Billions

Previously on Billions...

You guys here...

Bobby Axelrod's spare fucking apartment.

With goddamned Van Goghs on the walls.

I can house your paintings in a permanent tax-free state.

I'll store replicas, so you can hang the originals.

Hey. One other thing you can help me with.

You know my new artist... Tanner...

- Yeah. - He's not working.

You know what? Let me talk to him.

I'll see what occurs.

- What's on your mind? - Bobby Axelrod.

Specifically, an application he submitted for a bank charter.

We would like you to stall the approval.

And then deny it.

Dad. What happened? What's wrong?

Nothing to worry about.

His kidneys. Renal failure.

How serious are we talking here?

They think he'll need a kidney transplant in order to...

survive.

Fuck me...

You and me both...

Who's gonna go try and persuade 'em to walk away?

Lucky for me, I was sleeping on my good side.

I rolled you over.

Wow.

You... uh...

That's good. You got me.

Don't do that.

Why?

Figure drawing, it's art school "technique."

Copying.

It's like a rock band doing a cover song.

I love a good cover.

You kind of can't beat

Manfred Mann's version of "Blinded by the Light."

Yeah, well, you don't remember anything else they did.

Well, I love this.

For what it reveals about how you see me.

For what it reveals about us.

I want to keep it.

I-I don't, um, want this stuff out in the world.

It won't be out in the world, it'll be with me.

It feels like I'm the one who's naked and under the covers.

That's why I want it.

I brought it out of you.

Now sign it... and get back in here with me.

So Bobby Axelrod wants to be a bank.

But before we can ascend the heights,

we need your beatific blessing.

Mm.

So I am here as his banking sherpa.

To guide him through the craggy terrain

of the approval process.

Not least because of the close relationship

you and I have, Madame Chairwoman.

Madame Chairwoman, I need a letter from the SEC,

supporting my bank.

To allow me to fight for consumers

the way that I fight for my investors.

Like a ravening mountain lion. Whose only prey is value.

Not according to the United States government's prosecutors.

They say your prey is the entire financial system.

And that when you're done with it,

not even the buzzards can find anything left on the bone.

I was targeted. By a vengeful individual.

He pursued me publicly, relentlessly...

oh, and wrongfully.

- Mm. - And he lost.

His job. His standing. His highest aspirations.

As people who line up against me tend to.

And all the charges were dropped.

Yeah, in the end, the system worked.

As I have faith it will now.

Yeah, but we regulators aren't big on faith.

We look at the record.

That is why Axe Cap plucked me

from your tender regulatory bosom.

Wait. So you're why he deserves a clean bill of health, Spyros?

You know how I intuitively located every speck

of financial dirt when I was in-house for you?

How I harvested them and laid them at your feet,

winning the title 'Mr. Roomba?'

Well, I have brought these skills to Axe Cap

and vacuum cleaned every crevice.

We called you Mr. Roomba because you sucked.

And snuck up on us. And creeped us out.

Haha, I certainly miss the jocular banter...

And I see that you're still parading around

in that knockoff Mensa pin.

I had wondered why you were suddenly sporting that.

Was that your gimmick at the SEC?

You're a mountebank Mensa member...

I can assure you, this is... this is very real...

Do you know why they formed the Stock Exchange?

To keep out a crook, a market manipulator.

William Duer.

Gave us our first panic in 1792.

But I guess you feel that we could have skipped the effort

if we had you and your hoovering skills.

Look, I would, uh, gladly smash in Spyros's head

with the Stock Exchange gavel if that'd make you feel better...

Wouldn't make me feel worse...

But this isn't about him.

This is about the bank that I'm trying to build.

The difference it will make to our industry,

- to the economy. - Mm.

You want to talk about why they really formed the Exchange?

It was a club, not a cleanup.

A bunch of Francophiles with mops on their heads,

who gave themselves the sole right to trade...

at a commission that they set.

What we call price-fixing these days.

That's the gang that you're part of.

Now, I hate clubs, but if I have to join one, I make it better.

And I make the clubhouse bigger.

And that's why you want to give me this letter.

Sure, I'll write it myself.

On behalf of my 'gang.'

But it will warn the FDIC and the Federal Reserve

that you have been a regulatory armageddon.

Doesn't take a Mensa member to see that they'd be crazy

to grant you a goddamned bank charter.

Gentlemen.

Did the SEC bless you like a newborn?

Are we a bank? We saw the Chairwoman leave

and have been waiting to see you ever since.

I want my mahogany desk.

Settle for some fucking plywood.

One word: Spyros.

Second word: dickweed.

You blow the hunt, you don't get to escape back to the cave.

Just an opening salvo, we can find our way into...

Bad enough to wear this if it were real.

But a fucking fugazi?

I would have passed the test...

- Oh, my God. - ...if I had had time to take it.

You actually want people to think you're in Mensa?

Oh, Spyros, you should really work on this.

Alright. Enough.

The world is arrayed against us right now.

Against me.

I want to know what the rest of you can do to show your value...

either by outperforming or changing our footprint

to help make this bank happen.

You better have some fucking answers

the next time I ask...

because silence will not be acceptable then.

There's an opportunity here.

To give Axe what his own team can't.

Sure. They're distracted

between becoming a bank and earning and...

We show him we are where he should

put his investable cash... not into some bank.

We make more money as he makes more.

We earn his loyalty, too.

That's not a trio that should be seen together

unless something's seriously fucked.

It seems the liberty of our tax haven is threatened.

We got a painting problem.

Hey! Hey, hey, hey!

You have a right to inspect, not to remove.

Gotta get it out the box to see what it is.

Well, will you wrap your meat hooks with some kid gloves?

These are priceless works of art.

If they are damaged even in the slightest,

an entire generation of youth

would be robbed of the joy of their beauty.

Perhaps we can come to an agreeable accommodation...

for the children.

For your children.

They didn't want money in their pockets.

Most dangerous thing in the world:

government employees who don't hate their jobs

enough to take a bribe.

Doesn't seem to me like a random fucking search.

Seems like it's targeted.

How did they even know to go art hunting?

Axe-associate Danny Margolis is something of a promoter.

This time it was him trying to sell billionaires

on parking their paintings with him, tax free.

You're saying he's using Bobby Axelrod

as his celebrity endorsement?

Along those lines.

- That's the inventory. - Ah.

We could go after the whole concept,

try to get him on tax fraud.

Something poetic about taking him down the same way as Capone.

But the laws on freeports are murky.

It's too much of a gamble...

I can't have us bring a case just to have freeports upheld.

But this...

I see actual fraud here.

Van Gogh. What about it?

I'm fairly certain I've seen this painting,

up close, in one of Axe's apartments.

Standard rich folk practice is often to store the original

- and hang a replica. - No.

There's a feeling you get when you're in the presence