S05.E02: The Chris Rock Test

[PrincessPurrsALot]

Quote

Axe chases a play at Mike Prince's conference; Chuck wrestles with his demons and chooses a new path; Wendy takes the lead as Axe Cap faces a threat; Taylor confronts a figure from their past.

Original air date 2020.05.10

[scrb]

So Chuck is going to therapy which ends with doing eye moving exercises.  After that he decides to go to war with Wendy over the divorce, denying her a big glass palace -- so much for her privacy.

Chuck starts talking about how he's like Dexter Morgan, controlled by a Dark Passenger.

But that follow-the-lights therapy was something out of another Showtime show, The Affair.

Meanwhile, Axe and Wags go up north again, to a pseudo-Davos gathering of rich Americans hosted by Mike Prince.  This "Mike" is suppose to be where they talk about how they as the rich elite can give back or make the world better place.

Axe isn't having it.  He's a "fucking carnivorous monster" and so is everyone else at that gathering.  They're out to win and they rich people who want to do good are delusional, he says.

Prince says "you didn't build it" that he stood on other people's shoulders and took advantage of infrastructure, liquidity, etc. to become rich.  Axe says he benefitted from the paved roads but he was the driver.

Bobby is unconvinced but his ulterior motive for going up there was to cut deals with people who are involved in medical ayahuasca.  So the previous trip up North was to scope out a business opportunity, not spiritual discovery -- as if we should be surprised.

Wags tries to cut a deal by taking this investor to a strip club, only to find the headliner is Brandi, his own daughter.  Hence the name of the episode, though apparently they just threw in that scene in order to use the episode name.

Chuck is also using his Dark Passenger to manipulate his friend Judge DeGiulio into a post as the Solicitor General, where he can be more useful to the NY AG, rather than DeGiulio's preferred spot on the Supreme Court.  Turns out the judge authored the infamous torture memo.

Back at Axe Cap, Lauren is recruited by Wendy to smooth over relations with a major client, while Taylor runs into ex boyfriend Oscar at the Mike and finds that Oscar doesn't want to keep his money as long as Mason Cap is under the roof of Axe Cap.  So they tell Oscar how bad a chess player he is.

Bobby thinks they have the medical ayahuasca deal done but then Prince comes up with the ayahuasca shaman, scuttling Axe's deal.  That pisses him off, now knows he's at war with Prince.  He also tells Wendy to "gut" Chuck in the divorce, probably going to get her the best divorce lawyer.

At this point, what is holding Bobby and Wendy back from fucking?

[LibertarianSlut]

I don’t think Chuck would have bought into the bullshit light therapy.  I just feel like this show likes to force strange and different concepts on us, like the ayahuasca therapy, the wrecking room, and the female MMA fighter from last episode.  It’s boring in how expected it is.  

There is absolutely no way that the real estate agent would announce from across the room that Wendy couldn’t get that apartment because her husband got a temporary stay on her assets.  It’s like yelling across a restaurant that someone’s credit card was turned down.  

Other than showing us a beautiful snowy chalet, what was the point of that scene with Prince landing his plane?  So we could learn Axe Cap’s aim was to take down Prince with a fireside chat and that Taylor was supposed to convince someone to invest in medicinal ayahuasca?  That wasn’t clunky or extraneous at all.  Why didn’t they just do it instead of talking about it?  I thought this show was supposed to be geared toward an intelligent audience who didn’t need everything that was coming next to be spoon-fed to us with redundant dialogue. 

What at all was the point of that fireside chat?  How was the audience—who I assume were busy and productive—benefiting from hearing it?  Sometimes I think Damian Lewis leans on the outer-borough-unlikeliest-to-be-a-billionaire accent too much.  He sounds like one of the Jets or the Sharks.  

With Axe and Wags away, there is a psychiatrist running a hedge fund?  And an investor is able to access the floor, and Wendy has to scramble to decide what to do with her?  Why is Axe Capital as accessible as Grand Central Station when everywhere that I’ve worked—which has far lower risk than a hedge fund—requires an electronic badge to access the floor?  

So the guy Dollar Bill was threatening was doing his own trading at Axe Cap and left his screen up and Dollar Bill saw it and wanted in?  We’re supposed to believe any of this?

