Move over, Bobby Axelrod: You’re not the only pugnacious redhead in Axe Cap’s hallowed halls anymore.
For a brief time during the wildly entertaining Season 5 premiere of “Billions,” the truculent employees of both Bobby’s company and its quasi-independent subsidiary Taylor Mason Capital unite to admire a surprise guest, the flame-haired Irish professional wrestler Becky Lynch, playing herself. (Well, technically it’s Rebecca Quin, playing the same character she plays as a professional wrestler. Wrestling is complicated like that.)
At the end of last season, Taylor Mason’s breakaway firm was brought back into the fold as part of an elaborate scheme — as if there were any other kind of scheme on this show — and tensions have been running high. After a staged fight with Wendy Rhoades (Maggie Siff, who one hopes will get more opportunities to beat people up on this show), Lynch tells the assembled traders about the importance of “doing the job,” of allowing oneself to be humbled in the interest of the greater good. In professional wrestling, someone needs to lose in order to maintain the illusion that what’s going is unscripted — without a loser, no one could ever win.
“There’s nothing more noble than taking a beating and making someone else look good for the good of the whole damn operation,” Lynch says.
Tags: billions, new york times, reviews, TV, TV reviews