Showtime's Billions: A Six-Season Evaluation

In The Ring - July 15th, 2022

“In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.” -Matt Taibbi

A 180°

This week’s Haymaker isn’t a slight directional shift; rather, as the title notes, it’s a complete 180°.  For those who are looking for our usual financial and/or economic commentary, this may not be for you.  However, if you’re among the millions who love Billions, the mega-hit cable show, you should most definitely keep reading.

Please realize I didn’t personally write this issue (no applause, please!).  Instead, it was authored by my talented creative colleague, Mark Joseph Mongilutz.  Mark routinely edits nearly all of my work and has previously contributed content for this newsletter.  He’s about a quarter-century younger than I am and far more attuned to popular shows and the millennial mindset than is the Haymaker.  As he indicates, I watched Episode One and that was that; obviously, I wasn’t a fan.  However, I’m also the weird sort who prefers Longmire over Yellowstone and Turner Classic Movies to Showtime. 

Yet, there is a theme in Billions that I think transcends this rather oddly ultra-popular series and it relates to the enforcement of securities laws.  If you haven’t noticed, that has become an increasingly rare occurrence.  In that regard, Mark notes the similarities to one of the main characters and Elon Musk.  It’s not an irrelevant comparison. While Mr. Musk has many remarkable achievements to his credit, making himself the richest man on the planet, at least for now, he’s played fast and loose with securities laws along the way.

Further, the mind-spinning wealth that has been achieved by the early crypto promoters adopters, with almost zero regulatory oversight, is either a wonderful example of laissez-faire economics or proof that financial markets have become virtual casinos… but without the free drinks. With $2 trillion of alleged crypto currency paper wealth now well and truly nuked, it will be fascinating to see whether the SEC finally takes an assertive role.  There’s little doubt the tort attorney community will soon do so. 

Regulatory ineffectiveness is, of course, nothing new.  In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis that nearly crashed the planet financial system, apparently only one senior bank executive did the perp walk. Don’t ask me who that was but I do know that Lehman’s Dick Fuld did not get free accommodations in Bernie Madoff’s federal county club.  At least the NYC district attorney in Billions channels Les Miserables’ Javert in his relentless pursuit of the bad guys, however unsatisfactorily. 

Frankly, it’s been much more than just a case of a toothless SEC. The Fed not only stood by during last year’s peak speculative insanity phase, it actually enabled it.  As it also did not do during the tech bubble of the late 1990s, it failed to raise margin requirements even one time.  And, of course, its long suppression of interest rates and frenzied money fabrication created the ideal conditions for the mass market mania that culminated in the first half of 2021. 

It isn’t a stretch to say that fact has been every bit as bizarre as fiction in recent years.  Even the imaginative writers of Billions would have been hard-pressed to conjure up some of absurdities that have been a function of government actions, or the lack thereof, that we’ve all come to know… and not love. 

-The Haymaker

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Showtime’s Billions: A Six-Season Evaluation

Source: Sho.com (Mike Prince, Chuck Rhoades, Jr., and two expensive chairs)

Though most of my academic background is in the study of history, I did find time for a second major during my undergraduate years – that of film (Film & Media Studies, as it was known). It is actually a point of common interest between myself and the Haymaker. Thus, as Showtime’s Billions overlaps in its subject matter with the Haymaker’s field, and as we both enjoy film (or televisual) narratives, we thought this might be a good topic for a Friday post; plus, Making Hay Monday has you covered on the investment guidance side.

(Note: The Haymaker actually watched a single episode of the series… and never returned to it. That might be enough of a review for you right there.)

To the topic itself: Why should anyone watch and then continue watching Showtime’s Billions? Though I just finished Season 6 of the program, I can’t yet offer a useful answer (but stick around). There’s either a good reason or an amusingly bad one, and I’m leaning towards the latter.

Premise

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen (or has no interest in seeing) the show, here’s its basic overview/structure:

1. Chuck Rhoades, Jr is an NYC Southern District U.S. Attorney. He is an ideologue, a schemer, and is obsessively hostile towards the ultra-wealthy. 

2. Chuck’s existence is tied up maniacally with his goal of exposing the immoral machinations of various NYC billionaires; Bobby Axelrod (just “Axe” usually) through Season 5, Mike Prince thereafter. 

3. Wendy Rhoades is both Chuck’s spouse (until she’s not) and somehow a psychiatric “striking coach” for Axelrod’s shady firm (and then Prince’s). 

