Thoughts on Episode 1, Season 7 of Billions

 

I am, admittedly, behind schedule in watching the final season of Billions, the Showtime series that wrapped up its decades-long battle between a NY state attorney general (played by Paul Giamatti) and his various opponents at a hedge fund earlier this year.

Season 7 opens with billionaire Michael Prince (Corey Stoll) telling his right hand woman, psychiatrist & performance coach Wendy Rhoades (Maggie Siff), that he's running for President. 

She concludes that not only would Prince make a frighteningly awful president, he's a threat to American democracy (sound like anyone you know?). And she has to keep this from happening.

The entire episode sets out the goals of this final season. But THE scene - one of the best written, directed, and edited scenes I've watched in a long time - starts at the 18:40 mark. 

Wendy emerges from her black chauffeur-driven SUV in front of Wo Hop, a hole in the wall Chinatown mainstay familiar to millions of New Yorkers (it's at 17 Mott Street, if you're curious). We see its sign as she enters - I'm sure the owners made sure that would be included, in exchange for permission to use the location. And she settles at a tiny table in a tiny restaurant where the walls are covered with dollar bills, as waiters fill the table with platters overflowing with staples like egg foo yung and lo mein. It's regular people food - the stuff we all enjoy when wandering the joys of Chinatown. And very far from the rich people food enjoyed by billionaires.

Her dining company is the always slightly scruffy and non-PC but smart as a whip Wags - his full name, Michael Wagner, is almost never heard. Played by wonderful David Costabile, whose face is far more familiar than his name, he's the ultimate survivor of the previous incarnation of hedge fund Michael Prince Capital when it was Axe Capital and run by Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis).

The great thing about this scene isn't simply the dialogue, as Wendy makes her argument to Wags that they need to somehow figure out a way to stop Prince. It's how we see - we feel - that he isn't convinced that the threat is real. Or perhaps that there's anything they can do.

But just then, the scene shifts. It's after the meal. Wendy is back in her limo, ready to depart. This a tap on the window. It's Wags. She rolls down the window and beckons him in for part 2 of The Conversation (with apologies to the great Francis Ford Coppola movie of that name). And now it's clear that he's had time to digest the truth of her words. The threat that Prince represents, and the way his name has never been more fitting.

This scene COULD have been shot entirely in Wo Hop. There's no reason it HAD to switch locations.

But we'd have tired of the two of them talking and eating lo mein. By making that small change - same people but a dark and tight location rather than the brightly lit restaurant - the stage is set for the upcoming battle.