Billions' cruelty has become more relevant amid the pandemic

Salon.com

"The New York City of Billions exists in a reality almost entirely separate from our own," says Melanie McFarland. "That means coronavirus is mentioned at some point but at least in the two newest episodes, doesn't make an appearance in any meaningful way. One explanation for this is production related; the first seven episodes of the fifth season were filmed before the world ground to a halt in spring of 2020, airing between May 3 and July 14, 2020. The remaining five episodes of the season were already written at that point, according to series co-creator Brian Koppelman. Production resumed in March 2021. This means the fifth season's arc was set before last summer's racial justice protests and the New York Police Department's violent response. The first seven episodes aired at a time when New York boroughs were besieged by COVID deaths, hospitals were overflowing and the streets ominously hummed with the motors of refrigerated trucks holding dead bodies, overflow from morgues at capacity. It's worth reminding folks of all this because Billions doesn't and probably won't. But it will remind you that the world in which Damian Lewis' Bobby Axelrod operates, the one he's determined to rule, is a mostly white world and a vastly wealthy one."