The ‘Billions’ Stock Watch is a weekly accounting of the action on the Showtime drama. Decisions will be made based on speculation and occasional misinformation and mysterious whims that are never fully explained to the general public. Kind of like the real stock market.

STOCK DOWN — Bobby Axelrod

Good news and bad news for Bobby Axelrod this week.

The bad news is that he got played, bamboozled even, by Mike Prince, at Mike’s own event. The fireside chat, the charity work, all of it. Axe had it all worked out. Prince was playing into his hands and he was going to have the market cornered on medicinal ayahuasca, or pharma-huasca, if you want to talk like some capitalist psycho. What a perfectly Axe move this was going to be, in two distinct, extremely Axe-y ways: One, he was going to commodify an ancient treatment that comes from nature and has been used for centuries in a hunt for enlightenment, and he was going to turn it into a premium weekend brain twister for rich white people in the Hamptons, which is really just classic Bobby Axelrod; two, it revealed that his own experiment with the treatment in the premiere was not part of his own search for meaning as much as it was a business trip to lock in a key partner, because Bobby Axelrod will never change, not once, not ever.

Unfortunately for him, again, the bamboozling, which was revealed to both him and the audience in the final moments of the episode when Prince introduced the shaman and announced his plans to corner the very market Bobby thought he was about to corner. Which brings us to the good news, believe it or not…

The man got to say the sentence “You stole my shaman.” That’s one pretty wild collection of words. I’m not sure anyone has ever said them before in that order. Maybe they have. I don’t know. I’m not fully up on the history of duplicitous shaman maneuvers. I do know that I am absolutely delighted that I got to put the phrase “shaman heist” in this headline, though. I did not expect that to happen today, or any other day for that matter. A great start to the week.

Anyway, I guess Axe is fed up and planning to start his own bank now. We’ve all been there. Kind of.

STOCK UP — Smiling at your enemy while the camera has you framed in front of a crackling fire to reveal you as the devious bastard you truly are

Love Mike Prince. Love him. Love his whole deal, talking about giving back and privilege and his high school hoops glory days. Love how he infuriates Axe in every way, down to Axe’s icy core, with his talk about fairness and community and teamwork. And I especially love that there is very clearly a killer lurking about six inches below the surface of all of that. I did not necessarily see the exact shaman switcheroo coming, but I did know something devious way in play from Mike, and I knew it for two reasons:

• The look on his face in the screenshot at the top of this section, which, when coupled with the fire crackling behind him and the perfect “dramatic music” caption — always watch Billions with captions on — was such a villainous moment that I’m surprised he didn’t fill the room with poison and strap on a gas mask:
• Dude named his big fancy do-gooder conference “The Mike,” which is his first name

Don’t listen to his words. Look into his eyes. Mike Prince is a predator, too. He’s just sneaky about it.

STOCK UP — Lying to yourself

Oh, Chuck. Oh, you sweet delusional man. All this talk of your new code, with various Dexter references and support from Sacker in staying on the right path, with the goal of only using your diabolical powers for good, for society, for justice… you know this is all hooey, right? You know it. You have to. I say this because, in the same episode you started preaching this sermon, you also froze your soon-to-be ex-wife’s assets and steered your alleged friend Judge Adam out of one job he wanted and into the job you wanted him to have, the latter of which involved leaked memos and long games and tough senators. Yes, you protested, the ball had been rolling on this before you announced your code. But you sure did not try to stop it from rolling, not even a little.

It’s sweet that you think you’re in control of “the monster” that you and Bobby both referenced separately, though. Cute, even. I give it three episodes, four tops, before you ruin, like, an elementary school crossing guard to knock down a single domino in your battle with Axe. But good for you.

STOCK DOWN — Waterboarding, generally

Pretty tough for waterboarding to go down from its previous position, given its decades of history. And yet, here we are. Chuck Rhoades said it: if even he didn’t enjoy it, given his own decades of history with various forms of torture, I mean… yeah. Just a rough week for waterboarding as an entire concept.

Also, while I do love Billions very much, I am livid at everyone involved that we were denied the scene where Chuck offered to be waterboarded. Come on. I can see the whole thing in my head: him floating the idea with a twinkle in his eye, everyone kind of smirking, Karl getting all excited about it. Give me this as a web extra. I deserve it. We all do.

STOCK DOWN — MaseCap, Lauren excluded

Taylor had a bad meeting with Oscar, in which he said he doesn’t want his money with Axelrod and will pull it from Taylor because of it

Chuck knows Taylor triple crossed him and told them at a clandestine meeting in some parking lot, threats included, because why even have a clandestine meeting if you’re not issuing threats.

