#chuck rhoades senior

[nothingunrealistic]

WENDY: Craig Heidecker died. It… it exploded. SENIOR: Well isn’t that a shame… A real goddamn shame. CHUCK: I’m sorry, Wendy. For your loss.

—————

CHUCK: Didn’t figure he’d leave you behind, huh? After all that effort, all that history, to just ghost you like that? Guess you bet on a bad pony, Wend. TAYLOR: Chuck! CHUCK (To Wendy): Sorry for your loss.

3x04 hell of a ride // 5x12 no direction home

[how2to18]

TEN YEARS AGO, the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the global financial crisis of 2008. Democrats were eight years in power, and their failure to prosecute the corporate criminals behind the crisis surely ranks as their biggest legacy. That failure was the condition of possibility for the anti-elite narrative that inspired the white working class and the white upper class to support a genuinely fascist insurgency before and beyond November 2016. It was also the condition of possibility for Billions.

Across its three seasons on Showtime, Billions explores the aftermath of Lehman’s and Obama’s 2008 peaks, tracking the waning and waxing faculty of elite professionals to steer their careers and helm the most powerful country in the world. The show is built around an extended parallel between outer-borough upstart Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis), principal of the wildly fruitful hedge fund Axe Capital, and Manhattan WASP Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), US Attorney for the New York Southern District and hero of a counterfactual recent past in which 81 bankers and traders were successfully prosecuted for their outlaw engineering of toxic asset slides. Rhoades fancies himself a just warrior, fighting against “[these] Teflon corporations that defraud the American people on a grand scale.” As the series opens he levels his gaze at Axe, the Moby-Dick of parkour finance.

Root for the law, or root for the money? Fortunately, we don’t have to choose, since here both sides equal each other in their maniacal pursuits of professional acme — a steady double date with bent rules, a shared ruthless drive to win. Root for the winners! Both men are game theory geniuses, spooling out scenarios and hedging countermoves with the speed of gigahertz processors. Their sheer effectiveness propels the show’s narrative and renders the difference between good guys and bad guys a mere matter of preference.

The winners run their races in structural parallel, their lines intersected at right angles by mutual ballast: Wendy (Maggie Siff), a psychiatrist whose penetrating understanding of Bobby guides the growth of Axe Cap, and whose lashing crop rouses the vim of her husband, Chuck. The very first shot of the series frames Chuck bound and gagged on the floor, a vinyl stiletto boot pinning him down. (It’s not TV, it’s Showtime.) “You’re in need of correction, aren’t you?” she says, burning his chest with a cigarette and again with urine in the wound. Cut to the Manhattan skyline, that other site of bad boys who will be bad boys even after market corrections, and there we find Wendy’s second sphere: she is lucratively employed as the in-house performance coach at the hedge fund, a high-class fluffer whose flash-sessions amp the traders with dominatrix directives to “get out there and do what needs to be done.” All day long, Wendy dispatches debilitating anxieties and disruptive fetishes at lightning pace, checking in frequently with Axe to save him “from making a huge mistake for dick-measuring purposes.” She takes deep satisfaction in her beneficent effects. On “Comp Day,” when financial firms assign annual bonuses to their employees, she regularly merits $2 million — and that’s not counting spontaneous gifts from Axe like a black Maserati GranTurismo Sport. Her business model is clearly not Jacques Lacan’s.

Chuck’s rewards differ: he can’t help but be bad, even as he draws the compensation of righteousness, and his inner conflict mines much more fodder for repentance under the latex lash. “I work for the public good!” Chuck scolds Wendy in season one. “No, you work for the good of Chuck Rhoades,” she flatlines back. When he initiates an indictment against another giant hedge fish whose political ties will fall out advantageously, Chuck’s deputies repeat the exchange in a later season: “It’s the right thing to do,” Lonnie Watley (Malachi Weir) says. Kate Sacker (Condola Rashad) parries, “It’s what Chuck wants. It doesn’t make it right.” At the end of his righteous road, if Chuck Senior (Jeffrey DeMunn) pulls enough strings from behind the velvet curtains of his Fifth Avenue study, Chuck will be governor, a latter-day Spitzer chasing corporate offenses in between incriminating sexploits, clad in ever-more refined sharkskin grays of power.

Even as Axe, Chuck, and Wendy split repeatedly over the public good, legal technicalities, and codes of honor, they are three peas in a pod, winners united in their incomparable competence, their oft-declared outsized intelligence, their profound professionalism. The show’s creators are also consummate professionals (a team that includes Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times financial pages): the script is exacting, the plot gasping, the performances riveting, the cameos towering, the wardrobe flawless. Not your average workplace drama, Billions is impressively synoptic in its horizontal integration of mental health, financial services, Silicon Valley industries, and law and order, with a little Yonkers-secret-recipe-pizza and private-duty-intravenous-hangover-cure-nurses spicing the mix. Some seek money, some seek glory, some seek power, but everyone wants to win. The show thus poses the question, at the time of writing in 2014, at the time of setting in 2012–2016, and at the time of airing in 2016–2018, of professional potency. What is it about this decade that makes being excellent at your elite job a matter of concern?

¤

The authors of the financial crisis were, on the whole, excellent at their jobs. Inventing asset classes to dissimulate toxicity, booking loans as revenues, hyping instruments to defer reckoning, evangelizing for the equations that discount merely mortal common sense, and evading regulatory oversight with NASCAR agility, the hedgies of the new millennium performed spectacularly. What Axe calls the “unimaginative, do-gooder authorities” — regulators and legislators, Federal Reserve governors and lifetime senators — stood equally spectacular in their unwavering commitment to the upward transfer of wealth.

Barack Obama, the executive officer with purview over all this excellence — Harvard Law stamped, a 10 million popular vote win span, and cooler than the crispest cucumber — tragically forswore the audacity of power, and instead measured his every move for the middle. Appointing Wall Street alums to the Justice Department, maintaining the GOP Treasury, and utterly staying the course with the boondoggle bailout Hank Paulson and George W. Bush had rushed in late 2008, Obama achieved bipartisan support for the plutocracy. He declined to bail out the people. He announced but never really executed a program to aid homeowners in tiny proportion to the support for banks. He committed to but never delivered a plan for jobs for struggling homeowners, and he oversaw, in the name of Too Big To Fail, outrageous mergers of investment banks with consumer banks destined to risk even bigger failures. Facing the black and white of racist obstruction and class war, he went gray. Professionalism of the middle is not professionalism of the top.

