MONEY PROBLEMS
Fans can’t wait to see their favourite billionaires slither their way up the Wall Street food chain when “Billions” returns on Sunday.
Fasten your seatbelts for another year of dollars and deceit. “Billions,” Showtime’s most provocative corporate drama, returns for its fifth season on Sunday, May 3, airing on Crave in Canada, and fans of the show can’t wait to see more of their favourite fictional billionaires as they scheme and slither their way to the top of the Wall Street food chain. The Season 5 trailer, which was released earlier this year, introduces viewers to a whole new set of power dynamics and betrayal, making it evident that the fifth year of this captivating show is amping up the drama from the get-go.
The 12-episode season will be released in two parts this year, due to filming complications caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The first seven episodes will air starting this week, and the show will take a break mid-June at a natural point in the story arc. At this stage, there is no way to know when the second part of the season will air, but the muchanticipated remaining episodes will be filmed and released as soon as the production process is safe to resume.
In the meantime, Part 1 of the season continues to follow duelling New York City high-society members Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti, “Sideways,” 2004) and Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis, “Band of Brothers”) as they try to take each other down in a gruelling game of cat and mouse.
Providing more twists and turns than a Shakespearean production, Chuck and Axe have been on a collision course with one another since 2016. From Chuck getting a tip about insider trading and Axe’s subsequent disappearance in Season 1 to the two men going head to head in court in Season 3, it appears the billionaires will squabble over just about anything from money and business to women and politics.
Just when it seemed they would band together to form an alliance — especially with Axe’s focus now more clearly aimed at the destruction of Taylor (Asia Kate Dillon, “Orange Is the New Black”) and her company — Chuck and Axe are once again pitted against each other as Season 5 will feature a new player, Michael Prince (Corey Stoll, “House of Cards”), who joins their high-stakes — and, quite honestly, exhausting — game.
At the end of Season 4, “Billions” co-creator David Levien told Entertainment Weekly a bit about the fate of Chuck and Axe:
“When we thought of bringing them together, we didn’t know exactly when they would start to be at odds again,” Levien said. “We just knew two men with these qualities, this alpha dog mentality, that a peace and alliance could never last forever.”
With the arrival of this new threat to Axe and his company, Axe Capital (AxeCap for short), Chuck appears to have a plan in the works — because when does he not? — but all the alliances that have been crafted over the past four years are likely to fall apart as companies lose money, employees and power. Now, a newcomer to the feud (and the series), Chuck’s friend, Prof. Catherine “Cat” Brant (Julianna Margulies, “The Good Wife”), expresses her concern that his quest for dominance has gotten out of hand. Amid triple crosses, double agents and a single common goal, things begin to get “tribal,” and every player involved in this corporate chess game will quickly begin to realize who is the king and who is a pawn.
It’s not just the kings at play in the business game, either. Taylor, who has been fighting to keep her firm together and pull away from Axe, will have to make some serious adjustments as she is forced back to work at AxeCap, while Wendy (Maggie Siff, “Sons of Anarchy”), who had just spent the day at a closed-course recreational demolition site with Rebecca (Nina Arianda, “Goliath”) venting her frustrations and “moving earth,” can’t avoid her problems forever as she anxiously awaits the medical board’s decision on her case.
Throughout all of this, Rebecca finds herself a pawn in Axe’s game as she is blindsided in the boardroom and realizes that he purposefully orchestrated her demolition day with Wendy to suit his needs so that he could broker a deal and liquidate Saler’s Department Stores — a company Rebecca was very fond of — behind her back. As Rebecca shares her feelings with Axe and leaves the office, she has Axe (and viewers) wondering whether she will be back for another round.