4. Axe (then Prince) plots to increase his wealth through, as alluded to, incessant shadiness. Chuck is right on his (and Prince’s) tail, often losing, in embarrassing fashion, battles of his own making.

5. The wealthy usually skate by at great personal expense, but what’s the difference? They’ll make it back. Meanwhile, Rhoades just gets increasingly sallow with each passing season.
   
   

Who might you recognize?

Who’s to say? Whether absolutely confirmed or just parroted by viewers to the point of being pretty well confirmed, the show’s original antagonist, Axe, is to at least a limited extent modeled on Steve Cohen, of stupendous hedge-fund billionaire and (erstwhile?) law-enforcement-target fame. I’m not sure if any knowledgeable authorities have said one way or another. Let’s just agree Axe is modeled on nobody in particular, because…

… here’s the show’s poorly kept secret: It doesn’t matter. Axe and Prince are not the show’s principal villains any more than the iceberg is Titanic’s antagonist. Which is to say, Showtime’s Billions takes aim at wealth as a concept, and specifically what Rhoades (and perhaps the show’s writers) considers too much wealth. There’s an acceptable amount, presumably, and a billion greenbacks is at least one greenback too many for any one person. Might be fine for a family of four.

Everyone else seems like a narrative fabrication, or maybe an amalgam of medium-famous financial figures, loosely sketched analogs for East Coast politicians, et cetera. Again, it’s of no bearing on the show. It doesn’t really mean anything for the narrative if so-and-so bears a passing resemblance to that one guy from whichever Wall Street bank. This has been done before. Margin Call famously channeled aspects of the Lehman Brothers saga without going so far as to name names, for instance.

Any real finance?

I suppose there is, but the specifics are always wrapped up in more of a heist-like premise, so the spreadsheet manipulations that probably comprise a fair bit of Wall Street thieving are marginalized after being paid a bit of lip service. Once the outline is established, the technical jargon tossed about, and the stakes communicated, the show shifts to take on a stylish caper tone. 

Whatever the parties are trying to achieve in the way of misdeeds always takes the form of an elaborate, multi-party operation, rather than a few mouse clicks, fudged spreadsheet numbers, and subtle misdirecting of the SEC. They could be channeling Bernie Madoff or Charles Ponzi himself, but for creative purposes they prefer Danny Ocean (or sometimes Thomas Crown). It’s clear from early on in the series that the billionaires Rhoades is intent on bringing down seem to revel in being in the crosshairs, if only because they know a federal attorney is constrained by law from pulling the proverbial trigger as eagerly as he would surely like.

With so much mystery (and probably illegality) circulating within the crypto realm and given the many times various financial megaliths have been forced to pony up dinero by the hundreds of millions in retribution over the years, it would seem there’s an abundance of white-collar crime to fictionalize, repackage, and polish for Showtime’s purposes. A series writer’s obligation, however, is to entertain. That often leads Showtime’s Billions into a sort of alternate reality of outlandish discourse between obscenely wealthy criminals and the law.

It’s a wasted opportunity in some ways, as Rhoades, despite his demons, is laboring at great cost to his psyche to achieve something that bears at least a passing resemblance to justice. It just doesn’t always come off in grounded fashion. If the writers are frustrated with insufficient Wall Street regulation and with limited avenues for criminal prosecution in that arena, they’ve created a good outlet for that frustration in the person of the indomitable and overtly righteous, figure of U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades, Jr. Too bad the storytelling renders him something of a cartoon at times.

To be fair, with Axe and Prince’s respective grand ambitions and megalomaniac tendencies, there’s little room for the show to create a believable and informative representation of high finance. What we are reminded of ad infinitum is that a) every business/stock position has a vulnerability to be exploited, b) exploiting said vulnerability comes down to paying off someone at some level, and c) whoever that person is can always be bought off or, in rare instances, blackmailed into cooperating. It’s a hyper-cynical weak-link premise which argues that everyone is a weak link; some just haven’t been put in a position to learn that about themselves. 

But relax – once Prince gets what he needs, it’ll all pay off for the rest of us. He has a vision for the world. Just needs another ten billion to bring his plan to fruition. It’s that aspect of Prince that had me at least once wondering if Elon Musk had partially inspired the Prince role; and while it might be the case in terms of their zanier ambitions, they are much too different in terms of their characteristics for the inspiration to have been overly significant. (Note: I am told Mike Judge’s Silicon Valley is somewhat more overt in the way it parodies tech world public figures, though I don’t watch the show and cannot say with certainty)

New York

Nearly every episode of Showtime’s Billions has something weird on display. Axelrod’s protege, visits a so-called “rage room”; Chuck Rhoades hosts a self-consciously histrionic “Jeffersonian” dinner. Wendy spends time in the stylishly serene environs of a high-class monastery. The wisdom imparted might be sound in that latter instance, but the scene itself is too polished to seem anything but hypocritical. Do all monks live so well?

