Billions recap: Chuck's world starts falling apart

Billions has had its fair share of dramatic shifts across its five-plus seasons. There's been plenty of backstabbing and broken deals, that's kind of the show's M.O. But I'd argue that this week's episode contains one of the more intriguing shifts in character dynamics that we've seen in a while. Kate Sacker (Condola Rashad), the longtime mentee of Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) and, quite frankly, one of the show's most underutilized characters, ends up leaving Chuck's tutelage for a job with Mike Prince (Corey Stoll). So how does that happen? How does Chuck lose one of his biggest, most trusted allies?

At the top of the episode, Kate tells Chuck that she's been asked to attend a meeting. Chuck is convinced she's been offered a job. She says she's not so sure. Either way, Chuck wants her to go to the meeting to gather information for him; while we don't know that the meeting is with Prince just yet, Chuck's mention of Kate acting as his spy tips us off.

There's a good reason that Prince wants to meet with Kate. After Chuck's grand anti-Olympics gesture, Prince is working from behind. He meets with Governor Abbot to secure his support, but as the Governor points out, Chuck changed the conversation about the Games before anyone could even get their pitch out there. Now, no matter how much Prince thinks the Olympics will be a boon for New York, he's immediately starting on the defensive, having to prove that the Olympics won't ruin the city and only benefit the wealthy.

So, how does Kate fit into this? Well, since Prince will have to navigate all sorts of governmental bureaucracy in his bid for the Olympics, he needs a lead counsel who understands the ins and outs of the New York legal system. Wendy (Maggie Siff) tells him that Kate is the best choice, that there's no one else on her level, but that she's extremely loyal to Chuck and getting her to jump ship is pretty much impossible. Still, Prince takes his shot and meets with her.

Kate does exactly as she's told. She tells Chuck about an initiative for free Wifi that Prince is bringing to his Olympics bid, and that allows Chuck to take that information to the telecom companies and get it killed. But Kate is starting to get restless. She wants to be more than a pawn in Chuck's game. She asks him to start rounding up donors to collect money for her future run for Congress, and presses him to start bringing her big cases so that she has a more substantial resume by the time she decides to run.

She's thinking ahead. Chuck's problem is that he's only focused on the very near future and his rivalry with Prince. So he doesn't even see that Kate, despite her loyalty, is clearly considering Prince's offer. Chuck is so focused on getting Prince to hire his good friend Ira Schirmer (Ben Shenkman) as the lead counsel instead, hoping to install a mole in Prince's camp, that he fails to consider what it might take to keep Kate on his side. He takes her loyalty for granted, assuming that merely being a part of his team is enough for her.

This is proving to be Chuck's downfall in recent seasons. He's a megalomaniac, and despite casting himself as a "man of the people," he can rarely see outside of his own perspective. So, when Prince actually steps up and gives Kate the things Chuck keeps delaying, getting her a campaign office and staff for when she's ready to run, she decides it's time for her to do what's best for her future.

I love this move because, like I said above, I feel like Kate has been severely underused in the show. I hope that the character is reinvigorated by this move to Mike Prince Capital, and that this lights a fire under Chuck, too. Billions is always better when Chuck is desperate, and I have a feeling things are about to get very desperate for him.

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