The Coolest Sports and Movie References From “Billions” Season 1

Showtime’s new Paul Giamatti-led series comes out swinging right off the rip. The first episode opens with Giamatti tied up in some sort of twisted bondage get-up, and from there it’s off to the races. The story was easy to follow, even though the subject matter (at least at face value) could easily have been confusing. In this day and age, we’re all simultaneously doing other stuff while watching programs, so the fact that you can stick to the script while half-paying attention is priceless and overtly important.

And, while the performances of Giamatti and Diamond Dallas Page — I mean, Damian Lewis — are off the charts, the most surprising and pleasant aspect of Billions is the drops of nostalgia Koppelman and company drop in so eloquently.

Mixed in with the dominatrix scenes and all of Malin Akerman, Billions plops in movie and sports references all over the place.

Here are the best callbacks from Billions, handpicked by Slackie Brown.

“Towns fire managers, owners just give them the bad news.”

Giamatti, a U.S Attorney for the Southern District of New York,  is at his best when intimidating Lewis,  a hotshot hedge-fund manager, at a conference they’re both speaking at. He highlights his undressing of Lewis with this old New York sports saying.

“You’re gonna be our Brian Doyle.”

Lewis tries to encourage one of his mid-level employees by referring to him as former New York Yankees infielder Brian Doyle, a career .161 hitter who had an amazing performance in the 1978 World Series. What’s best about this scene, though, is that they drop numbers and context needed to make the callback effective — Doyle stepped in for Willie Randolph and hit .438 in the aforementioned ’78 Series.

“Go home and get your fuckin’ shinebox.”

David Costabile — COO of Lewis’ hedge fund, Axe Capital — delivers this Goodfellas line in a meeting and is followed up by a Robert DeNiro impression from another employee. The whole scene was alright, not great, but kudos to them for slipping it in.

“Nice guy? I don’t give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your kids.”

Last, but certainly not least, the best reference from Season 1 of Billions goes to Toby Leonard Moore and Susan Misner — two members of Giamatti’s office. These two took me by complete surprise and dropped the illest Glengarry Glen Ross performance I’ve ever seen. This one, unlike the Goodfellas bit, plays extremely well and is pure television gold.

Below is a decent compilation of movie references from Billions. In it, you can see the two I talked about, along with a few others that didn’t make the cut.