BoJack Horseman Season Four, Episode Three: "Hooray! Todd Episode!"

The writers of BoJack Horseman have always had their work cut out for them when it comes to the character of Todd Chavez. The first six episodes of the series made me think that the show was mostly going to consist of frivolous humor and Todd was the biggest goofball of them all. Todd was created as BoJack's naive deadbeat roommate whose silly antics were usually good for a laugh. His stories were largely on the periphery of Season One and as the show drilled heavier into the characters of BoJack, Diane, and Princess Carolyn, it seemed that Todd was just going to be used as a comic relief character.

Of course, the show has evolved to take all of its major characters seriously. That gets tricky at times with Todd, a character who once built his own amusement park out of trash. Todd's penchant for screwing around means that we spend most of his screen time thinking "what sort of kooky caper will he cook up next?" BoJack Horseman somehow has to balance that image with its desire to treat Todd as a person with feelings that we're supposed to care about. That's tough to do, but they've been able to pull it off, especially of late.

"Hooray! Todd Episode!" is the latest installment that threads the needle perfectly. Since near the beginning of Season Three, the show has done a great job of developing the "Todd is asexual" story and despite all the goofy dancing and obtuse behavior, they manage to make us the serious moments resonate. His reunion with BoJack, who has either backstabbed or left Todd hanging in at least one major moment in each season, perfectly encapsulates all the pain that he's experienced as a part of that relationship. His coming-out-asexual moment really feels like a strong moment after all of the B-plots he's been given over the last season or so that have been building towards it. In hindsight, though, it makes all his attempts to connect with women over the internet in Season One seem out of place, so I do wonder whether this was intended from the beginning or whether that's something that the writers will spin in hindsight as Todd trying to figure himself out before he actually found himself with a real live woman in Emily who was interested in him.

Aside from the serious stuff, this episode is great fun as Todd and his typically-helpful demeanor tries to fulfill the demands of his various friends while BoJack's probable daughter Hollyhock enters his life to complicate matters. When we first caught a glimpse of Hollyhock late in last season, I was thinking that we'd get some broken girl who had never felt complete because she'd never met her father (and since we just met Hollyhock, I'm not completely ruling it out), but instead we get a total waste of space who has inherited most of BoJack's worst traits. Todd puts it best when he says, "Um, we may not need that DNA test."

In addition to being a great Todd episode, we get a couple nuggets that set up the plot for later. Obviously, BoJack connecting with his daughter is going to be the big one, but the pending conflict between Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter feels inevitable. Diane's back in activist mode, and despite what she takes from her encounter with Todd-as-Channing-Tatum, you can't help but feel that exploiting her husband is going to be a tempting way to get people to read her articles.

Bullet Points

• It feels like Princess Carolyn has been taken out of focus for the most part this season. I bet she'll be featured heavily in a soon-to-come episode

• I legitimately did not know what fracking was before watching this episode. Is that bad?

• "It's me, Channing Tatum. I'm busy channing right now, but you can come back...Tatum?"

• "Less of course."

Episode Grade: A-

BoJack Horseman Season Four, Episode Two: The Old Sugarman Place

Now that's more like it.

As the story turns back to BoJack, the series also takes the opportunity to delve into an under-explored character, Beatrice Horseman. BoJack's mother's cruelty has long been pointed to as a reason that BoJack's so messed up, but before now, we didn't really get a good sense of why she's such a bitch. "The Old Sugarman Place" clears it up, and true to BoJack Horseman, the truth is unfathomably sad.

BoJack, not really knowing what to do after alienating everyone in his life, drives to his mom's parents' summer home in Michigan (which I hear has had its tourism hurt by the advent of air travel). The place is a dump, and we get some great comedy out of BoJack trying to fix the place up while doing a very poor job of assuming a fake identity. For the record, if I had to fix up an old place like that, I probably would have been just as ineffective as BoJack, with the exception of when I got to the hardware store, I wouldn't have had a damn clue what to buy. BoJack lived my nightmare in this episode.