2008’s extreme wreckage couldn’t be answered from the center. Billions endorses excess, and not only through the tops of S&M dens. It meets tremendous deeds with zealous, polarizing professional prowess. All three principals are awesomely effective, getting out there and doing what needs to be done. In supreme-stakes “three-dimensional chess,” as they call it, Axe, Chuck, and Wendy appraise their options with hawkish precision, and much of the viewing pleasure rests in the exertions of keeping up with these darting analysts. If we can hang with these pros, tracking their razor rhetoric, technical argot, nimble abbrevs, and bountiful movie allusions, aren’t we smart too? (I watch the show with my JD/Econ PhD husband, and we need subtitles.)

The power of the spoken smart animates most episodes of Billions. Choice bon mots leaked to the press can trigger shorts and swaps, misdirections planted in the ears of suspected moles confirm corporate espionage, incendiary insults inspire ire, and single syllables can suborn murder. Threats are promises and speeches are deeds; to be effective is to wield the word as cause, spurring domino actions. Fierce oratory anchors the action, accomplished stage actors people the remarkable cast, and the show makes much ado of theater, its narrow focus on the orators predominating over fancy camerawork, set design, or action sequences. Drama is the paramount medium of the act, so Billions deploys its theatricality to foreground its study of agency.

Evoking black box theater in its constrained interiors — the dark kitchen of the Rhoades’s Brooklyn townhouse, the wood paneling of Upper East Side clubs, the utilitarian taupe of federal offices — the show’s aesthetic is a tight frame for the efficacious act. It makes virtually no use of exterior settings, establishing shots, panoramas, or montage, only occasionally inserts drone footage of the Manhattan skyline between scenes, and is almost exclusively low-lit, faces half in shadow. Even the gleaming white of the Axelrod Westport headquarters (a conspicuous post-9/11 relocation for many such firms) reflects the light of scrutiny, transparent office walls and centered communal trader table exposing and circumscribing power plays. Chess moves within close squares, the actions anyone takes best be good form, as they’ll ramify into a long tail.

Poor form haunts Axe even as he cuts a precision figure, since his solo firm originated in unsavory transactions around 2001, a second world-historical juxtaposition alongside 2008. The destruction of the World Trade Center created all kinds of opportunities for financial crimes and shady gains, from insufficient health care for widows and first-responders, to the war-profiteering that drove the stock market up after the fraudulent invasion of Iraq. Axe, we learn late in season one, owes no small segment of his empire to 9/11. A stroke of luck kept him out of the office that morning, and a stroke of evil genius netted him nearly a billion dollars by shorting airline and hotel stocks in the very hours during which his colleagues perished.

The line from 9/11 to 2008 to 2018 spun by Billions is the problematic of professional power, from W’s amateur incompetence to O’s centrist impotence to HRC’s unshakable taint. Does power rest with the mighty rulers of imperialism, or with the few who seek retribution? When the elites peddle business as usual amid crises of their own making, how do they get away with it? Can a woman maintain the same middling charade as her male predecessor? Billions merges these elite domains of the political, the legal, and the financial with the baser registers of the professional, the sexual, and the criminal. Absolute effectiveness requires relative tactics in different domains, but the strategy remains the same.

¤

Luxely compensated black-clad Wendy is the cold, beating heart of the show. Her impeccable professionalism carves out an admirable Obama middle way between justice and money. The creative choice to foreground a woman in a genre usually defined by its abundant big swinging dicks comprises the show’s sizable allure. Beautifully loyal to both Axe and Chuck, Wendy’s actions are not quite as determining as theirs, and indeed several of the plot trajectories involve elaborate maneuvers by both men to protect her from implication in their misdoings. But she is fiercely dignified in her right to a career unhampered by her husband’s, hungry at every moment for a harder puzzle. Her work acumen shines as a real point of identification.

The middle imagines itself as noble, going high when they go low, but it often requires a certain prostitution, and Wendy finally sells herself to protect both her men. Having quit Axe Cap and left her marriage at the end of season one, over the course of season two she eventually negotiates a deal to recenter herself and buffer her men from one another: she’ll return to the firm, and Bobby will drop the hundreds of malicious prosecution lawsuits he is funding against Chuck; she’ll return to the marriage, and Chuck will hunt other whales. A potent broker like the rest of them, she exudes Swiss neutrality even as the show centers her decisive seat of power.

Combining the financial and legal expertise of her two men with her own primary expertise in psychic motivation, Wendy’s control is dazzling to behold, her deeds superseding those of both men. It comes as a hard gut-punch when the third season’s decisive misdeed is her own: she violates her patient Mafee, a likable every-bro with just enough “Navy SEAL” to thrive at Axe Cap, trading on her insider knowledge of his infatuation with her to seduce him, persuading him to lie to federal investigators on her behalf. Axe, Chuck, and Wendy are all facing jail time for their vertiginous triple crossing at season two’s climax, in which Chuck raids the personal trust he had sequestered when taking public office to overinvest in his friend’s juice company, but really to bait Axe into sabotaging the company to score on a big short of the IPO. Wendy, learning of the sabotage, does not warn Chuck, but joins the short. Her hedge is financially savvy though legally and maritally unsound, a middle ground between competing value systems, but no longer innocent. It primes her to shrewdly cross lines in season three, colluding with Axe and Chuck to pin the sabotage wholly on a fourth party, and to mine the exculpating falsehood from Mafee’s affections. As her black vixen sheaths foretell, the gray is untenable. There’s no credible integrity in the middle.

Wendy’s highly calculated betrayal of Mafee, and her betrayal of us for rooting for her, gets repaid in a patient’s betrayal of her. Taylor Mason is introduced in the second season as Mafee’s intern analyst, bound for the U Chicago MBA. Axe demands to be introduced to the young temp who makes Mafee millions, and on walks Taylor: “My pronouns are they, their, them.” Played by Asia Kate Dillon and earning Billions the Outstanding Drama Series award from GLAAD, Taylor is often celebrated as the first major gender nonconfirming character on a television series, but their drive is all too binary. “It’s not just about numbers and decimal points,” Wendy warns them. “No, I’m pretty sure there is only money,” comes their icy retort.

Where others want the good or the might, Taylor’s want is the machine. A stony quant, their grad school plans dissipate in the sway of one of Bobby’s trademark virile speeches: “You retreat behind your aquarium walls. What you don’t realize, Taylor, is that glass — it’s not a barrier, it’s a lens. It’s an asset. It’s what makes you good. You see things differently. That’s an edge.” The ensuing comp bargaining, rapid-fire and cut-throat, is equally signature. If there is someone who can rival Bobby, it is Taylor — not Chuck, poor analog soul. Where Chuck tries and fails to use Wendy to beat Axe, Taylor wins, optimizing their private sessions with Wendy to ultimately manipulate Axe.

