Billions – Risk Management

By: Jay Smith

At a Stadium with Bobby (Damian Lewis) he has invited Bach (Glenn Fleshler) to tell them how they are going to win. We get a flashback to three days earlier and we see a man with glasses arriving into the city. The Axe employees are anxiously waiting outside and they give their theories on what really happened to cause them all to work from home for three weeks. A young woman (Shaunette Renée Wilson) asks Bobby if they’re ready to open, but he says they need Wags to be there as well. She leaves Bobby to go look for him.

Chuck is in what we can assume is Jujutsu class getting his weekly lesson. In the bathroom we see Wags (David Costabile) smashing up pills and snorting them to start his day when the young woman tells him Bobby is waiting on him. The man with the glasses finally arrives and it’s at Chuck’s office. He barges in and formally introduces himself as Oliver Dake (Christopher Denham), Offices of Professional Responsibility. He says he’s there for an investigation into his recent conduct. Chuck takes him to his temporary office and it already has his name on the door. Dake tells him even with the tip he will still find out the truth about what’s going on in the office with or without Chuck and the team’s cooperation. Bobby finally comes up and allows the employees to come in. Everyone goes through extensive security checks while Wags is telling them no electronics will come and go through the company’s doors and everyone is getting magnetic ID bracelets to get through the new checkpoints at the exits.

At a seminar, Wendy (Maggie Siff) is introduced and she reads an employee heckler who she believes is lying about his true self when it comes to criticism and complaints. She continues to give a motivational lecture on performing when you need to because that’s what you signed up for. Bobby is having a presentation and tells them the hedge fund industry is under siege. He gets the employees involved and Mafee (Dan Soder) makes a joke about him passing the test. Bobby rips him a new one in front of everyone. He tells them trust almost killed the company and for him not to be compromised on any information all conversations will be had in front of Stephanie Reed, the young woman we’ve been seeing, the new Chief of Staff. After the lecture Wendy is with Todd (Danny Strong), the guy who introduced her in the seminar. He gives her the check she just earned and he tries to pry and get information on Bobby. She doesn’t sell him out. Todd says she’s passed his test and offers her a job. She tells him she doesn’t want to be tied down and likes being independent at the moment. She leaves and a man with glasses has been following her. Lara is dropping Dean (Christopher Paul Richards) and Gordie (Jack Gore) off at school and before she can fully leave she helps save a child (Delphina Belle) with a bad reaction while the nurse (Bettina Bilger) on duty didn’t think to administer the medicine, especially because Lara told her to.

Bobby is at home and brings everyone into the surveillance room. Bach mentions Chuck’s investigation and Bobby admits to being the one behind it. Wags thinks Chuck is really in Bobby’s head, but Bobby defends his actions by saying he has to get him out of that position in order to really be safe. The man with the glasses, Paul, is delegated to have Chuck watched while Bach is tasked with filing a lawsuit against him. Bach tries to get Bobby to understand what he’s really doing and Wags suggests this isn’t the way to get Wendy back. Paul gives the information he’s been gathering on Wendy and informs the group her and Chuck are nesting and she was seen at Krakow today. Bobby wants to know if she’s formally working there and all of her hours. Back at the school, Lara questions the safety of her kids with the unqualified nurse. Topher (John Hemphill) tells her he can’t fire the employee because the school needs a nurse at all times. Lara calls Mo, her cousin, and says she’ll be there soon. She will wait until she arrives and dismisses the uncooperative nurse.

At a farewell dinner, Chuck is making jokes while Bryan (Toby Leonard Moore), Lonnie (Malachi Weir) and Kate (Condola Rashad) discuss the new job that has opened up. The guys tell Kate she’s too young for the position while she jabs back and tells them they’re just the right amount of old for it. Chuck greets them at their table and tells the tale of how he discovered to change his approach on winning. He was in a chess match with a hustler (Maurice Ashley) and notices the cheat move. He doesn’t violently react, but instead admits defeat and while giving the hustler his “earned” money he tells him he caught him, threatens him and tells him not to cheat anymore especially against the little boy who has been watching them play intensely. With the story, he tells the group he had created a new way to achieve their goals of winning and wants them to follow suit. Bryan asks how did he know he actually won that day and Chuck says he sat on the bench and watched for awhile. He doesn’t admit that Spyros (Stephen Kunken) met him at the bench and gave him the information about the investigation and Oliver Dake. Chuck gets them one last round of drinks and tells them to cooperate with Dake. He leaves and the group deciphers his message as one of them will get the job from him or working with the replacement Dake places.

Bryan is being interviewed by Dake and finally gives him a real question by asking about the private meeting with Bobby. Bryan says he reported the meeting as soon as it happened. Dake disproves of the “as soon as” because the report was given the next afternoon and Bryan admits Bobby had offered him a job at the pizzeria in Yonkers.