I hate Bonnie.  I hate everyone at Axe Cap.  Their personalities are so cartoonish, as opposed to the two women from Mase Cap, who are written well.  

I didn’t understand why Chuck was in trouble with that woman at the beginning of the episode.  Why is Chuck in trouble as AG again?  Is it like last season, where Chuck just lost all of his power as AG for no explicit reason, and he had to heroically crawl his way back by having everyone with power arrested at that funeral in Albany?  In other words, was there a rhyme or reason to this, or was it just placed clumsily there so that Chuck would have a stumbling block?

I also had a hard time understanding why we would be interested in what was going on between DeGiulio and the senator.  DeGiulio had written a memo about water-boarding and Chuck was pretending to go to bat for him so that DeGiulio would be in a position to argue in front of The US Supreme Court for Chuck at some point?  Ok, whatever.  This is so boring, compared to digging up dirt on Jock Jeffcoat and his involvement with the telephone lines and the trains.  There, at least we were working toward something.

At some point, I stopped trying to understand this episode.  So Prince stole Axe’s shaman. Is there a shaman shortage?

I thought it was bad in previous seasons when someone would drop an esoteric line from history or an old movie that all the other characters instinctively understood.  I didn’t realize it could get worse with references to Dexter all fucking episode. 

No one is doing anything I find interesting or realistic or intriguing this season.  I will give it one more episode with my full attention, and then I’m just going to give up and watch passively, because they’re now had 100 minutes to do anything positive or plot-worthy, and they haven’t.  That’s pretty much DOA.   

[edhopper]

Axe is really loathsome person.

[Dminches]

This show is just too full of itself. I feel like they are trying to see how bizarre they can make it and still have people interested.  That never ends well.

 

[EtheltoTillie]

10 hours ago, LibertarianSlut said:

.

At some point, I stopped trying to understand this episode.  So Prince stole Axe’s shaman. Is there a shaman shortage?.   

Me too. I also stopped watching. 
and bwahaha. 

[jvr]

18 hours ago, LibertarianSlut said:

What at all was the point of that fireside chat?  How was the audience—who I assume were busy and productive—benefiting from hearing it?  Sometimes I think Damian Lewis leans on the outer-borough-unlikeliest-to-be-a-billionaire accent too much.  He sounds like one of the Jets or the Sharks.  

I listened to the podcast by the creators and they say these meetings happen in real life... people that supposedly run the world, gather together because they think they are thought leaders and people in the room are making trades in the moment based off what these guys say in these meetings. It's not hard to imagine super rich people think they are this important and this influential that they would gather together to hear each other speak about their own mythology.

18 hours ago, LibertarianSlut said:

There is absolutely no way that the real estate agent would announce from across the room that Wendy couldn’t get that apartment because her husband got a temporary stay on her assets.  It’s like yelling across a restaurant that someone’s credit card was turned down.

I didn't have a problem with this. It wasn't like it was an open showing with a bunch of people wandering around. It was just Wendy and someone she bought with her. 

12 hours ago, edhopper said:

Axe is really loathsome person.

You just realized that? jk

I find the Axe Cap people funny for the most part (except Dollar Bill). I don't have much of an opinion of Taylors group but obvious the show likes Laura. 

I'm trying to figure out if I'm supposed to think Mike Prince is sincere. 

Forgot to mention I liked the cameo by the real life Chess Master Hikaru Nakamura. The minute I saw him I was like, oh! 

The Chuck testing of waterboarding as torture, his line of, yes its torture..."if even I don't like it" lol. On a side note I've mentioned waterboarding a couple of time this week in relation to how it feels to wear a cloth face mask and as you breath it gets moist, I've said it's sorta like a tiny waterboarding of yourself. 

Edited May 11, 2020 by jvr

[hoodooznoodooz]

I’m glad that I’m not the only one who thinks this show has become a joke. 

I hate when Wendy smiles while pressing her lips together tightly. 

It was funny seeing Taylor wearing a goofy T-shirt.

Rob Morrow hasn’t aged much since Northern Exposure.

[dmc]

yeah again not impressed with this episode

 

My issue with it, it's all the same

Chuck jealous of Axe and Wendy goes after Axe and Wendy

Axe is annoyed someone is getting more attention than him so he has to take them down

Wendy is doing what is Wendy doing?