Hammon is getting railroaded by Wendy and doesn’t know her place after the merger and is feeling all sorts of useless and confused and her concerns were not exactly assuaged in the brief meeting she had with Taylor, which was yet another 30-second meeting that took place in person even though it could have easily happened over, like, text, which is just a perfect Billions thing.

But Lauren — Lauren — continues her rise in the business world and the unofficial power rankings I keep in my head, thanks to Wendy’s co-sign and her staggering competence at whatever exactly it is that she does. There’s something devious about her. I can’t put my finger on it. But the way she dunked that teabag while greeting Hammon… I can’t decide if she’s the most menacing character on the show or just the coolest. Maybe both.

STOCK UP — Dollar Bill

See, you’d think Dollar Bill would be a Stock Down situation this week, what with his performance issues and crusts of confidence. It’s a dark time for Dollar Bill, right now, in this moment.

But look at him at the end of the episode, when he turns down a minivan romp with Bonnie and opts for quiet time. He’s on a journey. He’s looking into himself. He knows something went awry and he’s trying to fix it. That’s not nothing. It’s a big step. Dollar Bill is getting himself back on the right track. I’m proud of him.

It won’t be great when he comes out of this with a plan to, like, buy up a chain of daycares and load them up with debt that leads to mass closings and layoffs, but that’s an issue for another week. Baby steps.

STOCK UP — Fancy pasta

Few shows on television make me as consistently hungry as Billions. This week was no exception. Look at that pasta. Look at it. Uggghhh I want it in my face right now. I don’t even know exactly what it is. It looks a little like a fancy cacio e pepe. What’s better than cacio e pepe? Not a lot, buddy, I’ll tell you that. There was probably some schmuck at this conference who was pissed he didn’t get lobster or steak or both. What a doofus. Lobster and steak are great. I’ll eat them for dinner tonight if you’re buying. But I would cut you with your own steak knife for this pasta. I’m a simple man. A simple, apparently violent man.

STOCK DOWN — Wags, but not for that reason

Wags discovered his daughter was stripping at a fancy strip club in the mountains and promptly freaked out, explaining to Axe that he failed the Chris Rock test by not keeping his daughter off the pole. That’s not why his stock went down, though. That happened because:

• He was apparently such an absentee father that he had no clue what his daughter was doing with her life until he saw her dancing to “Cherry Pie”
• He didn’t know where she was living, or he did and he made no effort to see her when he was in the area, instead opting for multiple nights of his patented debauchery
• He yoinked her out of the club and stuck her “in a facility,” which is fine if she has a drug problem, I guess, but maybe what she really needs is a dad who isn’t all Wags-y all the time.

It’s a “chickens coming home to roost” situation. I hope they reconcile and she moves in with him and Wags suddenly has to become a dad. Give me that entire spinoff. Give him three other kids, too. There’s a television show.

In just about each episode of The Last Dance we have heard Michael Jordan tell a different story about how he would find additional motivation for himself going into big games. That motivation sometimes came from a genuine place, like trying to topple the Bad Boys Pistons who knocked them out of the playoffs two years in a row.

Other times, that motivation was manufactured from something the media said (like, Clyde Drexler was on the same level as him) or if he knew Jerry Krause was fond of a player on the other team (poor Dan Majerle). By 1996, Jordan’s ways of manipulating the truth to feed his competitive fire were well known, and George Karl was trying his best to avoid that same fate when he saw Jordan at a restaurant with Ahmad Rashad prior to Game 1 in Chicago.

As Jordan and Rashad remember it, Karl walked right by them without acknowledging them, which angered Michael because they were two UNC guys who played golf together. As Karl told Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter Sunday night, he was simply trying not to get caught up in Jordan’s head games or say the wrong thing to him with a comment Jordan could flip into some motivation.

“It is true. I had Brendan Malone on my staff from the Detroit Pistons, and he said Michael plays head games with you all the time, and he said you don’t want to mess with him in the series. Say hello at the beginning of the series, shake his hand at the end of the series, but during the series don’t let him use anything to motivate himself to be a better player than the greatest player in NBA basketball.”

By simply trying not to do something wrong, Karl did something wrong and that’s just how it was going against Jordan. You were damned if you do and damned if you don’t, because he could always find something that worked as a slight against him — even if it meant making it up.

Billie Eilish has been enjoying her alone time in quarantine instead of catching up with friends on Zoom calls, but the singer is still staying productive. On top of Eilish launching a new radio show with her father last week, the singer is also devoting time to recording new music.