Wendy is in her office waiting for the next patient and it’s Bobby. He compliments her new space and she’s not very welcoming towards him. Wendy admits to there being a weird type of energy when they’re in a room together and it’s why she doesn’t want to see him. He pleads for her return to the company because he doesn’t really know what to do especially without her. Wendy tells him that he always figures it out and his progress will be amazing but she won’t be there to clap for it. He mocks her progression of trying to have a normal life with regular dull patients. To his reaction she tells him she might work for another hedge fund to avoid the dullness. Already one step ahead Bobby knows which company it is and tries to stake claim to Wendy, but she tells him for the last time she isn’t his, to stay out of her business and to leave.

Employees are pitching ideas and Wags isn’t interested. He wants help to get on Raya, a rich and famous people’s Tinder. He tells them again their ideas suck and the next idea needs to be big and barely legal. Mafee is working with his intern Taylor (Asia Kate Dillion) through lunch and they save him money on a deal. Mafee orders them lunch and assumes they’re vegan because of their “everything.” He tries to figure out a way to keep them on because they’re important to his well-being with the company. Taylor takes the lunch and jokes that they are, of course, vegan and that Mafee needs to come with a great strategy in order to keep them by his side.

Lara is with Matt (Kevin Isola) while Bobby and Raul (Ruben Santiago-Hudson) are outside grilling. He tells Lara he can’t go back to the way things were with Bobby after finding out what he really is. She threatens him and in small defeat he goes outside to play nice. As Matt leaves Mo comes in. Bobby hugs Matt and thanks him for coming. Lara and Mo are playing pool when Lara gives her the starting perks if she joins the school full-time. Mo thinks it over, but doesn’t think the gig is the big chapter she’s looking for next. Raul tells a story about how he surveilled a gang in a bar but was discovered and got beat up. Matt says at the end of the story the cops who were on duty went back to that bar, beat the gang up and the end result was no more shady business there for a while. Raul says the message of the story is about winning with the right numbers. Bobby takes this in and we can see a light flicker in his eyes.

An IT guy (Ryan Barry) comes into Wags’ office and he butters him up so he can help him get into Raya. The guys tells Wags he can’t do this task and his normal tasks, but Wags doesn’t care and slightly forces the employee to help him. Chuck calls Adam (Rob Morrow) and asks for his assistance with Dake. He wants to know who sent him but Adam won’t help him. Chuck threatens Adam, he caves in and sets up a meeting for Friday to give the information he’s looking for.

Wags is in the bathroom, doing his morning routine when Stephanie comes in and logs him into Raya. He asks how and she tells him she’s a member, to no longer distract the employees and to not tap the heart if he sees her on the app. Dake is going through files when he comes across Wendy’s bank statement and the five million dollar deposit. Dake tells Chuck of the payment and it was sent the same day he suspended his investigation against Bobby. Dake taunts Chuck with the new information and leaves him stunned. Chuck enters the house and Wendy is peeved he didn’t knock first. He apologizes and tells her they need to talk. He drops his new discovery on her as a hypothetical and she’s speechless. She admits that the sequence of events did look sketchy, but doesn’t fully apologize for keeping the secret. Chuck makes a comment about Bobby’s poison and says you don’t always have to directly have it in order for it to kill you because being close to it is enough. Wendy tells him she no longer has access to the poison and Chuck doesn’t have access to her either and leaves.

Back in the present, Bobby and Bach are still at the stadium and Bobby tells a story about being there watching the races and figuring out who are the potential winners. He stopped watching the races and started looking at the numbers on the scoreboard. They see a jockey practicing and Bobby tells Bach he comes out a few nights a week to get the new horse accustomed to the lights. Bobby owns up to the great advice the guys gave him back at the house in the surveillance room. He admits to wanting Chuck gone and tells the plan of finding everyone that he had done wrong and supporting their lawsuits against him with Bobby adding his into the bunch. Bach loves the plan and gets up to leave to set it in motion. Bobby also admits to him that the jockey doesn’t always run that late and Bobby had asked him to be out. Bobby signals for the lights to be shut off and the next morning Chuck is served with 127 lawsuits by a crafty bicyclist (Camrus Johnson). He takes his lawsuits to his meeting with Adam and states it didn’t make sense for that many until he saw Bobby’s. The AG calls Chuck and tells him she needs to see him in her office on Thursday in DC. He thinks she’ll fire him when he arrives.

Dake runs into Bryan and tells him the tip that started his investigation came from Yonkers. Bryan wants to know why does this matter to him and Dake runs the sequence of events and suggests whatever Bryan heard that night he didn’t like and knows Chuck should be out of the job so he made the call. Dake leaves Bryan and he looks nervous like his secret has been discovered.