(“I took an oath to the people of the United States,” Dake says. Just as Dake gets Lonnie to admit that Chuck didn’t really recuse himself from the Axe prosecution, he has to pack up his things and go, although not before leaving an ominous threat of future action. Chuck’s game of 12-dimensional chess also secures him freedom from scrutiny from the attorney general, who calls off Oliver Dake in the middle of a damning inquiry. The case against Boyd was a stalling tactic made good, like a kid feigning sickness to get out of a test only to ace it when he returns to class.
That they nailed Boyd for bid-rigging treasury auctions is essentially making something out of nothing, which is a much greater result than Chuck or his morale-challenged team ever expected. Recall that Chuck asked his assistant United States attorneys to get creative and find him a big case - not one that he could successfully prosecute, but one that would allow him to keep his job. His prosecution of Lawrence Boyd was a move to grant him a stay of execution from an attorney general hellbent on firing him, but it also turned into a proxy battle against Axe, who offered Boyd his counsel and his resources, including the dark arts of his fixer, Hall.įor as much as Axe gloats about Chuck’s sending other people away in cuffs while he remains free, Boyd’s ensnarement is an unambiguous win for Chuck and a warning that he can do the seemingly impossible.
Having realized that he can’t go toe to toe with Axe, whose money and power are too overwhelming, he has instead treated him like Muhammad Ali did George Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle,” countering his superior strength with a rope-a-dope tactics.
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They may sip on fancy scotch or take the private helicopter to dinner, but at heart they’re possessive and tempestuous beasts, like Jake LaMotta in expensive shoes.Īfter a season of taking losses in his quixotic pursuit of Axe Capital, Chuck has finally notched a series of stunning and improbable victories. “Billions” isn’t a exactly comedy, but the psychology it assigns to these two Masters-of-the-Universe types emphasizes the absurd gulf between their intellectual capacity and their raw, bone-stupid masculinity.
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Her time as a free agent had left Chuck and Axe without the woman they claimed but could not possess, and her re-entry into their lives rekindles a conflict that circumstances had miraculously conspired to resolve. Two weeks ago, I wrote about Wendy Rhoades’s period in exile, and how it has affected both her as a character and a show that relies on her as a unifying element.