Post: #1

An inside look in the Hedge fund/Wall street world, this awaited serie seem to be great and clearly have a lot of potential.

Quote:Shrewd, savvy U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades (Giamatti) and the brilliant hedge fund king Bobby "Axe" Axelrod (Lewis) are on an explosive collision course, with each using all of his considerable smarts and influence to outmaneuver the other.
The stakes are in the billions in this timely, provocative series.

Review by BI [Spoilers in]

Quote:We just watched the pilot episode of "Billions", the upcoming hedge fund drama that debuts on Showtime this month.
Our verdict: Wall Street is going to be obsessed with it and non-finance folks are going to love it too.

Seem promising, Thoughts ?

Post: #2

Post: #3

+1 for casting choices.

I will be watching.

Post: #4

When have U.S. Attorneys ever been enemies of Wall Street? They get along just fine.

Post: #5

Post: #6

Been looking forward to checking this one out

Paul Giamatti is great

Post: #7

Lol @ HCE.

Too good

Post: #8

might as well be a spin off of WOWS/The big short. Sure it could be good don't get me wrong but I'm getting kind of tired of the Wall street narrative. Guarantee there'll be more shows/films about this topic. WOWS was just the start really

Post: #9

Nothing particularly interesting. Lewis and Giamatti are good, and the really miscast the wife.

The Wall Street show that needs to be done is a half-hour dramedy along the lines of Entourage or Ballers, that castigates the types of people in finance. I think in the right hands, that show would have the potential to be awesome.

Post: #10

It's okay, the first episode didn't really get me hooked but i'll probably give it more of a chance.

Post: #11

I liked the second episode.

I didn't really want to like the show because it is another thing to watch.

I liked the way the second episode ended. I don't try to hurt people but I don't take being screwed over very well and do seek my justice, so I enjoyed the ending.

Post: #12

The concept is cool, but what are the stakes?

The guy is already a billionaire, so if shit gets too hot, he can always take his money and go home -- not buying this particular actor's character as a billionaire, his path to money should be important given that he didn't come from it.

Rhoades wants to take him down, but why?

At this point, he's just looking for a case, he doesn't really have anything other than the fact the SEC guy showing up in his office, but if it's that serious, why isn't the SEC going after him?

Don't buy that Axelrod and Rhoades' wife wouldn't have fucked yet, she's incredibly devoted to him, will do literally anything for him, and she's attractive, long nights in the office, and them being so close for so long -- she worked for him before she got married -- it seems like the nature of proximity would have taken over at some point.

Characters are showing up out of nowhere, and then just no longer heard from or seen again, Meechum from House of Cards in E01, the "trusted advisor" who suddenly gets fired in E02, but didn't even appear in E01, I could go on and on.

I don't watch a lot of shit, but the stuff I do watch, I have to watch it critically.

Thus far, this is not good, but I'll give it a few more episodes to get going.

Post: #13

The show is kinda slowly hooking me, but I don't really like how contrived some of the events are just to get the story going.

Like why does Rhoades has such a hardon for Axelrod from the very beginning, simply because he is rich? And what was that goofy ass plot point about buying a house, like some mastermind Hannibel mind reader buying an expensive house was an admission of guilt? Why not just start investigating him regardless?

Post: #14

I don't think that many women work on Wall Street or in law.

And they are trying to make these women so much like men I'm surprised they don't show them guzzling beer while wearing wife beaters and scratching their balls they wish they had.

The Big Short is so much better.

Post: #15

This show and WOWS do the complete opposite for me than what the creators intended. I rooted for Belfort, and I'm rooting for Lewis's character. So much Fuck You attitude from both of them, that I can't help but love it.

“What's the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you?”

The house plot was ridiculous though. They tell the guy that someone is about to close on the house in a week for 62 million, and he somehow ends up buying it for 63 million?

Post: #16

I've seen the first three episodes of this show and I can't get enough. The script writing is smart, the actors are great and far from cookie cutter and the whole show bring something new to TV that I've never seen before.

I was definitely curious about how this show would turn out, but I've been surprised by exactly how good it's been.

Highly recommend.

Post: #17

I've seen the first three episodes as well and, like Suits, I give it a Highly Recommend rating. It is a breath of fresh air in a world full of crap TV.

One thing that annoys me is the desire among producers of such shows to make the women look more masculine and bad-ass. The primary way they do this is by making the female characters use a ton of bad language. I lost track of the number of times the women used fuck in the third episode. I found this to be the case in Ballers as well.

It just doesn't work. And it reinforces what is common knowledge here on RVF - that Western women don't have an ounce of feminine behavior left in them. Billions would work just fine without fuck and twat being used every 3 minutes.

Post: #18

My close friend used to date a girl who plays a small speaking role in the pilot... damn, the camera really does add 20 pounds, cuz she's 5'9" and 120 lbs but she looks big boned on camera...

I like the show: seems like an extremely dramatized version of finance cat & mouse games, but it makes for good TV.

Post: #19

(02-08-2016 02:17 AM)John Quincy Wrote:  One thing that annoys me is the desire among producers of such shows to make the women look more masculine and bad-ass. The primary way they do this is by making the female characters use a ton of bad language. I lost track of the number of times the women used fuck in the third episode. I found this to be the case in Ballers as well.

It just doesn't work. And it reinforces what is common knowledge here on RVF - that Western women don't have an ounce of feminine behavior left in them. Billions would work just fine without fuck and twat being used every 3 minutes.