 

None of these people have grown, its Season 1 all over again

 

[Lemons]

I hate that the Taylor character has turned pathetic and weak. Weakened by Axe

[Sam Spayaid]

On 5/10/2020 at 4:24 PM, LibertarianSlut said:

With Axe and Wags away, there is a psychiatrist running a hedge fund?

Is that what she is because I always thought she was just some glorified "team builder" or some other workplace nonsense. 

 

2 hours ago, Lemons said:

I hate that the Taylor character has turned pathetic and weak. Weakened by Axe

That is sad. She used to be my favorite character. Now? I really don't know what exactly her role is anymore.

[LibertarianSlut]

7 hours ago, jvr said:

I didn't have a problem with this. It wasn't like it was an open showing with a bunch of people wandering around. It was just Wendy and someone she bought with her. 

I had a problem with it—with Wendy’s realtor shouting across the apartment that Chuck had frozen all of Wendy’s assets—on a couples of bases.

First of all, Wendy would have known first if Chuck froze her assets.  In this era of online banking, she would have gotten 25 emails on the matter within five minutes.  It would be very odd for the realtor to be the first one to know.  

Second, these realtors didn’t get to the position of selling multi-million dollars properties—and becoming millionaires themselves—by being indiscreet.  Wendy had another person there with her.  People are really funny in that they say their lives are like open books, and their divorce is fair game and how much money they have is fair game (and Wendy isn’t even written as one of those people; she freaked out when Chuck revealed they do BDSM last season), but even if she presented that way, people still don’t want third parties revealing to their friends that their estranged spouse froze the assets.  That can lose a realtor a client who might make several multi-million dollar real property investments in coming years.  So I don’t see a consummate professional making this mistake.  

My third problem is that we didn’t even need the scene.  Like I posted upthread, we’re supposed to figure things out on our own by watching.  If the show needed to do this dance, we could have seen Wendy saying she’ll take the apartment and the realtor coming back and saying, “Wendy?”  We all would have gathered there was a problem, and then we would have known the specifics when Wendy was later on the phone with Axe and she told him what happened.  That would have been much more suspenseful in my opinion.

So not only did I find it totally unrealistic, I found it silly and redundant to have this play out.  The thimbleful of extra drama that it lent to the show wasn’t worth watering down the story by pelting us with the same run-of-the-mill info twice.  

This is my problem with the show in a nutshell.  Stop trying to shock us, show, and just get good schemes going with a slow burn, and if we get it, we get it, and if we don’t, we’ll read the recap on Monday like everyone else, lol.  

[LibertarianSlut]

13 minutes ago, Sam Spayaid said:

Is that what she is because I always thought she was just some glorified "team builder" or some other workplace nonsense. 

Remember last season’s storyline about her losing her license and how much she was freaking out?  She had to go before the medical board, so I gathered she was a doctor.  She’s also written scripts in the past.  I think Chuck ultimately saved her license in some inadvertent way, as he didn’t really care whether she lost it, but man, was she freaking.  

I don’t know why either, as Axe told her she could keep her job babysitting at Axe Cap, so it wasn’t even good writing, but she had a hard-on for that medical license (which should have been taken away IMO) like nobody’s business.  

[dmc]

8 minutes ago, LibertarianSlut said:

I had a problem with it—with Wendy’s realtor shouting across the apartment that Chuck had frozen all of Wendy’s assets—on a couples of bases.

First of all, Wendy would have known first if Chuck froze her assets.  In this era of online banking, she would have gotten 25 emails on the matter within five minutes.  It would be very odd for the realtor to be the first one to know.  

Second, these realtors didn’t get to the position of selling multi-million dollars properties—and becoming millionaires themselves—by being indiscreet.  Wendy had another person there with her.  People are really funny in that they say their lives are like open books, and their divorce is fair game and how much money they have is fair game (and Wendy isn’t even written as one of those people; she freaked out when Chuck revealed they do BDSM last season), but even if she presented that way, people still don’t want third parties revealing to their friends that their estranged spouse froze the assets.  That can lose a realtor a client who might make several multi-million dollar real property investments in coming years.  So I don’t see a consummate professional making this mistake.  

