Let’s see if Billions starts us off a wee bit less gross this time than the first episode: fingers crossed for no pee!

We open with a ginch-clad Bobby, in his office trying on new clothes and waxing poetic about the Gold Standard’s return. It was a Peeta on the phone

And 1/200 of his ideas is fcuking brilliant. That was 197. Wags valets Bobby, and will I ever forget Gael? I WILL NOT. He’s trying to calm Bobby down, so the U.S. Attorney doesn’t go quite so hard at him, and Bobby assures him that there is nobody more lowkey than him. As he steps into his helipcopter. Did I say lowkey?

Chuck is eating takeout Chinese again while Toby, I mean Bryan, advises him on Asian cuisine and General Tso. And his chicken.  They move on to nailing Peter Decker and I’ve already forgotten who that is.

Bobby and Lara are toking up outside the gala; Bobby is complaining that the Ellis Eads Hall has a stupid name but he really likes the building. Lara asks how much he likes it…?

Cut to two women having really unrealistic lesbian sex and snorting coke off each other. I mean. You want to see what actual lesbian sex looks like, watch OITNB (the church fisting scenes are not for the faint of heart) or Sense8, this is strictly male-pron style. I don’t recognise either woman but a colleague of Obstreperous Reporter from last week calls and asks questions about Steven Birch while OR hovers. Oh okay, she’s from the U.S. Attorney’s office, is it naïve that I’m mildy shocked that she’s all coked up right now? While working for that office?

She doesn’t give them a quote, so they say they’ll run it anyway and hang up on her. She calls Bryan and Chuck, who immediately snap into action to investigate Birch. Point: Bobby

Meanwhile, Bobby is meeting with ex-law-professor $1000/hr lawyer, who is advising that for sure the U.S. Attorney will be bringing a case. Maybe now, maybe in two years, but for sure there will be a case filed against Bobby. He suggests starting on a pre-emptive culture change, letting everyone know there will be no settling. Bobby will never settle.

¨Penn Jillette is the talent this evening, holy cow, look how skinny he is!! My screencap looked like shite, so here’s what I found.

He’s eating fire and demanding donations by the millions, awwww public figurative pissing matches are so much better than literal ones!! Bobby stands up, then Steven Birch, then Wags, then the alert for the Steven Birch – skewering article by Financial Times pops up. Off he goes

Wendy (Dr. Wendy? Mistress Wendy?) has cancelled the morning power-up meeting, and a blonde who looks a lot like the one who was having coke snorted off her boobs is not happy. I don’t know for sure if it’s the same woman, I can’t see her boobs right now.

Lara is working in the field with a giant garden; random segue.

Bobby and Wags hold a pep rally with lots of swearing and dick measuring and they malign Catherine the Great and

Donna, the blonde from before, thinks hospitals are still the way to go; blah blah profane blah. Donnie wants Apple and blah blah big penis blah.

And in walks the men in windbreakers. That was fast! The FCC is investigating right NOW. Every single analyst says that every big, suspicious play they did recently was founded on Prom Night Promises: Just The Tip. I love old Baldie from the Superior Automotive trades last episode: all he says is “show me the warrant” and ”Lawyer. Lawyer. LAWYER”. He is not uncertain he is not talking.

Also a tough nut is Dr. Rhoades, who is refusing to allow access to her files. Ohhhhh, that was a Lifeboat Drill and they FAILED. The group that was pretending to interrogate them is now the Compliance Team.

Victor, a particularly cocky analyst (he asked the supposed FCC Team lead “how much do YOU make?”) is fired; and I have HAD it with Wags and how they write Bobby’s crew for this show. The dialogue is untenable.

Dr. Rhoades is FURIOUS with the lack of notice about the drill, and warns Bobby about the danger of humiliating Victor so publicly; Bobby did that for the PR, but she fears backlash.

Lara is talking to a man named Sean; she wants to secure naming rights for Ellis Eads Hall. Bobby is in with him, offering 100 million dollaroonies to own the name to that building. Oh, no, wait, 125 million dollaroonies! Soo if I was balancing Bobby’s chequebook, that’s $192 million he’s spent in the last two weeks.

Tara (Annapurna Sriram) (I think), aka the coke-snorting lesbian from the U.S. Attorney’s office, comes home to find Bobby’s dirty-work operator Hall (Terry Kinney) sitting on her couch watching a video of her very unrealistic sex scene with anono-blonde. It’s really the cocaine that’s her problem, though. Hall takes her hair and tells her to report everything she can from Chuck’s office back to him.

Chuck is going after the two Financial Times reporters that published the Steven Birch article. He shows up at Mike Dimonda (Sam Gilroy)’s apartment – that’s Obstreperous Reporter from last time. If they both want to see a bad man go down in a non-fun way, why are they fighting each other? I seriously LOVE Paul Giamatti, but this show is KILLING ME for him.

