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Billions

‘Billions’ Season 2, Episode 11 Recap: Even the Losers Get Plucky

Paul Giamatti in “Billions.”Credit...Jeff Neumann/Showtime

“*** massive reversal of fortune.”

This was a line I had written in my notes on this week’s episode of “Billions,” the best one to date. I wrote the line right after Axe ended a triumphant day on Wall Street by reconciling with his wife over pizza topped with caviar, a sublime culinary fusion of their humble roots and upward mobility. All season long, Axe and Chuck have been on opposing trajectories, with Axe paying for his hyper-aggression on plays like Sandicot while Chuck, buried in civil suits and multiple threats to his job, has been rope-a-doping his way back to the top. Nevertheless, it made sense to assume that Axe’s short on Ice Juice, with all the Rhoades family money on the line, would be the “massive reversal of fortune” that notched that one big victory that had been eluding him all season.

Nope.

The four lines in my notes that immediately followed:

“Lara trying but not entirely back with him”

“Chuck back to hotel room (serious stretch that he wouldn’t take wife’s advice)”

“cries about his losses”

“Three Weeks Ago”

It’s a wonderful feeling to be hoodwinked by masterly plotting, and this episode is the long-term play that creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who wrote it, have been cooking up all season long. Our assumption that Chuck’s winning streak will have to end figures into it, along with the succession of losers Paul Giamatti has played throughout his career. (The triumphant reprise of Tom Petty’s “Even the Losers” is a laugh-out-loud moment.) But what really sells the twist is the way Koppelman and Levien have already gone to astonishing lengths to reveal the sophistication of Axe’s effort to sabotage the Ice Juice initial public offering. There’s no reasonable expectation that any counterplotting by Chuck would or could be in the offing. There was plenty to admire in Axe’s handiwork, to say nothing of the script’s expert machinations.

The title “Three Weeks Ago” quickens the pulse. In a couple of episodes earlier this season, including the premiere, “Billions” had deployed “[X] Weeks Ago” as a framing device, so there’s initially no reason to suppose that anything special was going to happen here. The episode opens with “Two Weeks Ago” and then continues pressing forward with other time stamps as Axe and his people lay the foundations for Chipotle-level public health disaster on the day of Ice Juice’s highly anticipated I.P.O. When Koppelman and Levien return to the same structural gamesmanship after Axe has seemingly won the day, it’s like the reveal of a “how did they do that?” magic trick: Now all the earlier events, the ones that seemed so deviously clever on Axe’s part, are upended piece by piece. “Even the losers get lucky sometimes,” sings Petty, but luck has nothing to do with it.

The episode follows through on the idea that Chuck has figured out how his rival ticks and has adjusted his strategy accordingly. His martial arts instructor tips us off after Chuck pins an opponent to the mat: “You had to give him something, an opportunity, and you used it against him.” Chuck baited Axe on Ice Juice, knowing he couldn’t resist the chance to fleece the Rhoades boys, and boxed him into committing a criminal act in full view of the F.B.I. and Oliver Dake, the newly appointed United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York. To reference another Koppelman-Levien script, Chuck is like Matt Damon at the end of “Rounders” when he figures out John Malkovich’s tell and lures him into shoving all his chips into the pot with the worst hand.

In poker terms, Axe is a “loose-aggressive” player, someone who likes to control the action and bully the tighter players into folding, which can be an extremely effective strategy, provided that your betting patterns are varied and unpredictable. Axe’s problem is that Chuck has picked up on his betting patterns and knows exactly the right time to exploit his aggression. “Foolishness is right next door to strength,” Wendy tells Chuck when he refuses to heed her warning about Axe’s shorting Ice Juice stock. But what she doesn’t know is that Chuck understands this already and it’s Axe who’s the fool. Wendy cautions her husband about playing in Axe’s arena, the stock market, but the game is really being played in Chuck’s arena, the law, and few others know it yet.

Amid all the rug-pulling, the episode also solidifies Taylor’s status as a major player at Axe Capital and a major character on the show. Asked to evaluate all the analysts and “shiv” the weakest one, Taylor pushes through some deep-seated anxiety and learns to modify a strictly numbers-based evaluation and understand the intangible qualities of those who might be weaker on paper. Beyond this initiation into office culture — and Wags makes sure it’s a hazing — Taylor also has to accept the unseemly business of working among the rogues, which here takes the form of a giant duffle bag stuffed with $250,000 of rainy-day funds. “Everyone in our line of work needs cash squirreled away,” says Dollar Bill Stern. Taylor flinches a little at the thought, but opts to stay on the slippery slope.

Bulls and Bears:

• Wags remembering the first time he got to fire someone: “It tasted as sweet as the Mata Hari’s armpits.”

• The meetings between Taylor and Wendy have been a healthy affirmation that Wendy knows how to do her unusual job exceptionally well. Wendy gains some essential insights into Taylor that aren’t freely given away. She doesn’t let “I’m used to radical shifts” go without pressing further into uncertainties rooted in Taylor’s childhood.

• Funny timing for the Ice Juice episode to coincide with the misfortunes of Juicero, a Silicon Valley venture that began losing its cachet after it was discovered that human hands could accomplish the same goal as its $400 juice press.

• “Billions” almost never makes reference to real-world politics, so it’s notable to hear Wags talk about Chuck’s father gloating at Mar-a-Lago about his Palm Beach estate. But will Chuck Sr. be able to afford that new $200,000 membership fee?

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