I agree. However, at the same time, Axelrod's wife, Lara, might use bad language to make her seem tough, but her toughness is in full support of her husband. She absolutely has his back 110% (at least in the episodes so far). While expecting women to be as capable as she is may be a considerable stretch, it's nice to see a woman on TV who supports her husband.

The show Power, for example, has a wife character who meddles, manipulates and lies, but not in support of her husband.

The wife character in Power is poorly acted and is made to seem more credible than she actually is by surrounding her by week and idiotic male characters, but she brings nothing to the screen and her character is not credible because we never actually see her doing anything that would suggest intelligence.

Lara, from Billions, however, is shown creating and clearly executing plans of action that do suggest she has actual intelligence, as does the wife of Chuck Rhoades.

I don't mind strong female characters as long as they aren't given super human strength and the ability to crush the balls of every man they encounter. In Billions, the strong female characters always have a strong man they report to. Even though Lara and Chuch Rhoades sexual relationship suggests that he prefers to be subservient, the most recent episode (number 3) showed us that it's nothing more than a means of distraction from reality.

Verdict: I don't view this show as a victory for male/female depictions on TV, but it's a cut above 99% of other shows out there.

Post: #20

@Suits: I agree with your reply. This show is better than everything else out there. And it is refreshing to see women go to bat for their husbands instead of emasculating and ridiculing them. The show, Power, doesn't sound too promising. I might check it out just to have a laugh.

My main point was about the foul language. Whenever I hear a women curse on TV it reminds me of my years in DC, when attending happy hours etc. and hearing women (mostly lawyers and government types) constantly say f-this and f-that. Absolutely no feminine / nuturing qualities at all.

@Jariel: Your point about Axelrod's path to big money is a really good one. The show starts with him at the top. How did he get there? Was his wife with him when he was poor? Or did she jump on later, when the money train was in full swing? I hope they do a flash back episode that covers all of this and more.

I just watched the fourth episode. Good stuff. And much less foul language this time around.

House of Cards comes out in March. I didn't care for Season 3. I'll give Season 4 a shot but I have my doubts. The next good show after Billions will be Narcos (Season 2).

If you guys haven't watched The Big Short you really should.

Post: #21

Episode 4 was different, perhaps better, but this is still a bad show IMO.

The hard-on Rhoades has for Axelrod still doesn't make sense.

Rhoades' father is actively committing crimes, but they're still on a fishing expedition for Axelrod who hasn't done anything that they can prove?

There are other hedge fund guys, Birch and Decker, who they have airtight cases on, yet they plead out Birch, and Decker gets a deal prior to them realizing that he had nothing to offer them.

The Decker situation was ridiculous from jump because what attorney would trade a case in which there was a bombing attempt on the Statue of Liberty for a run-of-the-mill insider trading case?

These attorney offices are team efforts. I can't imagine a guy in a leadership position fucking one of his guys over on what would be a major case involving national security because he has an imagined ax to grind, no pun intended.

In regards to House of Cards, a lot of people were disappointed because they got used to the first two seasons of the show in which the Underwoods were scheming to get to the top.

Season Three had some faults, but it was still pretty good; it was just different because they were now in a position where they had to govern, which is a lot different than just being on the sidelines scheming while other people have decisions to make.

I also thought Narcos failed miserably.

I didn't like the fairytale of the one white American DEA agent being the hard ass who doesn't know anything about Colombian culture and doesn't speak Spanish, yet he's running around Medellin like Dirty Harry in his quest to get Escobar.

At the end of the day, it was Escobar's own people, Los Pepes and El Bloque de Busqueda who were mainly responsible for his demise.

The show failed for me because they rushed through it.

By the end of Season 1, he's already doing prison time, so that means they've already gone through at least the last 15 years of his life.

How long can they draw it out until he's riddled with bullets, lying dead on a rooftop?

Post: #22

I have seen the show, and I like it...but it's not perfect. A few things bother me:

1) Axe is cool, and he's obviously some sort of prodigy...but am I the only one who feels like the way he's characterized is pretty much to a T the way a lazy millenial typist would 'picture' a young, hip Hedge guy to be? Wearing band tees to meetings, coming and going as he pleases, raising his sons in a (definitely neomasculine) way...but he doesn't cheat on his wife!? Damian Lewis is so good in the role that I almost forget that he's being written as the guy you aren't supposed to root for.

2) Someone mentioned the hard-on Paul Giamatti's DA (or whatever he is) has for Axe and how there's no apparent reason for it - best I can think is that it's because his wife works for Axe, but there's been nothing shown that she's being mistreated, especially given that Rhodes' own damn father clearly obtained his money through illegal means (and in fact did engage in some illegal insider trading in the most recent episode).

3) The dominatrix thing...again - it's clearly there to shock but it'd be nice to know WHY exactly it's there. I'm sure it'll all be explained.

But all in all, I will be watching. Strong performances all around with Lewis and Giamatti as the co-MVPs (slight push to Lewis), despite an unfortunate sounding last name, Maggie Siff is always solid and David Costabile (the guy that was the gay chemist in Breaking Bad) has a very unsettling quality to him that makes him the perfect #2 to a crooked hedge guy.

Best moment so far?





8 red pills out of 10.

Post: #23

It's created by the guy who wrote Rounders.

Post: #24

Seeing all the old farts see Metallica in the last ep really made me feel like an old fart too

Post: #25

Don't forget Rhodes has gubernatorial/political aspirations. Bagging Axe would be the big catch that propels him to such a position. Birch and Decker aren't as big