A toxic brew of wealth, egocentrism, humanity, power, and corruption in a chess-game of NYC hedge-funds vs. prosecutional attorneys; The Wolf Of Wall Street on TV steroids: complex, proficiently-acted, highly-addictive, symphonic magnum opus of fiscal discourse taking us into a world beyond our wildest dreams: the lives of billionaires. 9.6/10.

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Plot Synopsis: Wealth, influence and corruption collide in this drama set in New York. Shrewd U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades is embroiled in a high-stakes game of predator vs. prey with Bobby Axelrod, an ambitious hedge-fund king. To date, Rhoades has never lost an insider trading case — he’s 81-0 — but when criminal evidence turns up against Axelrod, he proceeds cautiously in building the case against Axelrod, who employs Rhoades’ wife, psychiatrist Wendy, as a performance coach for his company. Wendy, who has been in her position longer than Chuck has been in his, refuses to give up her career for her husband’s legal crusade against Axelrod. Both men use their intelligence, power and influence to outmaneuver the other in this battle over billions. The high-profile cast is led by Emmy winners Paul Giamatti (“John Adams”) and Damian Lewis (“Homeland”) as Chuck Rhoades and Bobby Axelrod, respectively.

*Possible Spoilers Ahead*

The Official CLC Best #Billions Episodes: 1. Ball In Hand, 2. Short Squeeze, 3. Golden Frog Time, 4. Currency, 5. No Direction Home, 6. YumTime, 7. Pilot, 8. A Proper Sendoff, 9. Quality Of Life, 10. Fight Night, 11. The Third Orlotan, 12. Overton Window, 13. Dead Cat Bounce, 14. The New Decas, 15. Optimal Play, 16. Copenhagen, 17. Victory Smoke, 18. Liberty, 19. The Chris Rock Test, 20. The Conversation /// Season-By-Season: S1 – 9.7/10 / S2 – 9.5/10 / S3 – 8.7/10 / S4 – 9.2/10 / S5 – 9.6/10

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Official CLC Review

The Wolf Of Wall Street. One of the most legendary and mythological directors to ever touch the craft of directing, Martin Scorsese blessed the world with a far different type of picture back in 2013. A wild, brazen, drug-and-sex-fueled acid dosage of roller-coaster Dali phantasmagoria within the realism-grounded lens of a true story in NYC, WOWS did just as its eponymous acronym promised: a parable of The American Dream with nightmarishly-twisted avaricious greed and materialism every iota as hilarious and popcorn/coke spit-take entertaining as it was intellectualized by the grace of god-tier performances and a late-age cinematic legend who pumped more adrenaline and youth-energized moxie than most filmmakers in their 20’s. Previously holding the crown of fiscal movies/tv and esteemed in our ranking of Scorsese’s filmmography, part of us wished it was a little more.. elegant [though the aestheticization and energy was purposely-chosen to exemplify the breakneck pace/experience of Wall Street, we get that]: more Taxi Driver than Goodfellas. Merely three years later, we have that exact version of the story: one by a struggling network of Showtime in The Streaming Wars and landscape paradigm-shift away from network TV slowly bleeding-out on the sidewalk – playing the ultimate risk-all bet of the piggy bank to deliver to our screens one [perhaps: final] masterstroke.

A toxic brew of wealth, egocentrism, humanity, power, and corruption in a chess-game of NYC hedge-funds vs. prosecutional attorneys, Billions is The Wolf Of Wall Street on TV steroids: complex, proficiently-acted, highly-addictive, symphonic magnum opus of fiscal discourse taking us into a world beyond our wildest dreams: the lives of billionaires. The series takes us into a world beyond our wildest dreams: the lives of billionaires and machismo-fueled guignol carnival of hedge-funds – yet does so with a far more comprehensive atmosphere & depth-of-analysis than the average joe Wolf Of Wall Street or Gordon Gecko. Of course, there’s the omnipotence flex of power and capital enough to drive the common person’s fascination and investment: $70M beachfront palaces with olympic-sized pools and tennis courts in the Hamptons, Lamborghinis to swerve, companies to be monopolized or sabotaged with faux viral outbreaks in a game of thrones, countries to be destabilize, sports teams to be bought, stocks to short cheering right after a national tragedy like spacecraft blowing up mid-launch, planting evidence or deporting maids to avoid jail-time, faux fishing-trips to use as learning lessons to steal someone’s business under the guise of fatherly love, UFC-trained fight night boxing matches of toxic masculinity, alpha poker tournaments to crash, and the godlike power to manipulate people into doing whatever the f*ck you want. However, Billions hedges its bet like its stocks by painting the dark side of money beyond the glamorization – progressively unraveling the dreamscape and psychoanalyzing what it takes to be and become a billionaire.

