Showtime’s New Series “Billions”

Have you been watching Showtime’s new series “Billions” starring Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis? Paul Giamatti plays U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades who is on the trail of Lewis as Bobby “Axe” Axelrod, an obscenely wealthy hedgefund manager who obviously didn’t get that way by being 100% above board, or Chuck wouldn’t be so keen to take him down.

Showtime actually has the entire first episode available for free on its youtube channel, and so far we have seen that and “Naming Rights,” the second episode, even though we were almost steered away from it by some really critical reviews.

Showtime decided to send the first 6 episodes to some reviewers and, perhaps in retrospect, may now think it wasn’t the smartest move. One of the complaints was the dialogue. Scott Meslow says in his review, “The Boring Savagery of Billions” that the show’s dialogue makes him think that “someone loaded a bazooka with discarded material from ‘Glenngarry Glen Ross’ and blasted it all over a stack of TV scripts.” And we have to agree that some of the material is ludicrous. In “Naming Rights,” for example, a lot of people in Axe’s organization made analogies that just made you wince — melt like an Almond Joy in the sun; pop like a prom queen’s cherry; like a hurdler that fails to jump over the hurdles — and that is all said at a staff meeting where the employees are advised that the company’s reputation has to be “purer than the Virgin Mary before she got her first period.”

Vulture.com’s review of “Naming Rights,” mentions that both Axe and Chuck are making enemies. In Axe’s case, he fired Victor, an employee his in-house success coach and psychologist, Wendy Rhoades (she is the U.S. Attorney’s wife!), says is not prepared to deal with the public humiliation very well. Wendy says Victor will stew and obsess and plot revenge. Axe sends her off to handle that.

Victor was played by Louis Cancelmi. (He was Mike DeAngelo in “Boardwalk Empire” a couple of years ago.) It doesn’t look like Axe is going to have to worry about him because Wendy successfully convinced him to “act like a gentleman” or get blackballed by Axe, so that is probably the last time we’ll see him in this show.

Chuck, on the other hand, tries to intimidate a reporter named Mike Dimonda, who tells him where to go. Dimonda was played by Sam Gilroy. We could be seeing him again, but he claimed to be in it “because people deserve to know the truth about power and money,” so if there was something icky to report about Axe, wouldn’t he report that, too?

Jack Gilpin is one actor that we recognized in “Naming Rights” as soon as he was shown in the scene where Axe gives him (as Sean Ayles) the unhappy news that unless he can convince the Eads family that their name has to come off the symphony hall, he’s won’t be donating a dollar. Law & Order junkies that we are, we’ve often seen him not just in regular L&O episodes, but also in SVU and Criminal Intent. Did you know that, in real life, he is an Episcopalian priest?

Of course, these scenes are shown to illustrate how much power Axe and Chuck Rhoades have. In Episode 2, Axe was wielding his power with vengeful glee, while Rhoades was shown that his power has consequences that hurt innocent people, like the children of a man he sent to jail for four years for mail fraud.

The Wendy Rhoades character presents the most interesting aspect of the show, as far as we’re concerned. She is the one both men talk to when they need help but when push comes to shove, where will her loyalties lie? With her employer or with her husband? We’ll just have to keep watching to find out.