S04.E05: A Proper Sendoff

[PrincessPurrsALot]

Chuck begins work in a new position. Axe is surprised by a visitor from his past. Wendy deals with the consequences of Chuck’s actions. Taylor goes after an organization that has a history with Axe.

Original air date 2019.04.14

[scrb]

In the aftermath of the public confession, Wendy complains that Chuck too agency from her and now she's viewed by people in a certain way.

Agency would have been to plunge that knife into Chuck's neck rather than cutting up that frou frou pizza.

Or leave him.

In any event, this episode is about Chuck and Bobby both ending other people, specifically putting their careers to death.

Chuck does it to get his power back, which Jeffcoat had been cock-blocking and Bobby, well he does it because his godson or the son of a former mentor who died on 9/11 while he made profits doesn't love him or show enough deference to him.

Viewers are suppose to be impressed, because our heroes are outwitting their enemies or in Axe's case, it's not enough to ignore his own sons, he has to destroy a godson.

Sure people with power or money or both can be horrible, vindictive people.  We see examples of it every day.

But pols generally don't rise or keep their high positions by first blackmailing and then betraying others with some power.  Chuck plays the blackmail card a little too much, which is strange, since he prefers to be punished rather than threatening to punish when it comes to his personal life.

Meanwhile, Axe concocts an elaborate plot to destroy this kid because he didn't want to have anything to do with him.  It shouldn't be surprising, since his falling out with Taylor indicates that he's driven by vendetta.

Does that really make for a successful trader though?  He burned some investments just to try to block Taylor and he had his people spend the day unraveling this kid's firm but did they make profits that day?

I thought they were always under pressure to earn so how do they burn a day?

Axe has been using the term "people like us" a lot this season.  He said it to Chuck a few times and he said it to poor John Rice once.  Might be more of a tell that he plans to destroy "people like us."  He hasn't set out to destroy Chuck yet but he's making him do his dirty work, like find dirt on Taylor and prosecute them.

[dwmarch]

"I can't imagine I'd be sending you anything but a hearty 'how's my ass taste?'" and "If you'd whined this much as a baby I would have slipped more whiskey into your bottle and risked the chance you'd be a dullard" were true laugh out loud lines.

Chuck goes into beast mode and has a dozen people arrested at a funeral. He didn't come to praise Blackjack, he came to bury the son of a bitch and bury him he did!

Just when we think Axe might have a softer side, it turns out the engine malfunction is just a distraction to keep his former protege busy while Axe Cap buries him.

Taylor presents for the firefighters with a message of "Fuck Axelrod" and they all love it.

Even Spiros gets to do something useful and is only minimally annoying!

For personal reasons I also loved the Pulp Fiction references and a new character who drinks pickle juice as a hangover cure.

[Joimiaroxeu]

I think we're seeing the early stages of where Chuck and Axe's newfound friendship will retreat back to its former status. Chuck isn't going to gut Taylor quickly or deeply enough to satisfy Axe.

Do people actually walk around with $100M checks? It makes for a dramatic moment but come on.

Axe and his delicate ego. "You don't break up with me! I break up with you!" He didn't need to destroy that guy just because he could. The poor guy should've never given Axe an inch though, especially only out of nostalgia.

Wow, arresting people in church as a fcuk you to the guy you're supposed to be eulogizing? Definitely a swinging dick move. One that will likely garner a lot of attempts at payback. 🎶The wheels of the truck go 'round and 'round🎶

[Dminches]

Axe showed himself to be the total ass hole that he is.  Destroying the business of the child of a former boss killed on 9/11 because that person sees you for who you truly are is about as low as it gets.

I find it very surprising that Wendy is still with Chuck.  Makes no sense to me and is inconsistent with how she handled the relationship in the past.  She kicked him to the curb the first time after he read her therapy notes.  Chuck's latest escapade cut at the core of their relationship.

I am pretty tired of Bobby and Chuck but I really like Charles, Sr., Taylor and Wendy (despite how they handled the S&M reveal).  The first 2 have almost become charactertures of themselves. 

[Chaos Theory]

I don’t think the show knows how to write Wendy all that well.  She should be six kinds of pissed off.  Instead she is double dating with Axe and letting him and her husband mansplain why outing her as a Dominatrix is a good thing while at the same time doing nothing to actually help her.   Axe at least attempts to offer her some sort of alpha male wisdom.  Which ironically isn’t wrong.   Chuck on the other hand I am not sure has done much to reassure her at all.