Heeding Wendy and trusting their judgment, Bobby gives Taylor the reins at Axe Capital after one of Chuck’s contortions at last ensnares him in enough legal trouble to warrant a trading suspension. After crushing the capital raise by garnering $6 billion in new investments from a single speech, Taylor abruptly launches a solo firm, breaking Bobby’s bank and Wendy’s heart. All along, we’ve watched Wendy’s dual loyalties reap uneven returns: Axe tells her almost everything, leaving little plausible deniability (thank god for Doctor-Patient privilege), but Chuck tells her lies, and profanes patient confidentiality to steal fuel for his cases against Axe. With Taylor, she finds a relationship more complicated and intriguing than those with the male traders — an arc of actualization for both, a hint of the psychiatrist’s vocation beyond fluffing. But she also finds out that her most genuinely gratifying work can be someone else’s chess move; Taylor uses Wendy’s empathy for their experience in the über-male workplace to spur Wendy to advise Axe to offer Taylor more money, more prominence, more “forward momentum.” In a gray garage, in the most stabbing exchange of all the show’s Shakespearean duels, Wendy spits, “What do you want?”:

Taylor: You.

Wendy: You think … I’ll actually come with you? Haven’t you done enough damage?

T: I’m building not destroying. That’s where you come in …

W: Nice ideas. You are no moral fucking compass. For a moment, I thought you might be because you needed me to think that. But you used me. … You preyed on me and my empathy for you, preyed on me to get what you wanted from Axe — being part of the raise — so fuck you.

T: Oh, you don’t seem to understand. I’m not just offering you a job for my sake. I’m offering you a fresh start for yours. A restart for your slew of fuckups. You let things devolve at Axe Capital. You didn’t see me being pushed out the door. You couldn’t stop Axe from succumbing to his own worst nature. Instead, you succumbed to it. And who knows what other fallout you’ve created or at least allowed elsewhere in your life.

By recognizing that Wendy’s professional power underwrites Axe Cap’s, and thus that Wendy is culpable for its sins, Taylor caresses Wendy’s raw desire in one hand, while bitch-slapping her with the other. Wendy pretends to be in the middle, but is really in charge; by contrast, Taylor intends transparent management, “top down but not imperious or impetuous,” and largely “tech-centric,” employing the team of algo writers Axe Cap only briefly entertained, working as purely as possible. “A place free of arrests, indictments, insinuations,” Mase Cap pledges a Shangri-La of robotic proficiency bulwarked against irrational exuberance and illicit info. Even through the original sin of its founding, it’s a vision that winds Wendy, thudding the sternum of her own illusory virtue. Like Axe before them, Taylor goes solo with filthy lucre, but points out that Wendy, too, is an axe. There is no middling in financial baseball.

Axe vows certain vengeance, while Wendy counsels “looking within, to see what you, what we, may have done to cause this. We rebuild our business as we rebuild ourselves.” As Wendy and Bobby align against Taylor, Wendy and Chuck also realign, finding new thrills in resistance to the noxious anti-black autocrat Jock Jeffcoat (Clancy Brown), the new Attorney General after national regime change. A gruesome fusion of Sessions and Trump, Jeffcoat’s racism is matched only by his corruption. (He even gets to shout, “You’re fired!”) Chuck spends the second half of season three working with his two black Assistant US Attorneys and a black New York State Attorney General to build an obstruction case against Jeffcoat, renewing his commitment to justice after a détente with Axe Cap, but applying all the brinksmanship lessons learned to goad Jock into exposure. Jock is a better target than Axe, for it is easier to believe in preserving the neutrality of political institutions than in revealing the open truth of the rigged market. Sacker assures: “He’s finally doing it right, the right thing […] He’s doing that Chuck thing, but for the right fucking reasons this time.”

The final sequence of season three distills all these tactical realignments. In companionable silence with Chuck, Wendy takes a call from Axe. “I saw Taylor,” she says. “Fuck them. No, I mean fuck them over. You have to. We do.” “Well, that’s different from look inward,” Axe reproves. “Yeah, well, you know what, I’m different.” A different Wendy invites Bobby into the Rhoades dining room, mutually funding a new rapprochement. The closing lines over flowing wine put the long play for season four: “So you know how you’re gonna go after Jock?” Bobby asks. “Some ideas floating around my head. And, uh, Taylor?” Chuck reciprocates. “Yeah, yeah, got a plan that’s starting to form.” Wendy, wronged by both Taylor’s treachery and Jock’s tyranny, husbands the partnership: “Tell him about it. There’s no one better at breaking down a strategy.” From above, the camera’s final shot captures the tops of three heads harmoniously leaning in, readying for “a real good time together” (The Velvet Underground trills us), for staking out different fights.

¤

From Wall Street to The Big Short, the financial malfeasance genre is often marked by its gray regard for greedy elites, and Billions doesn’t quite crack this ambivalent mold. It offers charismatic winners at many chosen professions, unencumbered by constructs like ethics or law, and we want to be on their teams. But the insistent connections it draws among its principals, their common core of intrinsic drive, provokes not so much the guilty pleasure of cheering guilty heroes, as the savory systematic reflection on the diversified ends of powerful means. Use your might for the middle, or go one better?

A hedge offsets risk by playing both sides, rapacious plunder in middle-ground clothing. Billions deftly explores these faux middles via elite power struggles, elite deeds, and the tactics of elite war. Strikingly, though, its insights catapult beyond elites, whose monopoly can’t be trusted, who shouldn’t be the winners all the time. Everyone needs tactics, everyone needs strategy. Even we the writers and readers of literary magazines amid the ruins of the university, we the taxi drivers and lawyers at LaGuardia, we the marchers for climate science and gun regulation and feminism, we the teachers on strike, we the candidates with “impossible” platforms, we the servers in restaurants, we the occupiers outside baby jails, we too with power. The middle cannot hold. Get out there and do what needs to be done.

¤

Anna Kornbluh teaches literature and literary theory at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

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[the-record-briefs]

Oct. 11, 2017: Columns

Perfect day for the 34th Annual Henry Moore Scholarship Golf Classic $22,000 raised for the Wilkes Community College Foundation

  Thursday, October 5, was a perfect autumn day for participants in the 34th Annual Henry Moore Scholarship Golf Classic, who gathered to play golf and support the Wilkes Community College Foundation. Proceeds from the 34th tournament totaled approximately $22,000 thanks to the 100 players and event sponsors. 

Proceeds from the golf tournament will benefit students at Wilkes Community College with student scholarships.

Since 1984, the Henry Moore Scholarship Golf Classic, held at Oakwoods Country Club, has contributed approximately $593,346 to the WCC Foundation that supports Wilkes Community  College.

