aghst

I think Chuck is suppose to be this guy who had an almost perfect record in prosecuting high-profile targets. Remember, he had political ambitions, Albany, Washington. Or at least that was Chuck Sr.'s plan. He didn't need a special reason to go after Axe, who's really a cartoon character, snarling in his privilege and boasting that he makes the rules, not follow them. He was blatantly breaking laws like insider trading and daring them to get him. And this show decided to write the prosecutor almost as over the top as the bad guy. Lewis and Giamatti are good actors but they're both doing little more than barking and dropping cultural references, to show that these characters are not serious but they're hip and cool. Almost every extended line of dialog from almost every character is pontificating about something. It's all very one-note, which is why Billions pales in comparison to Succession, which also has a lot of unlikeable characters but they're interesting.

Jemele Hill was on one of the BD shows before. And one of the other guys is an ESPN anchor, so more stunt casting. I don't know if Jemele is trying to get back on TV or probably getting a free trip for herself and her friends. No question they were encouraged to be demanding guests, including the talent show portion and another beach picnic coming up, also an anniversary party. Looks like they decided to tick all the boxes available to BD charter guests. The guest who spoke up about the beets, just not eat them instead of making a deal out of it? Or make the complaint in a memorable way like "Chicken is not acceptable. Chicken is poor people's food." This whole "Katie should have kept on Delaney" thing has been going for 3 episodes now? Have they not milked this shit enough? Malia with the passive-aggressive complaints about having to help out the interior BECAUSE OF Katie, that's gotten old too. Did they drink everything that they ordered well late into the night? Or did they just film them making drink orders? So the drama for the last two episodes is that the crew is overworked and Mat is losing his mind. So they bring the backup chef aboard because he can't make eggs all of a sudden. Also from the previews they showed, guess the guy trolls Mat a bit. Isn't it interesting that the guests each order different things for breakfast, like very specific ingredients. Plays perfectly into the drama.

They're like Rolling Stone writers, dropping references into almost every piece of dialog. Too preoccupied sometimes with verbal ostentation. Why not do like other rich people and wear expensive wardrobe and bling if you want to show off?

They’ve been planning for Axe’s exit for a couple of years because Lewis asked to be written off the show. He wanted to spend more time in England with his family. The show runners said they had worked with Cory Stall for over a year to bring him on. So this whole story line about Axe wanting the bank which led to his downfall wasn’t written hastily. This is what they came up with, even though it made little sense, that he’d be liable for money laundering from a pot grower. They could have done the money laundering plot with Grigor, the unintentionally hilarious Russian oligarch character from a season or two ago.

Episode 4 - Well that was messy. Jonathan had to go take a shower in the middle of the episode! However there were messy parts throughout the episode, though the sex scene supposedly makes Mira want him back, according to Chastain. But Mira has shown indications of wanting a do-over on the whole thing in episode 3 and now episode 4. Months after episode 3, Mira and Poli tried to have children, after Poli left a message for Jon saying he's over it. We're seeing "scenes" from a marriage but they're months or even over a year apart and the offscreen events we hear about don't match up with the things they say to each other onscreen. She didn't take the London job she talked about and as a result, she's fired, while she had said she was over Poli, she tried to stay with him. But Poli accused her of not wanting to have his baby. Jonathan also wants to have another child, with some colleague, so he wants the divorce. He tells Mira he no longer has feelings for her and also that he wouldn't miss having sex with her again -- that he had that realization while they were having sex. Then they curse each other, actually fight and she signs the divorce papers while he drives away. BTW, what kind of movers work at night, during a rain storm no less? They were speaking Russian too. So in the finale they're going to be together for most or all of the episode. If Jon no longer gives a damn about her, why would he spend more time with her again?

So the season 5 finale, the reasons why it ended the way it did.

