It even fitted well with the subplot where Chuck and his ex-wife-slash-amateur-dumb, Wendy, briefly rekindled their old friendship, only to stop when professional concerns got in the way. At their son’s high school carnival, Chuck had won a private dinner for two with Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud, inviting Wendy over for the good old days. But poor Boulud, playing himself, ended up serving the multi-course meal to their nanny and himself instead. That’s life!
Ultimately, though, Chuck’s reunion with Troy didn’t pay off legally. Wags was one step ahead of him and tipped off the elite brothel that the police were on their way; the pros in question turned the place into the world’s least geriatric bridge club, thwarting Chuck’s attempt to tie Prince into illegal activity, thus thwarting his Olympic bid.
Even Chuck’s Plan B leads to DOA. With the help of his lieutenants, Dave and Karl (who keeps getting cuter), Rhoades points out Olympic “fixer” Colin Drache as the recipient of a $5 million bribe, presumably from Prince. (Even Wags, of all people, is baffled by the brutal nature of the graft, at least because it involves a self-conceptualized straight arrow like Prince.) But just when he’s ready to make an arrest at the New Year’s Eve celebrations York City for securing the games, Drache just disappears, like Keyser Soze.
In a way, watching this season of “Billions” is like watching some kind of ethical disease spread. Taylor Mason, head of Prince Capital subsidiary Mase Carb, could be patient zero. The one-time prodigy spends this episode setting up a crowdsourced investment rating algorithm, then dominating an established rating agency to force them to downgrade the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The idea is to allow Prince to get back into the system after his previous $2 billion donation to the authority backfired, leaving the city out of need for his big ideas to improve the subway.
It’s such an effective piece that the governor, the mayor, and the head of the MTA can really just nod and go along with it. Prince is upset that Taylor and his own right-hand man, Scooter, went behind his back with the plan, but he knows how to take a W. Still, he insists he’s not like a drunken father who has to hide the booze at Christmas; he wants to be involved in future maneuvers of this kind.