The structure of the episode is very clever. It interweaves BoJack's story at the house in present-day and Beatrice's childhood with her family. Her older brother CrackerJack, (voiced by Lin Manuel-Miranda!) is headed off to war, which doesn't end well, as he's killed in battle. The family, particularly Beatrice's mother Honey, is never the same again. Honey falls into a manic depression trying to fill the new hole that's been punched in her life, but nothing works, and her husband Joseph is basically an embodiment of stereotypical male attitudes towards women in the World War II era. He actually utters, "As a modern American man I am woefully unprepared to manage a woman's emotions. I was never taught, and I will not learn."

That sort of ridiculous admission takes a turn for the dark when, later in the episode, Honey pleads with Joseph to make her better, saying that she doesn't know how to fix herself. Joseph, in turn, does one of the most unspeakably awful things I've ever seen in real life, live action TV, or cartoon TV. It's a crushing moment when Beatrice encounters the "new" Honey. Her personality is muted and there's stitches across her forehead. The bastard made her get a lobotomy because he couldn't deal with her struggles. As if that wasn't hard enough to watch, the last line Beatrice says -- echoing an earlier quote in the episode -- is, "Why, I have half a mind...". It ranks as one of the most brutal moments that BoJack has ever done.

In the present, BoJack actually gets his house repaired thanks to the generous help of the Sugarmans' neighbor, Ed, who is a dragonfly. It's clear Ed's wife passed away some time ago and that he's still in pain from that, and BoJack and Ed actually form a sort of bond as they work to fix the house. There's a great scene in which they overlay the past and present and Honey and Ed perform the same sad song for a crowd. The experience sort of unhinges Ed and when BoJack stupidly falls off a roof in a weird attempt to get Ed to fly again, it works, but culminates in Ed exclaiming that he doesn't want to live anymore after BoJack saves him from drowning in a lake.

BoJack eventually talks to Diane and I like to think that how much he misses her, rather than her pep-talk, is what drives BoJack to head on home. I'm thoroughly convinced that we haven't seen the last of a BoJack / Diane romance, and this episode went a long way toward fueling that fire. The next thing we know, BoJack has the Sugarmans' house destroyed and a bewildered Ed is just left there trying to figure out what the heck this was all for. BoJack simply says that it was all a big waste of time, and quotes Sarah Lynn with a solid "suck a dick, dumb shit" before vacating the premises. Ed was simply another victim of BoJack's self-serving behavior. He destroys everything he touches and while the show doesn't provide any further updates on Ed in this episode, there's potential for darkness here.

"The Old Sugarman Place", while packed full of gut-wrenching moments, is what BoJack Horseman is at it's core and how it works at its best. The creative storytelling, the stellar voice acting, and the way that Raphael Bob-Waksberg & Co. give such depth and vivid angst to their animated characters never ceases to amaze me. We didn't have to wait long for the first fantastic BoJack episode of Season Four, and after a shaky premiere, it's a relief to see that this show hasn't lost itself.

Bullet Points:

• Maybe we should all be just a little bit more concerned about Joseph's secretary's self-esteem, huh?

• "Oh, of course, the twelve hundred pound horse will shimmy up a drain pipe to get it, that makes more sense than the dragonfly, who has the word "fly" in the name of what he is."

• The easiest way to get BoJack's goat remains talking about how fat he is.

Episode Grade: A

BoJack Horseman Season Four, Episode One: See Mr. Peanutbutter Run

I don't know how well I'm going to be able to keep up with these because my second daughter is due to be born literally any day now. So if these stop abruptly at some point, please know that it is because my life has been turned upside down once again and I would probably rather be sleeping.

My single greatest fear coming into this season of BoJack Horseman is the plot line teed up at the end of last season involving Mr. Peanutbutter running for governor. These days -- thanks to Donald Trump -- comedy shows, late night talk shows, and an unhealthy percentage of social media has devolved into people trying to tell the same jokes in different ways. Trump sucks, and the underlying issues are important, but I often find myself longing for the days when there was something else to say. BoJack Horseman is a special treasure; it has something unique and important to say about self-worth, happiness, and the struggle for both. I don't want to see it become Family Guy. Shit, I don't even want to see it become South Park, a show that handles the nuances of hot-button political issues better than any other I've seen. That isn't what BoJack Horseman is at its heart. I hope it does not become just another voice in the echo chamber.