This year’s tournament began with Danny Holman, golf committee member, thanking the sponsors. “The Henry Moore Scholarship Golf Classic is one of the longest-running golf tournaments in our area, said Holman. “I am grateful for the support of all the players, our sponsors, volunteers, and the committee members who helped make this year’s tournament such a great success.”

 Wilkes Community  College student ambassadors volunteered their time to help with the golf tournament. The student ambassadors were Jake Shore and Adrianne Draughn. Another student volunteer was Candy Francisco.

The winners for the 2017 competition include:

First     place gross: Jay Vannoy, Ray Love, Shane Simmons, Scotty Showerman

First     place net: Bill Bumgarner, Linda Absher, James Campbell, Judy Campbell

Second     place gross: Randall Parsons, Chris Kennedy, Ricky Brooks, Seth Rhoades

Second     place net: Jackie Mallory, Wes Minton, Keith Johnson, Ron Brown

Third     place gross: Joey Stone, Jamie Caudill, Marc Elliott, Danny Holman

Third     place net: David McNeill, Connie McNeill, Scott McNeill, Don Curley

Closest     to pin #8: Jeff Cox

Closest     to pin #12: Chad Aderhold

Closest     to pin #18: Shane Simmons

Longest     drive #13: (men) Jake Taylor, (seniors) Rey Rodriquez, and (women) Connie     McNeill

Chopper     Challenge: Terry Bumgarner

 Sponsors were Werner Ladder, Carolina West Wireless, Window World Inc, Wells Fargo, Arnold and Becky Lakey, Larry and Diane Stone, Bumgarner Services, The Sterling Group, Specialty Car Company Inc., Brushy Mountain Smokehouse and Creamery, Budweiser/RH Barringer, Rocky Hendrix, Pepsi, Fast Track, and CAG brands

Hole sponsors to the event were Animal Hospital of Wilkes, B&R Service, Benson Blevins & Associates PLLC, Keith and Aileen Bentley, Bob and Carol Black, Blue Ribbon Lawn Care, Blue Ridge Tractor, Brame Huie Pharmacy, Brame & Owens Financial Group, Brand Jewelry, Gordon and Abby Burns, Carolina Realty, Cook’s, Joe Campbell Roofing, Cubic, Inc., Don’s Seafood and Steak, Duane Cornett’s Detail Service, Cutting Edge Lawn and Landscape, Charles M. Drum, Elsewhere on 10th, Finley Properties,  Fleet Master, Chuck Forester, FSIoffice, Gardner Glass Products, Great State Bank, Vaughn Hayes, InfusionPoints LLC, Louisiana Pacific, McNeely Pest Control, McNeill Nissan of Wilkesboro, MECI & Associates, Inc.,  Mike’s Body Shop, Party Time Rentals, Pencare-Total Office, Phillips Cleaning Service, PruittHealth Hospice, Reins-Sturdivant, Bob and Alline Skees, Carl & Peggy Swofford, Suncrest Farms Country Ham, The Dispensary, The 50’s, Vannoy Colvard, Triplett & Vannoy, Susan Whittington, WFBH-Wilkes Medical Center, Wilkes Community College, Wilkes Economic Development Corporation, and Wilkes County Hardware.

Other contributors to the event were Champion Towing, Chick-Fil-A, Copper Barrel, Leatherwood, MerleFest, Northwest Food Service, The Walker Center, and the WCC Absher Bookstore.

In addition to the support received by the players and sponsors, the Henry Moore Golf Classic was made possible with the efforts of a dedicated group of volunteers. Individuals donating their time and energy to the event were Austin Anderson, Evelyn Bumgarner, Gordon Burns, Kathy Gray, Steve Hall, Arnold Lakey, Sandra McLain, Connie McNeill, Ann Parsons, Christy Perry, and Bobby and Susan Phillips,

Thank you to the WCC Foundation Golf Committee members: Chairman Ben Garrett, Linda Absher, Evelyn Bumgarner, Danny Holman, Arnold Lakey, Jackie Mallory, Connie McNeill, Phil Stevens and Jay Vannoy.

The golf tournament is named for the late Henry Moore, who was instrumental in the establishment of Oakwoods Country Club and a strong supporter of the college. He was eager to assist with the planning of WCC’s first golf tournament, helping with the layout and details of the tournament as well as being the first player to sign up to play. Unfortunately, Henry Moore passed away a few months prior to that first tournament in 1984. Saddened by the loss of a great friend and supporter, the college officially named the tournament the Henry Moore Golf Classic in his memory.

For more information on making a donation to the WCC Foundation, contact the Wilkes Community College Development Office at 336-838-6491. Contributions may be sent to WCC Foundation, P.O. Box  120, Wilkesboro, NC 28697.

Wilkes Community College, a member of the North Carolina Community College System, is a public, two-year, open-door institution serving the people of Wilkes, Ashe and Alleghany counties and beyond. Established in 1965, WCC continues to build on a strong history of meeting the educational needs and cultural interests of our students, community and workforce. WCC prepares learners for success in a dynamic world.

  t

[nothingunrealistic]

WENDY: You seem different. Lighter. Focused. Happy. WAGS: Yes, like Bruce Wayne after training at the monastery. TAYLOR: Steve Jobs after meditating in India. WAGS: Deadlier than ever. AXE: Okay. You guys are laying this on thicker than a Carol Kaye bassline.

—————

SENIOR: You’ve orchestrated this thing like Phil Spector did “River Deep.” CHUCK: Perhaps not who I’d have used to make the point, but, yes, we put together a wrecking crew and let them play, much as he did.

7x02 original sin // 7x12 admirals fund. carol kaye was a bass player and a member of the wrecking crew, a group of musicians who first came together as the session musicians for songs produced by phil spector and went on to play on hundreds of pop and rock records in the sixties and seventies. “wrecking crew” is a pretty good alternative name for team kill prince in my opinion.