I thought that word was "coach" when I first read it.😁

Axe's top people convene to learn the grim news about the potential jail sentence that Axe and Wags face. Besides having all their money frozen, Bobby and Axe both face up to 20 years in prison. After they leave, Wags tells Bobby that he can't do even one year in prison, that he's not up to it despite the bravado he displays to the underlings. Bobby assures Wags he won't go to prison. Then Axe holds a press conference outside of Chuck's offices, screaming into the mics that he's being unfairly prosecuted. He's going all populist and airing grievances about how unfairly he's being treated. Why not, it worked for a certain politician? But would a billionaire facing the loss of his wealth and going to prison for wrongdoing get too much sympathy from the public? I didn't think so as I watched it. And later on, they mention that billionaires aren't popular. Incredibly, Chuck goes down to Bobby's little spectacle and they trade some barbs at each other. Only on a fucking TV show would that happen. They have a round 2 when Axe barges into Chuck's offices, no cameras or mics present. They throw references and go tete a tete but it's overacting and speechifying, not good TV. Neither of them will give and it all comes down to Bobby doesn't think laws apply to him, that he's rich and can make his own laws, which is a shoutout to the very first season, when Axe bragged about having fuck you money. Wendy goes back to the office to pep up the troops but also to take shots at Taylor and Rian for tricking Axe and her. She barks something at Rian about losing her soul for betraying Axe and her. Bitch please! You gonna talk about someone else losing their soul? Over betraying that reptilian Bobby Axelrod? Taylor shows up at Bobby's country house -- I thought Janeane got that in the deal? Axe calls her a math nerd. Ooh, sick burn! Taylor says if they were just a math nerd, he'd have replaced her a long time ago. So they stage this elaborate arrest scene, where Axe's top people and Chuck's top people all convene on opposite sides of a heliport and Bobby is suppose to arrive by a sleek private helicopter to give himself up. Only on a fucking television show! Only Bobby doesn't show up. So then they go into "40 hours ago." Mike Prince pays Bobby a little secret visit in Janeane Garofolo's country house. Bobby is under surveillance but Prince just slips in via the back door. Oh that's how you evade police surveillance. Only on a fucking television show! Prince offers to buy all of Axe's wealth and the company and the bank -- fucking bank, Bobby must be thinking -- all worth over $10 billion, for the princely sum of $2 billion. Get it? Axe says this is a strange feeling, being on the losing end of a deal. Like it's never happened to him before.🙄 Only on a fucking television show! Later he tells Wendy that he's getting the hell out of Dodge, taking Prince's deal and running away. He tells her to come with him. They were going to go to Fiji together, where the water feels like air, so you don't even want to swim, even though it's an island. Now they get to go on the run and while that would be exciting for Wendy, she says she can't leave behind her kids. WTF? In five seasons, she's mentioned the kids maybe fewer times than the rings on her fingers. She leaves Chuck, goes into a series of Axe's luxury Manhattan apartments, not to live with kids, not to have time with them at her bachelorette pad. Why wouldn't she just pay Chuck off to get permanent custody of the kids and take them with her? He's not that fond of the kids either, only mentions them a few more times than Wendy has. If he couldn't make his crappy eggs for them, he might not GAF. Fact is, the show's never portrayed either of them as particularly doting or carrying parents. In fact, that's true of Bobby and Wags as well. And Chuck Sr. isn't exactly father of the year material either. Billions is partly about indifferent at best parents. But all of a sudden, Wendy is going to play the kids card to turn down Axe? Only on a fucking television show! So where does Bobby run away to? Beautiful Switzerland, with just $2 billion and on his spare private jet. Remember when he trash-talked that rival investment guy about how he would only have $150-200 million and that would mean reducing his lifestyle, with his wife being humiliated at not being able to afford society functions? Did they choose Switzerland because they plan to show Axe roughing it in Switzerland? They showed previews of season 6, which is coming back in January, with Chuck going after Prince now. In any event, Switzerland has this image of secrete Swiss bank accounts, used throughout history by famous figures stashing money. Axe's remaining money would presumably be beyond the reach of US authorities and Axe couldn't be extradited to the US. But I'm not sure Switzerland is necessarily beyond the financial reach of the US anymore because the FATCA law of 2010 made it more difficult for Americans to have foreign bank accounts without those accounts being reported to the IRS. In any event, they want to convey that it was that simple for Axe to run away from prosecution, with billions, to a rich country where Bobby can live just as luxurious a lifestyle, if not even more luxurious. Only on a fucking TV show! Prince makes a cocky entrance in front of all Axe Capital employees, to tell them it's all his now. Tells them he will make them all rich, otherwise GTFO! Dolla Bill and Maffee both leave. In reality, as soon as indictments came down, all of them would have bailed, looking for jobs elsewhere, especially those who had proven skills. Taylor and Wendy would be stuck, because they had significant equity tied up in Mason Carbon, which now Prince wants. He also wants them both to stay on. Just like that, after 5 seasons of Chuck vs. Bobby, it is now Chuck vs. Mike. Or so it seems in the season 6 previews. If they're bringing season 6 back so soon after the end of season 5, maybe it will be a short season, like 5 or 6 episodes instead of the full 12. Or maybe they will split it up, only show half starting in January. Seems unlikely they will put Bobby Axelrod character permanently in the background or off the show, unless they plan to end it after season 6.

