Billions Review: Everyone Sucks, I’m Ready For A Break

Ugh.

I mean, just ugh. There is not a single person on Billions that is anything less than detestable. Seriously. Just when you think they can’t hit a new low, they, in fact, hit a new low. I thought Chuck had reached Peak!Chuck with that ridiculous speech about being a chess grandmaster (suuuuuureeee Chuck, suuuurree you were) and being in a “dark rage” (please drink bleach). He could’ve said literally all of that speech in like three sentences: “Donnie is dead. I lost my head. This is my fault”. That’s all he had to say! All of it!

ALL OF IT!!!!!!!!

Then, my god, we come to find out that Bobby Axlerod cut Donnie’s (admittedly short) lifespan by not bring up the experimental treatment. Like, holy crap! Dude! You trade on 9/11 and make billions off tragedy, and that is not bad enough for you?????/  You want to be a worse person?????? WHY DO YOU KEEP TRYING TO DO BAD THINGS WHEN U CAN DO GOOD THINGS AND ACHIEVE THE SAME RESULT MY GOD JESUS

What is— this show just loses me sometimes. It just loses me. Too many times exposition is need to lampshade— OKAY WAIT A SECOND I JUST Remembered the worst part about the Donnie thing okay so Walter is Donnie’s husband (boyfriend? idk; partner, I guess) and Walter said Donnie just wanted to make it to Christmas so that he could do his secret Santa thing like he always did and that was use to lampshade how bad it was the Bobby cut his life short but the thing is that DonNIE HAS TWO KIDS AND A HUSBAND AND YOU DONT NEED TO SHOEHORN IN SOMETHING ABOUT A SECRET SANTA (which we’ve NEVER heard a word about in the entire show before this) WHEN HE HAS TWO KIDS AND A SPOUSE!!!!!! ITS BAD ENOUGH!!!!!! YOURE TAKING HIM AWAY FROM HIS FAM—

Anyway, what I was saying is that all of the cool plot threads require too much exposition to make them apparent. It was obvious that Chuck was taking down Wilcox to help his case in the future, but the fact that he wants Adam DeJulio in that spot doesn’t really have any basis in past storylines. Like, I get it intellectually, but when Bryan has to essentially deliver a monologue to a smug-faced Chuck in order for the audience to make sense of it, then the plotting is not working as intended. That could’ve been and should’ve been a really interesting, exciting idea, but instead we kind of hand wave after the fact

OH YES also Chuck shows up at Donnie Kahn’s funeral, like the worlds biggest anal prolapse, and has to be told to f off to Mars by his own WIFE to get him to leave. He actually walks over to Axe and makes him shake his hand, as if that’ll go over well with voters, or however the hell he gets into office. It’s just baffling how awful of a person he is.

also Lara is the worst now and I hate her I’d like her to never show up ever again, thanks. Wendy Rhoades is dope, and tries to help, and she’s caught between a rock and a hard place; one of the only really devastating revelations about the whole thing is that nobody trusts her anymore, even though she’s never put them in any danger. It’s even more devastating when you think (as you can see on her face) that they have been holding back from her the whole time.

Bryan and Kate make love (lolololololol) on the couch in a really fancy apartment, even though this dude is clearly in his mid to late thirties and she is barely in her mid-twenties, and this is 100% a superior taking advantage of an underling for bad reasons I mean my god Bryan you were the one who was supposed to have integrity!!!!!!! Kate is hella rich, too, which is weird; I already knew she was stupid wealthy but seeing an apartment of that magnitude (and having a rough estimation of the eleventy billion dollars it would cost in New York) really drives the point home.

I need a break from this show, because I hate everyone. Wendy is cool, I don’t hate her. But I hate everyone else. Chuck, Bobby, Dollar Bill (who dropped the hammer on some turncoat employees), Lara; it’s a shorter list of people I don’t hate than people I do. It’s like when a little kid or a dog or whatever grabs a toilet roll and it just unspools and unspools until it reaches the neighbor’s yard; that’s how long the list is of people I hate on this show.

I hope everyone fails. Except Wendy.

ONE MORE THING I really liked the Bobby/Dollar Bill fake fight that was cool as hell