My third problem is that we didn’t even need the scene.  Like I posted upthread, we’re supposed to figure things out on our own by watching.  If the show needed to do this dance, we could have seen Wendy saying she’ll take the apartment and the realtor coming back and saying, “Wendy?”  We all would have gathered there was a problem, and then we would have known the specifics when Wendy was later on the phone with Axe and she told him what happened.  That would have been much more suspenseful in my opinion.

So not only did I find it totally unrealistic, I found it silly and redundant to have this play out.  The thimbleful of extra drama that it lent to the show wasn’t worth watering down the story by pelting us with the same run-of-the-mill info twice.  

This is my problem with the show in a nutshell.  Stop trying to shock us, show, and just get good schemes going with a slow burn, and if we get it, we get it, and if we don’t, we’ll read the recap on Monday like everyone else, lol.  

agreed 

[Lone Wolf]

In case anyone's interested...

To paraphrase a quote, "Of all the strip clubs in all the towns in all the world...." Wags walks into that one??

 

Edited May 11, 2020 by Lone Wolf

[Sam Spayaid]

Um..did I miss something? Possibly in my current mental state which is, a cooped up, quarantine-addled brain, I was positive that when Wags went to the peeler bar, did he not see his own daughter working the pole?!!! And he mentioned it to Axe the next day....AND THAT WAS THE END OF THAT?!

Correct me if I'm wrong but did they not explore/expand upon that any further? It was just never spoken about again?!!!

Did I hallucinate the whole thing? And if it did happen, then was it not highly unusual for a father to just leave it at that?

Please don't judge too harshly. This confinement thing is kinda getting to me...

[EtheltoTillie]

1 hour ago, Sam Spayaid said:

Um..did I miss something? Possibly in my current mental state which is, a cooped up, quarantine-addled brain, I was positive that when Wags went to the peeler bar, did he not see his own daughter working the pole?!!! And he mentioned it to Axe the next day....AND THAT WAS THE END OF THAT?!

Correct me if I'm wrong but did they not explore/expand upon that any further? It was just never spoken about again?!!!

Did I hallucinate the whole thing? And if it did happen, then was it not highly unusual for a father to just leave it at that?

Please don't judge too harshly. This confinement thing is kinda getting to me...

Not judging.  I can't watch this anymore and I just come here for snark or summaries.

[Broderbits]

1 hour ago, Sam Spayaid said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but did they not explore/expand upon that any further? It was just never spoken about again?!!!

Wags mentioned something about getting her out of there, and Axe swore to put the bar out of business. But really, what's more important: a family crisis or finalizing plans to soothe Axe's massive ego? Where are your priorities?

[Pop Tart]

30 minutes ago, Broderbits said:

Wags mentioned something about getting her out of there, and Axe swore to put the bar out of business. But really, what's more important: a family crisis or finalizing plans to soothe Axe's massive ego? Where are your priorities?

Wags said he got her out of there and got her into a rehab, so guess he did do something, though not sure how he managed all that from the mountain retreat. Hmmmm.

Taylor right now doesn’t have much power but I’m sure they’re still plotting, just using a long game right now. They’ll make a move at some point I’m sure.

Much as Axe and Chuck are both monstrous (still enjoy watching them), something they both said about themselves in this episode, right now Wendy is topping my list of worst just because she still seems to be convinced that she’s a good person and somehow better than the others.

[Cotypubby]

Is medical ayahuasca really such a booming business that these two deca-billionaires are fighting over it? Why would that be a thing? 🤷‍♀️

That Mohonk Mountain House is everywhere all of a sudden! I watched Upload over the weekend and it’s used there too. 

I don’t care about DiGuilio nor can I follow all the political machinations of who is where in what office running for what and what it means to Chuck and *snore*

I actually do have “Darkly Dreaming Dexter” on my bookshelf as well but that’s not exactly a well-known reference, obvious it’s just cause it was also a Showtime show...

[dwmarch]

13 hours ago, jvr said:

I'm trying to figure out if I'm supposed to think Mike Prince is sincere.

I am reminded of Season 4 of The Shield which opened with a "reformed" gang leader doing some community outreach thing where all these teenagers were chanting affirmative slogans while the cops stood in the back mean mugging. And of course it turned out the community outreach was just an act and the "reformed" gang leader was still every bit a bad guy. I feel like Prince is going to turn out this way. Despite his high ideals I am sure we will eventually find out he made his fortune selling the souls of babies or something.