Original air date 2021.10.03

I think the Ashley threat and then Priscilla's "big move" may have been scripted.

It wouldn't be the first time a young woman shelved her career for the sake of a man, if that's what happened here. I'll let ladies comment on whether it's worth putting aside one's own career plans for a man.

It should be noted that the Debt Ceiling issue is about all PREVIOUS spending. McConnell and other Republicans whine about the $3.5 trillion but the debt ceiling is to pay for all the money THEY spent under Trump and all other previous presidents. Republicans have repeatedly threatened to cause the US to default when they're out of power. This is why filibuster needs to be eliminated. I think Bill spoke in favor of getting rid of the filibuster but I'm not sure.

Maybe the women are wary about dating or hooking up with him, hence the Uncle CT.

All 3 of them, who probably are college graduates, were Pooh poohing college education. Then Bill talked about the poorly educated Trump followers. So which is it, you don’t need college education or the poorly educated are politically unsophisticated? I would guess all the writers are on the show are college educated. You may not need to have gone to college to be a standup comic but would Bill be the same topical comic if he didn’t go to Cornell? In any event, the data is very clear, a wide gulf in earning power between college and non college graduates. Sure there are some trades and routes to success without college degrees. But they discussed it, 60% of those entering college are women and when they graduate, they increasingly don’t want to date men without college education. Even men who own their own construction or plumbing companies who make a lot of money. Is it elitism? Or It that some of these college-educated women want to know men with some intellectual curiosity or those who can converse on some topics? Or maybe men who went through similar experiences going through college, maybe grad school, maybe did some traveling, etc? Then Taibbi with his nonsense about there was no collusion. Um political campaigns can’t have ANY contacts with foreign powers, end of story. If it wasn’t for Republican obstruction, Trump and many in his circle would have been prosecuted though not in the US. France just sentenced their former president Sarkozy for a year. The libertarian chick — “libertarians are fun at parties” — with her nonsense. She’s skeptical of FDA and CDC. If it were up to libertarians, there would be no such agencies and there would be snake oil salesmen still. Yeah “read Brazilian studies on Ivermectin on your own and take them!” STFU. Morons in Idaho are threatening to shoot doctors for not giving their relatives horse dewormer. Individual choice? If doctors gave that shit and their relatives died, there would be malpractice suits or maybe they carry out the threat to kill doctors. The covid pill they talked about is associated with birth defects so men in the trial were told not to have sex because the pill could deform sperm. There may be other side effects. But this bitch says bureaucracy is going to block or delay the pill. Vaccine is still the better choice because it reduces the chance of hospitalization and death by a greater factor than the pill, not to mention reduce the chance of infection in the first place.

HAM = hard as a motherfucker.

Looks like the girl was in charge in that relationship. She vetoed the larger, more expensive place that he wanted, or pretended to want, because they had to save for their wedding. She kept mentioning the wedding. She was studying animals in Ecuador for a masters degree in the wilderness, decided to go to visit for some R&R, met him in a club. Then they went off together to China and now Vietnam. So no more science or academic career? They go to Vietnam to get away from the cold weather in the Chinese city they were in and also to get jobs teaching English. Except that they're apparently teaching subjects, not the language?