Chuck questions Randy Kornbluth’s authorship of the Steven Birch attack; he knows Mike wrote it and asks why he didn’t come to him to play in the bigs. Mike doesn’t play big ball with Chuck however, and ends the conversation reminding Mr. U.S. Attorney that he can write up this little ambush any time he wants. Noted.

The next day, Chuck’s taking his kiddos to the park; stopping to buy donuts for his family and some guy in a blue shirt anonymously. Blue Shirt tracks him down, though, and asks him to meet his kids. The kids he won’t be seeing for awhile because while he appreciates Chuck’s kindness now, he really could have used it at sentencing. I guess those 81 successful prosecutions were attached to actual people instead of just statistics, Chuck. This guy lost his wife and committed mail fraud and I agree with everything that happened except for Chuck trying to pay for the guy’s donuts (also, that should be doughnuts but that’s because I am Canadian. And can spell. Usually).

Bobby is working with the Whiffer from the pep talk (he thought he had a whiff; didn’t trust it); he wants him to short Crossco Trucking, blah blah short play blah do it. Wags (David Costabile – Gael!!) walks in; still hasn’t found their leak, I’m wondering if that’s what Bobby is checking right now. He also wants Bobby to meet some big deal hedge fund guy, but Bobby wants Wags to handle it himself.

Victor’s house is AMAZING. And he’s mad. He wants to bring Bobby down and Dr. Rhoades is there to remind him that people who are on the other side of Axe Financial end up losing salaries of 3 million dollars a year and wind up writing blogs. WHAT’S WRONG WITH WRITING BLOGS???

Personally, I don’t know Victor’s case history, but I don’t think disguy is gonna respond to intimidation like that.

Chuck and Wendy are walking home; so sweet and is it wrong that I want to see her hurt him again? WITH the gag? The point being made is that he thinks his job is so tough because he can’t use empathy as she can, but that she had to be just as tough on someone today, so basically: work is a soul-sucking empathy destroyer but if we want our kids to go to poncy schools and learn dead languages, we have to suck it up.

Chuck wants to repeat what he said to Blue Shirt in the park, though, he’s super chuffed about it: “I am never so proud as when I choose NOT to prosecute a case”. He just wishes he could be more human; he doesn’t see how he do that and be good at his job at the same time.

Wags is having a couples massage with Garth, who is a non-rube Kentuckian that wants assurances that Bobby is legit. He’s been concerned watching FunBobs spend his money like a gol’ durned rap singer and I’m more focused on his unruly back hair. They flip over: Handie time!

The Fibbies are here and I think THAT blonde is the one going down on Tara, Chuck’s staffer. Blonde Fibbie explains what they have on Birch, which is a Canadian trader named Pierre Bernard that was flipped based on stock improprieties. Tara lurks and listens while Rookie Fibbie says its a dunker – Dominique all.day. He means Dominique Wilkins, one of the best slam dunkers OF.ALL.TIME!

Bryan is assembling the team to lead the attack on Steven Birch, but Chuck knows Axe Financial is the real cherry in this particular pie: he tells Bryan to settle with Birch so they can get back to Bobby. He uses the analogy of the rideless horse from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: this posse will not be DISTRACTED. They’re a super posse! I’m 12 so I snickered all the way through that. In this scenario, Bobby is Butch and the Sundance Kid, Chuck heads the SuperPosse (snicker).

Bobby interrupts Garth and someone named Sir Ken at a swanky restaurant, dressed in sweatpants and unzipped hoodie. Sir Ken is trying to poach ol’ non-rube Garth; but his risk-averse strategy is pfft-ed by Bobby. Garth just wanted to see Bobby’s face earlier, be assured that Axe is clean and steadfast; he did not like the picture of Beach Bum Bobby on the front of the New York Post and neither did his investers. His investers like good old Sir Kenneth, but Bobby still thinks he has a shot at some of Garth’s firmament.

Chuck is meeting with Steven Birch, and the offer is gross: a fine of $386 million and never handling money again. BUT no 11 year jail sentence and he gets to raise his kiddos. He takes it and his lawyer is totally bummed.

Bobby slouches his butt into Dr. Rhoades’s office to thank her for handling Victor, there’s a strange vibe there. She threatens to leave if he ever cuts her out again and since he gets a text advising him that Chuck is re-focused on him again, he knows their time is close to an end anyway.

We cut to Bobby in a Metallica shirt at the newly renamed Axelrod Hall. COME ON. Nobody believes that guy listens to Metallica OR wears tshirts, given his spectacular freckle farmer’s tan. I’m a ginge, I have the same thing: my freckles give me the appearance of a tan midway down my arm. Am I focusing on this too much? Bobby’s not just there to advertise poor Wardrobe choices, he knew the Eads family. They don’t remember him, but he used to caddy for them back in the day. He gives an extremely detailed recounting of a bad putt that got him unfairly fired and just cost the Eads family 16 million dollars. They take it because they have to and it’s all very cliché.

So! What did you think? Getting better? Good all along? See you next week, SuperPosse! Snicker