On a side note I am getting curiouser and curiouser on how Taylor and Wendy will shake out.

Taylor’s weakness  maybe be that They have a conscious.  Axe will exploit that.  

Edited April 15, 2019 by Chaos Theory

[LibertarianSlut]

I think this show has (unofficially) jumped the shark.  Last episode was pretty bad too.  The episode before I got a laugh out of the whole "Chickentown" thing, but it was a cheap laugh, the destiny imposed on that poor bird who was ostensibly left in that bag to suffocate to death notwithstanding.

I am not a finance person, never have been.  I learned what it meant to "short a stock" as co-president of the Stock Market Club in high school (small class).  That being said, I haven't had a problem following the plot of this this show up until last week when everyone was on a burner phone for some reason, and this week, with everyone placing calls to, I guess, financially "ruin" the young man who wanted to cash out of Axe Capital.

Only problem...we are supposed to think that Wags and the others were hard at work at this since Axe and the guy went off on the boat.  Yet...Axe gave the guy a chance to change his mind. ("Hey, I've still got the check in my pocket.  Should we burn it?"). What if the guy had changed his mind?  How would Wags and all the other financial gurus have known?  They wouldn't/coudln't have. I just don't buy it.  It's not as clever as Ice Juice by half.

What was the point of Axe deliberately dismantling the boat?  And I guess offering the Coast Guard 100k to bail them out was something set up with the Coast Guard off-camera and ahead of time?  Not buying it.  

Isn't Ben Kim supposed to have his own office?  This is getting stupid now, with the inconsistency.

I also love how, when they returned to the car after the fishing trip, when everything was allegedly out on the table, Axe picks up the other guy's phone and throws it to him to show him that Axe gave an interview that the younger guy was ruined, and suddenly all these text messages come in to the guy's phone. Come on...don't these guys have facial recognition/ fingerprint recognition/ at least pass codes to get onto their phones? Let me guess...Axe just guessed the other guy's phone password the way that Wags was able to help Wendy intuit the "social media" password of that former employee so that Wendy could see what the people at Mase Cap were saying about her internally?

It just doesn't work that way.  If Taylor is paranoid enough to know that she should write a fake algorithm to throw Axe off the trail, because he might have a dude who has Israeli-army level cameras posted outside of her office windows, then she knows that any type of internal social media at Mase Cap needs to be inpenitrible.  You can't guess anyone's password anymore.  Maybe in the 90s.  Not now.  If I want to make a password for my local library, and I wanted it to be "Billions," the internal software restrictions would wind up forcing me to make it "bill^ioNsz89."  No one can guess a password.  If you needed to do this, Billions, then please bring in a hacker of the highest order.  Guessing a password is just lazy writing.  And why couldn't Wendy just read about herself on social media by, I dunno, checking social media, like any other normal person?  This was way too convoluted and stupid.

Also, I want to know what kind of parabolic mic the Feds were using to pick up Chuck and Charles Sr's convo at the end of the episode.  It doesn't work that way. If no one is micced, where was the microphone placed?  How did they keep it from picking up ambient noise?  I am not a money person, nor am I a tech person, so someone please clue me in if I'm wrong.  This technology wasn't in place when Sammy "The Bull" Gravano was being tracked by the Feds, so if something changed, they should clue us in with a throwaway line.

Ok, finance, I don't know.  Technology, I don't know.  The law?  I know a little something about that.  No fucking way would the state send officers to arrest multiple state assemblymen at Jack Foley's funeral.  Not if this hadn't been a sting for months or years in the making, of which there is no evidence.  It's just not going to happen.  This isn't Ruby Ridge.  These guys (and women) could all have been taken safely in a less high-profile spot, such as....anywhere else.  It doesn't look good for law enforcement.  No one was even sure of the charges at the time.  Rhoades just told his people that the evidence against the assembly had to hold up in court "eventually."  Suddenly Rhoades gets the governor to sign off on something, which Chuck communicated to no one, as Chuck immediately went on the make the impromptu "eulogy" and in come the state troopers with arrest warrants?  Where did the arrest warrants come from?  Which magistrate signed off on them without probable cause?  Just...no.