The opening episode of Season Four doesn't feature the titular character at all. BoJack has gone all Luke Skywalker on everyone and only Diane seems to care. Diane's struggling with Mr. Peanutbutter's campaign and just wants it to end while appearing supportive of her husband's aspirations. While the premise at hand is ridiculous, I'm sure that many have found themselves in lower-stakes versions of that situation and that makes it relatable. We know from last season, though, that Diane's new blogging gig is going to pressure her to expose dirt on Mr. Peanutbutter, so I'm sure a lot of her concern isn't just the coffee-snatching annoyances invading her house, it's a desire to avoid that conflict.

The central plot of the episode is crazy; Mr. Peanutbutter wants to be governor, but there's no election at hand; he needs to oust the current governor, Chuck Woodchuck. In the spirit of true Hollywoo craziness, he challenges Woodchuck to a ski race for the rights to be governor of California. That, of course, doesn't make any sense. The rather level-headed Woodchuck pays it no mind, but obviously the Hollywoo media and general public is all about it, and heck, there's a State Legislature, dammit! So of course, the law is changed such that the outcome of a ski race with poorly drawn rules determines the governor. I say "poorly drawn", because Todd drops out of the sky from his "drone throne" (a truly great and hilarious Todd concept) and crosses the finish line first, and that apparently counts.

Todd refuses the gubernatorial bid, as he's still not feeling all that sure of himself following Emily's labeling of him as asexual. That refusal makes the seat vacant until the completion of a general election, thereby setting up the plotline we thought we'd get from the beginning: Mr. Peanutbutter vs. Chuck Woodchuck in a heated election race.

I want to jump back to that Todd subplot, because I think the show can do some great work with it. There hasn't been a lot of attention paid to asexual people in pop culture; it's sort of an unexplored territory (at least in my experience). I think that it could be interesting, particularly because there's probably a lot of struggles that haven't been exposed to the public eye. In just this premiere, we're faced with two: Emily distances herself a bit from Todd once she understands that he's not going to be a sexual partner and Todd himself rejects getting slapped with the label, as he at least says that it's not quite the right descriptor of his situation. The Todd scenes were the strongest part of this premiere and I'm intrigued by what they might do with this going forward.

As for my greatest fear coming into this season? Well, there's references to Mr. Peanutbutter not really knowing what he's doing, being completely unqualified, never really thinking things would go as far as they do, verbally berating an ostensibly competent counterpart, etc. It's the same shit South Park did with Mr. Garrison last year, only with someone who's easier to like (and also: a full year later). BoJack Horseman deserves all the benefit of the doubt in the world, so I'll give them a chance to see how they want to play this one out. Hopefully they understand that telling a tired story with their excellent characters doesn't make the tale any less stale.

Bullet Points:

• "GO WOODCHARLES!" (in an episode with plenty of solid jokes, that landed the best for me)

• "Ski Race" is not one of the "Constitutional and Democratic Paths to Governorship" but dammit, "Lawful Elk Duel" can get you that office, fair and square.

• It wasn't immediately clear to me whether Princess Carolyn had a miscarriage or an abortion, but maybe I missed something. 

• I'm honestly curious as to how the BoJack / Mr. Peanutbutter relationship will play when BoJack inevitably comes back at some point. Mr. Peanutbutter was the only major character with whom BoJack didn't have a major falling out (though he and Diane seemed to have reconciled), and I thought that was an under-explored element of the falling action of Season Three.

• Maybe a spin-off of Todd traveling the world on a drone throne, eating kettle corn? Please?

Episode Grade: B-

High Maintenance Season One & Webisodes (Spoiler-free!)

High Maintenance is a show with a very unique structure that's pretty tough to sell. Honestly, I'm surprised I gave it a try at all, as I'm big on serialized character arcs and it was very clear from a simple overview of High Maintenance that this is not what it's all about. I think the reason that I actually wound up taking the recommendation to check it out was that I was a fan of Louie and that show had just one frequently recurring character (if you don't count the one played by Pamela Adlon). So, at least there was some precedent.

