Favorite and Least Favorite Family Member?
It usually takes a while to do a bunch of ranking, but it's a bit easier to roughly pick a favorite as well as least favorite character. So out of the family members (Smurf, the 4 brothers, and J), who is your favorite, and who is your least favorite?
Favorite: Pope
Least Favorite: Baz
In a funny way, both of these characters have swapped positions from where they were towards the beginning of the series (only just a handful of episodes!).
Originally, I almost hated Pope entirely and I generally saw Baz as the most "normal" of the crew. Now it is almost the opposite, despite how crazy Pope clearly can be. Pope, however, actually had the most connection to Julia; he also has the most connection to J it seems, even if he's usually bad with him. There's been some good scenes with Pope and J, as well as relative to Julia or the family's history - it just remains that Pope is one of the most awkward, and he was sad about this when talking (again, awkwardly) with Catherine in the 7/19 episode.
Baz, on the other hand, has only gotten worse as the series has gone along. He mainly gives into Smurf the most out of the family. He leads people along as much as possible, whether it's Pope, Catherine, the other girl he is with in Mexico, J, and so on. Further, the situation he created with J around Nicky and her father - and how he reacted to J about it was so terrible.
Baz is basically the person who, if anything went even slightly wrong, would be ready to just kill J and throw him in a trash bin, along with whoever else maybe caused an issue. Pope, ready to harm or kill people outside of the family, at the same time seems like he is more loyal yet not as subservient to Smurf as the others. He may hurt them but won't kill them - he saved Baz before; he's done multiple "favors" without asking; and I imagine he'll save/protect the others.
Finally, Pope very well knows how messed up he is. He indeed is probably the smartest of the bunch, despite his mental issues. The fact that he catches onto a lot of the little hidden situations shows this, and I really liked his talk with Baz about the drugs in the 7/19 episode. And as he also said when talking to J, he knows what they all are - "goddamned animals."