Step Up To The Mike
by Sean T. Collins | New York Times | May 10, 2020
Season 5, Episode 2: ‘The Chris Rock Test’
Welcome to the Mike Conference, named with characteristic humility by its founder, decabillionaire Mike Prince. It’s a place for fireside chats that double as vicious duels, for charitable acts that serve to ameliorate an exponentially larger number of uncharitable ones, and for the occasional late-night excursion to a strip club that doubles as a Wagner family reunion.
Yes, Wags discovers the hard way that his daughter (Wags has adult children?!) is a stripper, thus failing “The Chris Rock Test”that gives the episode its name. He gets over it, more or less. He wouldn’t be Wags if he didn’t.
But just as the Mike Conference was really about making deals, so too was Wags and Bobby Axelrod’s ayahuasca excursion from the season premiere a business trip (emphasis on trip). Bobby is aiming to move into the “psychoceuticals” sector, so he and Wags spend their off hours at the conference buttering up Simon Shenk (played by the “Ozark” and “Affair” veteran Darren Goldstein), who looks poised to become the next head of the F.D.A. Impressed with Bobby and Wags’s acquaintance with the shaman Bram Longriver (Henri Binje), he seems poised to greenlight the practice and thus line their pockets.
Continue reading Billions Season 5 Episode 2 Recap: New York Times – May 10, 2020