There's 19 (I think) webisodes of High Maintenance that run typically between 8 and 15 minutes of length. These were released between 2012 and 2015 and should be watched first. HBO then picked it up as a regular TV series and released 6 episodes (half-hour length) in 2016. High Maintenance follows the adventures of The Guy, a nameless marijuana dealer that travels by bike around New York City and delivers weed to his clients (hence the very clever name for the series). Though he's the closest thing that the show has to a main character, The Guy is not the principal focus of very many episodes. Rather, the show focuses on different clients of his in each installment and how his periodic visits for a sale fits into their lives.

Though the storylines in each installment are mostly are separate from the rest, High Maintenace does a decent job of world-building, as a few of The Guy's clients have cameos during unrelated episodes or get more than one full-length plot over the course of the series to-date. The biggest reason that the show succeeds is that creators Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld have a great eye for talent and they utilized a slate of mostly anonymous  character actors (on the other hand: hello, Kether Donohue and Amy Ryan!) that really make The Guy's clients come to life. 15 minutes is not a large amount of screen time, but it's all High Maintenance needs to make viewers feel like they really know these people and get a sense of their stories.

If I have a criticism of the show, it's that when you essentially create your characters and story for each episode from scratch (except The Guy), you can't draw from past episodes to create intrigue and that allows for the potential for individual installments to fall completely flat. I liked all 6 episodes of the official HBO TV series, but a couple of the webisodes didn't do it for me. That made the experience of watching those isolated episodes essentially worthless since the characters and stories don't carry over. Those were a small minority, though; most were very good. Given the non-serialized format, I wouldn't be shocked if the stories that are "duds" differ from viewer to viewer.

For those who have seen the series, my favorite of the webisodes was the one centering on comedian Hannibal Buress and my favorite of the full-length HBO episodes was "Grandpa", which is basically told through the point-of-view of a dog. For those who have not seen the series, I'd recommend giving it a try if for no other reason than that the short length of the webisodes allows you to do so with minimal time commitment. Some of my favorite recent TV experiences (Master of None, Louie) have done a good job of making relatively mundane situations very interesting via great writing and acting. High Maintenace fits pretty neatly into that mold.

Webisodes + Season One Grade: B+

This Is Us - Season One

Big-network dramas are effectively going the way of the dinosaur when it comes to top-notch programming, but last fall, when we heard that This is Us was about to kick off and that it was drawing a lot of comparisons to Parenthood (which we really liked), we figured we had to at least give it a try.

Now, it's a year later and the second season of This Is Us is about to start, so it's a pretty weird time for us to be wrapping up Season One. We actually watched everything except the final three episodes as they were released and then just put the finishing touches on the season this past week. A big reason for the delay is that This is Us has a serious knack for dropping sad-bombs, and with two of the saddest bombs possible hovering over the season's final episodes, we had a hard time working up the desire to watch something that was inevitably going to bum us out. That's excluding the fact that This Is Us had to compete for our attention with our rampage through The Sopranos. Hardly a fair fight.

By now, I've pretty much conceded that I can't truly write what I'd consider a good review of TV without dropping some spoilers, so feel free to check out here if you truly don't want anything ruined.

This Is Us centers on the Pearson family, which consists of triplets Kevin, Kate, and the adopted Randall, Randall's immediate family, his sick biological father William, and a married couple, Jack and Rebecca. In the fantastic first episode, the stories of the various characters seem unrelated until it's finally revealed that scenes with Jack and Rebecca are actually taking place in the distant past and that they're the parents of the triplets. The show jumps back and forth between the present and past, often with storylines intertwining and events of the triplets' childhood proving relevant to what's going on in their lives.

The structure of the show largely works, because even if the triplets aren't around one another in the present, they're linked by the scenes involving themselves as 80s/90s kids, so it never feels like the show's telling three different, completely unrelated stories. As far as plot-driven drama is concerned, This is Us does a great job of sucking you in with dramatic twists. Talent-wise, the cast is pretty deep and they make the big moments feel earned, even if the underlying character work is occasionally lacking. Scenes like Dr. K trying to help Jack cope with the death of his child, Jack's saving of Thanksgiving with his 'Pilgrim Rick' spiel, and the good-bye between William and Randall make for unforgettable moments that will always pop back into my head first whenever anyone brings up this show.

