Billions: What's Wrong With Showtime?

Billions of dollars, gratuitous scenes, and problems
"Whatever you think I am, I'm not. I'm not a leader, Mr. Alpert. I'm a mess." - Juliet Burke, Lost, S03E07



Once upon a time, there was a network called Showtime, and it hosted one of my favorite shows on television: Dexter. Though in later years it fell apart, the early seasons were fantastic, rivaling the content on any other high quality network at the time, be it HBO or FX. As I began to see what else Showtime had in store for me, I quickly found shows like Californication, The Tudors, and in later years, content like Penny Dreadful and Masters of Sex. While all four of these shows had upsides, they all shared in a common trope that lived on the network outside of Dexter: gratuitousness. Be it violence, sex, drug use, or a combination, almost every show on Showtime seemed to revel in their ability to be raunchy. It was as if the higher ups at the network had watched True Blood, decided it was the zenith of HBO programming, and modeled every show on Showtime after it. And, since Dexter and perhaps the first season of Homeland, I've been unable to find something on Showtime truly worth investing my time in. And, unfortunately, this trend continues with their newest edition to the network: Billions.

The general premise of the show is simple: a hedge fund king played by Damien Lewis is being hunted by a vicious attorney played by Paul Giamatti. Both of these New York titans have their own shades of gray and internal struggles (the show opens with a woman peeing atop Giamatti's "Chuck Rhoades" and putting out a cigar on him,) a lot of the substance of the show is hidden behind glitz and glamour.

I didn't watch close enough to see if Rhoades drank Merlot
First of all, let's formally introduce our fighters. On one end, weighing in at somewhere around 160 pounds, we have Lewis's Bobby Axelrod, nicknamed "Axe" and head of, you guessed it, Axe Capital. He's a blue collar kid at heart, but is now a bit of a corrupt business man, even though he has many redeeming qualities to put him at an even level with his immoral yet law-following adversary, Giamatti's Chuck Rhoades. On this end of the ring, we have an angry, sexually deviant, yet lawfully evil prosecutor who, after trying to reject the case against Axe and his Capital, eventually takes up the case that will be the inciting incident of the show. At the same time however, Chuck's wife, Wendy, has worked conveniently for Axe Capital for many years, and her personality matches that of Axe himself, basically an aggressive woman who eventually justifies the reason Giamatti turns to dominatrix prostitutes. On the one hand, this addition of plot feels a little contrived, but on the other, it does add to the stakes and the layering of the plot, with this case underway, not only does Rhoades risk his career and his reputation, but now also his marriage.

This is a decent set up, and the few major characters are at least interesting if not a bit cartoonish, but one of the questions I found myself wondering while watching the pilot was "why?" What exactly is the purpose of Billions? Themes of masculinity and money are the main two points of the show at first glance. Several times, we see Rhoades reference dogs, even at one point showing a German Shepherd get into a territorial dispute with his help, obviously a metaphor for being "alpha" in one's career and atmosphere. Both Axelrod and Rhoades are the alphas in their areas of being, and both believe themselves to be "The Man" in their respective places of life. Now however, the two large dogs are put in the same yard, and a Highlander scenario may play out. There can only be one. At the same time, we see money and ways of earning it play a large role in the plot of the show. Axelrod is a blue collar man who worked his way up to super wealth, while Rhoades is from old New York money, spending his life trying to prosecute new money. This too is an interesting idea, but a little too overblown to be effective. Over and over, just in the first hour of the show, do we hear stories about Axe's humble beginnings and Rhoades's not-so-humble beginnings. It's as if the writers didn't quite know how much they had proven their point, so decided to prove it three more times for good measure.

From one failed Showtime to another
In the end, what we get out of the Billions premiere is sadly more of what we've seen from past shows on the network, only with the addition of the always entertaining Paul Giamatti. Sure, Billions is a fun watch, and it is certainly not a thinking man's show, meaning that the hour doesn't take a ton of brain power to absorb complex plot or dialogue. What you see is what you get with Billions. There are twists and turns, but the show doesn't exactly take risks, instead being choc-full of people yelling at each other, nudity, and Wolf of Wall Street esq grossness of wealth. It certainly shows of certain lifestyles, but doesn't do a whole lot to expand on what Oliver Stone's Wall Street has shown us thirty or so years ago.

And, who knows? Maybe with more time and development, Billions could become a show worth following, but it's certainly not the program to shift the public opinion of Showtime. However, I don't think it will even get that. One of the major problems with a premise about one battle is that the plot has a set end point. FOX's The Following had a similar problem. A cop hunted a killer, but after the end of season one when said killer was slain, the show really had to grasp at straws for where to go next, eventually descending into stupidity and being cancelled. Neither Rhoades nor Axelrod strike me as a one season character, but the lawsuit would be painful to sit through for any more than one year. Unless it's going for a miniseries angle, Billions needs to find room to flourish and expand if it wishes to have staying power.

Without any of the major Winter dramas starting for a couple more weeks, I may give Billions a couple more episodes before calling it quits, but for the most part, it doesn't seem worth it. I feel almost as if I know exactly where the show is headed for the next nine hours before having seen any of it. If Showtime continues in its regular trend, we'll see quite a lot of boobs, wealth, angry outbursts, and overblown masculinity before the season concludes. And having watched past Showtime programs, I think I've had my fill without Billions more.

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