Victory Smoke

Billions 5×11

Wendy Rhoades: You just see an angle...
Rhoades, Sr.: So I have to play it.
Wendy Rhoades: What do you want?
Rhoades, Sr.: I want... to be 20 years younger. I'll take money and power.

Wendy Rhoades: Can we just skip the middle stages of this negotiation, please?
Rhoades, Sr.: Meaningful profit share... But I'll-I'll be honest with you. I feel less good about all this now. And that's not posturing. It's one thing to go against your own son. But when it's with his ex, and mortal enemy...
Wendy Rhoades: Well, knowing you as I do, I imagine when I get you your profit share, this goes away.
Rhoades, Sr.: Yeah... Knowing me as you do, I'd think so too.

Chelsea: Are you sure you're ready?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': "I'm ready for anything" is basically my first, middle and last name.
Chelsea: Even meeting my father? Most guys don't want to.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Right. The dad dinner. Sure.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': I'll look him in the eye, give him a firm handshake, and assure him my intentions are honourable.
Chelsea: He'll see right through that act. He's a lawyer, so he's spent his life slicing through bullshit artists. He can look at people and know what's really inside of them. He's self-made. Tough.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Chuck Norris tough or Guido the killer pimp?
Chelsea: See, he'll get that reference, probably, and know if it's good.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': So I earn his respect by going toe to toe. Like a fighter.
Chelsea: No, kiss his ass. But do it well.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Ah. Trombone blown, Tom Byron-style. You got it.
Chelsea: Another reference I don't... The important thing is he will.

Karl Allerd: The thing about arguments before SCOTUS is they are never about what they're purported to be about. Neither are the opinions or dissents, but everyone just presses forward.

Dollar Bill: Are those them?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': These... are the Glengarry leads. But do not try to steal them. They will be handed out to closers, which, unlike Dave Moss and Charlie Levine, you will be because Axe is.

Mafee: Give me one of those, I'll light it up right here, deal with the smoke alarms and fines later.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': We'll smoke them when Red Auerbach did: The moment victory is in hand, when our bank is solvent, not when the game is still in doubt.

Chuck Rhoades: You can't really say you're playing unless you're willing to put your highest-value pieces on the board.
Mike Prince: They're not pieces. They're my children. My first charge in this world is to protect them, not set them off like flashbang grenades.
Chuck Rhoades: You are protecting them. Better, you're arming them to protect themselves.
Mike Prince: Yes, a consequence of this action might be that they become wary, less open. That may be of some benefit in business. But I'm not doing this as a teaching tool. I'm doing it for my own aims and that is too bitter a lesson.
Chuck Rhoades: You can't safeguard your kids from pain. But you can protect them from evil. And we both know that's what Axe is. And that's what a world is that bows before him. They're how he knows you're serious. And that it hurts you to use them... that's why you're the man you are.

Kate Sacker: Excuse me. I have to go.
Chuck Rhoades: Ms. Sacker?
Kate Sacker: It's nothing.
Chuck Rhoades: Is that right? Why don't you fill me in on the exact brand of nothing?

Chuck Rhoades: You gotta let him dangle.
Kate Sacker: Chuck...
Chuck Rhoades: Whole operation gets blown if one piece gets out of order.
Kate Sacker: Shit!

Wendy Rhoades: It's not fucking time!
Ben Kim: That's what Wags said at first, but then he passed them out to us.
Wendy Rhoades: Because we won a round. Back in your pockets. You can hold on to 'em now but don't smoke 'em till Axe gives the word.

Bobby Axelrod: You ever been to Fiji?.... The ocean there's the exact same temperature as the air. And so when you walk into the water, you don't even feel it.
Wendy Rhoades: Fiji sounds...
Bobby Axelrod: Yeah. As soon as I get a clean bill of health. But first, victory smokes.

Kate Sacker: ... As to why I need this done? Family shit.
Mary Ann Gramm: I thank God every day I grew up medium-poor. The ones with the Tiffany rattles could never stop warring with their own.
Kate Sacker: Hmm. You know nothing about how I grew up. Yeah, we had some money. But I had to prove that I deserved my spot in the world every single day, much as you did in a different way. You don't go into the justice business because it's a fair world, you do it because you want to make it one.

Kate Sacker: I helped sell it...
Chuck Rhoades: You may be right. But don't act like that's why you did it.
Kate Sacker: We don't all enjoy sending our fathers to the wolves.
Chuck Rhoades: We don't. But we do it, because we not only accomplish whatever we were after, we get the thing they wouldn't give us any other way... respect.

Mike Prince: I've heard many times about Axe, the thought leader, the man ahead of the curve, doing his own thing. I don't know if he ever existed, but I haven't seen him. The Axe I'm acquainted with is a pirate, or in the lingua franca of your beloved New York streets, a goniff. You tried to steal from me again. It didn't work. .... And you know what you wound up with? Nothing in your hand but moonlight.
Bobby Axelrod: I have strings attached to all of my fingers. When I yank 'em, you are gonna shake, rattle, and shit yourself.

Rian: I can't sit on this if I wanna keep working here. And I think I want to keep working here. But if I talk about it, maybe I can't work here anyway. What type of a paradox is that?
Wendy Rhoades: One that probably only gets better if you take a deep breath... and actually tell me.

Rian: I don't wanna work in a place with secrets, lies, backstabbing, side-stabbing, any stabbing.
Wendy Rhoades: Understandable. So I know how best to handle this. Are you confiding it to me in session or are you reporting to me as your boss at Mase Carbon?
Rian: Whoa. You have made your life very complicated. I'm trying to make mine less so by offloading this. So... good luck with all of that.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': I get it... If you and Axe are gonna have another kind of thing, you need to make peace with who he is and stop trying to change him. Is that what's going on? Have you made that peace?

Taylor Mason: I want to believe the best of you because that's the kind of world I want to live in.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Every great love story springs from the forbidden... comes true against all obstacles of good family and good taste because sometimes a heart finds another heart it needs to be with.

Taylor Mason: Axe swallowed it. He actually closed on that money.
Kate Sacker: Didn't do his own due diligence, just accepted Prince's and took it down like sushi laced with polonium.
Chuck Rhoades: Wouldn't have happened without the efforts of everyone in this room.
Mike Prince: Or without great personal cost.
Chuck Rhoades: As all great triumphs require.

Mafee: God, it just feels like old times. You know, there's been so much shit, so much bad blood. But a pure win like this, after all we've been through? Fuck, I miss these days.

Ari Spyros: The estimable Zino Davidoff once said, "A cigar ought not to be smoked solely with the mouth, but with the hand, with the eyes, with the spirit."
Dollar Bill: Oh, Jesus.
Ben Kim: Wow.
Ari Spyros: I believe a good cigar and glass of wine and a good conversation is as close to euphoria as one can get. In a legal sense.
Mafee: Davidoff again?
Ari Spyros: Sly Stallone.
Tuk: Are these going to your head? They're going to my head.
Ben Kim: You're smoking a little fast.
Tuk: I'm excited.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': What do you want us to do?
Bobby Axelrod: I have no fucking idea.

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