Television

Standard Of Review: Raising A Glass Of Ice Juice To Billions's Excellent Second Season

In the second season, Billions moved from a show that was fine to a show that I looked forward to every week.

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billions logoIn the era of too much television, I am usually very excited when one of my shows ends a season, as that creates time to catch up with other television on which I have fallen behind. But I definitely did not feel that way about the second season of Billions, which concluded its second season this past Sunday. Billions’s second-season improvement was a very pleasant surprise; it has gone from a show that I thought was merely fine to a show that I looked forward to every week and am going to miss. Billions has become perhaps the best non-prestige show on television. But over the past few weeks, it is become clear to me that most of the show’s improvement falls on the financial side of the story (i.e., Axe Capital), and it still has some room for improvement on the legal side (i.e., the U.S. Attorney’s Office). (This column will contain spoilers up through Sunday’s finale.)

Unquestionably, the best character this season has been Taylor, the young employee at Axe Capital who quickly rises at the hedge fund. Over the course of the season, Taylor has gone from being unsure about whether or not they (“they” is Taylor’s preferred pronoun, which I will respect) even wants to work at Axe Capital to becoming Axe’s trusted confidante and being named interim Chief Investment Officer when Axe is arrested and charged by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York at the end of the season. Despite a liberal-leaning background, Taylor begins to feel at home at Axe Capital as they is respected more and more by their peers and is seduced by the money they receive. Perhaps more importantly, Taylor believes that working at Axe Capital challenges they to be their best self, which they cannot get anywhere else. Taylor also connects with Axe; Asia Kate Dillon nails a scene with Axe in this week’s finale in which they tells Axe that they doesn’t want him to go to prison because they still has so much more to learn from him. Dillon has been terrific at finding these nuances in Taylor, and I hope they is awarded with an Emmy nomination (probably a long-shot but it would definitely be deserved).

Taylor’s prominence has also meant that the show has spent a lot of time on other characters in their orbit, such as Mafee, the jovial Axe Capital trader who first notices Taylor, or Dollar Bill Stearn, the trader who is constantly pushing Axe to trade on inside information. Dollar Bill and Taylor have a great scene in the penultimate episode as, despite ignoring them for most of the season, he thanks Taylor for finding an ostensibly legitimate reason to short a company that Dollar Bill knows from material nonpublic information is about to crater. It is certainly the most touching scene I can remember in which one character gives another character a thank you gift of a duffel bag full of $250,000 in cash.

But that focus on Taylor has meant less time with the attorneys that work at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. While Chuck Rhoades remains a central character, Billions has focused less on Bryan Connerty. The show has barely returned to the notable scene earlier this season in which Chuck informs Bryan after a complicated mutton metaphor that he knew that Bryan lodged an ethics complaint about Chuck. In this Sunday’s finale, Chuck forces the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York to name Bryan as the head prosecutor on the Axe case, but I’m not sure what Bryan did to get out of Chuck’s doghouse. I also anticipate more tension between Chuck and Bryan related to Chuck’s underhanded tactics, which has bugged Bryan in the past.

Two of Chuck’s other deputies, AUSAs Kate Sacker and Lonnie Watley, have barely been onscreen recently. At the beginning of the second season, Kate, Lonnie, and Bryan spent a lot of time jockeying for a promotion from Chuck, but that storyline never really paid off until Sunday’s episode in which Chuck promoted Kate after she threatened to move to Sullivan & Cromwell. But before that, it had been numerous episodes since this promotion had been mentioned. It looks like Lonnie is quitting the U.S. Attorney’s Office after being passed over for a promotion, because Malachi Weir is a good actor who hasn’t had enough to do on Billions.

As for Chuck, I enjoyed his complicated plan to ensnare Axe by leaking the fact that Chuck’s father and good friend were investors in the IPO of the wonderfully named “Ice Juice” (including by investing upwards of $30 million of Chuck’s money that had been put in a blind trust), knowing that Axe would take a massive short position against it and attempt to illegally sabotage the company. That is exactly what happened, as Axe’s associates made it seem like Ice Juice was causing customers to throw up when in fact those patrons were coerced by Axe to poison themselves (not fatally). Chuck knew that Axe would attempt to torpedo the company, so he had FBI agents follow and videotape those customers, leading to Axe’s arrest by Chuck’s counterpart in the Eastern District.

It was fun to see Chuck finally get the upper hand on Axe, but that comes with a price, as Chuck ruins his relationship with his father and good friend in order to do so. And while Chuck is ostensibly the “good guy,” his methods are frequently just as unethical or even as illegal as Axe’s. Sunday’s finale also attempted to fix one of the show’s persistent problems — making the audience understand why Chuck hates Axe so much. Right before Axe is arrested, Chuck spies Axe meeting with Chuck’s wife Wendy (Axe Capital’s performance coach), and they share a platonic hug and a Lost In Translation-esque inaudible whisper from Wendy to Axe. Paul Giamatti rarely plays understated on Billions but he is terrific as he witnesses this moment with a look of complete resignation on his face.

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My one real complaint with the Ice Juice storyline is that before it revealed that Chuck intentionally trapped Axe, the show seemed to want the audience to believe that Chuck was devastated over losing all his money in the failed IPO when in fact he was thrilled about having the chance to potentially arrest Axe. Once the Ice Juice customers starting getting sick, it was fairly obvious to me that Chuck had something up his sleeve, particularly after the otherwise irrelevant scene of Chuck acting out of a position of vulnerability while doing jujutsu (a very obvious metaphor).

Despite some of these critiques, I am very excited for Billions to return next year. In the meantime, I plan to relax with some Ice Juice and catch up on the shows piling up on my DVR.

Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at harrygraff19@gmail.com. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.

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