‘Billions’ Season 6, Episode 9 Recap: Distract and Conquer

Season 6, Episode 9: ‘Hindenburg’

“We need Chuck dead, not wounded and angry.” Wise words, those, from Governor Bob Sweeney. He has intuited something Chuck himself failed to, when Chuck yanked the Olympic Games away from Mike Prince without delivering a killing blow. In retrospect, it was obvious that a wounded, angry Prince, for all his self-avowed graciousness in defeat, would strike back. It just wasn’t clear that his retaliation would, in fact, be a death blow.

But that’s certainly what it seems to be. Sweeney and the State Senate remove Chuck Rhoades from the office of state attorney general, the result of an elaborate scheme concocted by Prince. Chuck’s do-gooding, his rabble-rousing, his speechifying — none of it avails him.

And so he moves from one of his biggest professional triumphs — putting the kibosh on Prince’s Olympics — to his greatest professional setback since he was fired as the U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District by Attorney General Jock Jeffcoat a few seasons back. If anything, this defeat is far worse because it bears a firmer will-of-the-people imprimatur and because Chuck was nominally booted over charges of corruptly pursuing personal vendettas, not simply rubbing the boss the wrong way.

To be fair to Chuck, I didn’t see his downfall coming, either. Nor were we supposed to! Before learning of the attempt to oust him, Chuck spends most of the episode deeply invested in pursuing another pet project: opening privately operated but nonprofit and tax-exempt parks and other such amenities to the general public.

This quest is precipitated by two ugly incidents involving brown women, the first when his lieutenant, Dave, is barred from a private club and the second when a Hispanic mother is barred from a nearby park. Chuck strong-arms the local hedge fund bigwig Steven Birch (Jerry O’Connell) into ponying up a list of residents with access to the park, then takes them to court, where he settles on a deal that gives him a bare-minimum win — the best he could count on under such dubious legal circumstances.

But it was all a put-on by Prince. Stuart Legere, the bribed university official whom Chuck believed was his man on the inside; the host at the club where Dave and Legere were supposed to meet; the mother who is prevented from entering the park; the Wall Street jerk who prevents her from entering it; the lawyer representing the park’s members: All of them are on Prince’s payroll, thanks to bribes from Wags and Scooter.

In doing all this, Prince is acting on the advice of Chuck’s one-time right hand, Kate Sacker. Distract him the way a bullfighter distracts a bull, she says, and he’ll become vulnerable. And sure enough, he’s so busy hashing out the details of his big win against the high and mighty that he misses the political coup occurring right under his nose.

At this point, the rapid-onset defeat of its main characters is a “Billions” hallmark. It took only one or two episodes for Prince and Chuck to embroil Bobby Axelrod in the illegal cannabis business that led to his flight from the country. No sooner had Prince landed the Olympics than Chuck canceled them. And now, Prince has defeated Chuck just one episode later. No one is safe on this show, and that makes for exciting television.

Chuck’s entire downfall could, perhaps, have been prevented had it not been for his decision to show up at Prince’s Olympics HQ to gloat in the form of a peace offering. Prince recognized it for what it was: rubbing the billionaire’s nose in his defeat. Chuck’s biggest enemy is himself.

The episode’s B-plot centers on Taylor Mason, the one-time wunderkind of Axe Cap. When the alums Mafee and Dollar Bill pop in for a visit, they also start to woo the mild-mannered traders Tuk and Ben Kim away from the firm, no doubt hoping to recreate that old Axe Cap magic. Tuk and Ben’s manager Philip, new to the firm, is happy to let them go if it’s really time for them to move on.

But Taylor feels that this will make Philip look weak. Rather than allow a rival to take a hit to his reputation, Taylor unleashes a full Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction” verbal fusillade at Mafee and Dollar Bill, scaring them off from their attempt to pry Ben and Tuk away. Philip is retrospectively grateful for the help, though he tells Taylor he suspects Ben and Tuk aren’t the only ones pining for the good old days of Axe Cap.

Taylor, who has spent the whole season wrestling with Axe’s influence, seems chastened. But no one on this show stays chastened for very long.

Loose change:

• I’d like to give a special shout-out to the veteran character actor Kenneth Tigar as State Senator Clay Tharp, a rare Republican ally of Chuck’s who is ultimately swayed to Prince’s side. He delivers a dignified performance centered on Chuck’s sympathy for Tharp after the death of his wife, a sympathy he can no longer pay back with support.

• For you reference-spotters out there, this episode was full of them. Basketball? Prince compares himself to Coach Pat Riley. “The Godfather”? That’s the name Chuck bestows on Riley, while Mafee quotes, “Be my friend?,” from the film’s opening scene. The Coens? Ben Kim quotes the Dude in describing his time at Prince Cap as “strikes and gutters,” à la the Dude from “The Big Lebowski.” Wrestling? Senator Tharp tips the hat to the grappler Ken Patera.

• Some less frequently trod reference territory: Taylor paraphrases the entire “Say ‘what’ again” speech from “Pulp Fiction.” For the literary-minded, William Kennedy’s Albany-based cycle of novels also gets its flowers. Bob Sweeney invokes the name of the Stephen King arch-villain Randall Flagg when describing Prince’s feelings about Chuck. And a judge compares Chuck’s legal approach to the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.”; the song closes out the episode, and it is maybe the series’s most jarring music cue to date.

• Chuck compares himself to Charles de Gaulle and his enemies to the Hindenburg disaster, but it turns out the positions should have been reversed.

• Karl Allard goes undercover as a groundskeeper to spy on a meeting between Prince and his mega-rich cronies, reinforcing my love of Karl Allard.

• The episode ends with Dave’s being named the new acting attorney general. The show seems heavily invested in this character, and I hope the investment pays off.