"Succession" returns this Sunday for a third season on HBO. And for those of us already indoctrinated into the cult, that means one key thing: Time to indulge in the guilty pleasure of watching obscenely wealthy people act obscenely privileged and irredeemably vile — to each other, and to their so-called loved ones.
And then there's Greg.
Now, Greg "The Egg" Hirsch (played by Nicholas Braun) is part of the "Succession" family of Roys, distantly. He's very tall (the actor is 6'7"), hunches over, and looks like he might have been hatched yesterday. As patriarch Logan Roy's great-nephew, he reminds you of the old joke about being someone's "second cousin twice removed, forcibly." He's awkward, goofy, unclear on the situation whatever the situation may be, and desperately wants to be included.
In other words, he's most of us.
That's not an insult: In a world where the Roy family rules a vast media empire, where one son has aspirations to the highest office in the land while another son can walk away unscathed after killing a man in a driving accident, where the daughter is as calculating and power-hungry as everyone else but hides it better, Greg's appearance on screen is a soothing balm. He's not quite a court jester, but he's the person you'd want to be if you had to live in the world of "Succession."
Because at least for now, Greg seems to still have his soul.
Greg is "the guy in the room that doesn't get it, who wants to get it, and wants to be there," Braun recently told The New York Times. "It was pretty easy to get into Greg's, you know, thought patterns."
Greg is also the guy the audience is supposed to identify with, at least at first: He doesn't understand the milieu he's been thrust into, but he sure does want to. Everybody wants in with the cool guys and the mean girls, and they usually forget what it means to cross that divide (hello, "Mean Girls" and "Heathers"). But his eagerness to fall — if he was in the Garden of Eden, he'd bring a combine to harvest the Tree of Knowledge — is part of his charm.
His relationship with Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) has been critical to shaping his road through and around the Roys. Wambsgans, who gets married to Roy daughter Shiv (has a nickname ever been more perfect?) in the first season, is another outsider who wants in — though he's a bit more savvy about the process. But when he meets Greg, who actually has a tenuous claim to the throne by blood, he steps up and makes sure Greg sticks to him like glue.
(Warning: video clips contain vulgar language.)
This strange relationship between them has led to serious potholes for both. But what we've loved is how Greg always seems to come up clean and shiny. When Wambsgans tries to get Greg to dispose of incriminating documents about Waystar-Royco's cruises division, Greg starts shredding ... then thinks twice, and keeps leverage for himself. It's a totally identifiable situation — and we all hope we'd be that savvy if our boss tried to get us to cover his butt.
In fact, Greg is so guilelessly charming that when he lets Tom know he has this leverage, Tom actually seems like a prideful parent. It's a teaching moment, even if it could sink Tom forever. Another point in the Egg's favor.
Greg's also been the conscience of other members of the family: During Wambsgans' hedonistic bachelor party, Greg was the buzzkill for Kendall. He took drugs to keep Kendall from doing them, even though Greg was a complete newbie to cocaine. A further point!
But if there was a crowning moment for Greg (thus far) on "Succession," it had to come when he testified before Congress. He was totally overmatched, and spoke so formally he had to be reprimanded by his questioner to "speak to us normally."
In short, Greg is the Roy wild card. He might seem more like a card than wild, but he's a question mark. He's so far out of the loop of action that there's a chance he could end up taking over for Logan in the end. And if you think that's not a possibility, remember who ended up on the throne at the end of "Game of Thrones": Bran.
Greg is a lot like Bran, without the ability to warg. At least, not yet.
Even Braun thinks that's not an impossible fact. As he told the Times, "Greg's got a long way to go. He often gets what he wants, through a mixture of guile and guilelessness. I leave it up to other people to judge whether he's a real succession candidate or not."
We have our hopes up.