Billions on Showtime, Season 7 Episode 5: The Gulag Archipelago

The Gulag Archipelago, mentioned by Victor and that titles the episode, is a book written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I never read it but I am familiar with the author thanks to my Russian literature loving parents’ home library. Solzhenitsyn wrote to help raise global awareness about the political repression in the USSR. This particular book tells the story of a zek (a Gulag inmate) from his arrest to the show trial to being sent to a Gulag (labor camp in Siberia) to reflect on and learn from “his mistakes” based on interviews, reports,  legal documents and  Solzhenitsyn’s own experience as a zek. And as Solzhenitsyn revisits the ways things could have gone in his book, our characters deal with their past mistakes in their unique ways in the episode. Continue reading “Billions on Showtime, Season 7 Episode 5: The Gulag Archipelago”

Billions Season 4 Locations Guide

source: Showtime

I am an immigrant. I moved to the US for graduate study in late 1990s. My husband and I, having finished our PhDs, moved to New York in 2001, only weeks before September 11, for our first jobs. The city has since given me so much in so many different dimensions and defined me as an individual: a foodie, a film buff, a theatre lover, a feminist, a wine snob, a runner and more… Even though we moved to the South five years later for new jobs, we could not give up on New York. We still have a tiny apartment on the Upper West Side and we enjoy the city as part-time New Yorkers 😀

And as I mentioned a billion times before, Billions is a dream show for me not only because my favorite actor is in it, but also because New York, from its landmarks to its city parks and to its quirky shops, appears as a cast member in the show! As someone who feels the only home she has in the world is the city that never sleeps, I particularly love it that Billions is taking over New York, the BIG film studio that it is, and shooting all over the place, from Manhattan to Queens to Brooklyn to The Bronx to Long Island and to northern suburbs. So I have put together this Billions Season 4 Location Guide as a loving tribute to my most favorite place on earth and a heartfelt thank you to the show creators for writing a love letter to the city.

Hope you pick and choose and take your own Billions tour in New York City and beyond and give us feedback! And in case you missed our locations guide for Season 1, Season 2 and Season 3 you can check them out here, here and here.
Continue reading “Billions Season 4 Locations Guide”

Billions on Showtime, Season 3 Episode 10: Redemption

The moment you think your favorite show cannot get any better, Billions proves you wrong and delivers us a brilliant hour of TV with family at its center.

As Chuck delivers Carrie Caminetti, the corrupt Buffalo mayoral candidate, to Randy Kornbluth from The Journal in an envelope, Randy knows the US Attorney is expecting something in return: Everything he has on Jeffcoat! We find out Jeffcoat was the governor of Texas before becoming the AG in the new administration. He is twenty times 10-15 million rich and well-insulated with a PR team whose only job is to keep the boss out of the financial press. Chuck finds, at a time where most people try to look richer than they are, Jeffcoat downplaying his wealth intriguing.  The rumors about how the Jeffcoats made their money, according to Kornbluth, center around Jock’s “televangelist” brother and the ownership of the TV stations he broadcasts on. Continue reading “Billions on Showtime, Season 3 Episode 10: Redemption”