The characters on This is Us are somewhat hit or miss. Randall (played by a wonderful Sterling K. Brown) is easily the best character on the show, as he's often the dramatic heart of the present day scenes and adds some sneaky-good comedy as well at the right moments. His relationship with William (an also-great Ron Cephas Jones), who abandoned Randall at the hospital at birth, is consistently the best feature of the show and the writers get a lot of mileage out of Randall meeting such an important figure in his life with very little time left to truly get to know the man.

Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) is also very compelling throughout the struggles of raising his three kids and the ups-and-downs of his relationship with Rebecca (Mandy Moore). It's really easy to like Jack, and that helps us forgive the fact that for most of the season, he's essentially written as the father and husband that's meant to make the rest of us look like shit. The show explores SuperDad's flaws later on in the season, but it feels sort of disingenuous that This is Us shows him as nearly perfect for so long before we start to see that. It's not like the events of the earlier episodes shouldn't have tested his character. Even if she's written to be less likable, Rebecca winds up being the stronger, more relatable character and Moore delivers some great scenes, particularly in the later episodes.

Where the show fails is with Kevin and Kate, two people who've failed at every turn to justify the amount of screen time they're given. Kevin is an entitled man-child who skates through life on his looks, the help of Kate, and the fact that he landed a gig on a highly-rated big-network sitcom, "The Manny", a show that's apparently just as creatively lacking as you'd think it is. Throughout the season, he gets opportunities and privileges simply because people recognize him as "The Manny". He initially struggles to succeed as a "real" theater actor and we're supposed to care, but can't. He's in a relationship with a co-worker played by Lily from the AT&T commercials (just Google that), and isn't satisfied with her, ostensibly because he thinks that she's not as attractive as another co-worker that seems to have few other redeeming qualities. Kevin's "big moment" of the season involved actually leaving the theater minutes before his opening night performance to be with Randall, apparently because he sensed something was wrong. He abandoned a theater filled with people who payed for tickets, critics from The New York Times, his aforementioned friend/love interest, and everyone else who worked on his show to run to console his brother. Randall actually was having a breakdown and really did wind up needing consoling, but what Kevin did was arguably not a "hero" move at all given the other stakeholders. Also: it's fucking ridiculous.

Kate is a woman who struggles with her weight, and I bluntly point this out up front because the show has no time or desire to delve into any other aspect of her life. With the exception of the end of the season, in which she reveals that she's either responsible for, or blames herself for, her father's death, she's lacking in storylines that are not weight-centric. She has a mostly awesome boyfriend, Toby, who's a great combination of funny and genuinely sweet. In return, Kate behaves standoffish, often rude, and confusing towards Toby. The show doesn't bother to treat Kate like a fully formed person, so it's unclear why Toby does.

Despite two of the major characters being so weak, This Is Us pulled off a successful first season. If I have one concern about the show going forward, it's that they're overly dependent on the aforementioned huge twists and "very special" moments. Shows like that tend to find themselves reaching for plot moves to hold interest unless they have a very strong character base, and with William deceased, the ratio of strong characters to weak ones takes a hit. Had they dealt with Jack's death in the season finale, as would have been natural, I could have pretty easily considered the story of these characters complete. Instead, they kicked that can down the road and tacked on some potential future plot lines (Kate pursuing a singing career, Kevin moving to work with Ron Howard and the associated fallout with his oldest/newest love interest, Randall wanting to adopt a baby) that all feel somewhat contrived. Despite the weak finale, we're excited to see what Season Two will have in store.

Season Grade: B+

Billions (Season Two)

The single biggest issue with Season One of Billions was that all of the characters except Bobby Axelrod were either underdeveloped, thoroughly hateable, or both. That problem dropped the stakes of what was an oft-exciting plot. For Season Two to be a success, that problem absolutely had to be fixed. Did they succeed?