Batting at these major league levels, there’s bribery, corruption, insider trading, pay-for-play, sexual entanglements, conflicts-of-interest, spoiled kids, dirty cops/judges, wrong incentives for the young-and-gifted, blackmail, ritualized sacrifices, blood money, etc. Billions is every ounce of the cat-and-mouse game of subterfuge and chess-like moves and countermoves of 2012’s House Of Cards – remixed with an elemental yin-yang dichotomization of the U.S. Government & Attorney General’s offices forever hunting them down, but every bit a synergistic magnum opus of writing and acting pedigree. The characters & performances of Billions are truly what elevates it into the pantheon of TV history: it might be one of the most well-acted shows we’ve ever seen. Of course, Paul Giamatti is one of the top living actors in the world – and, predictively, absolutely nails the major protagonist of the series. It might just be the best performance and character of his life [well, of course in contention with his multi-Academy roles of Cinderella Man and John Adams]. The groundhog he anthropomorphizes physically is as much one in Chuck Rhoades: a pugnacious, aggressive bulldog U.S. Attorney with every bit of the magic of all-time great TV performance as Kevin Spacey’s Underwood he serves as a spiritual successor to, boasting a career-impressive 81-0 record against financial crimes.

From the opening scene of the TV series’ masochistic black-leathered roleplay, the major theme at play is power – even over money. Rhoades feels power in the ability to make the richest and most popularly-defined ‘powerful’ quake in their boots and break down like little girls when he prosecutes against them and sentences them to decades or even lifetimes in prison. In pursuit, he treads the fine lines of egocentrism, tyrannical authoritarianism, and cruelty-of-soul – painting that even the ‘good guys’ have to get their hands dirty to find true justice oftentimes to make it hard to differentiate from the criminals, especially when it comes to the landmark case dropped on his desk: Bobby ‘Axe’ Axelrod. Make no mistake – while Giamatti delivers masterpiece work himself for the flip-side of the coin – Billions is Axe’s show. Damian Lewis is perhaps best known for Band Of Brothers and Homeland [both phenomenal TV series with B.O.B. being one of the greatest of all-time], but finds a career performance here. Do you know how difficult it is to portray a billionaire on-screen? To be able to portray that kind of wealth and sovereignty (the kind that puts you both metaphorically and physically above the world’s problems in penthouses] takes a special kind of thespian pedigree – there have been few, if any, truly memorable performances and characters of the bunch except the patriarch and modernized remix of which Billions directly-references/eulogizes: Citizen Kane.

Welles has found not only one modern-successor – Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of a young college-aged Mark Zuckerberg in the masterpiece Modern-Citizen Kane of a new landscape of news/capitalism in The Social Network – but another one of a modern grown-up & mature type in Billions’ Axelrod: something the series declares boldly and thunderously by direct reference through him watching it. Similarly, he is a somewhat tragic figure of never being able to truly detach himself from his work or the mega-corporations he runs – even if he just wants to go to a Metallica concert with friends who secretly-leech off him for investment advice instead of just enjoying the ability to fly on a private jet and be friends with a mogul. Even when he mops up the problems, opens up, gives bonuses to, and takes care of his wolfpack, they disrespect and betray him behind-his-back for personal gain.. everyone always having an agenda, staring at him even when they say they don’t want to out of fascination ‘like the way you want to stare at a lion at the zoo’, and treating him ‘like a woman with perfect tits’ by how he always knows what’s on everyone’s minds whenever he walks into a room. Even with all this modern tragedy he experiences divided between his Xanadus in Long Island and The Hamptons and brings gravity to with his nuanced, pokerfaced, stoicism-laced, cryptic, byzantine performance, Lewis infuses him with an air of positivity and engaging amiability.

Axe is a street-suave, pulled-up-from-his-own-bootstraps, grounded archetype who talks with a Bronx-swanky New Yowk accent and frequently slumming it at pizza joints and hot-dog stands – someone you’d like to have a beer with, and just might even forget his fortune outweighs the GDP of world countries or is both a hero-and-villain simultaneously by how seamlessly he mixes and amalgamates both diametrically-opposed extremes: a testament to the absolute brilliance of Lewis’ performance we prize amongst the greatest in TV history. For all their differences, Axe and Rhoades are the same as well: both alpha males, territorial, willing to get down-and-dirty, betrayed by their own prodigies [Taylor and Bryan], and even bonded in their hatred of one another. The seismographic depth with which Axe and Rhoades are psychoanalyzed comes by the grace of chief resident Freudian master/mistress of the mind: Dr. Wendy Rhoades, M.D. The opulence drug of being a hedge-fund psychiatrist enabling a pack of bloodthirsty wolves you know commit crimes just because you’re the most well-paid of your med school class is a classic conflict-of-interest throwing the legitimacy and ethics of your hippocratic oath into question: one going further to realize the canvas of mega-lottery billions by painting its characters are deeply-flawed in their own right – even more endearing by the fact she has a doctorate in cerebral physics [one of the strongest female leads on TV by how credentialed and powerful the presence of intellect and grace Maggie Siff exudes], but fails to properly diagnose her own complexities/problems in blind spots.