Eilish detailed the status of her new music in a recent interview on Apple Music’s Beats 1 with Zane Lowe. The singer revealed she has been spending a good amount of time in the studio with her brother/producer Finneas. The duo has completed an entire song so far, and have even more in the works.

“We’ve been in the ‘stu,’ which just means Finneas’ basement, basically,” Eilish told Lowe. “We actually, we wrote a whole song in its entirety — an entire song, which is kind of rare for us. I really love it. It was like exactly what I needed to say when we wrote it.”

Eilish continued that the track is a way for her to work through the landslide of emotions that she has experienced with the onslaught of the global pandemic. Though Eilish thinks she is supposed to be feeling despondent, the singer is actually enjoying a break from her the limelight:

“Honestly, I feel great. The song I was talking about earlier that we wrote a couple weeks ago that felt so right was … I wish I could sing it for you, but I can’t. It was just about, there was this part in it — I needed to say this — which was I know I’m supposed to feel unhappy right now because of this break and because I’m not seeing anybody … I feel like there’s this kind of thing that I feel like is floating around of like you’re supposed to be missing people. You’re supposed to be missing this person and be missing people in general. I kind of have this feeling of like, I miss my really close friends, I miss people, of course I do, but I also at the same time am liking the space.”

Listen to the full Beats 1 episode here.

As Swizz Beats and Timbaland’s Verzuz hits battle series on Instagram grows in popularity, their viewer numbers grow with it. After Babyface and Teddy Riley set viewership records for the show at around 500K viewers despite uncle-related technical difficulties, the first woman-oriented battle demolished the previous record, with Eyrkah Badu and Jill Scott’s battle/celebration of each other reaching a reported high of around 750K. The “battle” started off exactly as many expected, with both stars playing their versions of The Roots’ Grammy-winning hit “You Got Me,” as Badu projected a Bruce Lee movie on the wall behind her and Scott picked up the slack when Erykah’s connection dropped out.

Verzuz has become the in-home distraction de rigeur for many music fans during the extended quarantine as millennial music legends face off to play ten rounds of their greatest hits, share stories from the good old days, and occasionally talk sh*t during their livestreams on Instagram. While billed as a battle, they function more as history lessons and celebrations of stars’ careers and legacies, attracting both contemporary fans and younger ones curious to see what all the fuss is about. Fans have even begun speculating about which matchups they want to see, while stars themselves have taken to challenging each other, with Ja Rule and 50 Cent rekindling their rivalry, DMX challenging Jay-Z, and 2 Chainz issuing an open challenge that culminated in fans selecting Meek Mill as a worthy opponent (this battle has yet to happen, though).

The next Verzuz matchup between Ludacris and Nelly has been confirmed. See more here.

Stargirl shall soon make her debut to pass the superhero torch onto a new generation after, well, something bad happens to Starman. He’ll be portrayed by Joel McHale, who’s still somehow sarcastic in tights (imagine that) as we saw in the previous trailer, when he told his former sidekick, Pat Dugan/S.T.R.I.P.E. (Luke Wilson), that he’s not fit to hold the cosmic staff. Now, we’re receiving a formal introduction to the TV show’s first-season antagonists, the Injustice Society. Where you’ll be able to see this prolonged CW Network fight play out is slightly confusing, but never fear if you don’t subscribe to the DC Universe streaming service. Stargirl episodes will premiere weekly there starting on May 18, but they’ll follow each Tuesday on the CW and its app.

The main character of Stargirl shall be high-school student Courtney Whitmore (Brec Bassinger), who’s miraculously able to wield Starman’s staff, and she’s pumped to assume her new alter ego. Her stepfather is Pat, who’s somewhat mockingly referred to as “Stripesy” in this series, and although he attempts to caution the fledgling hero from waltzing into danger, she can’t be stopped. As we see above, the Injustice Society has taken root, including Icicle (Neil Jackson) and Brainwave (Christopher James Baker). And in the series, Stargirl’s New Justice Society will include Hourman (Lou Ferrigno Jr., who grew up with The Incredible Hulk at home, so it really is a new generation here) and Wildcat (Yvette Monreal).

Meanwhile, Amy Smart will step in as Stargirl’s unaware mom, and the special effects are looking pretty decent for the small screen, at least from what we can see in quick glimpses. Stargirl premieres on May 18.

Much has been said about X Æ A-12, the newborn son of Grimes and Elon Musk, in recent days. The baby’s unconventional name has certainly generated some attention, and people can’t get enough of the boy. Now, Grimes has pleased X Æ A-12 fans by posting the first publicly released video of the newest Musk.

Grimes shared the five-second clip on her Instagram Story last night, and the video shows X Æ A-12 curled up on Musk’s chest as he gently pats the baby’s back. Heart emojis were also put on top of the video.

