Billions recap: Prince's beloved Olympics bid goes up in smoke
Billions isn't exactly the most subtle show on TV. In fact, that's why I, and many of us, love it so much. What Billions understands is that you can get a lot of mileage out of quick dialogue, high drama, and more than a few scenery-chewing performances, even if you're getting a lot of the same plot mechanics from one episode to the next. I mention this because at the beginning of "The Big Ugly," Mike Prince (Corey Stoll) is training for a marathon. He plans on running the original marathon as a way to drum up excitement for the Olympic games before they kick off in the summer, and to perhaps boost his ego a bit along the way.
You see, this training acts as a rather obvious metaphor for the rivalry between Prince and Chuck (Paul Giamatti). Prince has secured the games for New York, winning the initial sprint. But the race isn't over. This is a marathon, and Chuck is still going slow and steady, trying to come up with new ways to go after Prince and his billionaire buddies.
In essence, Chuck is pretty sure Prince managed to snag the games through some illegal bribing, but he can't prove it. He meets with the head of the Olympic committee and tries to detail Prince's misconduct, but even she can tell that Chuck has no real proof of wrongdoing. She says that if he comes back with something more, she'll happily distance the games from Prince in the name of keeping things clean.
Without clear evidence, Chuck decides to do the next best thing: try to insinuate what Prince has done and hope that the tides of public perception turn against him. While the people at Michael Prince Capital are focused on the games — Wendy (Maggie Siff) is working with soccer star Megan Rapinoe to get an "Athlete Performance" program off the ground, and Taylor (Asia Kate Dillon) is taking a massive position in an airline company in an attempt to one-up Phillip, securing them as an official sponsor before, later in the episode, things go south — Chuck is working his usual magic.
Christopher Saunders/SHOWTIME Paul Giamatti as Chuck Rhoades and Sakina Jaffrey as Daevisha 'Dave' Mahar
He concocts a plan to get various state Governors together for a dinner under the guise of working on an antitrust lawsuit against healthcare companies that exploited the pandemic for financial gain. In reality, Chuck just wants to get them in the same room as part of a larger plan.
He tells his foes Lazzara (Wayne Duvall), Krakow (Danny Strong), and Sruthi (Sulekha Ebelle) that during this latest legislative session, he's included a bill that will close the Carried Interest tax loophole, meaning all of their capital gains will now be taxed as income at the State level. Krakow calls his bluff, saying that can't happen without neighboring States agreeing to the bill, therefore blocking anyone from moving their business elsewhere for tax break purposes. That's when Chuck shows them all the Governors having dinner in another room. Buying into the ruse and worried about getting taxed another 22 percent on their wealth, they all agree to help Chuck defame Prince.
Before long, the head of the Olympic committee is holding a press conference where she says that she's been made aware that New York, and Mike Prince, obtained the Olympics through bribery. She calls it corruption, and Krakow is there to insist that had his people known this, they never would have backed Prince's bid. So, the committee pulls the Olympics and takes them to Los Angeles, and Prince's dream is dead.
It's interesting that the show ditches the Olympics bid so quickly after building up to the decisive moment in last week's episode. It doesn't feel like we have much time to sit with Prince getting what he wants only to have it pulled away.
Nevertheless, there's an impact here. Losing the bid actually works out for Taylor, who got in over their head with the Hypersonic position and nearly lost the company a lot of money. Now they can dump the shares at a much smaller loss and not incur the wrath of Prince. Then there's Chuck, who finally gets a win, but has clearly pushed Prince to a point where his whole "nice billionaire" schtick might be a thing of the past. And finally, there's Prince, who not only loses his prized Olympics game, but may lose the re-sparked connection with his wife in the process.
Prince has been winning all season long. He had to lose at some point. That time has come, and I'm very curious to see how this changes the character and what it might mean for the rest of the season.
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