Promos, promos, get yer Billions promos right here!

We were all talking earlier today about spoilers…The thing is I can handle visual spoilers via trailers and promos just fine, but something about written spoilers gets me slamming my computer shut and quickly walking away, particularly for shows I’m interested in getting to know completely. You see, images and the world of visuals can be contained. Images are manageable, relegated to a separate part of the brain that loves them, no doubt, but doesn’t keep too tight a hold on them. They’re fleeting, flashing in and out of real cognition. The written word on the other hand knows no such boundaries. Words, whether they be plot summaries or entire scenes with dialogue, when they are strong, have the capacity to sear into the brain for much longer. And words open up worlds. You read something and you want to know: Well, how? What? If x, y, and z happen, then what comes next? And you imagine so much more than a measly 60 second promotional spot of a series of flashing images can ever provide. There’s no end to the worlds that good words can open up in your head. Thus, sometimes, it all just becomes too much and your head feels ready to explode with its own set of visuals and ideas and speculation.

Images of promos are not only contained, but they are also often edited to be misleading and open to interpretation. Red herrings abound in the world of trailers. Goodness knows I’ve been wrong about a particular interpretation of what happened in a promo. For instance, my initial reaction to the first promo we saw of Bobby laying that “a woman with eyes like yours” line on Wendy was: Ick, is that any way to talk to a co-worker? I feared they’d be making Bobby into one of those oblivious old-school corporate guys who never managed to sit thru a session of required sexual harassment training. But then, in the pilot episode, we heard the entire dialogue, and the world these two characters occupy immediately opened up:

Being a billionaire, I never get to talk about this, because who’s going to give a shit, but…being a billionaire, when you walk into a room, it’s like being a woman with a perfect set of tits, or great legs, or eyes like yours, you know exactly what every one’s looking at, you know exactly what they want….you know what that’s like.

Clearly Bobby and Wendy have a friendship that defies a work relationship. Bobby is confiding in her and she’s listening like a friend. They have history and some sort of understanding of each other beyond just as colleagues. The words taken out of context and dubbed in as backdrop to a man and a women smiling at each other were intended to be completely misconstrued and were. The words in their full context, on the other hand, spoken and/or written, give a far more complete picture.

I guess that’s why most books are better than the films made from them. When you’re in the world of a book, the sky’s the limit as to what you can visualize. When those words are rendered into images, it’s like boundaries are drawn around them, the world of possibilities gets smaller. For a television show, of course, it’s all about watching, and that watching can be damaged by reading too many details before hand.

So,  that’s my long winded explanation of why I can’t handle written or fully spoken spoilers. But images are just fine! And, boy, did we get an explosion of ogle-worthy material this week. Damian went on a whirlwind promotional tour, making stops at all the places everyone stops when they’re about to premier a show.

First, he did CBS This Morning. Amidst the same old questions he always gets asked about playing an American, we learned something new about how he paid particular attention to the cadence, rhythm and pacing of a New York accent. It’s by paring it down to its basic parts that Damian is able to play a New Yorker and sound like one, without going full-on Pesci with the hand motions and exaggerated vowel sounds.

Then he hopped on over for a brief visit to Live Kelly and Michael. Our very own Damianista was at that filming so a lot of my watching was trying to spot her in the audience while texting. Much nerd glee shared among us three as we engaged in the meta-media of it all. As for the interview, again, fun chatter about Damian’s “fake” British accent, and, surprisingly, more time spent talking about Homeland than Billions.

Next came a longer respite at Charlie Rose. Andrew Ross Sorkin, Brian Koppleman, and Paul Giamatti were also in attendance, so lots of great discussion to be had about the ideas and research and “sit-downs” that informed the writing of this show.

One thing that struck out to me was Koppleman’s mention of Theodore Dreiser, a name I vaguely remembered from college reading lists, and subsequently looked up to find described as the first novelist truly successful in producing “a great American business novel” (The Financiers)…one of the first writers to show that “behind every great fortune there is a crime”. Dreiser wanted to explore the ideas of morality in American business dealings… the lengths people will go for money and the power it brings: he wanted “to observe a certain type of crime in the United States that proved very common. It seemed to spring from the fact that almost every young person was possessed of an ingrown ambition to be somebody financially and socially. Fortune hunting became a disease with the frequent result of a peculiarly American kind of crime, a form of “murder for money”” (Wikipedia) Always a treat to know that such heady material is behind a television show; bodes well for its future indeed.

And another beat from the Charlie Rose session including the linked clip, which only affirms what we already know about Damian: Koppleman’s remark on his precision and the direct and exact questions he would ask about the character: “What kind of creature is this?” Harkens back to Damian’s propensity to look for the basic animal traits in a character he plays. Don’t know what animal Damian decided on for Bobby, but first impressions reveal a bit of black panther, I think. Stealthy, steady and still at the core but ready to pounce violently when challenged.

Lastly, there was The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.  Colbert has a way of spinning elaborate segues that his guests don’t always see coming. And, after answering the same questions on many different occasions during the week, I think Damian was pleasantly caught a bit off guard when Colbert brought up the point of them working for the same billionaire. Touche.

Then, there was the series premier party attended the full cast, all looking fabulous.

Of course, we on this blog needed none of this to be sold on this show.:) Billions, episode 2, will be online on January 17, which is also the first day of the regular season premier on, you guessed it, Showtime.