[nothingunrealistic]

“Billions” ends where it began. At the close of “Admirals Fund,” the series finale of the Showtime drama series, Bobby Axelrod is scheming once again to make a new fortune with his merry band of alpha-male traders, who are revved up by his leadership to kill in the name of capitalism. The closing segment of “Billions” was unabashedly designed to appeal to fans of the sudsy drama, which turns on the crazier-than-fiction tales of hedge fund managers and traders. Axelrod, played with gusto until the final frame by Damian Lewis, winds up on top. His most recent foil, rival trader/investor Michael Prince (Corey Stoll), has been defeated, publicly humiliated — although he is destined to rise again. “As it has ever been for men like you over the centuries,” Prince’s loyal confidant Scooter (Daniel Breaker) tells him in their parting scene. As is to be expected, the finale features a lot of reflection among key characters on who they are as people — who they have been in the past, and where they are headed in the future. There’s some ruminating on whether people can change, and what it is that makes them change. A key turning point for core characters is buttressed in the soundtrack by the use of Blind Faith’s haunting “Can’t Find My Way Home.” But in fact, by the closing moments, pillars of the “Billions” universe seem to be setting out on a clear path to find solace and even happiness. For the grand battle, Axelrod and Rhoades teamed up to help Axelrod exact revenge against Prince for the coup that Prince pulled against Axelrod at the end of Season 5. That forced Axe out of the country and allowed Prince to take over the ashes of Axe Capital. The Season 7 plot of Axe’s revenge campaign was typically complicated, involving Prince’s quixotic bid for the presidency by promulgating a Trump-esque platform, an ego-stroking trip to Camp David, a big dose of fake news around energy stocks and some sleight of hand that allowed the good guys to stay rich while Prince was (mostly) wiped out. Most of “Billions” revolved around epic cat-and-mouse chases between Axelrod and Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), the former New York federal prosecutor-turned-New York attorney general-turned disgraced politician-turned (by the end of Season 7) New York federal prosecutor again. Rhoades wanted to nab Axe for violating the federal rules of high-finance, whereas Axelrod always saw his efforts not in the dim light of insider trading but as going the extra mile to understand the market. Rhoades closes out the series an unusual state of contentment. He’s pulled off a professional coup in nailing Prince. He even gets an attaboy from his ultra wealthy and politically connected father, Chuck Rhoades Sr. (played with a charming sneer by Jeffrey DeMunn), who has nagged him throughout the series for not being nearly successful nor mean enough for Senior’s liking. And Chuck has once again secured the role of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — one of the most powerful law enforcement posts in the country.

One the quirky conceits of “Billions” from the start was that Chuck Rhoades, crusader for justice and fairness on Wall Street, was married to (and then divorced from) Wendy Rhoades (Maggie Siff), a razor-sharp psychologist who works as a life coach for Axe Capital, helping traders overcome their insecurities. The tension in their marriage was both personal and professional. It took actors of Siff and Giamatti’s caliber to pull off what would otherwise be too fantastical of a storyline to survive. Wendy Rhoades throughout the series was torn between her loyalty to Axelrod and her fealty to her husband and father of her two children. That strain eventually led the Rhoadeses to divorce. The finale depicts Wendy and Chuck sitting down happily at a fancy Japanese restaurant with their teenage children. Whether that signals a romantic reunion for Chuck and Wendy or not is open to interpretation (probably the stuff of future fan fiction). But the message is clear: These two are no longer at odds. Another Wendy subplot throughout “Billions” has been the peculiarity of her relationship with Axelrod. There’s an unmistakable chemistry between the two. They are deeply involved with each other — something that irritated Chuck and Bobby’s various partners to no end — but not in a sexual way. The “Billions” writers kept that discipline to the end, teasing out a long final scene that ended with a hug that was still more brother-to-sister than lover to lover. Wendy heads out of the world of Axelrods and Princes to do some good for the world by running her tele-health therapy business. “Maybe you’ll take me public some day,” Wendy tells Axe with a smile as she assures him they will still stay connected even if she’s not formally on his payroll.

As for the fates of other key characters in the series: Mike “Wags” Wagner (David Costabile): Axe’s hard-partying, hard-working, ever-faithful second in command is heading off to Miami to check out the investment scene there. He is also breaking from Axe at long last, albeit on good terms. Kate Sacker (Dola Rashad): The ultra-ambitious federal prosecutor turned general counsel for Michael Prince Capital has not wavered from her plan (telegraphed as early as Season 1) to pursue political office. She’s on a mission to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as the series ends. Taylor Mason (Asia Kate Dillon): Taylor’s quant-tastic genius helps play a big part in the sting that ends “Billions,” of course. And they too decide its time to move on from the Axe universe, sort of. Like Wendy, Taylor yearns to give back after more than proving their worth at making piles of money by outsmarting others. Taylor moves their foundation into the old Axe Capital headquarters in Greenwich, while the newly constituted Axe Global claims the former Michael Prince Capital headquarters in Manhattan. Dudley Mafee (Dan Soder): The doe-eyed trader with a heart of gold is back with Axe and celebrating the dawn of legal weed sales in the Empire State. Bryan Connerty (Toby Leonard Moore): The former federal prosecutor who went into a professional spiral after a big falling out with Chuck Rhoades has his honor restored. Chuck Rhoades helps him get his law license reinstated even if Connerty is now otherwise engaged as a chef at a high-end Japanese hibachi restaurant (where the Rhoades clan dines in their final scene). Roger “Scooter” Dunbar (Daniel Breaker): Mike Prince’s loyal soldier lays down his sword. He’s saved from personal ruin by his nephew, Phillip, who worked for Michael Prince Capital but was in cahoots with the Axe group all along. Scooter gives Prince the politest of brushoffs at the end, but a brushoff nonetheless. “Dollar” Bill Stearn (Kelly AuCoin): The epitome of the amoral Wall Streeter driven only by money, Dollar Bill is back with Axe, once again leading the pack of trader wolves — and shouting vulgarities to his heart’s content.

some corrections on this:

wags is at least sticking around long enough to help axe get axe global up and running.

sacker may still be hoping to get elected to congress, but she’s given up on that mission for the moment to return to SDNY, which is kind of an important detail to leave out here.

taylor is moving into the recently-vacated axe global office in manhattan, not the former axe capital office in connecticut from seasons 1-2. (they don’t even look anything alike.)

that hibachi restaurant connerty’s working at is not high-end.

scooter is going to go be a conductor. it’s not an error exactly to leave it out, but it is a glaring omission.

i was going to say that philip isn’t mentioned at all, which would be a grievous insult. then i double checked and saw that he is mentioned briefly, but with his name misspelled, in discussing scooter’s ending, and that’s it. less grievous, still an insult.

[nothingunrealistic]

New York City has been the backdrop for many TV series over the years, from “Law & Order” to “Sex and the City” to “Succession.” But the Showtime series “Billions,” which ends on Sunday after seven seasons, may have been the New Yorkiest of them all. It’s clear from the opening credits, which feature an eagle-eye’s view of Lower Manhattan — but no actors — that New York City is not merely a location but the star. The showrunners, Brian Koppelman and David Levien, planned it that way. “The city plays a central role on the show,” said Mr. Levien. “We always felt like being here and knowing the city was like our secret weapon.” Mr. Koppelman and Mr. Levien were both born on Long Island but eventually moved to New York City. (“Nothing makes you more desperate to be in Manhattan than growing up on Long Island,” Mr. Koppelman said.) The two first worked together on the screenplay for the 1997 film “Rounders,” set in the underground poker scene in New York, and they went on to collaborate on “Knockaround Guys,” “Runaway Jury,” “Solitary Man” and “Ocean’s Thirteen.” But “Billions” was their love letter to New York City. New York has been integral to the plot, which follows the endless battle between hedge fund billionaires (Bobby “Axe” Axelrod, played by Damian Lewis, and in later seasons, Mike Prince, played by Corey Stoll) and the U.S. attorney, Chuck Rhoades Jr. (played by Paul Giamatti).