6 hours ago, LibertarianSlut said:

Remember last season’s storyline about her losing her license and how much she was freaking out?  She had to go before the medical board, so I gathered she was a doctor.  She’s also written scripts in the past.  I think Chuck ultimately saved her license in some inadvertent way, as he didn’t really care whether she lost it, but man, was she freaking. 

As I recall he didn't save her license although he had the opportunity to. I'm not sure if his ultimate motivation was spite or what but he actively decided not to help her and then told her he tried his hardest.

3 hours ago, Sam Spayaid said:

Um..did I miss something? Possibly in my current mental state which is, a cooped up, quarantine-addled brain, I was positive that when Wags went to the peeler bar, did he not see his own daughter working the pole?!!! And he mentioned it to Axe the next day....AND THAT WAS THE END OF THAT?!

Correct me if I'm wrong but did they not explore/expand upon that any further? It was just never spoken about again?!!!

Did I hallucinate the whole thing? And if it did happen, then was it not highly unusual for a father to just leave it at that?

Please don't judge too harshly. This confinement thing is kinda getting to me...

The thing that bothered me about this scene was that Billions has normally been a sex-positive show. Now all of a sudden strippers need to be in rehab? Despite what Chris Rock says, I am sure there are some women out there who had an entirely normal upbringing and who strip because it's easy (relatively; I've seen the shoes they wear) money. Then again, we are talking about the daughter of Wags here so some addiction issues would not be unexpected. I don't follow why Axe feels the need to have the place shut down except just to make Wags feel better. But it's not the last strip joint in the universe so good luck chasing her around.

3 minutes ago, Cotypubby said:

I don’t care about DiGuilio nor can I follow all the political machinations of who is where in what office running for what and what it means to Chuck and *snore*

I would not be surprised if this is one of Chuck's chess moves that ends up backfiring on him. DiGuilio will find out that Chuck shat on his dream right around the time Chuck needs a favor from him the most.

[jvr]

30 minutes ago, dwmarch said:

As I recall he didn't save her license although he had the opportunity to. I'm not sure if his ultimate motivation was spite or what but he actively decided not to help her and then told her he tried his hardest.

Did he just forget? Too busy trying to fuck someone else over to save his wife's career perhaps? You're right though he didn't save her license, Axe did with a bribe and the Axe's lawyer guy helped, but I'm not sure he decided to purposefully fuck her over. He did say he would do it but didn't.

30 minutes ago, dwmarch said:

Now all of a sudden strippers need to be in rehab?

I want to think it's more about Wags being a drug fueled idiot and how I'm sure that played a role in whatever life his daughter is living... and less about the stripping itself (besides being traumatized by seeing your own daughter stripping). I think Axe was just trying to make him feel better by flexing. Good thoughts though, I did have the thought of, someone's daughter has to be on that pole, and not all of them are coming from some fucked up background.

Edited May 12, 2020 by jvr

[ahpny]

Quote

At this point, what is holding Bobby and Wendy back from fucking?

Only the trope that their connection is too deep and important to mess it up by introducing sex. And Wendy is still technically married, though that hardly seems an impediment now.

 

15 hours ago, Cotypubby said:

That Mohonk Mountain House is everywhere all of a sudden! I watched Upload over the weekend and it’s used there too. 

I recognized it pretty quickly and was curious if they'd name it (they did once). Its a beautiful spot that benefits further from being surprisingly close to Manhattan. But it's a bit of an odd choice here given its its rustic charm and homey ambiance. It's not where I'd picture billionaires hanging out - even for "charity." I've been fortunate to visit it several times, and it's very nice, but nothing like a 5-star hotel or a fancy high-toned retreat. Think National Park lodge - that's the closest type of inn that comes to mind, though Mohonk has been privately owned for more than 150 years. See https://www.mohonk.com/

[mledawn]

On 5/11/2020 at 5:28 PM, Sam Spayaid said:

That is sad. She used to be my favorite character. Now? I really don't know what exactly her role is anymore.

Just your periodic reminder that Taylor uses they/them/their pronouns.

[talktoomuch]

I, too, want Taylor to become a mf'ing monster (again). Its the only hope for reinjecting some life into this circuitous, repetitive Axe v Chuck "fight." And what exactly is Sara's job now?

