The knives are out on Billions, where money is just the means of revenge
The anti-Axelrod forces converge, but there's one surprise defector
TV Reviews Billions
Everybody wants something on Billions, but when they get it, they usually find they want something else even more. For all the talk about the bottom line, money is only desirable insofar as it can make the real victories possible. Companies come and go, but the emotional satisfaction of crushing your enemies is permanent…or so the characters on Billions believe. Those of us watching from the outside know those victories rarely last.
Having unwittingly delivered Axe his bank, Chuck now wishes to destroy it. He and Sackler visit the Delaware Attorney General in hopes of doing some favor trading that will result in Axe’s charter being pulled. They’re unsuccessful, but the seed has been planted. When Chuck later refuses Prince’s help with taking down Axe, he waters that seed and watches it blossom when Prince pays his own visit to Delaware and threatens to pull his billions out of the state. The AG agrees to place an unwanted trustee on Axe’s board, handpicked by Prince to do the most damage. Prince brings this information back to Chuck, who has the perfect candidate in mind.
Unable to be the good son in the way Senior needs him to be (by supplying him with a new kidney), Chuck is finding other ways to fill the role, from paying for Senior’s coffin to outsourcing his eulogy to Ira. While he can’t help his father extend his life, he realizes he can give what time he has left a purpose by making him Axe’s bank trustee. Senior is reinvigorated by the assignment, but Axe knows there’s something he wants even more. Thus, Axe becomes the good son Chuck could not, granting Senior his kidney courtesy of his curator and ensuring an ally in his bank rather than a hindrance.
It’s a rare moment this week when Axe isn’t completely consumed with destroying Prince. Having damaged his reputation to the point where charities are distancing themselves and investors are pulling out of Prince’s fund isn’t enough for Axe. “He’s dead when I say he’s dead.” When Prince undergoes a brief crisis of conscience and pulls out of the green energy companies he’s been nurturing rather than taint them with his presence, Taylor sees an opportunity to buy up his holdings on the cheap. Axe appears to go along with it, only to force Mafee to sell Taylor’s own positions in order to make Prince lose even more money. That this will not only cost Axe money but set back the cause of green energy when we need it most is not even a concern. Hurting Prince is all that matters.
While Prince flounders about, trying to make amends with the mother of the partner he screwed, his right-hand man Scooter is more focused. Axe’s pet frozen pizza project is finally coming to fruition as Anthony the pizza guy gives his approval, but the first batch of supermarket-ready pies is stranded at sea after Prince acquires the shipping company. Axe is willing to blow ten million dollars to have the authentic Italian pizza ovens installed in a local warehouse; whether it’s more important to him to help his old friend Anthony or deny Prince even this small victory is a question we don’t even have to ask.
Money always corrupts in this world, but not everyone gets the opportunity to find out firsthand. Tanner only needs a few commissions in order to buy the country house in Vermont he dreams of, but Wendy can’t help but notice that when money is the inspiration, the art itself suffers. After she consults with Axe, he makes the commissions disappear. Wendy thinks she’s doing Tanner a favor by letting him get back in touch with his pure creativity, but Tanner ends up destroying the one piece of recent art that came from the heart, which in turn ends their relationship. Still, value is in the eye of the beholder, so a defaced Tanner original is still a Tanner original as far as Axe is concerned—though he appears to take more aesthetic pleasure from the discarded sketch of Wendy sleeping.
While he may have wooed one unexpected ally to his side in Senior, Axe’s pettiness ends up driving his enemies into each other’s arms. Taylor crashes Chuck’s meeting with Prince in which they decide to let Axe go too far and be the agent of his own undoing, so the battle lines have been drawn for the season’s last few episodes. How much longer Billions can continue to keep these plates spinning is anyone’s guess, but with a sixth season on the way next year, an endgame is not yet in sight.
Stray observations
- Judging from an offhand comment by Chuck’s would-be kidney procurer, the show’s timeline is still pre-pandemic. That makes sense, since COVID-19 was referenced for the first time in episode seven, and future Billions viewers will experience season five as a continuous experience.
- During a fire-and-brimstone speech to an investor who is trying to pull out his money, Prince refers to himself as the atomic punk. Over the end credits, we get Van Halen’s “Atomic Punk,” from their 1978 self-titled debut.
- Martin Scorsese clearly didn’t have Senior’s mortality in mind when he settled on a four-hour running time for The Irishman.
6 Comments
Ugh. I’m getting a little bored with the repetitive “lets make X character evil (this time) then have Y and Z team up as unlikely allies” storylines.It also seems like they’ve made Axe a really two dimensional character this season—-for some reason he just doesn’t seem to have anything to go on besides his cartoonish villainry in taking down Prince. I half expect him to be sporting a Snidely Whiplash mustache at some point next episode.
That’s all this show has become: four or five major characters who switch loyalties and team with each other in different combinations in order to screw over one of the others. They’ve completely run out of ideas.And the idea that Senior, who has done nothing but stab people in the back, will now be loyal to Axe is ludicrous. One expects the by-now-standard scene in the last episode showing us that what we thought we knew didn’t happen and that Senior will have been setting up Axe the entire time.This show should really change its name to “Rinse and Repeat.”
Billions is the perfect show that needed to be based in the UK for production so it was limited in its run. This is what happens with all shows like this, you have to make it so ridiculous just to keep things moving. I still love this show and really want Taylor to get the win out in the end. Some show needs to have the balls to completely destroy their main character. Dexter needed to get caught and ruined, and Axe needs to be thrown away either in jail or broke. This show is still so much better than Succession… haha
“You need tens of thousands of pizzas cooked in special ovens, by tomorrow? Done!” The way these characters operate outside the laws of physics, it’s like watching a Roadrunner cartoon. But I love this show, and I’ll keep loving to the bitter, unsatisfying end.
I fear this is going to go the way of a typical Showtime show, in that it goes on too long.
Looks like AVClub has stopped covering “Billions” as of Sept. 19, which I can’t really blame you for given the low number of comments on this and other recent episodes. Still, I’ll miss the snark you would have had for the latest episode’s incredibly exciting five-minute, single camera, overhead shot of Paul Giamatti frying eggs.