Showtime saw one of its flagship programs sizzle back into the Sunday Night slate over the weekend. Billions’ season 6 premiere, its first episode released in the post-“Axe” era following Damian Lewis’ departure, proved the rest of the stellar ensemble could more than pick up the slack.
However, for one real-life company that has boomed over the past couple of years due to domestic exercise’s catapult into demand, the gel maintained between who on the call sheet remained came at the price of its product not depicted in the most desirable light.
In the time-jumping “Cannonade,” Axe Capital C.O.O. Mike “Wags” Wagner (David Costabile) suffers a mild heart attack while working out on a Peloton-issued treadmill. The flown-thecoop Bobby Axelrod’s second banana parlays the privacy-violating health monitoring ring his new bosses used to detect the cardiac event as a bargaining chip later on, but not before becoming the second cable character in as many months to have this specific Peloton experience.
Released in December, the premiere episode of HBO Max’s Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That…, saw Mr. Big (Chris Noth) fatally succumb to a heart attack while using a Peloton bike. Investors who had tuned in were made worrisome and started selling off. Before long, the episode had torpedoed the company’s stock percentage into an undeserved dive.
“The episode became available to view in the U.S. on Thursday morning and in the evening in the U.K. and Ireland. By 11.53 am EST on Thursday, shares in Peloton Interactive were trading down 8.2 percent on Nasdaq,” Newsweek reported at the time. “They closed at 40.7 on Thursday, a drop of 11.35 percent.”
As of Wednesday, Peloton stock had dropped 11.57% total over the past five days. Its sharpest decline occurred Thursday, January 20, following CNBC’s report that the company was halting production of its treadmill and bike lines due to waning demand. Notably, Billions early-released the episode in question over streaming the next day, which certainly did not help matters. The stock price continues to fluctuate within mid- $20.00s, well beneath its $30.00+ highpoints of last week, but is overall expected to improve by the next episode – so long as Chuck Rhoades steers clear of the machine.
Theoretically, sparing someone as beloved as “Wags” should have changed hearts and minds from propagating such pattern repetition this go-around. Nevertheless, in the year 2022, there is no such thing as bad publicity – unless you are Peloton, now constantly blindsided by its own prestige TV appearances they would have preferred more comprehensive warning notices about.
On Mr. Big’s And Just Like That… death that started the trend of unintentionally putting Peloton on blast, a spokesperson for the company told Business Insider: “Due to confidentiality reasons, HBO Max did not disclose the broader context surrounding the scene in advance.”
The Billions scenes discussed were filmed last April, but showrunner Brian Koppelman and his crew agreed to incorporate a last-minute addition: the on-brand “I won’t go out like Mr. Big” dig Wags offered upon his return to the office.
“It would be completely out of our character not to take a swing,” executive producer Beth Schacter told USA Today. “It’s too good.”
Here’s hoping HBO Max’s Peacemaker crack team does not earn a day off from “Operation: Butterfly” to squeeze in-home gym time during any of its remaining four episodes. Vigilante is too young to fall in love (with falling on workout machines capable of affecting real-world stocks).
