Categories Billions Print Media Recap

Billions Season 7, Episode 9 Recap: Character Assassination

Game Theory Optimal

by Kyle Fowle | Entertainment Weekly | October 8, 2023

Now this is what we’ve been waiting for. Billions hasn’t quite had its same mojo for awhile now, as it’s really been a few seasons since it last operated at a thrilling pace. This final season in particular has been rather sluggish and meandering, failing to create any real tension. But now that the end is in sight, things are ramping up. Finally, there seems to be real stakes here, and the twists and power plays are getting started.

This week’s episode begins with Chuck (Paul Giamatti) having dinner with the former police commissioner Richie Sansome. He’s picking his brain about the idea of fudging evidence and getting someone (Prince) locked up for the greater good, even if they don’t have all the solid evidence they need. Sansome says it happened a lot during his days as commissioner, but that he advises against it, that the “rails of justice” are there as guides for a reason, and that no charge really sticks unless you do the work and find the actual evidence.

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Billions Season 7, Episode 8 Recap: Into the Woods

The Owl

by Kyle Fowle | Entertainment Weekly | October 1, 2023

It should come as no surprise that Chuck Sr. is a man who ventures out into the woods at least once a year with a bunch of his rich male friends to “reconnect with nature” while drinking, wrestling, and frollicking naked amongst the trees. This year, his 52nd, he wants his son to join him. Chuck (Paul Giamatti), of course, is a man of substance, a man of the city, and has no interest in engaging with the traditions his father prefers.

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Billions Season 7, Episode 7 Recap: Morals vs. Business

Prince Is Amassing Potential Enemies

by Kyle Fowle | Entertainment Weekly | September 24, 2023

This week’s Billions begins with a little bribery, but it’s not from the usual suspects of the business world. Instead, Chuck Sr. is attempting to bribe a driving instructor into giving Kevin a passing grade on his driving test, which he’s failed miserably. The bribe doesn’t go over well, as the instructor calls the cops, and before long Chuck and Wendy are wrapped up in sorting out the situation and getting Chuck Sr. off the hook with the law.

While there isn’t a ton of intrigue in the details of that plot, there’s some interesting character insight. Essentially, Chuck and Wendy realize that they’ve been fairly absent parents lately, which led to Kevin seeking out his grandpa to take him to his driving test. This realization ties in with Chuck’s journey so far this season, where despite his focus on taking down Prince he’s also trying to be a better man, to allow his moral compass to guide him. By the end of the episode he’s made amends with his son, and he may even have reconnected with Wendy in a way that will pay off against Prince later on this season.

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Billions Season 7, Episode 6 Recap: Prince for President

Price Struggles With Negative Feedback

by Kyle Fowle | Entertainment Weekly | September 17, 2023

At the start of this week’s episode, Damian Lewis is once again back for a brief appearance, as Axe needs a favor from Chuck (Paul Giamatti). They meet on the tarmac in Iceland in the middle of the night, because that’s where high-powered fugitives meet to make deals. Axe says that he needs Chuck to arrange safe passage to the United States for none other than Grigor Andolov (John Malkovich), the Russian oligarch that Chuck ran out of the country a few seasons ago. Axe and Grigor became buddies when they came together to help get military reinforcements to Ukraine, but now Grigor is seen as a traitor to his country and asks (or threatens) Axe to get him out of the country.

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Categories Billions Dining Guide

Billions Season 7 Dining Guide, Episodes 1-5

Bon Appetite

by Damianista | Fan Fun with Damian Lewis | September 13, 2023

One of my favorite things about my favorite TV show is how it showcases the New York dining scene from hole-in-the-walls to neighborhood gems to Michelin-starred restaurants. And it has been my pleasure to share the information about restaurants appearing on the show first in my weekly recaps and then in a full dining guide by the end of the season for Season 1,  Season 2Season 3.  Season 4. and Season 5.

Fan Fun Billions dining guides are some of the most popular posts  on the blog and even some leading media outlets have noticed. Look what Forbes Magazine says about us!

“There are posts on actor Damian Lewis’s official website, that diligently track, with screenshots, all the food locations featured in every season. These posts even manage to name-check the take-out Chinese in one scene as the beloved eatery Wo-Hop.”

