Who Won Succession This Week? Season 3, Episode 5

This week’s episode of Succession had everything: Belligerent zucchinis, Cousin Greg threatening to sue Greenpeace, a UTI, and even Tom Wambsgans admitting that his and Shiv’s periods are “synced.”

While the show ordinarily saves big blockbuster moments for their penultimate or final episodes, Succession gave viewers a master class in building tension this week and featured the entire cast at their best during an episode centered around the annual Waystar-Royco shareholders’ meeting.

Over the course of the hour, the A plot is the Roy family, plus Gerri and Karl, desperately trying to reach a deal with Stewy and Sandy in an effort to retain control over their company. While doing that, Logan spends time spiraling into delusion. Suffering from a UTI and avoiding taking his meds, he becomes — as Roman dubs him — the “demented piss-mad King of England.”

His mental absentia forces everyone into a scramble and even allows for Shiv to do some conniving to help stave off a vote from the shareholders. Ultimately, her negotiating (which included her snagging an extra board seat for, ideally, herself) helps the Roys maintain control of the company, but the cost is high: They lost their private jets (PJs). Oh, and Logan is furious with Shiv after he regains awareness and finds out what she’s “won.” Also unfortunate for Shiv: The costume designers put her in a truly heinous peach suit that did her complexion zero favors.

Meanwhile, the B and C plots this week included both Cousin Greg and Kendall reaping the consequences of their actions. Greg gets told he’s being fully cut off from any potential inheritance from his grandfather while Kendall has an explosive fight with his siblings that culminates in a performative speech professing his empathy for sexual abuse victims.

Perhaps the most illuminating moments were when Logan turned on two of his children in very pointed ways. First, Logan publicly and loudly snapped at Shiv for “buzzing” in his ear as she attempted to celebrate the avoidance of a vote. Then, he tells his assistant Kerry to block Kendall’s phone number from his cell “permanently.” It’s pretty clear who’s on Logan’s shit list now and who’s not. Looks like everything may be coming up roses for our short king, Roman.

Jezebel discusses our winners and losers of the week:

Jenna’s take: Roman all the way, baby!

Winner: Romulus! Our dear sweet Roman baby showed the fuck up this week when he took a call from the Raisin on behalf of his out-of-commission dad. He was composed, clear, and didn’t say “fuck” even once.

Loser: It’s a tie for me between Megathump, the rabbit who ate that bagel and then got sick, and Kendall. For starters, Megathump should’ve never been given that bagel bite. Keep your bagels away from your bunnies!! Anyway, as for Kendall: He’s been in free-fall since the end of last season and has deluded himself into thinking he has a parachute in the form of pushing his own father out of Waystar-Royco. The grim reality is that the super-dark past his dear old dad once helped him hide (uh, remember when he entirely killed a guy?) is most definitely going to come back to bite him in the ass after he threw his dad under the bus. Not to be super dramatic, but start the funeral arrangements, Naomi. Your boy is donezo.

Honorable mention: Tom as loser. Tracking Shiv’s ovulation cycle so he can knock her up before he goes to prison is psychotic and most definitely not “nice.” Also, please never refer to anyone’s penis as a “scepter.”

Ashley’s take: Shiv for the W.

Winner: I’m surprised to say this, but after taking L after L, the winner of this episode is likely Shiv. Was I convinced her game time deal making decision with Sandy’s daughter would backfire? Absolutely. I was waiting for Logan to find out about her taking things into her own hands and chuck her out that 30 story building. But it appears that Shiv has girlbossed her way into a win for Waystar (for now).

Loser: Yeah, Kendall might have embarrassed himself big time on that stage, but I feel like Kendall embarrassing himself is a facet of every single episode this season. Nah, the biggest loser this time was Greg, who might get thrown under the bus by Kendall for betraying him and who isn’t even getting a penny of his grandfather’s inheritance now that he’s been bullied back to team Waystar. Good luck suing Greenpeace, bro. None of this would have happened if he just took the millions that gramps offered him in season two. But no, he always goes crawling back to Logan and co. When will he learn?

Jennifer’s

Winner: It’s hard not to walk away from this episode without acknowledging the power of old, white men. Everyone continues to bend over backwards for Logan—newly fitted with his glass slipper and severely disoriented. He literally spent the entire episode looking for the bathroom. Meanwhile, Sandi’s dad is calling shots without even having to move his mouth. I guess this is what respecting your elders looks like for the elite.

Losers: I’m astonished Kendall was even available to take a call from his daughter’s babysitter, but it was a total jerk move to use the moment to undermine her authority over something as trivial as feeding a rabbit a bagel. Also, Logan pulling Kendall into a room to purposefully leave him hanging was bruising. I shed a tear for Kendall.

Falling Rapidly: Shiv’s suit was awful, a complete monstrosity. It reminds me of that horrible tan suit Obama wore in 2014. Of course, she saved the deal, but we all knew her father was going to hate it and will probably make her feel bad about it for the remainder of the season.

Megan’s take: When everyone is truly terrible, does anyone really

Winner: Per my meticulous notes and the proprietary methods I use to calculate this answer every week, it looks like Shiv came out on top, despite the fact that she spent this entire episode in a beige-peach-nude suit that did absolutely nothing for her. Regardless of that particularly demented sartorial choice, Shiv leaning in to tell Sandi, daughter of Sandy, that there’s one way to play this game that gets them both a seat at the table, while using their old, drooling papas as puppets, felt akin to empowerment, ladies!!!

Gerri can have a little win here, too, for stroking Roman’s ego and appealing to his deepest desire by calling him “Bootleg Roman” before encouraging him to hop on the horn with the president in his father’s stead.

Loser: Kendall is clearly too narcissistic and blinkered by his own desperate need for his father’s attention to be empathetic. He killed his daughter’s rabbit inadvertently by telling the babysitter to feed it bagel, and by storming the stage at the shareholders meeting to engage in a bit of ham-fisted and ultimately self-serving social justice was a good way to make him look like an asshole. His father will likely use the dying gasps of his energy and mental acuity to absolutely destroy his son, placing his head on a metaphorical spike as a warning to the rest of his brood. Kendall lost, but he always loses. Everyone in this family is horrible, so they are all losers, but I suppose that’s the fun.

Man, if you don’t quit this shit right now…: I have reached peak Greg fatigue, because it is clear by now that his character should’ve just stuck around for the first season only and then quietly disappeared somewhere in the middle of the second. The only reason this man must exist still is because he’s part of an overarching metaphor that will pay off in the end—the physical embodiment of mediocrity failing upwards.