Billions whittles down the issue of our time – income inequality, and the increasingly outsized power of the wealthiest of the wealthy – to a cat-and-mouse game between a rogue venture capitalist and an ambitious U.S. Attorney. The format is almost comically simplistic; the men at war adopt ideological personas more grandiose than even the thickest of our comparable public figures. Yet that narrowed focus – that simplification, that sweeping generalization – gradually emerges in this salacious new drama as a deeply political and wickedly satisfying choice. Billions is without much texture or interest in the intricacies of law and morality. But this is not to the show’s detriment – on the contrary, it’s entirely the point.
Billions, which comes from the writing team of Brian Koppelman and David Levien as well as the New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, takes a fatalistic approach in its depiction of power and justice in American society. It doesn’t mourn the past; it doesn’t dream of a better future. It moves beyond realism – beyond a more nuanced understanding of its world – to get at bitter, probing truths. Its characters are powerful ciphers of archetypical backgrounds – billionaire Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis), a classically rags-to-riches success story; opponent Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), a ruthless adversary to the world of one-percenters in which his father once dominated and still holds sway – who wholly embrace their symbolic places in American culture. Most crucially, their individual journeys are brutally masculine in aesthetic, unending pursuits of fulfilled egos and decisive victories. There is no good and bad side; that’d only make for boring entertainment and, more to the point, inaccurate commentary. In Billions, there is only man, his resources, his bruised yet inflated self-esteem, his commitment to illusory American ideals – tainted principles of capitalist success and legal justice – and his past, silently informing each step forward and each step backward.
There’s also the domain of his woman. Billions’ most absurd contrivance – and there are a few here – also makes for its most invigorating and irresistible dramatic component. In the middle of Chuck and Axe is Wendy (Maggie Siff), wife and co-parent to the former, performance coach and in-house psychologist for the latter’s investment firm. She provides both men their most intimate relationships, with an uncanny ability to delve into Axe’s subconscious and an admirable willingness to feed Chuck’s obsession with power (through committed role play). Quite obviously, there’s an immediate, if dormant, tension there. And as Chuck begins his quest to bring Axe down – on suspicion of insider trading, and out of contempt for his arrogance and perceived invincibility – that tension activates with thrilling excessiveness.
The season’s earlygoing is uneven. Initially, there are some half-hearted attempts at providing some perspective on each of the two men – duds include Axe’s trip to a Metallica concert in Quebec with his old buddies, and Chuck’s brief irritation with a man who doesn’t clean up after his dog – and watching the case gear up while Wendy and Lara (Malin Akerman), Axe’s equally central wife, sit in the background doesn’t make for the most riveting of television. (There’s also time spent on those who work under Chuck, which is well-spent if inessential.) But the groundwork is effectively laid, with its splashy visual template disarmingly complemented by Eskmo’s score and a collection of gritty performances. Billions makes a bet with its audience, exchanging investment for payoff, with the opportunity to bask in its barrage of F-bombs and character revelations in the interim. It’s not a bad deal – lest it be a Bobby Axelrod-styled con – and fortunately, the show follows through.
Billions realizes its potential as an interpersonal melodrama. The structure befits its intent, both as a piece of pulpy entertainment and as a stylized critique of the process from white collar crime to governmental response. The dynamics between Axe, Chuck and Wendy – who, as the season rolls on, makes good on her complicated place in the story by evolving into a third lead – are juicy, ripe for psychological interpretation and rich with struggles for control. Indeed, that last point works as a neat trick, paralleling the characters' push-and-pull and the narrative's broader implications regarding influence and authority. Those early, aforementioned attempts at characterization pale in comparison to what Billions achieves simply by letting Axe and Chuck go after each other, and by – most intriguingly – allowing Wendy utmost agency, navigating her way through the sea of male egos in order to assert her own desires and values in a system that treats her as a companion-tinted pawn.
That established contrast is what clicks Billions into place. Giamatti aptly chews up the scenery as the lawman on the hunt, while the ever-fascinating Lewis is slick as the billionaire on the run. But, to my mind, there’s no performance more impressive than Siff’s, who between Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy and now Billions has proven as wide a range and as pronounced an ability to create memorable characters as anyone currently on the small-screen. Just as Wendy slides by Chuck and Axe, so too does Siff quietly dominate her scenes, exuding delicacy and inscrutability in the face of Giamatti’s bluster and Lewis’ suave. The show seems aware of her uniquely compelling presence: ample background is provided on Axe, Chuck and even Lara – whose secondary presence awkwardly stands out in the season’s more-focused second half – but Wendy, central as she is, stays seductively enigmatic.
Her journey does join the rest of the cast’s in terms of Billions’ central theme: the road to self-actualization. As Axe’s layers are slowly peeled, he’s revealed as a corner-cutting, money-minded egomaniac who views himself less as a criminal than as a radical, less an opportunist than a capitalist (but, you know, in a good way). With his father always in his ear, Chuck is left to come to terms with the root of his own poisonously linear way of thinking – in this case, his need to catch Axe at all costs. In Lara, we meet a woman of a working class background increasingly unwilling to compromise her new status; in Wendy, an educated, qualified and consummately effectual professional left to weigh her ethics, her vocation and her family. Each comes out with a stronger sense of self by season’s end – precisely why its final moments could only put Axe and Chuck face-to-face, clear-eyed and with nothing left to hold back.
In that final scene, the dialogue between Chuck and Axe is deliciously broad; their patriotic pronouncements are overtly evocative of our political discourse. And their missions are clearer, a most powerful metaphor for a story about the profit-hungry forces we’re protesting, and the combating state forces we have no choice but to trust. In the end, thorny debates over greed and regulation and the limits of the American dream turn – to borrow an earlier phrase – comically simplistic: a rivalry between two extraordinarily influential men, fighting for power, without subtext, over a woman. Here, Billions argues, is what’s left of the battle. As for the rest of us, it’s time to grab some popcorn and take a seat. We no longer have a place in this story. We can only watch to see who wins.
Grade: B+