Um, kinda.

[SPOILERS BELOW]

Chuck Rhoades was probably the character that needed the most work due to his prominence and he actually got fleshed out quite a bit more. His couples therapy sessions with Wendy brought out some deep insecurities within him (I particularly enjoyed the scene where he explained why he always wears his suit to social occasions) and it did quite a bit to humanize him. The rare scenes involving Chuck and Wendy's children gave Chuck the chance to stick up for his wife when she wasn't around. In all, he came across as slightly more likable in spite of some horrible stuff he does. We'll get to that.

The results were mixed for the rest of the ensemble. Connerty, for one, got a little more attention as his relationship to Rhoades was tested and we got to follow his personal life for a little bit. I don't know that I'll go so far as to call him compelling, but at the very least he's a little more noticeable than he was in Season One. They did a little better job with the general employees at Axe Capital, particularly Dollar Bill and Mafee, but it's still a largely blah group of people.

I think where Billions lets us down are the female characters, who are essentially still either a go-between and point of conflict for the male leads (Wendy), crazy (Lara, more on that later), or nondescript (Sacker). I think the writers failed most with Wendy. Like Sacker, it seems like they were too hesitant to write Wendy with significant flaws or side distractions (in contrast to someone like Axe, who's more interesting because he's far from perfect and has plenty of interests outside of his job and a pseudo-love-triangle) and she therefore becomes difficult to relate to. This is another Suits comparison, but I liken her to a less entertaining version of Donna Paulsen. Wendy's portrayed as an indispensable asset to Axe Capital, which rings hallow given the additional legal attention she brings to Axe and just how implausible it seems that no one else could do that job (Wags' goon notwithstanding).

Despite those failures, Billions came through big time with the introduction of Taylor, a gender non-binary intern whose acumen is quickly picked up on by Axe. The show handles Taylor's backstory well and executes what felt like a mostly realistic portrayal of the spectrum of reactions to their presence. You have the people who are immediately accepting (Axe, Mafee) and others who are well-intentioned but sometimes slip while trying their best to get used to the unfamiliar (Connerty). Then, you have the bigots (Dollar Bill, Krakow) who are prone to saying hurtful things. People like Dollar Bill are plentiful in this world, no doubt about it, but Billions disappointed me with one hilariously bad telling-not-showing line he dropped to Axe when the latter passed him over for Taylor to participate in a poker tournament: "Everything I measure myself by has been called into question." It was a pretty unnatural thing to say out loud and would have been easy to express via a couple subtle facial expressions or gestures over the remaining of the episode. You know, "acting".

Back to Taylor. Probably my favorite subplot of the entire season was Taylor being asked to choose someone to fire in the season's penultimate episode. The rapid increase in authoritative responsibility would have been difficult for anyone to handle and it even rattles the typically composed Taylor a little bit. Further still, it had to be difficult for the remainder of the employees to watch someone -- even a person as deserving and qualified as Taylor -- rise from an intern to their direct superior in a very small amount of time. The interview scenes actually got me to feel for some otherwise uninteresting characters (Ben Kim tearing up at Taylor's questioning without a word was a particularly powerful moment). Taylor's handling of the emotional experiences and developing ability to look beyond the numbers made for a great moment for the character.

I want to jump back to that poker tournament I mentioned above, which was a personal highlight of mine for the season. I used to play poker a great deal during the post-Moneymaker boom. One thing that's always bothered me is its portrayal in TV shows and movies. Poker subplots typically pander to the crowd that is only casually familiar with the game. As a result, there's problems such as nonsensical dialogue, dumb bet amounts (e.g. "raise to $200" / "re-raise, all-in for $10,000"), and uncommon monster hand vs. monster hand situations that are portrayed as either misplays or products of skill, when anyone who's played a million poker hands could tell you that they're actually just inevitable situations that aren't all that interesting (The final hand in Casino Royale being a prime example).

