom for wanting, for liking nice things, for being, at his core, a status-seeker, one who learns “old money,” who graduates from boxy three-button cuts to tailored Tom Ford two-buttons as the series progresses. Tom’s morality is belied primarily in his love of Shiv. Because he truly does love her. Almost as much as he loves nice things. Morality Grade: B+
Logan Roy. Sure. Let’s tackle the big guy. Logan was, as his brother more clearly explained at his funeral, a man of his upbringing. He was hardened by World War II as much as he was hardened by the parents who abandoned him, the aunt and uncle who actively did not love him, the world that likely never gave him a break, that made him break it instead. And once he started breaking, breaking became habit, winning became habit. More than that even: winning simply became who he was. He was never a father. He was never a brother. He was incapable of that kind of love, of kissing a boo-boo, of ever seeing people as people. That emotional ability was taken from him at an early age. For that, it’s impossible to fault the man for the boy. However, as gifted as he was, he knew the difference between good and evil. He knew in the moment if something was decent or demoralizing (q.v. “boar on the floor.”) But he also believed, in a Nietzschean sense that all was beyond good and evil as time arced into the infinite. There was a moment in Season 1 in which Stewy tells Logan people hate him. Logan replies, “It’s sunny. It’s cloudy.” While this may seem a severe ethical philosophy, it’s also an ethical philosophy as far as logic might dictate a stoic’s ethics. Logan was not devoid of ethics, nor of morals. He’d been formed by a truculence unique to his time. His greatest moral shortcoming is that he never tried to change. Never tried to “break the cycle.” He never tried to love, to be vulnerable, to be better than the world that made him. For that, he’s not culpable, but neither does he get any bonus points. Morality Grade: C
Connor Roy. Grading Conor’s morality is a bit like grading the clown in a play: you can try, but he’ll keep squirting you with water from his carnation broach. What can we say about his antics? Napoleonic genitalia. Campaigns on a whim. Libertarian fuckery. His center is about as realistic as an Ayn Rand novel. That’s not to say his ethos is not ostensibly shared by a great many Americans who self-lie their ways into the same fantasy. But it is to say that a Conor Roy Presidency (were he not to, as many have once taking office, realize the immense no-fucking-joke of it all and conveniently forget some of his preconceived fantasy) would dissolve America like cotton candy in a bonfire. Connor’s biggest moral issue is his laissez-faire “fuck-you-I’m-still-a-billionaire-so-what-why aren’t-you-too” attitude. The fact that he sought to force this upon the masses is forgivable, but only in as much as it’s a bedtime story the parent believes as much as the child. He has, as he has been the first to tell us, lost all ability to feel. He’s trained himself to do so. It was a survival tactic, certainly, but it’s also created a man who cannot tell what is moral and what is not. Morality Grade: D
Greg Hirsch. Cousin Greg. Greg the Egg. Whatever name you want to call him – this dude sucks. Sure, he sucks because he’s clueless. But he also sucks because he’s not dumb. In fact he’s one of the smarter and bolder members of the family. God knows why he’s a mascot in the pilot (perhaps a throwaway plot point simply to show he was quote-“trying” to work his way up for a moment), but we quickly learn that he will stab and stab to kill when, also in the pilot, Greg offers Logan his grandfather’s board seat upon the old man’s demise. Logan immediately recognizes the offer as the shrewd Draconian business move it is; Greg might be diffident, bumbling, clumsy (both verbally and physically), but he’s also a butcher – or as Mattson’s #2 calls him in the “Tailgate” episode of Season 4, “a butcher with a smile.” Greg revels in being a “Disgusting Brother” sexually. He sued Green Peace (okay, that was funny). He once said to Tom without an ounce of irony, “What am I gonna do with a soul?” And the single person Greg has ever protected (q.v. saving cruise line documents) is Greg. This is a dude who would roll over on any other, any other, character without taking a breath to ask which way he should roll. Were Hitler to pop back to life and ask who wanted to join the party, Greg would quip, “I dunno, are we gonna get those uh little you know pointy hats, or are we just gonna get to do some more genocide? Cause I’m cool either way, just, you know, I kinda like pointy hats, is the thing.” Morality Grade: F
As for the actual validity of the question, “Who is the worst person in Succession?” it holds about as much water as a healthy spill of Pennzoil 5w30. These characters all live in a post-moral world. Without getting too much into it, they don’t operate on the, as Nietzsche would call it, the “Christian morality” that so many of us have come to expect and that the question supposes. There’s a reason they get to be horrible to one another then ask what time dinner’s at; their values lie not in decency and good will, but in the acumen of not bringing a “ridiculously capacious bag” to a party. Asking who’s the worst character on Succession is like asking which player on the Lakers has the best golf swing.
All that said, Greg’s the worst.