Saturday, March 19, 2016

What I’m Watching: Billions


Billions: Season 1, Episode 7 “The Punch” (B+)

It’s impressive that, after ending last week’s episode with such an immense blowup between Axe and Chuck, this installment didn’t see them interact at all and barely even dealt with the case against Axe. Instead, the charismatic billionaire nearly made headlines for a different reason after he found out that someone drove his kids while he was drunk and he promptly drove over half-clothed to punch him in the face. It nearly became a story, and it turns out that Axe didn’t even have to catapult a journalist’s career to make it go away since the full video essentially let Axe off the hook due to the admission of drunk driving on the part of the man he punched. Lara’s determination to give her sons street smarts wasn’t as supported by Axe as it could have been, namely because of his defiance of her plan to force them to camp overnight to teach them a lesson, something that seemed to give him immense pleasure. Wendy is making big strides in finding a new career, and Steven Pasquale’s Chase Kendall seems like he’ll be just as much trouble here as he was on “The Good Wife.” Chuck completely eradicated Ari when the sniveling lawyer tried to blackmail him into being in charge of the entire case, but he didn’t have as much luck putting the pressure on Brian, who stood up to Chuck when he seriously chewed some scenery by hiding in the closet and then bursting out after Brian’s clandestine meeting with his informant. This show is still good despite regularly veering into potentially exaggerated territory.

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