Paul Giamatti

Lunchtable TV talk: Billions – a dick-measuring contest in need of neutering

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I’ve written about Billions before, early on in its run. I mostly thought of it favorably.  While Showtime’s Billions has always been focused on characters who are petty, smug and selfish, it’s reached a whole new level of narcissism, disconnect and cruelty. Featuring a cast that includes Damian Lewis just off his Homeland run, the inexplicably magnetic Paul Giamatti, and the most compelling of all, bringing soul and humanity to a show largely devoid of either – Maggie Siff. There have been plenty of other notable performances throughout the series’ run (five years), but it’s fair to say this trio is the heart of the show.

I use the word “heart” liberally. Because the show really doesn’t have any. It’s always been a combination of soulless Wall Street-meets-tech bro, concocted in a simmering cauldron of rivalry between an aggressive, Machiavellian US attorney, Chuck Rhoades (Giamatti) and hedge fund giant, Bobby Axelrod (Lewis). Stuck in between the two is the US attorney’s wife, Wendy (Siff), who also happens to be the in-house performance coach/psychiatrist to the hedge fun and personal friend/advisor/conscience to Axelrod.

The show has always shakily walked the tightrope between gripping and ridiculous. The decline into full-time ridiculous started last season; the show has completely fallen off the tightrope in the latest season. It’s just become stupid.

There was a time when the ridiculousness was tolerable, possibly humorous, but we are living in the exact wrong moment for the self-satisfied, hellbent-on-destroying-others, dick-measuring contest this show has become. Please neuter it.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Lunchtable TV Talk: Billions

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We got rid of Nicholas Brody in Homeland, which could not have come sooner. It saved Homeland, and in exchange, we got Damian Lewis as self-made billionaire and financial wizard/criminal Bobby Axelrod in Billions. (FYI: Lewis is okay, but he is the least interesting thing about the show.) Is Billions great, on par with lauded fare like Mad Men or Breaking Bad? No. But is it interesting? Yeah, more than marginally. We get Malin Åkerman, who was so mercilessly set adrift after Trophy Wife was canceled, and she is unexpectedly fantastic as Lara, the bitchy, cutthroat, scheming, fiercely loyal wife of Bobby. We also get doses of Maggie Siff, who is always great (Mad Men, Nip/Tuck, Sons of Anarchy), as Wendy Rhoades, the person who is actually closest to Bobby, who has worked for him for an eternity and kept him “sane”, and who happens to be (improbably) married to the man who has made it his life’s mission to destroy Bobby. That man is US Attorney Chuck Rhoades, played by Paul Giamatti, who is also always great, especially because he does fundamentally unlikable and complicated so well. His role here is no different, even if his character’s more stubborn than a dog with a bone – so hellbent on some kind of twisted sense of justice that he will let it destroy his marriage, his peace of mind, possibly his career and sanity, taking along with it his entire life and everything he values (taking a page from Les Misérables’s Inspector Javert, chasing this “villain” for his entire life – villain or no, the moral of the story – since there always is one – is that he only hurts himself in his dogged and endless pursuit).

There are other stories, characters, actors here, but there four form the real core of the show, what drives it forward and what keeps me watching. The rivalry between Bobby and Chuck – the stupid bravado driving both forward with what seem petty motivations in many cases, and the damage this does to everyone around them – from colleagues and employees to their families and loved ones – is the real driving force of the show. Also why I will continue to consume another season when it returns.