The timing is also coincidental to the news that Mark Teixeira has once gain left the Yankee lineup due to injury. You might remember he was able, several episode back, to give Chuck's son an autograph without injuring himself. It is playing baseball without winding up in a medical office that he has trouble with these days.
It is easy to figure out why we don't see the children of Chuck and Wendy Rhoades, or those of Bobby and Lara Axelrod too often: there are so many utterances of the word "fuck" by all adult characters that the children have to be shielded somehow. If the show were a movie it would easily be rated "R" for dialogue and sexual situations. But, Showtime comes with its own warnings, so everything is cool.
The last two episodes of Season One are great setups for a Season Two. In the penultimate episode Chuck catches a view of Wendy's late night confidence building session with Bobby, seemingly flirting together as Bobby tries to get his head together after making a disastrous trading decision. Wendy, being the "best-in-the-game" in-house performance coach she is, is up for a long session with Axe as she tries to get inside his head and see what lead him to make such an obvious blunder.
Wendy is good. She asks all the right questions and deflects all the cover-up answers Bobby creates. She should have been a lead counsel on the Watergate Committee hearings. She can smell a bad clam from the north side of South Street.
Her session with Bobby runs into long hours after work. No hanky-panky whatsoever, but her absence from home does start to make Chuck wonder what's going on. Axe Capital is located in what seems to be Westport Connecticut, and Wendy and Chuck live in a swank townhouse in Brooklyn Heights, just across the river from where Chuck works as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District on St, Andrews Plaza, Manhattan.
These people live is an alternate universe. Chuck is able to get inn a chauffeured black car and make it to Wesport to witness--without either Bobby or Wendy realizing it--what looks like some serious flirting and laughing that can only lead to sex. (It doesn't.)
Chuck is able to get back in the same car and be back in Brooklyn in the same evening. Wendy is able to get to Brooklyn from Connecticut in the same evening.
This of course is ludicrous. No one can get to and from Brooklyn and Connecticut by car in the hours after work and sometime before sun-up the next day. And no one can get from Connecticut to Brooklyn and be in the shower before hubby gets in, even after his aborted dominatrix session with Troy in the same evening. The things these script-writers would have you believe!
Chuck is sneaky. While Wendy is in the shower he taps into her laptop and reads session notes from her and Bobby. There are incriminating statements in there that Chuck thinks he can use to get Federal charges, of any kind, against Bobby. Chuck is Captain Ahab and Bobby is the White Whale. Are they both doomed to mutual extinction?
I've gotten into the habit of leaving the close captioned (CC) option on, even for non-British dialogue. It helps to sort through the rushed and mumbled words.
It also describes the sounds that are being made in a scene. "Door creaks," "muffled voices in background." Aside from the number of times we hear the word "fuck," which needs no close captioning because it comes through quite clearly, it is amazing how many times "clicks teeth" comes up on the screen, describing the sound a character is making with their lips, tongue and teeth just before speaking. I have no idea what a speech coach or a dentist would make of this. More flossing might be recommended.
At the outset of the final episode of Season One, we have Axe bestowing the keys to what looks like a Maybach to Wendy on a street in Manhattan, in what looks like SoHo. Take about product placement! This is just his way of saying 'thanks" for the psychological insight he gained from their late night session. Considering the value of such a vehicle, that is some form of co-pay.
But as the episode proceeds, Axe comes to the mistaken belief that Wendy betrayed his confidences and revealed compromising information to her husband Chuck, who is now using it to bring federal firearm charges against him, along with conspiracy and bribery charges for corrupting municipal employees, namely members of the Greenwich police department.
A few episodes back, you might remember, Bobby intercedes with the police after one of his employees is caught firing an assault rifle at a herd of deer who are eating his shrubs. The poor fellow has had waaay too much to drink, and is fed up with the deer in a big way.
It's just Bobby's way of protecting his people from themselves, but it does leave a trail of offshore money and expensive vacations for the involved officers. It comes back to bite him in the ass once he confides the event to event to Wendy, and Chuck, unbeknownst to Wendy, uses her password to gain access to her session notes on her laptop while she takes a shower.
