As a music cue, [Neil] Young’s plaintive ballad [“Old Man”] makes emotional sense, even if crosscutting between the two old men in question drives the point home a bit too hard. Young’s old-before-its-time voice erases any edge of condescension his youth might have brought to the material at the time he recorded it — he was 24, amazingly. It’s the sound of a young man trying to find common ground with one of his elders, and the song never reveals whether the effort is successful. Chuck and Bobby, two complicated men with difficult fathers, could surely relate.
I reviewed tonight’s Billions for the New York Times.
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