Implosion

Billions 5×9

Bobby Axelrod: Get me to see Taleb. Gotta make sure this thing's a real black swan event.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': High priest. There's no profit at the end of this call sheet. No money to be made. My one job is to help you do your job. And right now...

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Can I talk to you like you talk to me? I'm gonna talk to you like you talk to me.
Bobby Axelrod: This is to what? Refocus my lens?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': That it is. ..... What I'm really searching for is a pattern in the madness. But all I'm seein' is the madness.
Bobby Axelrod: Hmm. The reason I can talk like that... Well, there are myriad reasons, none of which you'd understand. As you don't understand why my moves right now are the very acme of sanity. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Now do my bidding. And get me Taleb. Let's go.

Mike Prince: A second-tier event might as well not exist. Cancel it.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': But Prince is done. He's bled out. And you're calling in favors for what? So you can fuck a dead guy's skull? Michael Douglas only talked about it in The Bible. He didn't do it. Besides, skullfuckery is not even fun to watch... Okay. That part is a lie.
Bobby Axelrod: He's not dead till I say he's dead.

Chuck Rhoades: My mistake doesn't have to snowball into our mistake.
Mr. Moody: There's no legal basis for this...
Chuck Rhoades: No. It would be a favor.
Kate Sacker: Which we tend to repay.
Chuck Rhoades: No, not tend to. Always will, and always have. Favors are not asked lightly and will not be ignored.

Mr. Moody: You think this is the state that Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours built, with the cousin marrying and the wrestler murdering and all that French aristocracy nonsense? The glass shards on top of the wall, keep the lesser family out? No. This is the state that was built on corporations getting what they need, which is freedom from the yoke of tax burden.

Mr. Moody: I don't believe corporations are people. They're better than people, because they don't fuck up when they get so obsessed with one thing they can't see reality. So no, I'm not gonna participate in your agenda, while mine is part of a bigger economy... But do consider shopping for some tax-free, high-end electronics before you go.

Mike Prince: But who do you want in your corner? Someone who's never put money before humanity? Or do you want someone who knows the cost of putting humanity aside, and how it'll break you?

Mike Prince: Perfect people don't exist. But flawed people... who have taken a walk through their own wounded psyche, reforged themselves and come out stronger? We're the great hope for the species.

Mike Prince: It's your money. You can take it right now, and you could walk out this door. Leave while I'm down. .... But power is atomic. And eventually, this moment, this moment where one electron is slightly out of whack, will end, the world will right itself again. I'll be on top again. And the curious thing is that I will have forgotten your name. I don't believe in enemies. It's not that I don't have them, it's that when you become my enemy, my next move, my only move, is to continue to rise. While you will eddy. Sink. Not by my hand but by your lack of connection to me.
     So walk out with your money. It's yours. But you won't be done with me. As the song goes: "On every wall in place my fearsome name will be heard. I'm the atomic punk." I will remain so. And you, Matt, will simply evaporate.

Mike Prince: I'm not doing that again.
Roger 'Scooter' Dunbar: The save or the beat down? Because it was gorgeous.

Kate Sacker: I need to know: what is the plan, or the next move in the plan, or the next step in the move of the plan?

Chuck Rhoades: No, Moody is right. I made this shit soup, and now I have to sip it.
Kate Sacker: Fine. You want to act existential, does not mean that I have to.
Chuck Rhoades: No act. No, this right here, is what my alienist would call Anhedonia. The kind of paralysis that can only come when every move you make hurts. Wendy's gone. Her successor, also gone. Meanwhile, my enemies thrive.
Kate Sacker: If we can pause with the Freudian analysis...
Chuck Rhoades: Ribot came up with the concept. Freud got all the glory. So the least we can do is give ol' Theodule his credit where it's due.
Kate Sacker: Okay, back from Europe to here in NYC....

Mike Prince: I want a path back to goodness. A way to be a force for good again.
Brenda Fells: Yeah, I know you do, Michael.
Mike Prince: You do?
Brenda Fells: Yeah. But I can't be the subject of that, or the object, or the road map. I mean, I can point you in the right direction... Stop ruining good people because you think you're better than them. You're not better than anyone.

Roger 'Scooter' Dunbar: We can't take a billion dollar plus loss so you can assuage your guilt over something you can't go back and change.
Mike Prince: Right now, this company is the house built on a Native American burial ground. It doesn't matter how good the house is. We have to start from scratch.

Bobby Axelrod: There's no such thing as bad fucking luck, not when money's involved.

Ben Kim: Okay, this is a satellite snapshot of every ship at sea, updated every 20 minutes.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': So where the fuck are our pizzas?
Ben Kim: Forty-four degrees, 32 minutes, 23.8 seconds North by 25 degrees, seven minutes, 51.6 seconds West-- North Atlantic Ocean-- The ship carrying your pizzas broke down two hours ago.

Chuck Rhoades: Some would argue that by virtue of just how much money you have, you have by definition done much wrong.
Mike Prince: So because I'm so rich, I'm inherently guilty?
Chuck Rhoades: It's what I built a good chunk of my career on. Probably what drove me to that career. But I do believe you just said it better than I did.
Mike Prince: Wealth is always going to exist. Power along with it. People are so consumed with the idea that money buys freedom that they can't demand better of the powerful... or themselves. As soon as they gain some power of their own, they forget about better and just want to be rich. So the powerful have to demand it of ourselves. That's what I was trying to do. I can't save the world, but I was gonna leave it a lot better than I found it.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': I have been charged with delivering your pizza empire, so to speak, and deliver it I fucking will, on time.
Paul 'Manz' Manzarello: How?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Now tell me. Why Italy?
Paul 'Manz' Manzarello: The ovens.

Bobby Axelrod: Ten million to not let Mike Prince win a round? Consider the money spent.

Chuck Rhoades: Okay, we're in.
Mike Prince: ... You knew. When you told me to blow, you knew I'd come back with something. I've seen Cop Land.
Chuck Rhoades: Did I? I thought I meant it at the time. But we're here now...

Mike Prince: Yeah, we'll need someone who's served on a bank board. Someone who's known for being tough on the institutions they're a board member of, not a yes man. Someone who won't care if they get booted a few months in due to politics. Someone who will go down swinging.
Chuck Rhoades: Oh, I have just the guy...

Chuck Rhoades: Positive reinforcement never has been your raison d'être. No, you love power via destruction, a motivation you have handed down to me.... The chance to be in the game, to fuck with someone else's power and take it for yourself, you can't deny that would feel good.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Nothing is hard to believe if you have the will to make it happen.

Bobby Axelrod: Do we get to see a shortlist?... That is a short fucking list.
Mr. Moody: Charles Rhoades Senior has been selected and approved.

Bobby Axelrod: We'll appeal this decision. I'll sue you.
Mr. Moody: Oh, I imagine you will. Well, I guess I will see you across a courtroom to hash this out... in 18 months to two years, when the case finally comes up for trial. In the meantime, please see that Mr. Rhoades is welcome. Gentlemen.

Dr. Swerdlow: Nice fucking job getting him up the list. One month from now, these hospitals, they're gonna be overrun with that damn Chinese bug.

Chuck Rhoades: Axe delivered my father something that at this moment transcends even my familial bond. He gave him life. And so he became the son I couldn't be... My father is owned by him now.

Mike Prince: When he wants something, he's blind to everything else.

Mike Prince: I'm the bait, and the bank is the trap.

Taylor Mason: How are we taking down Bobby Axelrod?

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