This isn’t the first look the world has gotten of X Æ A-12, as Musk previously shared a photo of himself holding the child — his seventh, as he previously had six kids with his first wife, Justine Wilson. Sadly, their first son, Nevada Alexander Musk, died at ten weeks old due to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Musk also took the opportunity over the weekend to shout-out Grimes on her first Mother’s Day as a mom. Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, shared a post expressing gratitude for her sons, and Musk shared the tweet and added, “Happy Mother’s Day to other mothers!! @Grimezsz,” followed by three heart emojis. Grimes responded by tweeting alternating heart and hedgehog emojis.

It looks like all that time Lil Uzi Vert spent pump-faking fans about the release of his follow-up to Luv Is Rage 2 was very productive because no sooner had he finally released Eternal Atake than he was chasing it with another full-length album, Lil Uzi Vert Vs. The World 2 (released as a super-sized deluxe version of EA). Now, the Philadelphia spitter is threatening to drop another album, which could release as early as the end of this month, according to a tweet he sent to fan.

The fan, replying to a now-deleted tweet from Uzi, requested confirmation on their assumption that Uzi would have performed all of Eternal Atake at the now-postponed 2020 JMBLYA Festival set for the beginning of May. Not only did Uzi confirm that he was going to perform EA but he also hinted at an entirely new album he said was “coming soon.” Since three-day, traveling JMBLYA was set to begin May 1 in Dallas, that likely means the new album was scheduled for completion before then and there’s a high chance that it’s done already.

While Uzi hasn’t given an exact date of its release, he’s been baiting his fans for a while now as he and Playboi Carti taunt one another back-and-forth. Uzi previously tweeted that he would drop when a mysterious “he” dropped — “he” meaning Carti in many fans’ estimations — so perhaps the release of this forthcoming project really is just contingent on Carti sharing his own album, Whole Lotta Red.

Check out Lil Uzi’s latest single, “Sasuke,” here.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The casts of NBC’s incredible mid-2010s Thursday night lineup have reunited in recent weeks: The Office, for a Zoom wedding dance; Parks and Recreation, for a new episode that raised millions for charity; and Community, for a virtual table read. (Still waiting on 30 Rock, although Tiny Fey and Alec Baldwin both appeared on the SNL finale.) The table read, for season four’s “Cooperative Polygraphy,” hasn’t happened yet, but in an interview with The Wrap, creator Dan Harmon discussed how it came together and hinted that the second half of the #SixSeasonsAndAMovie hashtag might finally happen:

“I can tell people for sure that the enthusiasm for Community, both for all of this time and the resurgence of it [on Netflix], there’s always an aspect of that affects the marketplace,” Harmon said. “And when the marketplace gets affected, conversations happen. And when conversations happen, things happen.” Things like human beings (Human Beings) remembering that Community was one of the best shows of the 2010s.

“I mean, when you’re part of the Community family, you learn never to raise expectations, keep ‘em nice and low and then be pleasantly surprised. So I can say that there are conversations happening that people would want to be happening and that I’m very, very excited about the coming months.”

Maybe if enough people watch Dean Pelton’s peanut rap on YouTube, it will trend, and hit the Billboard Hot 100. Then they’ll have to make a Community movie! If nothing else, it’ll free up a lot of time for the cast. They’ll never have to answer “so, what’s the latest on the Community movie?” ever again. Reason enough to make it, I say.

(Via The Wrap)

Like many festivals, Barcelona’s Primavera Sound decided months ago that the best decision would be to postpone the event. So, the fest was pushed back from June to August, but it turns out that wasn’t enough of a delay: Primavera Sound has announced today that its 2020 festival, which was set to be a 20th anniversary celebration, has been canceled outright.

The fest wrote in its announcement today:

“Today, Primavera Sound announces the most difficult decision in its history: finally we will not be able to celebrate our 20th anniversary during 2020. In the face of the evolution of the Covid-19 health crisis, we find ourselves obliged to postpone the next edition of Primavera Sound Barcelona, for reasons of force majeure, until next year: from 2nd to 6th June 2021.

We are devastated and are terribly sorry for the inconvenience causes but the health and well-being of our festivalgoers and of all the people involved in the festical has always been and is still our absolute priority. We cannot thank you enough for your patience, love and understanding in this uncertain scenario. We will never forget this.”

The post goes on to note that refunds will be available, but tickets for this year’s festival will be valid for 2021 “and will include special benefits for those who decide to keep them.” Additionally, the lineup for the 2021 festival will be announced on June 3.

Read the full announcement below.

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