By contrast, in Billions, they spoke the language of serious players and the writing seemed to grasp the history of online play, modern terminology, and proper game flow. In particular, the final hand between Taylor and Krakow was a showdown between ten-nine and four-five in which neither player hit anything on the board, but both players still found themselves all-in. The hand was pretty well-constructed* and entertaining to watch and think about. Phil Hellmuth made a guest appearance in the episode, and I imagine his hands were probably all over the design of that scene.

*For those who have seen it, I feel like trips make up a decent portion of Krakow's range there, unless we're to take his agonizing over what to do on the river as genuine. Given Taylor's ability to read people throughout the season, maybe that's how we rule out Krakow coming from a position of strength.

From a plot standpoint, Billions reaches beyond the Axelrod/Rhoades conflict for awhile and doesn't really circle back to it until close to the end of the season. That gives them time to focus on the relationship between Chuck and Wendy, Taylor's ascent, the ambitions of Chuck's underlings, and finally, the relationship between Bobby and Lara. Wendy returns to Axe Capital with the condition that she and Bobby won't have any sessions together. Bobby lets Lara believe that it's his condition, not Wendy's. When Lara finds out that Wendy set the boundary -- even though Bobby has respected it -- she up and runs out on him for a long period of time and takes the kids without so much as discussing the problem first. Did that strike anyone else as batshit insane? I get that Wendy is a major sticking point for Lara, but damn, that reaction was too extreme for even a TV relationship.

That conflict leads right up to the climax of the season, which involved one of the most thrilling plot lines that I've ever seen. Bobby's rigged tanking of the Ice Juice stock was a power play against the Rhoades family that, in one of the best twists I've ever seen on TV, turned out to be completely orchestrated by Chuck. I was absolutely stunned watching the season's penultimate episode. Where I became disappointed was the finale, which really made the viewer understand what Chuck had done. He ruined his father, best friend, and his eight-figure trust fund just to trap Bobby and see him in a jail cell. When I thought about it in that light, it just seemed so far-fetched. Why does Chuck hate Bobby so much that he's willing to go to THAT length to see him brought down? Aside from possible jealousy over how close his wife has been with him throughout the years (which doesn't even seem like a major problem anymore), what has Bobby done to Chuck to make him this angry? Giamatti's "Worth it" line at the conclusion of their face-to-face conflict rings false just because to a rational person, it's very obviously not. In the absence of a well-developed explanation from the show's events, there's no other conclusion to draw here besides "Chuck's a psychopath", which isn't all that interesting.

I imagine we'll be watching Season Three when it comes out, because Season Two had a boost in quality and the writers are flat out good at putting out engrossing plot lines. The issue, however, with a show that's over-dependent on big reveals and dramatic story events is that they tend to jump the shark at some point as they reach to keep things interesting. Billions is always going to be at risk of becoming cartoonish without an ensemble of deep, believable characters. I'll continue to have fun watching it, but I'll never confuse it with a great television show.

Season Grade: B

Billions (Season One)

Billions is a show that has been raved about by many friends of mine as well as by quite a few people on Twitter, so it was only a matter of time before I found myself with little else to watch and dove into it. I finished up Season One last week and felt compelled to write something on this site for the first time in months. That's not necessarily because my review of the show is glowing; it's a show with a lot of strengths and a lot of problems.

First, let's start off with the good. The show's three leads are portrayed by Paul Giamatti, Damian Lewis, and Maggie Siff, and all three are fantastic. Giamatti in particular does great work with his voice, as his mannerisms and inflections are infectious. For lack of a better comparison, he's a poor man's Dark-Knight-Joker in that regard. Giamatti plays Chuck Rhoades, a U.S. District Attorney with an incredible 81-0 track record for putting away white collar criminals. He has his heart set on putting hedge fund kingpin Bobby Axelrod (Lewis) behind bars for insider trading, despite Axelrod's status as a beloved public figure for his philanthropy. Once Axelrod ("Axe") makes a PR slip-up, Chuck sees his chance to start an investigation against Axe that the public won't hate. That's complicated, because his wife Wendy (Siff) is also a psychologist and a prominent advisor of sorts to Axe at the latter's firm, Axe Capital.

