‘Billions’ Recap Reality Index: Season 3, Episode 8 (“All The Wilburys”)

The recap is back! Welcome back to the Billions Recap Reality Index, where every week we tally a list of events from each episode of Billions that we found to be either too real to fail or as fake as a toxic asset’s triple A rating, scored on our completely subjective point system.

This week we provide you with due diligence on the eighth episode of Season 3, “All The Wilburys.”

When we last saw Axe and the gang, Axe had just succeeded in getting the case against him thrown out, and his co-conspirators, Chuck and Wendy, also found themselves free of Connerty’s web. This week we get to see how things will be at Axe Capital now that the Axe can finally return to the throne as well as how things will be at the Southern District with Connerty returning to the barn. Will Axe and Taylor butt heads? Will Connerty ever return to Chuck’s good graces? Will Dollar Bill finally be unleashed with Axe coming home? Let’s take a look at the numbers and find out!

THE BILLIONS RECAP REALITY INDEX

REALER THAN A CANDIDATE’S SPOUSE GOING AWOL AND DERAILING THE HARD WORK DONE BY CAMPAIGN STAFF

• Chuck and Wendy look like hell early in the morning after having spent hours wrestling with whether Chuck should run for governor. Campaigns are tough on candidates, but they can be just as grueling for the significant other.
  PLUS 1
• Wendy is quick to advise Chuck not to listen to his campaign staffers and to go with her ideas. This is basically what every candidate’s significant other does.
  PLUS 2
• Dollar Bill rocking the fleece vest. Always good for a…
  PLUS 1
• Taylor dropping jokes about morning wood, pretty clear they’ve picked up the locker room lingo after spending time surrounded by traders.
  PLUS 1
• Bobby gives the order to rebuild the book and unwind Taylor’s positions, making it clear who’s running the show.
  PLUS 1
• Chuck meeting his campaign chair at Donohue’s is a nice touch.
  PLUS 1
• The chair then tells Chuck to mend fences with Sweeney to get upstate New York’s numbers where they should be. You’d be surprised by the number of elected officials part of a gubernatorial candidate’s coalition who actually hate them like hell.
  PLUS 1
• The Traveling Wilburys reference is fucking awesome. PLUS 1
• Grifting a fortune by using bribes to corner the construction steel supply market is exactly the kind of racket a New York kingmaker like Blackjack Foley would be into.
  PLUS 1
• “You think, Rickles? You called him a pants shitter on the trading floor.” Fucking classic line from Wags.
  PLUS 1

• Bobby gets his estranged wife to agree to a lock up and paying 1 and 10 on her money that Axe Capital will manage. Every good fund manager knows, fees come first, even before family!
  PLUS 1
• The hokey house party/meet and greet Chuck has that’s intended to be a campaign launch event at the candidate’s home is perfectly depicted and felt exactly like the dozen or so I’ve been bored out of my mind at.
  PLUS 1
• “You go to a gym with other people in it?” Wags really brought the thunder this episode.
  PLUS 1
• Axe had an assistant who works at his fund take his kids to dinner. It is crazy how frequently you hear stories about personal errands and even child care being farmed out to an assistant. Also “Buy them every dessert in the place and take them home” is vintage divorced hedge fund dad parenting.
  PLUS 1
• Of course Chuck’s dad has the occasional rendezvous with a pro in a hotel room.
  PLUS 1

TOTAL FOR REAL: PLUS 16

FAKER THAN A MAJOR DONOR INTERRUPTING HIS CANDIDATE’S DUNGEON TIME TO MAKE A POINT

• Blackjack Foley and Chuck’s father giving Chuck and Wendy a lecture at the S&M dungeon and laying the groundwork for his campaign? WTF?
  MINUS 2
• Axe calls for a cap raise of $20bn in six months. For someone who just finished dealing with their second federal investigation, that is a pipe dream to think investors would be willing to throw that much at him.
  MINUS 1
• Wags says to Taylor he’ll get them some old pitchbooks to update. Investor relations would handle that, not the CIO.
  MINUS 2
• The treasury secretary approaches Axe with some info on natural gas regulation citing FERC, but FERC is controlled by the Department of Energy, not the treasury, and I mean the treasury secretary meeting in person with a twice charged fund manager for insider trading? C’mon.
  MINUS 2

• The treasury secretary then hands over their debit card for their offshore account. Yup Axe will just take that back to his fund and swipe it through the Axe Capital card reader when it’s time to deposit some money in crypto (which would go into a separate wallet, not an offshore account).
  MINUS 1
• Chuck throwing away his ambitions for the governor’s mansion, which his entire career was built around pursuing, feels totally insane.
  MINUS 2
• The idea that Taylor would put up with being tossed crumbs by Axe, an occasional piece of the billion they were promised to manage, and put up with it, beggars belief. Taylor would have instead started their own fund, seeded by Axe’s money, not this current arrangement.
  MINUS 1

TOTAL FOR FAKE: MINUS 11

OVERALL SCORE FOR “ALL THE WILBURYS”: PLUS 5

OVERALL SCORE FOR BILLIONS SEASON 3: PLUS 39

OK. Plus 5. That’s a solid return to positive territory for the show. Axe’s storyline, especially his volatile and selfish behavior, really feels like it makes sense and is grounded in what you could expect to happen. Research has shown that fund managers going through/after a divorce end up performing much worse than before and frequently never returning to their pre-divorce numbers. Bobby’s cavalier behavior, skipping dinner with his kids, jumping at insider trading opportunities (two in just this one episode!) shows he definitely isn’t the same Axe when he and Lara were a couple. And Chuck? I just can’t understand how he has thrown basically everything away over the course of two episodes- his trap for Axelrod, his reconciliation with his father, his relationship with Blackjack Foley, and now his political ambitions— so hastily. I’m curious to see where this train is headed.

So where do we go next week? Will Axe let Dollar Bill off the chain to run free with his new secret weapon? Will Chuck be content as a US attorney for the rest of his life? Will Charles Senior finally get to catch up with the escort Wendy bamboozled? Stick with the recap when we return with next week’s episode of Billions.

Comfortably Smug is a government relations professional with a focus on the financial services industry. He can be found on Twitter with his musings on all things finance and politics at @ComfortablySmug

Watch Billions Season 3 Episode 8 ("All The Wilburys") on Showtime Anytime