I was watching pretty closely, and I have no idea how Chuck lost his authority as AG and had to make this power move to get it back.  I am not sure how closely this show follows the idea that the state and the federal government are separate sovereigns, other than some stupid throwaway line from Chuck last night.

I didn't say anything last week when Chuck, a state official, kicked a foreign national out of the US, but that was because last episode was borderline plausible.  This was just too much to take.  Too much fanfare and bullshit and fan service and not enough story and suddenly I have every little nit to pick.  

I wish Taylor's dad would be gone.  He might wind up saving the day--of course he will--but now he just seems like a loser with a sympathy office.  I don't like seeing famous people play small roles either.  Every time I see "Taylor's dad," I don't see "Taylor's dad," i see Kevin Pollack, the absentee father who died on Mom and fought with Demi Moore about the morality of their military defendants in "A Few Good Men."  I can't stand that. There are so many talented unknowns who could have fit the shoes and wouldn't have constantly taken me out of the moment.  

I don't know if I enjoyed anything about last night's episode, and that was strange to me.  I have loved this show up and through Chickentown and now it's on a hate slide of epic proportions.  Too many loose ends.  I wish Showtime would have just emailed me, "Hey, we think you're stupid!" So that I could get that hour of my life back.  

I'll watch next week, but maybe not at 9 on the dot.  I'm not nearly as curious or eager as I was before I realized that Axe and Rhoades are apparently omnipotent.  That's not what this show's supposed to be about.

[scrb]

Stavros played the tow boat operator.

Bobby told them no signal and lets not have distractions so he got Rice to leave his phone in the car.

He was unreachable when they were poaching his clients.

I find it hard to believe a) that they knew who his clients were and knew how to reach them and b) that they'd suddenly move their money out.

And they spent the whole day working on this rather than making other trades to make money?

I guess viewers are suppose to be impressed but Axe and Wags just look like assholes, especially after the previous episode where they bullied other firms into taking garbage natural gas contracts.

[Chaos Theory]

I thought the whole boat thing was mean but clever.  Plus the kid was t really the point.  He was just a dry run for Axe’s real target....Taylor.  Taylor is the person that really really hurt Axe’s ego and he can’t let that go.  

Edited April 15, 2019 by Chaos Theory

[hacman00]

The AxeCap team didn't waste their time burying the kid. They took in $430 million of the kid's business.  

[edhopper]

If Axe Cap spent half the time investing as they do trying to destroy other firms, they would be twice as rich.

And Axe is a soul-less monster who can only feel something by destroying others.

Edited April 16, 2019 by edhopper

[LibertarianSlut]

Oh ok, Stavros being the boat operator...didn't catch that.  I thought Axe bought off the real boat operator in advance, but I get it now.

While I understand that they left their phones in the car--I was highly focused on the moment when the men parted, because the kid (sorry, I keep forgetting his name) said he was going to take an Uber and I kept saying out loud, "get your phone, get your phone," so I watched while Axe picked up the phone and tossed it to the kid.  Axe didn't open the phone, he didn't quickly type in a website, nothing (unless he's a sleight of hand artist), yet when the phone reached the kid's hands, the interview was on the screen.  How did it get there?  We saw the kid throw the phone into the trunk of the car prior to the fishing expedition, and Axe had no control over it, so how did the interview get on the phone?  I guess if I was still willing to suspend disbelief I could say that Axe grabbed it off-camera before the lock went on and typed that website in just prior to going out on the boat, but...that's the thing.  I'm not willing to suspend disbelief anymore.  Too much shit has been goofed up these past two episodes.

To think I was just laughing my head off in episode one when Chuck went around trading favors and couldn't get rid of that fecking parking pass to...this.  It's just the theatre of the absurd, and it's not funny, it's just a game of who can be the bigger, more power-hungry asshole.

I like Chuck being cunning and devious and willing to bend the law to enforce the law.  I find him a much more compelling character than Bobby.  The problem is that no one has that much power, nor do they accumulate it so fast, and his come-up this episode seems...undeserved.  How many times is daddy going to bare his teeth at Chuck, only for Chuck to have a huge strategic breakthrough that works out perfectly?  This is getting as predictable as Columbo.  Oh, one more thing...

