Billions

It suffers from so many problems that it will surprise you. A lot of short padding scenes fill many of the episodes, dialogs from time to time become annoying boring word-for-word dialogs and theatrical gestures, many unnatural and forced metaphors are way over the edge of quality TV, obvious cheap ignoble scene are like from a completely different series (and surprisingly they handle the central sado-masochist relationship exceptionally well), Lewis will annoy you with his ridiculous effort to have "like a New York" accent and a there were certainly much more things I could mention. But all of this becomes irrelevant the moment it settles and focuses on the main point that is, a cheating game in the psychological, legal, financial and personal level of a pair of alpha dogs (basenji vs. pit bull terrier) from opposite sides of the Wall Street barricade, where the boundaries between who is the cat and who is the mouse, who yin and who yang are completely erased. And fortunately, such moments still prevail, moreover, it restores its reputation with excellent final episodes. As expected, Lewis is rather a sparring partner of Giamatti, but he makes it up it with his specific, hard-to-define charisma, on which his character of a "kind billionaire who is loved by everyone but there is something odd about him" that determines if he fails or not. Paradoxically, the biggest snag of the whole series are the partners of the central duo. Åkerman is clearly only a makeweight, and screenwriters artificially put her at the center of events at all costs to create the impression that she has a more fundamental role. Maggie is much better in this respect. Her role is the unacknowledged main heroine of the entire series, a multi-layered and stimulating character forming a connecting bridge and bringing tension between the central duo. But she manages her role hardly well, and at the same time the whole series would only benefit from her better performance. So, as much as it did not reach its "paper potential" in many ways, when it is already starts to reach it, you will get into it and you will be excited to watch the new season. However, the second and third seasons made big progress and learnt on their mistakes, that is for sure. Caricatures of the characters, the uselessness of the wives, episodes serving as a padding or extremely forced and unnatural ways how to make two characters meet in one room literally disappeared overnight. Everyone follows their line and pretty much step by step progresses inevitably and approaches to an open conflict with each other. It aims straight at the core of individuals who want (and most importantly need) to win at any cost. Even at the cost of (self) destroying everything and everyone around you. The fourth series fixed the biggest flaw of the last series and relied much more on the scenes where the central duo is together. Unfortunately, their story lines each go their own way, so it doesn't even seem to be story lines from the same series. In addition, Chuck's is too similar to the one in the previous series, and Bobby always makes something up on the spot, has many padding scenes and laughs at supporting characters. The beginning of the season is appalling, but the final third saves a lot, although it will only take a detour back to the point where the series was at the beginning of the third series.| S1: 3/5 | S2: 4/5 | S3: 4/5 | S4: 3/5 | (27/04/2016) (menos) (mais)