Succession: Daddy’s Favorite of the Week — Season 4, Episode 2

This story contains spoilers for Succession Season 4, Episode 2 “Rehearsal”. Make sure to check out last week’s Daddy’s Favorite rankings to see who climbed the latter and who dropped a few rungs.

It’s the eve of the GoJo sale and, less importantly, the eve of Connor’s (Alan Ruck)’s wedding to Willa (Justine Lupe). While none of Connor’s family cares about this marriage, the rehearsal dinner creates the perfectly weird circumstances for a father (a Daddy really), to try and patch things up with his rebellious children. 

Earlier in the day, after sabotaging the kids’ helicopter back into the city, Logan/Daddy (Brian Cox) makes a surprise visit to ATN (American Television Network for the uninformed. Though, I don’t think they have ever said this network’s name out loud). Logan is taking stock of his remaining realm, rousing staffers with promises for ATN’s future, as well as discussing Kerry’s (Zoë Winters) possible future as an ATN anchor with Tom. (Spoiler: It doesn’t look like there’s one for her, but more on that in a bit!)

Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin), arrive late to Connor’s rehearsal dinner and the siblings meet with Sandi (Hope Davis) and Stewy (Arian Moayed). They want the siblings to join forces to stall the sale in the chance that they can get more money from GoJo.

But everything takes a turn when Logan shows up, trying to put matters to rest so they can all move forward. And, with that, let’s review the Daddy’s Favorite rankings for this week’s episode, “Rehearsal”.

Roman Roy

Roman makes great strides within this episode to break away from Kendall and Shiv to take the title of Daddy’s Favorite this week. Kendall and Shiv find out that Roman sent Daddy a “warm” birthday text – breaking a no-contact agreement they made to ice Daddy out until he apologized to them. While out at a karaoke bar, Connor alerts Logan to where all his kids are, but Daddy then calls Roman directly instead. At the end of the episode, when Roman checks in, Daddy tells Roman that he needs him to be a “fire-breather” on his side, and implicitly offers him Cyd’s (Jeannie Berlin) high-level position at ATN as he plans for the network’s rebirth. Let the games begin!

ATN

Daddy has always loved his news channel, and after the GoJo sale it’ll be all he has. So, even though Daddy nitpicks at cost margins, wasteful pizza orders, and slow email writing, he shares his confidence in ATN’s staying power. Logan easily turns on his brand of charisma with a Wolf of Wall Street-esque speech about being the only “spicy” and “true” news out there. Daddy wants to build something “faster, lighter, leaner, wilder” with ATN and I think that’s beautiful.
Can a news channel really be “Daddy’s favorite”? This is Succession, so it’s fair to say any possession can be.

Tom Wambsgans

Tom had the thankless job of not only having to watch Kerry’s ATN anchor audition, but also having to navigate breaking that news to Logan. However, Daddy understands and directs Tom (who then delegates that job to Greg) to let her down gently. We also learn the other ways Tom has benefitted at others’ expense: Daddy gave him divorce advice and chose to keep Tom over Cyd in this new ATN re-structuring.

Kerry Castellabate

We finally see part of Kerry’s endgame as Logan’s assistant: to be an ATN anchor. We only see clips of her, well, let’s just say unpolished audition played on laptops across various locations where various characters in different locations, resulting in many of Succession’s key players getting to have a laugh at Daddy’s assistant-with-benefits. Kerry embarrassing herself embarrasses and undermines Logan’s decision-making, which has kicked her down the list of Daddy’s Favorites from last week. 

Kendall & Shiv Roy

While Roman jumped straight to the top to become Daddy’s Favorite this week, Kendall and Shiv still manage to eke out ahead of poor, sad Connor. It seems like Shiv could be ranked lower than Kendall because Daddy is effectively helping Tom “mom” her (a.k.a. screw her over in the divorce). Logan makes the reasonable argument that he would’ve given Shiv the same divorce advice, but he can’t help them if they don’t see him. And that type of diplomacy shows that he is not operating to purposely hurt his children, even though it may feel like it to them.

I’d like to believe that Logan missed his lively conversations with his kids so much that he purposely entered a karaoke bar to meet them. When Kendall and Shiv quote Daddy back to Daddy, he’s reminded of how their moves have been fueled by spite and grounds them in the moment by telling them that he loves them but that they are not “serious people”. He lumps them off together with that assessment, knowing that comment will cause extreme emotional damage on its own, and in different ways for his children…

Connor Roy

… except for Connor, who has accepted the love his family cannot give him. You can tell that Logan didn’t include that “serious people” critique for Connor, because Connor was ignored the whole time for not being relevant to the actual (business) matters on hand. Daddy doesn’t even feign a “Oh, shucks” when Roman reminds him that his impromptu plans to see Matsson conflict with Connor’s wedding. Even when it seems like his relationship might be over and that he won’t be getting his money out any time soon, Connor dutifully gives up his siblings’ location to Daddy for a semi-ambush. However, none of that even registered because Daddy didn’t call Connor when he got to their location.

Gerri Kellman

Gerri was in the room watching Kerry’s audition tape and laughing, but her rank this week was solidified when Daddy makes last minute plans to cancel the board meeting so he can talk to Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) in person. He makes a point to make sure that Gerri isn’t included on this little trip. 

Cyd Peach

Missing from last episode’s rankings, where Daddy called Cyd to yell at her about the top of the hour, Cyd is now “toast” according to Daddy. In the larger feud between Tom and Cyd, Tom is victorious multiple times over.

That’s it for this week! Let us know who you think was Daddy’s Favorite in the “Rehearsal” episode below! Where do you think Matsson will end up next week?