I also agree that it is hard to believe that Axe Cap would be able to strong-arm people into moving this much money in this little amount of a time with nothing but rumor and innuendo to get them by.  Especially since the same exact thing happened last episode.  Let's see some losing, so the winning can be that much sweeter.  I don't think we need to leave every episode satisfied; I think we should leave every episode curious as to what is going to play out next.

I was also completely underwhelmed by Taylor's speech to the FDNY.  It felt like someone fell asleep in the writer's room.  Where the hell is the Sandicott Taylor, the pragmatic, bottom-line "the town must fail for its own good" Taylor?  I love that Taylor!  I know that Taylor's party line is that Axe Cap made Taylor do bad things and veer from Taylor's moral compass, but I don't believe that.  Sandicott happened way too early into Taylor's tenure at Axe for that not to be Taylor's own, independent thought. I think Taylor is at heart cold-blooded, and I need to see more of that ASAP.  Taylor is losing me with the dad who is, supposed to give us the feels I guess...

I can't stand Wendy.  She is another one who I don't think is "good" at heart, and I only like her when she is teaming up with someone to do something wrong, like when she told Chuck last season about the slide, "you know there's going to have to be a fall guy for this."  That was cool Wendy.  Not the Wendy who tells her co-workers about her sex life one week and is shocked and appalled that her political husband would make a political chess move by revealing info about her sex life another.  I know it's more complicated than that--there's breached trust--but Chuck was between a rock and a hard place and he made a move.  It's BDSM in 2019.  Did she really want Chuck to be shamed out of the race?  I watch this with my husband, and I already told him that he can reveal whatever he needs to about me, privately or publicly, if he is ever in any kind of situation. I trust him.  Wendy feels like she can't walk down the street because she cracked a whip a few times?  Well, would Chuck be able to walk down the street if he had let Foley bully him out of the race?  Did she think about that?

I guess my favorite character is Charles Sr., especially when he made that speech to Ira's wife, Tyga.  He was gold in that moment.  I just don't need him making a rallying cry every. Single. Episode.  Three times a season is plenty.  

I am hoping this will turn around in the back half of the season, and strange new alliances will form, and things that are complex (not necessarily complicated) will occur, and people will be clever and there will be winning and losing and jockeying for power, and no one will become too much of a caricature.  That's my hope.  

[txhorns79]

On 4/15/2019 at 2:40 PM, scrb said:

And they spent the whole day working on this rather than making other trades to make money?

I feel like that kind of revenge driven behavior is going to be the way Taylor screws over Axe, or at least I hope Taylor takes down Axe.  Maybe it is all going to be a scam, but I like to think Wendy reached out to Taylor because they were the one person who didn't respond to her scandal by being a voyeur, and actually shows a maturity which is sorely lacking in Axe and Chuck.  

Also, I was certain Chuck Sr. had an orgasm when Chuck staged his funeral arrests.    

[Auntie Anxiety]

On 4/15/2019 at 11:39 PM, LibertarianSlut said:

like Chuck being cunning and devious and willing to bend the law to enforce the law.  I find him a much more compelling

It’s that exact thing that I dislike so much about Chuck. It makes him no better than the people he is trying to indict. But I guess that’s the premise of the show. He and Axe are two sides of the same coin, both amoral, selfish, narcissistic and willing to sell their souls for a cheap thrill and imagined power. 

[Chaos Theory]

I read in an article somewhere that if you want a show about likable characters this is the opposite of that kind of show.  There are maybe three likable characters on the entire show.   

It is more then likely Taylor is going to get burned by the end of the season because the show is ultimately about Axe and Chuck.   Who knows where Wendy will end up?   But Axe and Chuck will go on and on because they must.

[car54]

8 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

I read in an article somewhere that if you want a show about likable characters this is the opposite of that kind of show.  There are maybe three likable characters on the entire show.   

It is more then likely Taylor is going to get burned by the end of the season because the show is ultimately about Axe and Chuck.   Who knows where Wendy will end up?   But Axe and Chuck will go on and on because they must.

That's why I love this show I think.    I love nothing more than a good unrepentant villain---shows like Hannibal, Breaking Bad....and only a handful of people on this show are good and likeable.    Many many greedy driven people--and a couple who go back and forth when they need to --like Wendy and Taylor.   

I feel like the never-ending tug of war between Bobby and Chuck is like grand opera --it is so over the top and improbable (but in today's world--the improbable is possible to imagine).