Billionaires and Wannabes: Characters and Motivations

[Chinspinner]

Apologies if this should have appeared in another thread, please feel free to move it; or feel free to change the title to something witty. This thread is intended for discussion of any of the characters, character arcs and their motivations. 

I am late to this show, and have just caught up with it online. I find one character unfathomable, and it has been bugging me over the two seasons, namely: Wendy Rhoades. 

1) I do not understand what she does professionally. Other characters spout self-help book levels of nonsense about her, like: "She broke me down and reassembled me", but I just watched the entire scene where this was supposed to have happened, and it didn't. To the contrary, they had a chat with some weekend-course psycho-babble thrown in on occasion. She  gets paid a fortune and her role and purpose literally has the same value as a $9.99 self-help book. This just irritated me endlessly, I was constantly told how she was invaluable to the firm, but there was nothing in the show that showed me that.

2) Given the above I started to wonder if it was Axe's relationship with her that kept her in the job, and to a degree that explains it, but there is no doubt the show wants you to think she is a prodigy that excels at her role. Which is another issue, the relationship between Wendy and Axe felt antagonistic from the start, and his loyalty to her felt out-of-character. The show never sold me that he would hold such blind loyalty for her character (before his motivations turned to revenge on Chuck, and even taking into account his control-freakery).

3) I never understood what she got out of her relationship with Chuck, I was never shown a reason why she was with him, or why she would have fallen for him. The show-boating S&M scenes in the first season did not help, as they reduced their relationship to a gimmick.

If I were to be harsh, I would describe her as a McGuffin around which the other characters can revolve and their motivations can be shaped.   

[roughing it]

Nice post Chinspinner.  I dislike both women in the series, Wendy, for reasons stated by you, and Lara.  I don't get the Wendy-worship, at all.  And Lara just feels thin, not much depth.  The character (or actress) does not play "warmth" well, nor does she play "cold-hearted" well.  Lara thinks she's tough, but I don't.

[dwmarch]

On 24/08/2017 at 9:37 AM, roughing it said:

Lara thinks she's tough, but I don't.

I think this is not a bug but a feature. She's used to playing the role of bad bitch because her money/name/influence has been worth something in certain scenarios due to who her husband is. But when we've seen Lara trying to accomplish something on her own, she falls flat on her face and Axe lets it happen because he's not afraid to remind Lara that she's nothing without him. There's an interesting power dynamic between Lara and Axe. She is by far the better parent, letting her pampered and entitled children know that they might one day have to literally dig for food. Axe just throws money at problems until they go away. And we can bet that he's got just such a contingency plan ready for Lara should she ever betray him.

As for Wendy, we have seen her be effective in motivating the team to achieve their best results. We saw with the douchey guy who replaced her that this whole aspect of corporate management is mostly bullshit with some self-help stuff thrown in so it's a placebo effect at best but what is more important is what the people at Axe Capital are willing to pay for it. It is not necessarily important that Wendy brings them real therapy; the illusion of such (provided it keeps them on track and hitting their goals) is much more important than what can be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The bond between Wendy and Axe is explained in one single scene in Season 2: they survived 9/11 together.

That pool in front of them is the footprint of one of the Towers, the dialog in that scene confirms why it is sentimental to them.

 

As for Wendy and Chuck I believe it could be as simple as that it is difficult to find someone who will allow you to walk on them in your best spike-heeled boots while putting cigarettes out on their chest. Axe Capital is full of A-type assholes, no way are they willing to be the sub in a BDSM relationship.

[wilnil]

9 hours ago, dwmarch said:

As for Wendy, we have seen her be effective in motivating the team to achieve their best results. We saw with the douchey guy who replaced her that this whole aspect of corporate management is mostly bullshit with some self-help stuff thrown in so it's a placebo effect at best but what is more important is what the people at Axe Capital are willing to pay for it. It is not necessarily important that Wendy brings them real therapy; the illusion of such (provided it keeps them on track and hitting their goals) is much more important than what can be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

This. I used to work in an office where I'd frequently pass by where the sales staff worked, and it seemed like they spent a fair amount of time in meetings that had a strong "pep rally" feel to them: "This is the new product, these are its selling points ... and here's why you wanna be selling them like hotcakes! Go team! Meet the goals -- no, beat the goals!" Now from my non-sales point of view, this sounded like pure rah-rah bullshit, but every time I've seen a sales department, I've seen something like this going on in it. It seems to be an expected part of the system, and if you can supply good rah-rah bullshit, you can probably go far.

9 hours ago, dwmarch said:

As for Wendy and Chuck I believe it could be as simple as that it is difficult to find someone who will allow you to walk on them in your best spike-heeled boots while putting cigarettes out on their chest.

I think it's more that she's drawn to aggressive go-getters. Even when she left Axe Capital for a while, she didn't start working with, say, traumatized kids or even underachieving kids, she just found different powerful people as clients. Chuck is a guy from a rich and connected family who's tucked his money into a blind trust so he can tilt at corporate dragons in a high-profile, politically advantageous kind of way. Another go-getter, just more after the power than the money. (And from things I've read, it's apparently not at all hard to find type-A hardasses who secretly crave to be dominated.)