Or Chuck doesn't have to distract Wendy because her value to Axe Capital is overrated, mainly by one person. If she starts sleeping with Axe, the employees are going to be highly resentful, like she slept her way to the top. Even if it's not true, it's only human nature and the misogyny of the culture to accuse of doing so. In fact, if they're being consistent, there would already be a lot of resentment against her in the office by all those trader bros. Does that culture look like a place which would be accepting of a woman earning an 8-figure compensation without making a single trade or cutting a single deal?

Only only through S06E03 so far but wanted to make some general comments about the series, which I've enjoyed a lot. First, we don't know where it takes place, there's been speculation but it's not London. Striking how huge the police department appears to be, with multiple AC (anticorruption) units. There are also several SWAT or armed response units too. But it's really striking how well-resourced this fictional dept. is. All the detectives from at least whatever rank Arnott had in season 1 drive nice European premium brand sedans. They're either very well paid or the department is paying for the lease of those cars? Even then why would they only lease BMWs, Benzes, etc. instead of some UK brands like Jaguar? The main detective characters seem to be well-paid or really not have money problems, so you wonder why so many of them become corrupt. In the US, police used to be underpaid at least through the '80s or so. There were efforts to reform, including Clinton in the '90s pledging to hire 100k cops. Generally pay went well up. These days, in a big city PD, cops make well over $100k and with OT can be more around $200k or more. In fact, there are some SFPD cops looking to refuse vaccine mandates and they were said to earn at least $140k a year. Now that doesn't mean criminals can't bribe them. After all, Corbett was supposedly pulling heists of millions. But cops with families and a middle to upper-middle class lifestyle in a medium-sized UK city would be risking a lot by doing the bidding of OCG. That's another thing the OCG is this faceless, amorphous entity. Sure there is a lot of money to be made running drugs, prostitution, arms and other illegal activities but other UK shows usually put a face on the villains. For all I know, police corruption is very common in the UK and Jed Mercurio is basing his scripts on real-life cases but I get the sense that he's using a lot of license to glamorize the nature of finding and prosecuting bent coppers. Especially this multi-season arc of trying to find some very high-level cop who's orchestrating all this. Also they show that OCG will play the long game, put a young criminal into the police academy, somehow get past all the vetting, because Pilkington is shown as a murderer who's willing to put aside the "fun" he's been having to join the police force, move up the ranks. Even in the US, there is suppose to be some kind of psychological profiling of potential police candidates. Again, are there cases of organized crime playing such long game, implanting a criminal into the police force and waiting years to benefit? In any event, there are plenty of corrupt cops and there has to be, in order to sustain a series about a police unit which catches them. But I wonder if maybe the success of the series wasn't anticipated so they had to not only create a lot of corrupt cops, who are often very compelling characters, but also have this kind of overarching plot across multiple seasons, though the plot has mostly been vague until the last couple of seasons. Maybe a lot of these comments or questions will be resolved by the end of season 6. LoD is unique among cop shows and movies in that it features characters who go after police corruption. In the US, police internal affairs characters are usually not portrayed sympathetically. They're either persecuting good cops or they're seen as having their own agenda which is at odds with the justice doled out by cops. If anything, the last couple of years should have tarnished the image of the beat cops, the ones who pull people over and mete unequal justice depending on the race of the people pulled over. It's a problem for cop shows and movies because for the most part, the protagonists are suppose to be sympathetic. They may bend laws but they put the bad guys away. Maybe it's not so much in the UK but cops who police other cops have a higher bar to clear for sympathy from the audience.