Chuck puts the wheels of an investigation into motion, in the hopes of getting an indictment and an ironclad case against Axe. It is much like the strategy of taking Al Capone down for income tax evasion, rather than all the other crimes he's committed, but can never be made to stick. Just get him for something.
Axe thinks back and figures out that Chuck's information has come from Wendy, which of course it has, but not directly, and not from her meant to be used against him. He confronts Wendy in a big way, showing her screen shots he's kept locked in the office safe of her dominatrix website; her "dark side." Wendy's cornered, and walks out.
Chuck's hoped for indictment and case against Axe unravels when Wendy, who should really be a CIA operative, confronts Chuck with what she believes, and gets him to unknowingly cough up what is really a confession about how he's obtained the information into her cell phone that she has purposely left on to record.
She instructs Chuck to get out of the house, which he does do, taking his overnight gym bag to his club to start his exile. Without a lawyer, Wendy has secured the house, and gotten to keep the car Axe gave her. And she's not finished.
She plays the phone recording back to Bobby, as she sits in jeans in her her cleaned out office and asks Bobby how is he now going to make her feel better. She didn't sell him out; she didn't betray him. Bobby ups the bonus from $2 million to $5, making sure Wags gets the instruction to put "five sticks" into Wendy's personal account. He tells Wendy to check on it in two minutes, which she does. Wendy has hit Lotto. The money's there.
But Wendy's not staying. The air has been poisoned by all the secrets and evidence that has been kept. She gets Bobby's commitment to destroy the screen shots. Bobby wants the recording of Chuck confessing, and offers $15 million, "for starters." He wants to destroy Chuck. But Wendy won't let that happen for any price. Chuck is after all, still the father of her children.
Tangential to all this is the wooing of Chuck's chief-of-staff, Brian Connerty, by Bobby, after his lead counsel Orrin Bach has explained to Brian how his boss Chuck was getting the information to pursue Bobby. Brian is disgusted by the actions of his boss.
After delivering the news to Brian in what must be the be the best after-hours pizza joint in the city, Orrin excuses himself and leaves the stage for Axe to enter from the wings to start his employment pitch to Brain. At this point on, we're into Shakespeare.
The pitch is flattering and lucrative. Seven figures to work with Bach on Axe's account. Brian reluctantly listens, refutes the offer with his doubts, but does not, as Axe coyly points out, say "no" to anything. He doesn't say anything after listening, but also doesn't finish "Nonna's" (grandma's) pizza, which by all facial reactions we've seen before, is to die for. A good pizza goes cold on the table.
The final scene in the last episode of Season One is a doozy. It is solid Shakespeare, but which play it is I can't identify. I don't know enough Shakespeare to venture a good guess. It is dialogue from the movie 'Wall Street.' "Greed is good" and all the rationalizations for what he does coming from Axe, versus the morality of who really gets hurt coming from Chuck. Black Hat versus White Hat. Just not in iambic pentameter.
The two adversaries are squaring off at the offices of Axe Capital after Bobby has had the place completely ripped apart looking for bugs he believes Chuck has planted. Carpeting has been ripped up, holes have been punched in the walls, ceiling tiles have been torn down to look for wires. The place looks like ISIS dropped by.
You see, Chuck has figured out Bobby has been getting information from an informant Bobby's head fixer has planted in his office, a janitor, who in addition to emptying waste baskets, keeps his ears cocked for stray conversations about Axe Capital. Having figured this out, Chuck concocts an openly contrived conversation with an FBI agent that he knows the janitor is overhearing, which leads the informant to report back that bugs have been planted, even without warrants, in Axe Capital's offices.
Into this mess walks Chuck to tirade against Axe and all he represents. It is dramatic, if not at all believable. Would Preet Bharara, the real U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, pop up out of Phil Mickelson's golf bag--his place of business--and confront Leftie Phil? Puh-leeze!
All the implausibility aside, it is a great exchange that leaves you wondering: Will good triumph over evil? Is there really good? Is there really evil? Will Brian Connerty desert Chuck because of his Captain Ahab fixation on Bobby Axe as the White Whale? Will Wendy find employment somewhere? Will she get someone to unzip the back of her dress? (It can be a long zipper.) Will Chuck get back in the house? Will Chuck's next dominatrix session not be cut short because he utters his safe word, "red."
All the good reasons for there to be a Season Two.
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