S07.E03: Winston Dick Energy

[CheshireCat]

Quote

Prince attempts to leverage a past employee's work for his own gain; Chuck rallies the troops at his old stomping grounds; a betrayal from within Prince Cap shakes Wendy's confidence.

Air date: Aug 27, 2023

[Dminches]

I thought this was the best episode of season 7 so far.

Chuck and Wendy are on parallel journeys to look inside themselves. I wonder if these journeys will intersect...

 

[paigow]

USA Torre is the new Kate Sacker... Chuck Sr + Ivana WTF????!!! 

[paigow]

Of all the MCP patients, Ben Kim is the only one needing Wellbutrin? 

[txhorns79]

3 hours ago, paigow said:

Chuck Sr + Ivana WTF????!!! 

That was such a strange moment.  Not sure why they went there.

I do like Holland Taylor, and hope this doesn't turn into yet another scam where she has to be destroyed so Wendy can feel better about herself.

The rest was kind of meh.  Wags is tiresome, and I don't care about the Prince campaign.  Kareem Abdul-Jabaar was a nice surprise.  

[paigow]

13 hours ago, txhorns79 said:

That was such a strange moment.  Not sure why they went there.

Proving that Chuck Sr. is a Skrull ... but the brain copying included fantasies / delusions that could not be distinguished from actual memories / events. 

[Joimiaroxeu]

Michael O'Keefe was a surprise. It took me a minute to recognize him though.

Poor Ira, back on the crazy train. Just when he thought he was out, Chuck pulled him back in!

I love how Wendy's self-serving performance coach b.s. finally came back on her. And that Taylor was the driving force.

"Knock off Melfi." Random Sopranos reference FTW.

Groin cousins. I get that "Eskimo brothers" is problematic now but "groin cousins" is not a thing and hopefully it never will be.

What's the deal with the super PAC? Prince is trying to trap Chuck with it but I don't understand why.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Stunt casting at it's worst, to provide a protracted basketball metaphor. 🙄

[Starchild]

3 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

I love how Wendy's self-serving performance coach b.s. finally came back on her. And that Taylor was the driving force.

That was very satisfying. Her "therapy" has always put the company first. I can't remember a single time she put the "patient's" needs first in a conflict. Gotta say, though, Holland Taylor is looking pretty frail.

The stunt casting has always been jarring but this was ridiculous. Why the hell would Kareem Abdul Freakin' Jabbar allow himself to be dragged from wherever he lives to give a 5 minute pep talk to some guy he's never met, and probably only heard about (if at all) when Chuck's BDSM kink, or his recent firing, went public? You'd think if he was a friend of one of those other 3 that Chuck would have met him by now. Why the hell would a legend subject himself to that if he wasn't being paid a massive amount of cash for it? Stupid.

[aghst]

4 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

I love how Wendy's self-serving performance coach b.s. finally came back on her. And that Taylor was the driving force.

 

1 hour ago, Starchild said:

That was very satisfying. Her "therapy" has always put the company first. I can't remember a single time she put the "patient's" needs first in a conflict.

I am not so sure that is where they're going with this.

You look back at the whole series, when has any of these characters ever eaten the slightest bit of humble pie or reflect on and acknowledge any failings on their part?

That is not what this show is about.

Nor does the show ever paint these characters in a negative light.  They have setbacks but have we ever seen contrition?  In the end they win, again and again.

Whereas Succession shows the ultra rich as very flawed, pathetic beings, though in many ways, figures that viewers can sympathize with.  Billions is about people who's always kicking ass, and we're suppose to cheer, as they vanquish the little people (like Winston in this episode) and drop some supposedly deep pop culture references.

Chuck is back to his roost, as powerful as ever, though supposedly gun-shy?  We know that's not going to last.  Meanwhile he's insufferably pontificating again to Ira, as if he's going to "teach" him, like he did Connerty and Sacker and all the rest.

This OTOH is more likely where they go with Wendy going for her own therapy:

On 8/26/2023 at 6:16 PM, txhorns79 said:

I do like Holland Taylor, and hope this doesn't turn into yet another scam where she has to be destroyed so Wendy can feel better about herself.

We know Wendy isn't going to therapy for years or decades.  She will pronounce that she doesn't need to see this Mayer character any more, that she never needed to.

Melfi did therapy all her life or at least through the run of The Sopranos.

I can't believe neither the writers nor the actress saw how absurd it was for Wendy to brag about some financial metric when trying to prove that her work has  been effective.  But the way the line was written and the line reading suggests they played it straight, like they believed that notion.

 

Maybe because I never bought into the legend of Mike Wagner as this old school bad ass who bully all these Type A traders -- to me he's still Gale, the meth cook wannabe from Breaking Bad -- I thought the whole thing about getting Winston and his software back to MPC as tedious.

They don't have proof that he developed the software while at MPC.  But they have proof of him hacking and so they blackmail him to coming back.  How is Prince on board with that, now that he's running for the presidency?

But not only is blackmailing illegal, they wiretapped his home and probably broke into his computer to get the "evidence" and they have knowledge that he perpetrated illegal hacks and they hire him back?  Doesn't that make MPC liable?

And Taylor, who's made noises in the past about doing good, after they've hit that $1 billion number, is in on bullying this nerdy, sexually insecure guy, probably denying him of a chance to hit big with his work, in effect taking away a valuable piece of IP which could have made him financially independent.

Like I said, most of the regular characters are not in the slightest bit about contrition, but about winning, at any cost.

[Starchild]

I agree that most, if not all, of these characters are unlikeable and unrelatable. In this episode, only Mayer spoke anything close to like a real human being, which instantly made her the most likeable member of the cast in her very first episode.

As for Winston, as irritating as he is, between him and our MPC heroes, I was rooting for Winston. Sorry to see these amoral monsters win yet again.

ETA: Wags is a sociopath

Edited August 28, 2023 by Starchild

[paigow]

3 hours ago, Starchild said:

ETA: Wags is a sociopath

He should be running for President, not Prince

ETA: WDE = Wags Dick Energy

Edited August 28, 2023 by paigow

[Taget]

On 8/27/2023 at 8:04 PM, Joimiaroxeu said:

Poor Ira, back on the crazy train. Just when he thought he was out, Chuck pulled him back in!

 What I'm cheering for is Ira to get back at Chuck for sinking his company for his own ambition.  I want to see Ira backstab Chuck and become the US Attorney himself.  The office could do worse than having someone highly competent without a self-serving messiah complex.

[paigow]

59 minutes ago, Taget said:

 What I'm cheering for is Ira to get back at Chuck for sinking his company for his own ambition.  I want to see Ira backstab Chuck and become the US Attorney himself.

Ira + Dave running a game on Chuck... Chuck will never see it coming

[Lone Wolf]

Chuck finally got his groove back, thanks to Kareem. Now we have the answer to the eternal question of who's buried in Grant's Tomb - Chuck's Analysis Paralysis.

Of course, Horny Goat Senior's pep talk about boinking Ivanka helped. Amanda Torre is young enough to be his great-granddaughter, but it didn't stop him from eye-raping her on his way into Chuck's office.

And I guess Wend now has Wendy Clit Energy thanks to her visit to Dr. Joyce Brothers.  Sure, why not?