On 5/11/2020 at 11:03 PM, dwmarch said:

I would not be surprised if this is one of Chuck's chess moves that ends up backfiring on him. DiGuilio will find out that Chuck shat on his dream right around the time Chuck needs a favor from him the most.

What? Why would you possibly think that? Oh. Because this is what happens to Chuck every. fucking. time. 🙄

On 5/12/2020 at 2:50 PM, ahpny said:

Only the trope that their connection is too deep and important to mess it up by introducing sex. And Wendy is still technically married, though that hardly seems an impediment now.

In my Billions dreams, there was once a scene where we saw why Wendy ever married Chuck. And that she used to love or respect - hell I'll even take like - him. And then the fight over her would actually have some tension or some stakes that anybody cared about.

[MamaBird]

Something I don't understand, and haven't seen explained anywhere: the grey-haired woman that Axe is seen conspiring with in a restaurant, who then shows up in the scene where the bitcoin mining case (or whatever it is) gets taken away from him.  Chuck was going to make it a civil rather than criminal case at Axe's request. And Axe's mole intervenes to take it away from him?  What did I miss? Is this just supposed to be an example of Axe playing 11-dimensional chess - and if so, to what end?

[scrb]

5 minutes ago, MamaBird said:

Something I don't understand, and haven't seen explained anywhere: the grey-haired woman that Axe is seen conspiring with in a restaurant, who then shows up in the scene where the bitcoin mining case (or whatever it is) gets taken away from him.  Chuck was going to make it a civil rather than criminal case at Axe's request. And Axe's mole intervenes to take it away from him?  What did I miss? Is this just supposed to be an example of Axe playing 11-dimensional chess - and if so, to what end?

She's like the Manhattan DA.

Apparently Axe convinces her and she convinces the governor (bald guy) to move the case from the State AG to the NYC AG.

Not sure how that works.  I don't think Governor has control over what the State AG does, since the State AG was elected as well.

In any event, I guess the show didn't really want to make a long story about the crypto mining case.  They just thought it was cool to reference a new thing.

[Joimiaroxeu]

Well, I can guess how Axe will ultimately get rid of Mike Prince. Flight accident.

Re Wag's daughter on the pole, I've seen it theorized elsewhere that Prince arranged that to mess with Wag's head at a key time. I dunno, this Prince guy doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd victimize a young woman like that just to score a deal.

You stole my shaman!

[RealReality]

On 5/11/2020 at 9:03 PM, dwmarch said:

I am reminded of Season 4 of The Shield which opened with a "reformed" gang leader doing some community outreach thing where all these teenagers were chanting affirmative slogans while the cops stood in the back mean mugging. And of course it turned out the community outreach was just an act and the "reformed" gang leader was still every bit a bad guy. I feel like Prince is going to turn out this way. Despite his high ideals I am sure we will eventually find out he made his fortune selling the souls of babies or something.

As I recall he didn't save her license although he had the opportunity to. I'm not sure if his ultimate motivation was spite or what but he actively decided not to help her and then told her he tried his hardest.

The thing that bothered me about this scene was that Billions has normally been a sex-positive show. Now all of a sudden strippers need to be in rehab? Despite what Chris Rock says, I am sure there are some women out there who had an entirely normal upbringing and who strip because it's easy (relatively; I've seen the shoes they wear) money. Then again, we are talking about the daughter of Wags here so some addiction issues would not be unexpected. I don't follow why Axe feels the need to have the place shut down except just to make Wags feel better. But it's not the last strip joint in the universe so good luck chasing her around.

I would not be surprised if this is one of Chuck's chess moves that ends up backfiring on him. DiGuilio will find out that Chuck shat on his dream right around the time Chuck needs a favor from him the most.

I think the show will go that way with prince, and it'll be a disappointment.  Sometimes people can be good and just have an Achilles heel of assholery.  

It's what I think this show always tries to do.  Create complex characters with dimensions, but somehow they all end up not being all that interesting.  

I think a deca billionaire who has altruistic intentions, but is petty as hell and wants to "win" over other deca billionaires would be kinda interesting. 

It's how I imagine bill gates is.  Good intentions, but would cut you like a knife through butter so he could win.  

