The episode aired a few weeks ago, but I've been letting them stack up, building a bit of a library to fall back on now that New York baseball went kaput. I'm going to the well slowly.
I haven't been as anxious to keep up with weekly episodes of Billions as I was in the past. Maybe, knowing it's the last season I want to draw it out, but it's also because I'm a bit tired of the snappy, pop culture references in the dialog that the characters spout at each other. I've even taken to keeping a pad of paper and pen nearby to write down the references I have not idea of what they're saying. It's good the show has run its course.
Nevertheless, it is still entertaining, even though Mike Prince has replaced the hedge fund nemesis Bobby Axelrod. Chuck Rhoades, once again the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District in New York, is still after the ultra-rich.
Mike Prince is in Bobby's old firm, but now known as Mike Prince Capital, MPC. Pretty much the same characters surround him. Played by Corey Stoll, Prince is ell named after Niccolo Machiavelli's Prince. There are no coincidences in the writing, which we will see more of later.
The major plot line running through this last season is that Mike Prince is running for U.S. President in 2024 as an independent. He is wealthy enough, and if Ross Perot could do it, so can he. He's got the stones and the money, so away the scriptwriters go.
How do you make a multi-billionaire likeable? Well, you need a political strategist, and Mike gets one, a young, somewhat obnoxious know-it all who knows every poll result ever taken everywhere.
Immediately, this wunderkind tells Mike he's got to be married, or at least appear to be married to the woman he's separated from. The nation doesn't need a Golden Bachelor running for office.
He interviews Mike and his former companion as they try and pass off that they're together. This kid can smell a tell before he gets off the elevator. He's not fooled by their cuddly appearance on the coach holding hands like in a Diane Sawyer interview. He can tell they had a night of sex just to act as if they are together. He's even checked Mike's bathroom medicine cabinet for the presence of feminine products. They're there, but he's not fooled. (My guess is that they were all unused.)They're going to have to appear together as a marital unit if Mike is going to have any chance at campaigning.
Wunkerkind gets them to type into their cell phones all the people they've slept with in the recent past and send him the list. Of course there's a list. Nobody's a monk or a nun. Neither sees the other's list, but wunderkind lets them know that as of now they're best advised to no longer seek a partner other than the one they're now sitting next to. They agree. But they're not happy about it.
The episode that is nearly stranger than truth, or that truth is stranger than fiction, is titled The Owl. No, it's about Flaco who escaped one from the Central Park zoo and had been showing up a lot on X (Twitter). Come to think of it, I haven't seen many Tweets about him lately. I think he's still at large and will remain so. They say the rat problem in New York City has improved. They need more Flacos.
Chuck and his dad are having dinner in the dad's well-appointed brownstone. the maid has just sliced the beef wellington, when Chuck Sr. comes in and challenges Chuck Jr. to come with him to The Owl Retreat, an almost all male gathering in the Adirondacks where the shakers and movers, old and newly minted gather for a naked romp in the cold and get back to nature. It's very elitist.
Chuck's dad has been doing this for 50 years, but you'd expect that. He is the personification of Old New York Money.
Chuck demurs and declines. But further into the episode it's revealed that Mike Prince is going so that he can curry favor with George Pike IV, a character who looks a bit like David Rockefeller and George Soros. That the character is also named George is no coincidence.
Mike is going because he's learned that his major opponent in this presidential bid is a woman governor from Montana named Nancy Dunlop. It would seem she's a Ddemocrat, but in a terrific cameo role she's played by Melina Kanakaredes. (There doesn't seem to be a Republican opponent in the script.) Dunlop and Prince are craving George Pike IV's (hereinafter referred to as The 4th) endorsement. An endorsement from him opens doors. They basically both want to lick his ass.
I knew Dunlop looked familiar but couldn't put my finger on it until the credits rolled. Kanakaredes is well known from CSI roles. She might be the only Montana governor to have a New York accent.
She's plain spoken and no nonsense. She belts down red-eye whiskey at the bar like Hillary Clinton with coal miners in West Virginia, and rips off her blouse to reveal a black sports bra before she takes to the mat and leg wrestles a poor sap who is badly outmatched. She is the first female member of the Owl retreat.
She and Prince rate front row seats at the exclusive invite that is The 4th's fireside conclave. Just to show off his lineage The 4th tells us how he got his nickname when Billy Graham wanted someone to roast smores with and how he remembers JFK talking about the Berlin airlift crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis and the go/no go decision on the use of nuclear weapons with Nikita Khrushchev.
