Bill & Roman

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421030/board/thread/232974529

I think the show is set up so it's unclear who's right on the issue that kicks the series off between Bill and Roman, that being money from the stores. I'm not sure that it's totally clear that Bill was in the wrong, but that's a definite possibility.

It all turns on what the terms of the loan were: did Bill agree to give Roman a piece of the whole Home Plus business, or just one store? Without more detail on what they wrote down or said, it's hard to say who's right. In general, I would tend to assume the former (i.e. Roman's position) would be the more typical one. When you invest in a business, you have a percentage of the business as it expands, not just the first location (or product, or contract, or customer). If you got 5% of Microsoft in 1983, you don't just own 5% of MS-DOS, but Windows, and Office, etc.

No matter what the ultimate merits of their positions were, the key dynamic was that Bill's reaction to Roman taking a position which (at worst) wasn't unreasonable was righteous indignation. He never even discussed the question, but was just unshakably certain that Roman was wrong and he was saintly. That, of course, was Bill's fundamental attitude about the world in general.

The bottom line isn't that one or the other of Bill and Roman is a good guy and the other a bad guy. They're both bad guys: inflexible, absolutely certain of their own rightness, and disdainful of anyone who looks at things differently.

Minor side point: with Barb's cancer, my impression was that Roman helped out in the form of support, rather than cash. Most immediately by providing Nicky to help care for her. I think the money was just for the stores.