Ultimately though, I think you're right and Mike prince is going to be a monster of some sort. 

I'm jonesing!  I need to discuss the most current episode!!,

Edited May 17, 2020 by RealReality

[RealReality]

5 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

Well, I can guess how Axe will ultimately get rid of Mike Prince. Flight accident.

Re Wag's daughter on the pole, I've seen it theorized elsewhere that Prince arranged that to mess with Wag's head at a key time. I dunno, this Prince guy doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd victimize a young woman like that just to score a deal.

You stole my shaman!

I doubt it re: prince.  Why would he even care about wags?  And that's playing a pretty long con for fairly little gain.  Maybe prince's personal "wags" set it up, but again....like how much is that really going to fuck with axe.  Axe kinda cares......

I think it makes sense that the wags thing was an accident and meant to show what a lifetime of being an absentee father can bring about (I assume there was an addiction in there since he shipped her to rehab).  Chickens coming home to roost and what not. 

Sounds like wags was an absentee father, so I'm not sure how drunk, probably high as a kite wags put two and two together in a dark strip club.  

[RealReality]

On 5/14/2020 at 10:16 AM, MamaBird said:

Something I don't understand, and haven't seen explained anywhere: the grey-haired woman that Axe is seen conspiring with in a restaurant, who then shows up in the scene where the bitcoin mining case (or whatever it is) gets taken away from him.  Chuck was going to make it a civil rather than criminal case at Axe's request. And Axe's mole intervenes to take it away from him?  What did I miss? Is this just supposed to be an example of Axe playing 11-dimensional chess - and if so, to what end?

I think axe wanted the whole thing dropped.  Chuck said be would make it a "civil case" and that was the best be could do.  

It seems like a really silly move on Chuck's part because he already broke the tenuous truce with axe and axe just went above his head.  

I could see why axe wouldn't want a civil case because I believe there could still be discovery, which could be tricky even in a civil case.  And as far as I remember, there aren't any protections against self incrimination for a civil case.  No one can MAKE you answer a question, but guilt can be inferred from refusing to do so. 

I was more surprised by chessmaster Chuck because what he did seemed short-sighted and stupid.  

[Joimiaroxeu]

Quote

I think it makes sense that the wags thing was an accident and meant to show what a lifetime of being an absentee father can bring about (I assume there was an addiction in there since he shipped her to rehab).  Chickens coming home to roost and what not. 

I don't disagree. Still though, it seems like an incredible coincidence that Wags' daughter would happen to be at that strip club out of all the strip clubs in the world. Aren't they in kind of a remote location? It may have been set up by somebody who gleaned what Axe and Wags were up to and wanted to create a distraction for Wags. Of course, they assumed Wags would care.

[RealReality]

34 minutes ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

I don't disagree. Still though, it seems like an incredible coincidence that Wags' daughter would happen to be at that strip club out of all the strip clubs in the world. Aren't they in kind of a remote location? It may have been set up by somebody who gleaned what Axe and Wags were up to and wanted to create a distraction for Wags. Of course, they assumed Wags would care.

Yeah, but IMO, in shows like this unlikely events happen all the time in furtherance of the plot or a point.  

Axe cares about wags, but I'm not sure that this would have been enough to throw axe off his game.  It wasn't really enough to throw wags off his game since he closed the deal.  

It would be an awful plan, because it would rely on a million uncontrollable variables, with a very uncertain payoff.  

If the game was to get the shaman than all Prince had to do was make a call.  And that was the better, more direct and more certain mindfuck.  Prince let axe run around all weekend feeling like a 3D chessmaster ready to get his revenge, just to Lucy yank that football at the last minute.  

It seems unlikely to me, but I'm not decabillionaire so maybe they do stuff like this. 

 

[Broderbits]

45 minutes ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

Aren't they in kind of a remote location?

Mohonk is about a 90 minute drive from NYC. Do we know anything about Wag's mysterious family or even how old this daughter is supposed to be? Maybe she went to Vassar, which is in Poughkeepsie, and got started with drugs there.

[Bcharmer]

On 5/16/2020 at 7:27 PM, Joimiaroxeu said:

 

You stole my shaman!

Of course, my mind just leapt right over to "Don't squeeze the Shaman!" 
That is all. Carry on.