“I used to try and pretend I was dreaming all of the pain, but don’t you kid yourself: Some things have to be endured. And that’s what makes the pleasures so sweet.”
Whether as shorthand for their feelings, metaphors for their predicaments, or models for their aspired-to lifestyles, characters on “Billions” simply love dropping pop-culture quotes on one another. In fact this week’s episode, “Chickentown,” takes its name from a bowdlerized version of the famous “Forget it, Jake …” conclusion to “Chinatown,” referenced when Bobby Axelrod and Wags Wagner stop their mad-dog lieutenant Bill Stearn, known as Dollar Bill (Kelly AuCoin, delightfully amoral), from salvaging an insider-trading scheme by wiping out a poultry farm. (It’s a long story.)
Still, to the best of my recollection, no one on this quotation-happy show has yet referenced Clive Barker’s sadomasochistic horror film “Hellraiser,” whose undead antagonist Frank Cotton I’ve quoted above. No, not even Chuck and Wendy Rhoades, who can at least attest to the veracity of Cotton’s claim about pleasure and pain as a sexual matter.
Yet after watching “Chickentown” I want to set up a “Hellraiser” screening in Bobby Axelrod’s home theater just to make everyone wake up and smell the suffering. Axe, Chuck, Taylor Mason, even the lovably loathsome Dollar Bill — they all seem to require intense adversity to be at their best, whether they realize it or not.
I reviewed this week’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.
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