The characters have visited hundreds of locations in the city, from the Thurgood Marshall United States Court House on Centre Street in Lower Manhattan to Morningside Castle in Morningside Heights and the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Scenes have been filmed at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands, Barclays Center in Brooklyn, and Yonkers Raceway. “There was almost nowhere that we couldn’t shoot, that we wanted to,” Mr. Levien said. The neighborhoods where the “Billions” characters live also serve as shorthand for their personalities. Chuck’s father, Chuck Rhoades Sr., is an old school, blue-blood businessman, so naturally he lives on the wealthiest stretch of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, not far from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Chuck Jr., whose positions as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (and New York attorney general) involve prosecuting financial crimes, lives in a Brooklyn brownstone (the exterior shots are of 49 Eighth Avenue, in Park Slope). “Chuck Sr. would not experiment with another neighborhood just because he could, financially,” said Mr. Koppelman. “He’s not going to go try a loft in TriBeCa.” And it makes sense that Chuck Jr. lives on an understated (but gorgeous) block outside Manhattan: “Chuck would have been a little bit rebellious to his dad’s ways,” Mr. Koppelman said. Brooklyn? “Senior thinks it’s like the frontier, basically.” Axe, the character played by Damian Lewis, is the CEO of Axe Capital, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund. His Manhattan home is an airy, light-filled penthouse, high above the city. “It’s this incredible glass box built on top of this building downtown in TriBeCa,” said Mr. Levien. “Because, you know, he is somebody that would go try some neighborhood, live where he wants, open himself up to new experiences.” The location was an actual apartment where the show filmed for a couple of years — and it impressed even the showrunners. “If you’re a New Yorker, it’s fascinating to walk through what a $60 million apartment is,” Mr. Koppelman said.

As die-hard denizens of New York City, the characters on “Billions” eat at all the best and most famous restaurants. There are scenes set inside upscale white-tablecloth rooms at expensive eateries like Keens Steakhouse, Babbo, Craft, Ai Fiori, Wolfgang’s Steakhouse, Michael’s, The Pool and Marea. But the characters also visit more humble spots: Wo Hop, Gray’s Papaya, Joe’s Pizza, Old Town Bar, Costello’s Claddagh Inn. There are new favorites (Una Pizza Napoletana) as well as New York classics, like Peter Luger’s, Cibao, Second Avenue Deli and Barney Greengrass. Mr. Koppelman said that for New Yorkers, food information is a valuable currency. “Finding the best bao is as important as finding the best four-star flambé or something,” he laughed. “The show was absolutely trying to show you the real thing over and over again each time. Where’s the best hot dog, where’s the best burger?” New York City chefs — including Daniel Boulud, David Chang, Kwame Onwuachi, Tom Colicchio, Alex Guarnaschelli — have made cameo appearances in “Billions,” weaving the show intricately into the food scene. (The show featured so many restaurants that someone wrote a book detailing the locations.) “Because we’re New Yorkers and we care about New York, we care about these restaurants, we care about these people, we want to find a way to showcase what they love about their place and what they do,” said Mr. Koppelman. (And at some restaurants, it’s not just the food that the characters are into: In the first episode of Season 4, Chuck Jr. and the police commissioner visit Sparks Steakhouse and re-enact the 1985 murder of Paul Castellano, the reputed boss of the Gambino crime family — a hit that an F.B.I. investigator said was arranged by John Gotti.) In addition to celebrated places, the show features the occasional lesser-known gem — like Chartwell, “the world’s Only Winston Churchill bookstore.” When he needs some quick cash, Chuck Jr. sells his collection of Winston Churchill books. Being featured on a television show can be a boost for business and for a shop owner’s self-esteem. “Most places that we got feedback from that were featured in the show were extremely happy to be associated and to be recognized sort of like nationally and internationally,” said Mr. Levien.

Watching movies set in New York when they were younger inspired both of the showrunners. The Coney Island scenes in “Warriors” and the dinner scene in “The Godfather,” they said, were especially memorable. “The walking in the back door at the Copa in ‘Goodfellas’ is an all-time classic,” Mr. Levien said. Mr. Koppelman was in awe of the Sal’s Pizza scenes in “Do the Right Thing.” “I’ll never forget the extra cheese argument in that movie. It reveals so much about character,” he said. “It’s a very important thing in my cinematic journey as a young person wanting to do this — we thought over and over and over and over and over again about Sal’s Pizza.” There was only one downside of filming in New York, Mr. Levien said: “Sirens and car horns. Ruining takes. When these actors are locked in concentrating on some serious emotional monologue or moment — and you know, it’s like, ‘Hold for the police helicopter. Hold for the fire truck.’” For their next show, Mr. Levien and Mr. Koppelman may head to Florida. “We’re certainly really animated by the idea of making a show set in Miami,” Mr. Koppelman said. Still, Mr. Levien said filming in New York was “such a privilege.” Mr. Koppelman put it this way: “I do think, as is often the case for a Long Island-born New Yorker, who has been a New Yorker for 35 years, Billy Joel put it best: I’ve loved these days.”

[nothingunrealistic]

please join me in imagining the face taylor would have made upon seeing these alleged hors d’oeuvres if they’d been at this meeting

[nothingunrealistic]

The final season of Showtime‘s hit series Billions is nearly here and ahead of the August 11 premiere, stars such as Paul Giamatti, Damian Lewis, Maggie Siff, and more are offering viewers an update on who’s who and where the ensemble of characters are at as the seventh season picks up.

Scroll down for a peek into what’s ahead and don’t miss the return of Billions when it makes its final season return on Paramount+ this summer.

[…]

Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis) Returning Billionaire With smarts and ruthlessness, the working-class kid from Yonkers, New York, ascended to the apex of Wall Street, despite enemies like prosecutor Chuck Rhoades. The self-described opportunist’s “one saving grace: loyalty,” says Lewis. That useful skill could help his return home.

Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) Former NYS AG The silver spoon–raised Junior opted for power at all costs in civil service, eventually winning election as New York State attorney general…before being ejected. This season, Chuck “attempts to reclaim some moral compass,” says Giamatti. His mandate is to stop “the self-interested monster” Prince.

