‘Billions’ Season 6 Episode 6 Summary: I’ll Be Watching You


There are few things I enjoy more than a good “Billions” trick on TV. It comes from the gorgeous Season 2 episode “Golden Frog Time,” in which Chuck Rhoades, who at first seemed to be sobbing, actually laughs hysterically as his plan to weaken his nemesis Bobby Axelrod works like a charm. (At the expense of his best friend and father, but still!)

The sleight of hand that occurs in this week’s episode isn’t nearly as important, but it still provides that smattering of excitement. For a moment, Chuck seems to have screwed up Mike Prince’s graduating Indiana A&M to keep him from investing in his firm. How? He began embezzlement by blackmailing Stuart Legere (Whit Stillman alumnus, Chris Eigeman), the university’s head of endowments.

But the opposite turns out to be true. Chuck is blackmailing Legere and the foundation. into Investing in Prince by threatening to expose the embezzlement. Chuck, who previously rejected his father for being the obvious choice, wants an inside man to report on Prince’s every move, and now he’s found one. The needle drop of the Policeman’s “Every Breath You Take” accompanying the maneuver is not just a musical cue. It’s a mission statement: no matter what Mike Prince does, Charles Rhoades Jr.’s watchful eyes will be on him, whether he knows it or not.

Why? Because Chuck seems really and truly religious when it comes to the billionaire class. He calls the Prince a “thief baron”. He denounces Prince’s seemingly charitable donation of a fleet of new high-tech subway cars (which was the purpose of reopening the private Prince List to new investors, like the school he graduated from) as a new form of “noble necessity.” He describes Prince’s ostensible benevolence as an attempt to “advance one’s own causes, while enjoying ten thousand, one hundred thousand times the resources of anyone who, however, seems to benefit from his generosity.” All billionaires adopted “hostis humani generis”, an old name for pirates: enemies of the entire human race.

So how will Chuck beat Prince’s last gamble? Relying largely on the intelligence of his new lieutenant, Dave Mahar. In a brief conversation with his predecessor, Kate Sacker, Dave realizes that speed is essential when it comes to Prince Cap’s plan to buy these new subway cars. So it threatens to tie up everything related to the Chinese manufacturer of cars with bureaucracy – a recent study revolving around the Transport Workers Union and bought in with half a billion dollars worth of retraining and training for members. they lose their jobs to newer, more automated subway cars. Kate offers Mike her resignation over a blunder, although she doesn’t actually accept it.

Then there’s the matter of Leon Sherald (Okieriete Onaodowan) to consider. Sherald is a blockbuster football star in the home fitness space and wants to be on the private investors list of the reopened Prince List. Despite strange interpersonal dynamics, it’s Taylor Mason’s former stakeholder, Lauren (a returning Jade Eshete), who brings Sherald’s offer to the firm.

But when Sherald learns that the public sector pension fund to which the Transportation Workers Union belongs includes the New York police union, she demands that Prince drop it, or he will discredit the list in the crucial public court. idea.

This is where Taylor comes in. Driven by Rian to an app that suppresses problematic social media posts, Taylor reverses the procedure and digs up goddamn information about Sherald, negating her ability to destroy Prince List in the process. Once again, Rian was horrified, but the firm won the day.

In the end, Prince agrees to finance public transport, even without the futuristic Chinese subway cars. But what’s the endgame here? Remember when Chuck talked about Prince’s “own motives, whatever it may be”? At many points in the episode there are encouraging hints that there was a game behind the game, a ploy by Prince that the Olympic Games were just a pretext.

Scooter warns Prince that his acting is getting expensive, but it’s permissible “if there’s no other way to get everything you want”. Later, Prince tells Scooter, “You know where we’re going – you’re the only one – but when we leave to do the work, we need to get someone to run the place right.” The dialogue seems to rule out the simple matter of getting a plum coaching job to his estranged wife; It points to something bigger, more hidden.

The short-term implications are clear enough: Scooter’s nephew Philip is trained for leadership. Long game though? Is it what Prince is aiming for beyond the Olympics? This is everyone’s guess. I don’t know about you, but I love a drama that keeps guessing.

  • I hadn’t really made a thematic connection between Police songs “Synchronicity I” and “Every Breath You Take” even though they were both on the album “Synchronicity” until I heard they toggle this episode on and off. The first song is a kind of mystical paranoid fantasy where everything is connected; the second is a follower’s message that it’s okay to be paranoid.

  • In this week’s recap of “looking like themselves”, we see Warby Parker’s CEO, Neil Blumenthal; David Einhorn, founder of Greenlight Capital; Wharton professor and TED speaker Adam Grant; dot com pioneer Seth Godin; and philanthropist Jacqueline Novogratz as members of Prince Cap’s board of directors.

  • Your pro-wrestling reference of the week: Dave threatens to shoot one of the most feared headshots in art history, Bobo Brazil “Coco Butt,” against Transit Workers Union boss Tony Plimpton (Kevin Chapman).

  • Your final sign that “Billions” has outstripped Bobby Axelrod: Auditor Leah Calder (Wendie Malick) congratulates Chuck on taking down Ax, and Chuck says his one-time foe is “definitely in my rear view.” Adios, Ax.



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *