In most television series, it takes you about three minutes to decide which character to root for. Granted, sometimes the lines between good and bad begins to blur as the plot unfolds revealing certain unexpected twists and turns, but even by those parameters, the attachment of the viewer to the character is most likely to remains unchanged.
The reason behind that is that the main protagonists - as well as their antagonists - are very often defined with extreme clarity from the very beginning.
It’s almost as if there was some kind of unwritten rule of screenwriting where you have to create a certain element of attachment or 'relatability' between the viewer and the protagonist.
So if you’re a reader of this blog then you’ve probably guessed by now that today’s subject is not those traditional archetypes, but rather the mavericks who refuse to play by those rules and create something unique, the outliers that create something different and stand apart from their contemporaries.
And with that in mind, mention apart deserves Billions, the TV show that revolutionized the hero-villain archetype by leaving that decision entirely to the viewer.
A Breath of Fresh Air
After watching the first two seasons, one can say with great confidence that the character archetypes in Billions is none like we’ve seen before. So much so that it’s taking the viewers so many episodes to decide which character is the supposed ‘hero’, if there’s even one in this story.
Quite frankly, that’s a truly refreshing thing to watch.
You see, we the viewers have been bombarded since practically birth with repeated fictional stories where the cop saves the world, or the politician save the world, or the prince saves the world...
And if you stop and think about it, you’ll realize it almost has a feel of indoctrination in it.
After few years of repeated consumption of the same re-packaged information, your brain starts to associate those symbols with the role they’re portrayed to play.
So the next time you see a shiny badge, or a golden crown, or a federal robe... Your brain immediately associates the character wearing the symbol with a hero or an idol status, the one you are ‘expected’ to root for.
And that’s where Billions is so different, and that's what makes it so avant-guard.
For those who haven’t watched the series - without spoiling anything - the show tells the story of a clash between two main characters, a U.S attorney named Chuck Rhoades played by Paul Giamatti and a billionaire hedge-fund manager called Bobby Axelrod, played by Damian Lewis.
At first sight, you’d assume that many viewers would feel threatened or jealous of Axelrod’s success and root against him, and at the same time, they would look at the man in a federal robe as if it was it was a protector wearing a magic cape.
However, the minute the camera starts rolling, all of that goes right out the window.
You see, the attorney with his inflated ego and blinding quest for power gets so perversely corrupt and so unscrupulously deceitful that ends up leaving the viewers disoriented when it comes to finding a character to root for.
They even get more confused as he keeps escalating and as we discover all the corrupt and unethical things he does while hiding under the guise of ‘the law’, maybe even lying to himself in the process.
Confusion starts to take over and nobody seems to figure out who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy. Maybe because of what we’ve been taught in school, maybe because of what we’ve been told to hate by the media…
But to be honest, I don’t know the reason. Maybe nobody does, but the question lingers.
Even James Altucher had the same question in mind when he had the writers of the show on his podcast.
“So essentially this show is basically main street versus Wall Street, you think you’re gonna have everyone hoping for the U.S attorney to quote-unquote win, and for the other guy Axe to lose... But it becomes more complicated, right?” ― James Altucher
“ We never set out to do like main street versus Wall-Street”. ― David Levien.
“ I don’t think that’s on the show at all!” ― Brian Koppelman.
That’s part of what makes Billions so unique. The fact that its characters are not necessarily portrayed in the way we’ve been accustomed to.
For example to portray anybody who’s wearing a symbol or swearing an allegiance in a positive light and disregarding their actions.
It’s the one show that doesn’t portray the political class by the promises that they make to the people, but rather by the things they actually do when noone is watching.
What makes it more interesting is that on addition to Koppelman and Levien, one of the key members of the series (executive producer) is no other than Andrew Ross Sorkin, the author of Too Big To Fail.
In short, this is one of the very few series that you can find these days where the story isn’t based on a pre-packaged model, rather on facts and several years of research, doing so by breaking all those old TV character stereotypes, and that’s what makes it so goddamn revolutionary.
Who’s the hero? Who’s the villain? You decide for yourself.
Maybe for the first time this information is not provided to you beforehand and decided upon by the people who created the narrative.
In short, this is a truly interesting story, so masterfully written that it leaves you wondering which part is fiction and which part is based on true events, doing so while leaving space for some interesting philosophical questions to arise.
Questions we may explore on another day, on the upcoming post maybe.
Final Thoughts
Billions is a series that makes you think, it makes you question. You question if those you were told to hate have actually done you anything to you, and if those you were told to revere are working against their own self-interest at the expense of society, no matter how many populist slogans they can recite.
And more importantly, it makes you realize that just like in real life, you have to decide for yourself who’s the good guy, and who’s the bad guy. If there’s even one in that situation.
Billions is not a show that feeds you an opinion, or reinforces a narrative. It’s the show where you have no remedy but to think for yourself and make up your own opinions.
And that my friends, is a rare and truly beautiful thing.
… To be continued.