The daily challenge was really elaborate. But I thought the way TJ described it, they would have to dig for the puzzle pieces in the water, instead it was obvious where they were and it was mainly a race to retrieve the puzzle pieces and the key. Puzzle-solving won it, though it did require some athletic ability, at least some swimming. Guess some players don't realize causing waves or drama could make them a target. First Berna with all the woe-is-me-she-took-my-partner drama, so exhausting. Then Amber probably drinks too many and brags about going down to take Berna out. All the speechifying in the deliberations room isn't going to help their case, because people are looking for a reason to vote you into elimination and just annoying enough people may get you voted in. The elimination really advantaged the tall, long-limbed Jeremiah and Priscilla over Berna and Hughie -- "it's really his ass!" Still someone more fit and flexible than Hughie would have done well. As far as Priscilla blowing up the game, I think before they got down to these numbers, the possibility of making all rookie-vet teams wasn't there. Rookies knew what was going on -- the vets always talking like they were pulling a fast one. 🙄 The problem wasn't that the rookies didn't see what was going on. It was that they saw what was happening but didn't band together, especially when they had greater numbers. But they came into the game cold, didn't know each other like the vets knew each other and really it was every man or woman for themselves. So the rookies who won elimination just cared about being paired with a vet, didn't care about rookie-rookie teams who might be vulnerable the next day. In any event, the real alliances will come out now that vets will be going into elimination.

Hope that Issa doesn’t mail it in to fulfill her contract so she can go back to doing movies which are not as good as Insecure. Or make other TV shows as producer which again are not as good as Insecure.

Yup. not to mention, when Sandy was cussing Malia out, there were at least two cameras in that narrow bridge, one each trained on Sandy and Malia. It’s as if they knew there might be a dramatic scene of the captain dressing down a subordinate!😄 Did Sandy get all the cuss words out at a loud volume in one take? Did they have to do another take because they couldn’t keep a straight face? Or did the director have to coach Sandy on really selling how mad she was?

Well the Melbourne episode demonstrated modern vs. traditional choices. The house hunter was coming from NY and loved living there but moved to be close to her family, who had all moved to Sydney. So she wanted a very nice view in a high rise. The realtor did throw in an old traditional home which had been renovated. It had nice fireplaces and carvings in ceilings. She chose the high rise with the skyline view. Besides all the modern features, an apartment is going to be much lower maintenance than a home, especially with a backyard with avocado and lemon trees. (she was a doctor so probably worked long hours). My guess is as some of these Australian cities grew, they had to densify the housing to fit more in. So all those 100 year old homes with yards became more expensive and when new housing was put up they tended to be multi residential. If not high rises, then duplexes or something along those lines, taking up smaller footprints.

Amsterdam, they chose the most expensive one. Closest to the kids' school but far away from the city center she wanted to be in. She was worried about getting a job after living 15 years in the US. Maybe she didn't establish much of a career in The Netherlands before she went to the US. One of those rare cases where the American home they used to live in was smaller than some of the choices shown. Playa del Carmen - either the house hunters were really playing up their differences or one of them really relented. They were trashing the choices which they knew their partner liked the best. During the deliberations, they didn't tip which way they were going to go but they went for the most expensive, the furthest away from town, so probably additional expense of needing a car. Interesting, they were going to open a concierge business to help basically Americans navigate moving to Mexico, like all the bureaucracy and such, So they were going to help house hunters find homes?

I don't know, I don't see tract homes in the Australian episodes. One obvious difference is a lot of them have these doors which open to the backyard all the way. That's not really common in the US, I don't think. Maybe they are in the Sunbelt states. But my guess is in those places, they just shut the door and blast the AC. Most of the homes featured in the Australian episodes have usually been renovated, so they look clean. Compare and contrast to regular HH episodes. In general, the homes they show seem roomier and more modern than those in the European episodes.

Well after episode 5, it's clear why Laetitia was upset and afraid after being confronted by Gilles, the foster parent, for coming home late. Obviously explains why she wanted to get the hell out of that home, though she may ever have found out about Gilles and Jessica. So why didn't the twins report Patron and back up Lola's accusation? Doesn't quite explain why Laetitia went off with Meilon, who didn't exactly hide what he wanted. She had just slept with her boyfriend but decides to go off with an older, creepier guy? The girls just got dealt bad set of cards, starting with their miserable father. They wouldn't cut off Franck from their lives, even though they must now understand what he did to their mother. Did what they witnessed what their father did to their mother make them both more likely victims? Well Laetitia was going to report Meilon, though telling him that probably wasn't a good move.