This sparks a revealing debate with Dunlop and Prince. Dunlop says Kennedy's restraint saved the world. Prince reveals he would use a first strike policy if he had good intel (there's that word intel, every scriptwriter's favorite) that someone was readying a first strike attack of their own. How would he have good intel? He'd have the best people around and he'd listen to them. Oh boy. Is this ever an eye-opener.
Chuck Jr. who hates Prince and is amongst others—there being a cabal within Prince Capital—to judge Prince out of his mind and unfit for the office. He confronts The 4th that he can't possibly think Prince is worthy of his endorsement.
The 4th says something about the current "nanny state" and that it's unusual for someone to advocate a first strike policy. Chuck is aghast.
All these shows weave in a few sub-plots, and in this one there is one involving Prince's ex-wife, cutely named Andy who is a champion female rock climber and who was instrumental in getting rock climbing into the program of Summer Olympic events. It seems her real other half, Derek, is seemingly hopelessly stuck on Mount Makalu and needs to be rescued. Time is running out.
Prince is Ross Perot because when his ex Andy tells him about the dilemma h gets his right hand man Scooter ( Scooter Libby, a former White House chief of staff?) on the phone to patch together a rescue team from the Tiger Rescue team (the best) to get the disabled Derek down.
Since the level of production and scriptwriting is first class in Billions, there are no coincidences. Ross Perot famously got his hostage-held EDS employees out of Iran with a private military-style rescue effort. Ken Follett turned it into a book, On the Wings of Eagles.
The 4th is obviously leaning to the first strike guy, Prince. Before The.4th gets back in his chopper to leave, he leaves Prince with the impression they'll continue to talk,
Meanwhile, things are going badly in rescuing Derek. They're going to have to do a "helo rescue," which is military-speak for a helicopter rescue. Problem: Derek is on the Chinese side of Everest, and an air space violation could have repercussions with the touchy Chinese.
Prince has okayed a helo rescue, firmly believing the Tiger Team can get there and back without showing up on Chinese radar. As The 4th bids Prince adieu outside one of the cabins he tells him two things: Get his marriage back in order; complete the rescue without pissing off the Chinese. Then, they'll talk some more.
How does The 4th know about the rescue? Well, we have to believe a man like The 4th (George Soros) knows everything that goes on in the world. Prince gulps,
Next thing you know there is radio communication from the rescue team that they're close, but oh-oh, wait, there are Chinese bogeys in the air. They've been made. They abort the mission, and the next thing you hear are shots, with the assumption that the Chinese have taken Derek into custody.
Derek is probably alive and saved off the mountain, but the Tiger Team couldn't stay around and risk trading shots with the Chinese. Prince's Andy is distraught, but has a feeling. She asks Mike did he tip the Chinese off so that he wouldn't be caught running a military operation on foreign soil? Prince coldly tells her she wanted him off the mountain. Mike Prince is a cocksucker, because he surely did tip the Chinese off to remove himself from a political catastrophe. (We don't hear or see Mike do this ,but we know he did because he took The 4th's warning about creating an international incident. Mike is a selfish bastard.) So what if Derek doesn't eat well for several months or even years. Mike's political future is unharmed, but his propped up relationship isn't.
That would be enough to end the episode, but the producers and screenwriters come full circle and show us what that chain saw owl hoisted onto of a pole in the forest was all about. A ritual of The Owl retreat people, The Cremation of Care ceremony.
Well, a little Google doing reveals the owl place is meant to depict Bohemian Grove, a 2,700 acre private retreat in Northern California, very much for real, that is home to a two-week conclave of movers and shakers who are members who gather to run naked through the woods, skinny dip in cold lakes, drink up a storm, and maybe smuggle a little paid female escort activity in
The place has been around since 1872, and now boasts a membership list of 2,700 (I guess one for each acre) movers and shakers who have paid a $25,000 initiation fee in addition to ongoing dues. It's a bit of think tank that started with artists, poets and writers in 1871. Members have included several past presidents, Walter Cronkite, Mark Twain, Henry Kissinger, et al. Plans for the Manhattan Project were hatched there.
One of the Google entries tells of Elon Musk being a member. No surprise there. Walter Isaacson's book Musk has an index, but no entry under Bohemian Grove. No surprise.
Security is tight, but in 2000 Alex Jones clandestinely gained access to the proceedings and filmed extensively. Yes, that Alex Jones of Sandy Hook denial infamy who has been seeing conspiracies for a long time now. He saw Satan at work everywhere. But...as odd as the goings on at the end of Billions are somewhat unbelievable, there really is a Cremation of Care ceremony that takes place at Bohemian Grove where an owl on a pole is burned by hooded guys bearing fire torches.
Truth as fiction is the best kind.
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