Billions has thankfully turned its characters into caricatures

The New Republic

"When I first started watching Billions, I worried that it might be another high-gloss, high-budget excuse to show the trappings of wealth on screen," says Rachel Syme. "But as its third season airs, I have come to appreciate the purposefulness of its exaggerations. Billions is written in extended metaphors, strings of expletives, grandiloquent monologues, fire and brimstone soliloquies ... If the monologues feel epic and overdetermined, it is because they are meant to highlight the farcical, barbaric aspects of the entire Wall Street apparatus. We are supposed to cringe when Chuck and Axe collide and speak to each other like cocksure generals preparing for battle; their swagger and hyperbole are meant to be comical. Billions is a melodrama, a gleeful jab at the men who think they are kings."