Categories Billions Print Media Review

Billions: Super Antiheros – April 24, 2018

The Superhero Show About Finance and the Tale of Two Warring Goliaths

by Rachel Syme | The New Republic | April 24, 2018

Billions reckons with the inflated egos and muddled ethics of Wall Street.

The first season of Billions premiered in January 2016— eight years after the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and eleven months before a self-proclaimed billionaire was elected president. This was the sweet spot, timing wise, for a bombastic prestige drama about the world of money. In 2011, the sharp and enraging documentary Inside Job, which charted the corruption that led to the financial crisis, won an Oscar. In the winter of 2016, The Big Short—a sermonizing, big-budget Hollywood comedy about reckless bankers—was nominated for Best Picture. The mea culpas had been issued, the bad actors identified, and although only one person officially went to jail, the coast looked clear for new stories of Wall Street and wealth.

Of course, in the wake of the crisis, a showrunner could not simply rehash the old Gordon Gekko formula for a modern audience. Slickness was no longer glamorous but gross; very few Americans had an appetite for captains of industry slurping down midday martinis at the Capital Grille. Instead, the three creators of Billions—the longtime writing team of Brian Koppelman and David Levien, along with The New York Times’ financial reporter, Andrew Ross Sorkin—took a populist genre and grafted it onto the honeyed, moneyed lives of the rich and infamous: They made a superhero show about finance.

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Categories Billions Print Media Recap

Billions Superlatives: Best, Worst, Most from S3E3 – April 9, 2018

Best Food Porn, Most Intimidating Interview Posture, Best Cardigan

by Miles Surrey | The Ringer | April 9, 2018

Source: Showtime

Every week, The Ringer will celebrate the passing of yet another Billions episode by honoring the installment’s best, worst, most, and least. These are your Billions Superlatives.

This week’s Billions, “A Generation Too Late,” is what I like to call a Side Quest Episode. Axe and Chuck aren’t making moves directly at one another—Axe is finalizing a way to trade under the table and work with Raul Gomez, the guy in charge of the police pension fund, and Chuck is still learning the lay of the land with the new, ultra-conservative attorney general. But that doesn’t take away from another entertaining and often bonkers week, featuring three separate references to the Oakland Athletics’ Billy Beane (really!), more sumptuous dining, and Connerty letting out his inner Bronx brawler. Let’s not waste another minute.

Best Food Porn

Like the season premiere, and, thankfully, most Billions weeks, this was a good episode for food. Axe’s personal cook, Chef Ryan, prepped burgers—twice! The first time, he paid homage to Ann’s Snack Bar, the home of famous, possibly Hall of Fame–worthy burgers in Atlanta. (Wags was a bit hard on Chef Ryan because the burgers weren’t quite as good as Miss Ann’s, but conceded it was a decent try.)

Continue reading Billions Superlatives: Best, Worst, Most from S3E3 – April 9, 2018

Categories Billions Print Media Recap

Billions Superlatives: Best, Worst, Most from S3E2 – April 2, 2018

Flat Whites, Avocado Toast, and Literal Helicopter Parents

by Miles Surrey | The Ringer | April 2, 2018

Every week, The Ringer will celebrate the passing of yet another Billions episode by honoring the installment’s best, worst, most, and least. These are your Billions Superlatives.

Axe’s trading license has been frozen—he’s no longer running Axe Capital—and in the second episode of Billions’ third season, “The Wrong Maria Gonzalez,” he has honored this legal mandate and stepped to the sidelines! He’s hanging out with his kids more, eating healthy … oh, forget it, you know I’m kidding. Axe wants to pull $2 billion from Axe Capital to do all sorts of shady shit with it behind the scenes, and you know he’s not attending his sons’ Little League games. And that clusterfuck is just the tip of the IceJuiceBerg this week. Let’s get to it.

Continue reading Billions Superlatives: Best, Worst, Most from S3E2 – April 2, 2018