Wendy Rhoades (Maggie Siff) Staff Shrink The brilliant, intuitive performance coach—“she’s superhuman in this realm,” says Siff, like former boss Axe and her ex-husband Chuck—“perceives a threat in Prince and takes a moral stand.” Her journey this season: “plotting and full of machinations she’s often side-stepped before.”

Mike Prince (Corey Stoll) Billionaire Tycoon The hedge fund titan who took over Axe’s business is running for POTUS. Way less ethical than he professes, “Prince sincerely feels his actions are justified and that they help most people,” Stoll says. “Axe is out for revenge, but only a huge conspiracy can take Prince down!”

Mike Wagner (David Costabile) Axe’s Enforcer Wags is always “right in the center of the mix,” says Costabile. “If he hasn’t proven himself an excellent chess player by now, he has really blown it.” Libertine and loyal, Axe’s onetime No. 2 may still work at MPC, “but the bond between Axe and Wags endures.”

Taylor Mason (Asia Kate Dillon) Chief financial analyst Taylor feels constrained by Prince, even though the “driven, ambitious” nonbinary character co-runs his company. “They must decide what kind of person they want to be and what they will risk it all for,” says Dillon, describing Taylor’s relationship with Axe as “kinetic.”

Kate Sacker (Dola Rashad) Prince Cap Lawyer Once Chuck’s trusted assistant U.S. attorney, Kate has smarts and a “cutthroat ambition,” the actress says, that brought her over to Prince Cap as legal counsel. “She navigates holding a more powerful position.”

Chuck Rhoades Sr. (Jeffrey DeMunn) Father figure Chuck’s dad, an entitled, money-loving businessman with a young wife and child, is a thorn in his son’s side when he pushes the boundaries of his marital fidelity and continues to interfere in Chuck’s business.

“Scooter” Dunbar (Daniel Breaker) Prince’s Enforcer Prince’s enigmatic right-hand man is uncle to Philip, who now temporarily oversees Michael Prince Capital with Taylor. Will Scooter, seemingly joined at the hip with Wags, be Mike’s spy at the company to ensure no one undermines the boss’ plans?

Daevisha Mahar (Sakina Jaffrey) Acting AG The crafty defense attorney—who is now acting attorney general—is swimming in treacherous waters, working publicly against but privately with her disgraced boss Chuck to take down Prince. Knowing Chuck’s deviousness, the future of that alliance could turn on a chess move.

Philip Charyn (Toney Goins) Tycoon in training Despite Uncle Scooter’s opposition, the math whiz was embraced by Prince, who recognized his strategic acumen and fearless trading. Quickly promoted, Philip partnered with Taylor at their division before being tapped as the execs in charge.

[nothingunrealistic]

truly can’t believe billions set me up to not only anticipate but hope for “charles rhoades senior gay experience” and then let me down

[nothingunrealistic]

DEGIULIO: All our kids are gonna end up in second-tier schools.

CHUCK: Not Eva. She’s going to Yale.

—————

CHUCK: How was it?

WENDY: Fine, after your father got done browbeating Kevin over his handshake.

CHUCK: He could probably use it.

WENDY: Right, because the tensile strength of his grip alone will dictate his outcome in life.

CHUCK: You’d be surprised.

—————

Senior gives Kevin a present.

SENIOR: Happy birthday, Kevin.

KEVIN: Thanks, Grandpa.

Senior, Wendy, Chuck, and Eva watch Kevin pick at the wrapping paper.

SENIOR: It’s a fucking slinky. Now leave us alone and make some fun out of that with your hands and some hardwood stairs, huh?

Kevin and Eva head upstairs.

SENIOR: If he’s still playing with it tomorrow, put all of your energies into the girl.

—————

WENDY: Kevin’s gonna be applying to colleges soon. And if you can’t get him into Yale, we’re gonna need them to jam him into —

CHUCK: Don’t say Cornell.

1x09 where the f*ck is donnie? // 3x03 a generation too late // 4x09 american champion // 6x07 napoleon’s hat

[nothingunrealistic]

WHERE SHOULD I GO?

BETTER I DON’T KNOW

TEXT ME A CODE FROM A BURNER EVERY 8 HOURS THAT UR SAFE

5:13

MESSAGES | now Unknown You may have already won a house!!

2:41

MESSAGES | now Unknown Do you need your house painted?

[nothingunrealistic]

from the 3x04 recap: shots of chuck tearing up and throwing away photos of wendy and heidecker post-rendezvous that senior gave him. this didn’t appear in any previous episode; chuck received the photos in 2x12, so that’s the earliest it could have happened, but it might have originally been in an episode of season 3 instead.

[nothingunrealistic]

SENIOR: And even as a kid, you would never get into a fight unless you knew you could win it. Oh, do you remember that Minsk boy? He was a head taller than you, probably could’ve made you eat dirt. And he left that ball field thinking you were best friends.

CHUCK: Okay, Dad, I gotta go.

SENIOR: And then I made sure he didn’t get into Dalton.

—————

MINCHAK: On the hazing, the whole Code Red situation, you were the victim, not one of the aggressors. You were Santiago, not Dawson.

CHUCK: Boy, they left me black and blue anywhere my shirt would hide.

MINCHAK: And you told on them?

CHUCK: Oh, no. Oh, it had its desired effect. I never breathed a word. Until just now. But later, not a few days, two years later… intramural baseball. I was at bat, the ringleader was catching. And on one fast ball, I swung backwards. Lefty. Right into his face.

MINCHAK: Was he wearing a mask?

CHUCK: Yeah, that’s why his head stayed on, but his jaw… shattered.

1x06 the deal // 2x10 with or without you

[nothingunrealistic]

The markets have closed for Billions, the high-stakes financial drama that concluded its run after seven adrenaline-filled seasons. With one last flawlessly executed final scheme, longtime rivals Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) and Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis) banded together to topple self-righteous billionaire Mike Prince (Corey Stoll). In one fell swoop, Prince turned pauper and Axe’s most loyal sycophants lined their pockets. “Admirals Fund” provides the veneer of a happy ending, with Axe reclaiming his old hedge fund and career lawman Chuck reasserting his mission to bring criminals to justice, but that doesn’t signify growth, co-creators and co-showrunners Brian Koppelman and David Levien tell Vulture. “They can’t help themselves!” says Koppelman. “You’re taking on the language of evolving, maybe, but that doesn’t mean you’re evolving.”

