Last night saw the season finale of Showtime’s newest original drama “Billions.” And I wish I could say the show was an unqualified success, although I do like parts of it and think about half the show is really worth watching.
It’s become apparent that the biggest roadblock to fully enjoying any Showtime series is getting around their unlikable characters. And that’s an especially big problem for Showtime series since so few are truly plot-driven and most depend on their characters and our willingness to care about what happens to them. For example, do you really care what happens on “Masters of Sex,” “Ray Donovan,” “House of Lies,” “Shameless” or is it more about who it happens to? Even more plot-driven series like “Dexter,” “Homeland,” and Showtime’s all-time best series “Brotherhood” are as much about their slice-of-life locales or character’s flaws than any big action sequence or plot twist.
So it’s become a huge problem that Showtime insists on “edgy” characters that feel borderline shallow and one-dimensional in their unlikability, and ones who talk like no breathing human you’ve ever met. [Just listen to anything Marty on “House of Lies” or the “Shameless” clan or most “Billions” characters say and ask yourself if they’re people or just marketing pitch meetings brought to life.] “Billions” continues that and then someone with a main quartet of characters (Hedge Fund King Bobby Axelrod, his prosecutor nemesis, and their respective wives) who are different degrees of despicable.
It’s saying something when the most sympathetic main character you’ve got is a corrupt billionaire (Damian Lewis is magnetically intense, but the guy sometimes looks too crazy in ordinary scenes and can’t master a New Yawk accent to save his life), and the most horrible is the “good guy” prosecutor charged with putting him away. I don’t know if the character of Paul Giamatti’s Chuck Rhodes is supposed to be unlikable, but the series sure seems to go out of its way to make it so. Chuck is horrible: an annoying, hateful, slovenly, and loathsome petty-tyrant. He seems to exist solely to sulk into a scene and ruin any other character’s happiness with threats or outright ruination, like a pissy cloud hanging over a series that feels at odds with him.
In fact, a lot of the supporting cast of “Billions” is much more sympathetic and even interesting. Chuck’s right hand man is Toby Leonard Moore (who played Kingpin’s right-hand man on “Daredevil”) and he’s an actually likable, compelling presence that only grows more so when around the radiant Condola Rashad as the other half of a great couple surrounded by sour, mistrustful ones. The rest of the deep bench of talent includes Alexrod’s charismatically loyal employees, including the always great David Costable (Gale on “Breaking Bad” in a different kind of role for him). All in all, “Billions” is barely a penny stock right now, but there’s real room for growth in season two.
I totally agree with your review.
More surrounding character plots and less of the 2 big ego maniacs.