Billions on Showtime, Season 3 Episode 9: Icebreaker

The Bottle Rockets’ “Wave that Flag” opens this week’s episode in which both Axe and Chuck figure out how they would feel if somebody owned their asses.

As Chuck is spending some time with Jeffcoat in West Texas, he happens to go on a hunting trip with him and ends up shooting the coyote that has been picking off Jeffcoat’s calves for a while. It turns out Chuck learnt from the best:

“My father taught me. Once you have the animal in your sights, breathe easy and let fly.”

Continue reading “Billions on Showtime, Season 3 Episode 9: Icebreaker”

Billions on Showtime, Season 3 Episode 8: All the Wilburys

Now that Axe and Chuck have dug themselves out of their own graves, both embrace their victories, and pick up the game where they left. We find them handling new situations they face in their own unique ways: sometimes with utmost care, and sometimes not so much. Continue reading “Billions on Showtime, Season 3 Episode 8: All the Wilburys”

Billions on Showtime 2.05: Currency

Billions season 2 episode 5 is titled “Currency”, after the main play of the episode which happens to be a highly delicate currency play. Currency, the word, when spoken by Damian Lewis manifest as Bobby Axelrod, is also one among the many rhythmic words you’ll hear from him this episode, pronounced in impeccable New York-ese. We probably shouldn’t keep harping on his believability in this role. After all, that’s why they call it acting, right? Where most acting is a well-developed form of impersonation and most non-native accents are a form of ventriloquism, what Damian does with Bobby, in terms of body and language, is something else entirely. Something that is neither simply impersonation nor just ventriloquism.

Continue reading “Billions on Showtime 2.05: Currency”

Billions on Showtime, Season 2, Episode 5: Currency

source: Showtime

How to save a quarter? How to bag a wolf? We learn from the very best in this week’s Billions episode 😀

Wags arrives at Axe Capital in his vintage Mercedes in the opening scene of Currency. He looks GOOD for a change. And he has something important to tell Axe but the other does not let him speak because it is not his turn to speak. While Wags was MIA for the last couple of days “learning the Yaqui way, or how to run like the Tarahumara” Axe has been fighting the “Battle of Thermopylae” frequently cited as an example of a patriotic defense where the small Greek army was able to defend its land against the huge Persian army in a three-day battle.  Continue reading “Billions on Showtime, Season 2, Episode 5: Currency”

Billions on Showtime 2.03: Optimal Play

Billions pulls a great trick from the big bag of tricks available to entertainment. It puts on an episode with a discrete arc — a beginning, middle, end… rising tension, climax, and denouement. And it does it in each episode while also exploring deeply profound themes fit for feature length film. This show is entertaining, no doubt. But there are ways in which it isn’t “just” entertainment. Allow me, please, to explore a few of the ways Billions pulled it out for S2Ep3 “Optimal Play”, would you?

Continue reading “Billions on Showtime 2.03: Optimal Play”