How does it feel to say good-bye? Brian Koppelman: The way the audience interacted with this show, the people who loved it, they were as obsessed as we were in the telling of it. This last season was for them. It was for people who wanted to figure out the references, who wanted to understand what the characters meant when they were saying various things — people who basically had murder boards of their own up, trying to figure out the alliances. People who love the show watch it over and over again, and that’s the kind of viewer we are when it comes to the things we love. We watched the finale with an audience at the 92nd Street Y, and it was amazing because they laughed in every spot where we hoped that they would. Axe telling Prince that $100 million in Indiana is practically like being a billionaire. Or Senior telling Chuck not to slump about the shoulders. That felt really good to us.

Can you describe the writing process as you headed toward the finale? David Levien: Every time we’ve done a season finale, we’re dealing with a good amount of resolution on the season, but we wanted to always leave a fresh edge. If not a cliffhanger, something that was a dramatic question that was going to propel everybody into the next season. This time around it was like the season was a funnel going down to this final narrowing. There was no tomorrow. We made a list of the characters we needed to say good-bye to and the pairings that needed to have their moments of closure. BK: We wanted to reward all the people who watch closely. The shows we kept talking about were the Mad Men final episode, and obviously The Sopranos final episode and The West Wing final episode too. Even though Aaron Sorkin didn’t write it, you could feel John Wells’s hand in a very direct way. That West Wing ending was satisfying because you had some good dramatic questions at the heart of it, but also got these character resolutions. We were so happy that we got Timothy Busfield in the show this season because for us, Allison Janney and Busfield’s relationship in that final episode, building up to Allison Janney saying, “I don’t want to stay at the White House” — we wanted to make sure we honor our characters in the way that they honored those characters.

What were your specific goals for this final episode? DL: The goal was to find a way to balance these final moments with the characters with a plot that had to have a lot of resolution, and to find a way to not just end the story and then have a lot of good-byes. BK: We talked about wanting the visceral reaction to moments like Axe’s last words to the troops. We wanted it to feel a certain way — the way that Billions felt — but hoped that then you might say to yourself, “Wow, that’s a happy ending for Axe. I’m so happy.” And then you might go, “Hold on a second. So this guy, after all this desire for freedom, his last words are, ‘Let’s make some fucking money!’?” It’s like, is that really a happy ending? But we want you to feel that. The whole time, we were trying to create the adrenaline rush of being around these kinds of avaricious characters who chase a certain kind of freedom and power. It’s that thrill of riding shotgun with them. We always hope that each time the ride ends, you ask yourself why and what it means about the world you’re living in — that this has become a thing we allow to thrill us. We always felt the best way to do that wasn’t to satirize it, and it wasn’t to talk about it, but it was to put you there with them on that rollercoaster ride. We wanted the end to do that too. But, you know, the song “Take the Money and Run” is hilarious, and it feels a certain way, but we’re also telling you a story about what the fuck is going on.

I was like, “Wait a minute, Chuck and Axe are right back where they started!” They’re talking about how they’ve grown, how they’re different. No, you’re not! BK: Rian evolves. Taylor takes a big step toward evolution. But people like Dollar Bill, they’re never going to evolve. Victor’s never going to evolve. That’s not really part of their matrix. But Axe belongs behind that desk. That’s where he’s supposed to be. With Wendy, she’s the main character of Billions because Wendy is the one character who is able to go beyond the hero’s journey. If anyone can resist the temptation of the gods, it’s Wendy. What Maggie Siff has done is given the show humanity and someone to root for throughout the entire series. We could all hope that she would pick herself up out of that morass and remember who she is. And Jeffrey DeMunn is a national treasure; his performance has been absolutely extraordinary. DL: In the screening, when we cut to him sitting at his desk when Chuck walks in, the room erupted. Because they knew they were going to be delighted by whatever happened. That’s just what he brings.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve called Jeffrey DeMunn’s character “loathsome” in my recaps — and he made me cry in that scene! DL: Jeff DeMunn being a loathsome character is the height of artistry because he’s a wonderful man. He’s nothing like that character. BK: The whole time you’re writing the series, you’re not allowing yourself to give in. But it’s hard to write that final episode without feeling a lot of emotion about the characters.

Final question: Did Toby Leonard Moore have teppanyaki training? DL: Over the course of a long-running series, you get to know a lot about the cast, and if they have special skills, we try to use them — like Condola Rashad speaking fluent Italian. But Toby did mention to us around season two that he’d worked his way through school being a teppanyaki chef. And we just had it in our heads in the final season: “We got to get this in somehow, because it’ll be amazing to see him doing it.” When we told him, of course, he was like, “I’m so rusty, I haven’t done it for years.” And we’re like, “We’ll send a guy — start practicing.” BK: But he’s magnificent, isn’t he? I think most people were not expecting to see him back at the hibachi at the end of the episode.

[nothingunrealistic]

From the office to the forest, the men of Billions are taking some much-needed time out in nature in the final season’s upcoming eighth episode. In an exclusive to Collider clip, audiences can catch a sneak peek at the men’s camping trip that launches them out of their comfort zones and forces them to slow down and take in the little joys that life has to offer.

Catching up with Chuck (Paul Giamatti), Ira (Ben Shenkman), and Chuck Sr. (Jeffrey DeMunn), the men have just settled into their mountain retreat when who else should come busting through the door than Dr. Swerdlow (Rick Hoffman). Here to enjoy some fresh mountain air and maybe the company of a lady or two, the doctor is upset to find out that it won't be that type of gathering. Still, with his iconic sunglasses and a flashy red windbreaker, Dr. Swerdlow is here to shake things up alongside his old pals. Maybe the getaway will be salvaged after all.

After a seven-season run, Showtime’s hit series will soon be bowing out following this final batch of episodes. The latest season has pushed the characters to the breaking point with longtime alliances turning to dust and friends stabbing one another in the back. As the season trudges on towards the finish line, fans can expect plenty more undermining and greed to drive the plot. Along with Giamatti, DeMunn, and Hoffman, the current season saw the return of Damian Lewis’ (Homeland) Bobby Axelrod who was missing from the penultimate season, with an ensemble including David Costabile (Suits), Dola Rashad (Steel Magnolias), Asia Kate Dillon (Orange is the New Black), Daniel Breaker (Passing Strange: The Movie), Sakina Jaffrey (The Equalizer 2), Corey Stoll (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), and Toney Goins (For Life).

From One Business to Another

Having gained notoriety for his leading role of Louis Litt on USA Network’s long-running legal drama, Suits, Hoffman is back in the final season of Billions to reprise the role of Dr. Swerdlow. The outlandish character made his Billions premiere back in Season 5, Swerdlow was introduced as a medical professional there to help Chuck Sr. With interesting methods and a foul mouth, audiences will be happy to catch more of the good doctor’s hot takes before the series comes to an end.

Check out Collider’s exclusive peek at the upcoming eighth episode of Billions below and get caught up now before the series comes to a close on October 29.

[nothingunrealistic]