The plot of the first season largely revolves around a chess match between Chuck and Axe as each tries to stay one step ahead of the other throughout the investigation. As one might expect, Wendy gets caught in the middle of that and is often cited as a potential conflict of interest for Chuck. Despite her insistence that she's not merely a go-between for the two male leads, that's frequently the situation in which she finds herself, particularly due to her close personal relationship with Axe. From a plot standpoint, the show is pretty engaging. I'd compare the plot devices as similar to (but better than) those used in House of Cards. While those in the know will be skeptical that any comparison I make to House of Cards resembles a compliment, that was actually one thing that House of Cards did quite well.

What makes the show less engaging than it could be is its narrow focus and generally weak characters. One watches Season One with the sense that Chuck can't ever really succeed in locking up Bobby, because without the central pissing match between two men with crazy egos, there's not much else going on. Other people are introduced throughout the season and don't resemble fleshed out characters as much as accessories to the ongoing spat between Axe and Rhoades. Chuck can't put Bobby in jail, because that would simply end the show. Therefore, when Bobby is on the ropes, it's not a question of if he'll wiggle out of trouble, but how. Similarly, Bobby can't get cleared of wrongdoing. This drastically lowers the stakes of the conflict.

Another issue is that Rhoades is a thoroughly detestable man. Sure, he's on the right side of the law, but he's such a fanatic for it that he's merciless (in a bad way) and tries to attain his own ends via truly horrible means. He's actually eerily similar to another Chuck -- Chuck McGill from Better Call Saul. However, where Saul puts a great deal of effort into developing Chuck McGill's backstory and gives us a lot of subtle character moments that make his story compelling, we really have no idea why Rhoades is such a prick. In one episode, he gets pissed at a guy on the street who doesn't pick up his dog's shit, so he bullies the guy into picking it up with his bare hands. It was a little funny, but the show does nothing to help us understand what motivates Rhoades to perform such random acts of assholery. It's remarkable that despite how well Giamatti plays Rhoades, the character still winds up one-dimensional and boring -- a pretty big failure on the part of the writers. His wife Wendy is similarly problematic -- we don't get to understand much of her besides her relationship to Axe and that she's an awesome psychologist. We probably learned more about the Chuck/Wendy marriage from one pretty great scene between Chuck and a dominatrix in a whore house than a full season's worth of their actual interaction.

Axe gets fleshed out far better, as we see what he's like outside of his professional capacity. At his job, I liken Axe to Suits' Harvey Specter in that he wins with gimmick-like frequency and his success earns him absurd lifestyle perks. However, in addition to Axe the investment world demigod, we also see Axe the father, Axe the husband, and Axe the friend. Despite being a criminal, Axe can be a good person sometimes and Rhoades being human garbage often makes Axe the more sympathetic figure in the central conflict. Without spoiling too much, though, he does pretty terrible things to some people around him besides trade on insider information. The writers deserve credit for giving Axe the depth the character deserves; it's just that some of his actions make him tough to root for. We watch these men claw at each other tooth and nail for twelve episodes while sort of wanting both to fail.

 As mentioned above, the auxiliary characters are on the whole pretty bad. Wags, Bobby's COO, is an uninteresting ass-kissing drone who's mostly on screen to be mean to the employees, though he's genuinely funny when he cracks wise. Lara, Bobby's wife, is a little more interesting, particularly later in the season when she encounters adversity (the ruthless, intimidating, wolf-in-sheep's-clothing act wears thin pretty quick). Most of Bobby's employees might as well be the same person and the one who actually has some depth, Donnie, is ultimately just a tool used by Bobby and the show's writers (...to further develop Bobby). Rhoades' underlings are no better; I thought it was super cute that the show was trying to get us to care about a budding relationship between Connerty and Kate, two people who couldn't be more nondescript through this first season.

All that being said, Billions has proven to be clever enough at times that I'm going to stick with it for now. The action in the season's final episodes was very engrossing and they've laid enough groundwork with the characters to hopefully make the supporting cast more interesting going forward. I'm skeptical they're going to start treating all of these people like they're people and not plot tools. But for the time being, I'll just enjoy Giamatti's intensely-voiced analogy-laden monologues and Axe's frequent moments of badassery.

Season Grade: B-