Continue reading Billions Season 7 Dining Guide, Episodes 1-5

Categories Billions Print Media Recap

Billions Season 7, Episode 5 Recap: Prince Starts to Lose Control

Chuck Deals With PR Crisis; Prince Losing Control of Company

by Kyle Fowle | Entertainment Weekly | September 11, 2023

At the top of this week’s episode, Ira (Ben Shenkman) is in a panic. He’s in Chuck’s (Paul Giamatti) office talking about how he was mugged the night before, that someone ran off with his phone. He tells Chuck that he needs to get the phone back not only because there are work-related files on it, but because there’s also some NSFW videos involving him and his wife that he’d rather not see leaked. He describes the videos as “pretty vanilla,” but still, this is clearly a crisis.

So, Chuck leaps into action to help his friend out, and honestly the storyline is a nice change of pace from the usual Prince-focused stuff. Here, we get a rather self-contained, episodic story that only somewhat ties into Prince (Corey Stoll) and instead allows Giamatti to shine in a few scenes. Chuck first goes to the incoming NYPD Commissioner and asks him for a favor; he wants access to CCTV footage in order to track down the man who stole Ira’s phone. In order to convince the Commissioner to work with him, he lies about there being “issues of national security” on the phone.

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

Revisiting Past Mistakes

by Damianista | Fan Fun With Damian Lewis | September 9, 2023

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.

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Categories Billions Gallery Trailer Video

Next Time on Billions Season 7 Episode 6

Season 7, Episode 6: “The Man in the Olive Drab T-Shirt”

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | September 8, 2023

Axe turns to Chuck for a favor involving a common adversary. Prince maneuvers to raise his public profile. Chuck seeks counsel from an out-of-the-box business mind. Wendy works to run employee feedback rounds, even at the cost of Prince’s pride.

To view more sneak peek photos, please visit our Gallery here.

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Categories Billions Print Media Recap

Billions Season 7, Episode 5 Recap: A Plan Starts to Form

Half the Traders at Prince Cap Became Involved in a Plot Against Their Boss. They Just Didn’t Know It.

by Sean T. Collins | New York Times | September 8, 2023

Season 7, Episode 5: ‘The Gulag Archipelago’

Let’s do a little narrative reverse engineering, shall we?

Imagine, if you will, that you are a both a trader and a traitor — a high-powered executive at a major investment fund, looking to fatally undermine your own boss in order to stop him from becoming the president of the United States.

Your Plan A, recruiting your even more dangerous old boss to stop him, has failed. You’re tired of waiting around for your performance-coach colleague, the ringleader of your band of mutineers, to generate a Plan B. It becomes clear that coming up with Plan C is up to you.

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Categories Billions Print Media Recap

Billions Season 7, Episode 5 Recap: I’ll Wait

A Mouthful of Helium

by Sarene Leeds | Vulture | September 8, 2023

If you’re feeling restless after five episodes, I assure you you’re not alone.

Unfortunately, “The Gulag Archipelago,” like most of the episodes in this final season of Billions, offered very little payoff. The only significant developments came in the form of Taylor officially joining Wendy and Wags in their fledgling Rebel Alliance/Fifth Column, Wags obtaining investment sign-off privileges — and Dave Mahar wresting the Mike Prince investigation from Chuck’s firm grip.

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Categories Billions Print Media Recap

From The Trader’s Desk: A Whole Lotta Rosie!

Billions Season 7 Episode 4 ‘Hurricane Rosie’

by Lady Trader | Fan Fun with Damian Lewis | September 8, 2023

Ooh, a storm is threatening
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Ooh yeah I’m gonna fade away
Gimme Shelter – The Rolling Stones

We’ve made it to Friday so that means this is your weekly dose of “From the Trader’s Desk”.

This was a stormy (see what I did there?) episode, so to change it up I used lyrics from The Rolling Stones, since while the storm Rosie was threatening the lives in it’s path, it seems the storm named Wendy (with some help from Dr. Mayer) will be threatening the life of Prince’s White House ambitions. And extra points if you can name the band that sang the song I used as today’s post title!

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Categories Billions Poll Print Media

Billions MVPs: Season 7 Episode 4, Hurricane Rosie

The Unbeatable, Unstoppable, Unparalleled MVPs 

by Staff | Fan Fun With Damian Lewis | September 6, 2023

Billions is back and so is our MVP series! We continue to award our Most Valuable Players for Billions season seven in our series compilation, the ‘Billions MVP Fanbook,’ which commemorates all those in honor of achievement for the utmost brazen, uber shameless, ultra scheming, unmatched bad asses from the episode – from sports references, music and tasty food to pop culture remarks, shocking twists and ultimate paybacks. In case you missed it, catch up with the MVPs of the season seven premiere Tower of London, episode two Original Sin and episode three Winston Dick Energy.

Now let’s dive in. Here are the Billions MVP awards for Season 7, Episode 4, “Hurricane Rosie.”

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