That’s only outdone by the fact she’s the wife of the attorney general prosecuting her place of work – a magnificently-uncomfortable/twisted dynamic and machinized system at the crux of the series that makes for damn good drama just as much on personal levels as financial or legal as friends become enemies, enemies become friends, and the chess-game goes on and on. The other side characters & performances are just as memorable and fantastic. David Costabile’s Wags is a herculean pleasure of pure idiosyncrasy to see every time Axe’s COO steps onto screen. Malin Akerman’s Lara Axelrod is just as scruffy and grounded of a billionaire’s wife as her husband – pulling strings on her own arcs behind the scenes to bring major Claire Underwood Robin Wright vibes in just as strong a female character. Condola Rashad only one-ups her by the fact this trust-fund kid prosecutes justice with POTUS-dreams/ambitions her own. Toby Leonard Moore’s Bryan Connerty is Big 4-making by how the young-and-hungry lawyer constantly-rejects the easy money promises of private firms to care about true justice he sees slowly and comprehensively unraveling in its idealized illusion around him turning the messianic Jesus figure more-and-more to the dark side.

Hell, even the side characters are unforgettable and proficiently-acted: Glenn Fleschler’s sniveling, pretentious sell-out corporate-lawyer Orrin Bach, Dany Strong’s pretentious douchebag Krakow, Stephen Kunken’s cringeworthy lost puppy of hopeless incompetence-humorized Ari Spyros, Kelly AuCoin’s dual-family wrestler with a perfectly-pretentious/evil smile Dollar Bill Stearn, Daniel K. Isaac’s shy-and-timid Ben Kim, Clancy Brown’s alt-right Old Testament injustice Texan Attorney General, Malkovich’s brutal Russian arm-breaking oligarch Gregor Anolov, Eva Victor quirky Gal Gadot-sister Rian, Dhruv Maheswari’s pudgy/awkward comedic injection by the cuddling-sound teddy bear Tuk (bonus points: Indian representation!), Denham’s straightshooting govt. whistleblower Dake, Dan Soder’s boys’ club Mafee, Frank Grillo’s Nico Tanner, Corey Stoll’s faux-woke wolf-in-sheep-clothing Michael Aquinas Prince, etc. Billions also has the honor of being the first American TV Series To Ever Have A Non-Binary LGBTQ+ Character [& even better: have them be one of the biggest roles in the series acted with calculating, surgical proficiency in a remarkable performance]: Taylor Mason. All of them are brought to life by pedigreed elegance of characterization scripting. Enough grace is of presence in the writers’ room to, e.g. in one scene in the S1 finale, hydrolyze the entirety of capitalism and government from all morality perspectives of the ultimate civics discourse and paradox of civilization.

Traffic cops in federal robes suck from the municipality and don’t always donate back rewards to the poverty-stricken, driven out of offense that billionaires [even ones donating hundreds of millions in philanthropic charity and employing thousands of people in/directly to make systems and industries run] make money and succeed like The American Dream posits -despite it being done sometimes in dirty ways to romanticize old-western villains like a cartoon serial and existentially infecting the world by example of prophets-being-turned-to-profits. Brilliant screenwriting. Billions has – quite simply – one of the best character-casts and melodramas on television: one that barely even needs the money it psychoanalyzes, creates judicial tension around, and dramaturgizes in a chess-match of egos and power-flexes, but is all the better and more massively-entertaining because of its feature in the background. Oh, and there are real-world cameos from ~every major pop-culture renowned billionaire in our world from Mark Cuban to Chris Sacca to Sara Blakely, tons of wall-street heavy-hitters like Omeed Malik and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, and epic celebrity cameos like CC Sabathia, Metallica, & Kevin Durant. The cinematography is well-stylized to bring the canvas of ferrari red, lamborghini verde ithaca, and law mahogany library shelves to life alongside the shimmering skyscrapers of a classic NYC it serves as a love-letter towards [enough to even persuade often-haters of The Big Apple]. The score’s major theme utilization of dubstep juxtaposed with orchestral swells is idiosyncratic, calculating, and thrilling and as calculating as its wall-street hedge fund plays.

If there’s one major flaw in Billions, it’s the bizarre cardinal sin of modern TV: failing to know when to walk away. S5 is a god-tier victory tour that culminates on a masterstroke finale that could very well serve as the series-conclusion; for them to have announced a planned S6 is heresy (even with the comprehensive lack of major deterioration even 5+ seasons in) without 1/2 of the entire show’s raison-d’être: Robert Axelrod. Why can’t networks learn this is a recipe for ignominious death – from Michael Scott on The Office to Frank Underwood House Of Cards. Minor nitpicks include Connerty going from being one of the most likeable characters in early-S1 to an insufferable grudge-bearing ingrate-hypocrite pushing the apprentice-flip stereotype too far to the point of feeling forced, one-note, and inauthentically-edgebro – fizzling out too soon. Oh, and S5 goatee-less Chuck siphons the intimidation factor his character demands and is heavily distracting by the radiating frailty of his appearance. Regardless, Billions is still a near-perfect series amongst the best we’ve seen in the 21st century overall. A toxic brew of wealth, egocentrism, humanity, power, and corruption in a chess-game of NYC hedge-funds vs. prosecutional attorneys, Billions is The Wolf Of Wall Street on TV steroids: complex, proficiently-acted, highly-addictive, symphonic magnum opus of fiscal discourse taking us into a world beyond our wildest dreams: the lives of billionaires.

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