Anyway, why? Why does every episode feature something weird?

If my feeling was that the writers were content with simply highlighting the complexity, dynamism, and occasional bizarreness of New York City life, I might not have thought to say a word about it. But my impression, instead, has always been that the writers, however small “d” democratic they imagine themselves to be, want everyone west of New England and east of Los Angeles to know where they stand, and where they don’t. Where they belong, and where they don’t. How much cash they have, and how much they don’t. 

Self-indulgently weird scenes in Showtime’s Billions unfold and are exhibited with off-putting insistence; it’s not unlike someone hoping you’ll notice their new tattoo only so they can falsely convey a reluctance in sharing its backstory. Here it might read: “What, you’ve never heard of a rage room? You Midwesterners are rather a quaint demographic, aren’t you? But thanks for growing our food. We (sometimes remember to) appreciate it.” 

This impression begins to take root from the moment that exquisitely captured waterfront establishing shot radiates across the screen to let you know the show isn’t just set in New York City – it’s set in NEW… YORK… CITY. “The real thing. The city every other city between the Sun and Neptune wishes it was good enough to halfway emulate on its best day, and perhaps only think about halfway emulating on any other day. Boston? This is New York City – before NYC the term ‘metropolis’ scarcely had a useful definition – it’s now a synonym for ‘New York City’.”

It reads critically on my part, but I’m more channeling the feeling this aspect of the show leaves one with. Take it as a neutral observation. After all, a bit of pride in one’s home is nothing at which to sneer.

What are they getting at?

If the show’s reason for existing, and persisting, was strictly to re-state in flashy style the cliche about excess being a soul-corrupting phenomenon, it achieved that by the first season’s fifth scene. Because they settled that so early on, what was left for them to say?

The writers seem to be working that out for themselves. They don’t mind wealth or class - both saturate the series. They seem to have a problem with hypocrisy, as they understand it, and that understanding bolsters a fixed-position declaration that while millions are acceptable, billions are not. I don’t know why they stop the counting at 999 million, but the “policy failure” mantra is rhetorically reserved expressly for billionaires and above (is there a bona fide trillionaire yet?), though the monumental taxation measures they propose do extend to various levels of millionaire. So, presumably, millionaires are also a failure at the public-policy level? Chuck Rhoades sometimes thinks so, despite being heir to a sizable fortune, fond of dressing up his soliloquies in antiquated verbal costumery, and otherwise feeling comfortable in his city’s uppermost echelons. 

This has long struck me as a bit of a contradiction, or at least a strange aspect of the show’s moral outline. Wealth and elite coastal living are lovingly rendered in Showtime’s Billions; they are not merely ornamental, they are integral to the show’s milieu and to the lifestyle it loves to celebrate just a little more than it loves to lampoon. Then again, not every work of fiction needs to be consistent.

Is it entertaining?

Yes. But not always for the reason(s) its writers think it is. I suspect that in writing a show about varying levels of excess, the writers are revealing much about their own proclivities, ideologies, and lifestyles (or desired lifestyles). We’re a fracturing society in many ways – just ask Michael Malice – which has me watching Showtime’s Billions to keep an eye on where some of the social fissures are forming, or widening, rather. Socioculturally, I’m interested in how premier coastal artists view themselves and, through inversion, how they view the rest of the country.

Watching six seasons of a program loosely predicated on the ill-gotten gains of various policy fail– I mean billionaires, is perhaps a roundabout means of gleaning such insights, but at least the show is suitably ridiculous to function as a source of spectacle, absurdity and even occasional humor.

It’s also a bit tasteless and downright low brow in its worst moments, even if the show doesn’t seem aware of this. But maybe it is. Let me know if you have an opinion one way or the other.

In the last word of this overdue analysis, there might, in fact, be a few good reasons to watch Showtime’s Billions. It is frequently likable, it is stylized to an almost embarrassing degree, and it seems (seems) to have something to say on American culture. For research-intensive, well-reasoned, utterly candid investment and economic knowledge, on the other hand, I’d instead direct you right here to Haymaker, where there are many, many reasons to check in weekly… maybe even billions of them.

-MJM

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A Word From The Haymaker’s Corner

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