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