Industry Recap: Love and War
We’re past the halfway point of what is shaping up to be Industry’s last season. How are we feeling? I, for one, am feeling focused. Lumi is over, Harper has Leviathan Alpha, and the show starts to feel like it’s hinting at its finale. We have the mystery of Charles Hanani’s absence left to solve. Yasmin, Harper, Robert, and Eric are shaping up for whatever their next move is. I’m ready! I’m a man, and I’m relentless!
This week’s episode goes deep into Robert, who is being hung out to dry by Pierpoint. Post-failure, Lumi is the subject of a government inquest, and Pierpoint has to send a representative who will act as the bank’s face and potential fall guy. Of course, that guy is Rob, who never saw this coming. Sometimes, I find Robert’s naivete tiresome. You’ve been in this business for years, guy! You didn’t set yourself up for protection? You’ve never sat Harper down at the kitchen table and asked for some pointers on how to be self-serving? Come on, dude! Get! It! Together!!!!
I forgive him, though, because he looks A+ adorable in those Clark Kent glasses he wears to his deposition. I will be honest and say I did not care very much about the exact workings of this government inquest, but the broad strokes appear to be Lumi sold itself as a green company that would bring energy to underserved and low-income households. When Lumi went under, it was placed under emergency government control and bailed out by taxpayers for £2 billion. Perhaps worst of all, the low-income folks relying on Lumi for power were literally left out in the cold, with soaring energy bills that they couldn’t pay. The government inquest is looking to find who’s to blame for this situation. Is it Lumi’s inept CEO, Henry Muck? Is it the bank that fronted Lumi’s IPO and failed to do due diligence on the company? Is it the government itself?
Robert will be the sorry face of Lumi’s failure for most of the inquest. He’s just such a clunky performer, unable to see that Pierpoint finds him expendable and that Henry is physically incapable of taking responsibility for anything. But who should come to Robert’s unlikely rescue but Aurore? For those who may have forgotten, Aurore is a rising star in the conservative U.K. government who we met last season as Gus’ boss. She’s wily, cunning, everything Robert isn’t. She comes sweeping into the government inquest, tearfully declaring that she and her team are responsible for not thoroughly vetting Lumi. She takes the blame entirely, resigning from her position in the cabinet. The inquest ends, Henry sweeps Robert into his car and takes him to private member’s club, where Otto, the rich investor who is funding Leviathan Alpha, waits, as does Henry’s tabloid owning Uncle. After a brief wait, Aurore joins them. It turns out that the whole inquest was essentially a sham. Aurore used it to further her political profile as a conservative with a conscience, aiming to win the public’s trust and become the next prime minister. Robert looks bewildered. Even though he’s been involved with the well-moneyed for years, he remains confused by his sudden class ascension. On a smaller scale, I’m reminded of when he used his entire first-year bonus to buy a motorcycle, a move that was classified as being very “New Money.” Oh, Rob. Perhaps you’ll never understand how these posh people move. Maybe that’s what keeps you pure.
Henry and Co. spend the evening celebrating their success. After an altercation between Yasmin and Henry (more on that later), Robert finds himself trailing after Muck, joining him on a soul-searching psychedelic trip.
I hate vomit. I hate when it happens to me, when it happens to strangers. I especially hate watching it on screen. It is a testament to this show that I soldiered through the psychedelic-induced vomit-thon that happened to Henry and Robert. The ayahuasca trip itself was not that interesting; there were lots of spliced-in scenes from season one, which mostly made me feel nostalgic for the baby bankers, and a motif of the trading floor being a sort of hell presided over by a demonic Eric. Henry’s trip is also not interesting enough to merit mention, though it does cause him to remark that they ought to monetize psychedelics and that there’s a monster in the mirror of the bathroom (him, duh).
The most interesting part of this whole experience is the absolute and utter peace that Robert finds when he returns home. Though it’s punctuated with the ceiling of his kitchen falling in, there’s a sense of calm that permeates the scene, a rarity in the chaos of Industry. After the gauntlet of the Lumi inquest and his harrowing psychedelic trip, clarity has descended on Robert. I’m sure he’ll quit after this or at least look for something else. Remember when I said that Industry is a bildungsroman? I think we are witnessing Robert growing out of Pierpoint in real-time.
Other people who have grown out of Pierpoint, quite literally. Harper, who is coming to Pierpoint as a member of Leviathan Alpha, ostensibly for some meeting with a charity fund that Yasmin has set up. While there, Harper overhears crucial news in the bathroom, where Sweet Pea is confiding to Yasmin that her web of new grad connections throughout the bank has led her to believe that Pierpoint has taken an outsized bet on ESG funds. (See! I told you Sweet Pea is proving herself smarter than she looks.) Harper takes this tidbit, cancels her meeting with Yasmin, and goes back to Leviathan Alpha, where I assume she will wreak some kind of semi-illegal havoc in the next episode.
If you are wondering what Sweet Pea is talking about, I will sketch this out for you, although this one is proving to be a real doozy for me. Essentially, Pierpoint issued “a fuck ton” of senior secure debt. Senior security debt is debt that has to be paid back first if a company should go bankrupt. Basically, if a company bought Pierpoint’s senior security debt, it is first in line to be repaid ahead of other companies that might have bought junior security debt. Pierpoint’s debt is coming to maturity, which means it’s time for Pierpoint to pay up. However, Pierpoint’s strategy to pay back that money was essentially bidding everything on the ESG pivot. As you’ll recall, all the IPOs with ESG companies are in limbo or on the brink of failure post-Lumi. That means that Pierpoint doesn’t have the money to pay back the companies that bought said debt, which could mean that the bank would essentially go bankrupt.
Why is this important? When he hears Sweet Pea talking about this, Eric tries to shake it off like it’s no big deal, telling her she should be careful about what she’s saying because it’s possibly illegal that she has all this information. But later, when he confronts Bill Adler, he learns that Sweet Pea is right on the money. Pierpoint is in big trouble, which doesn’t move me much, but it does put my bankers in trouble — Eric, Yasmin, Robert, and Rishi would be out of a job. Layered on to this looming crisis is the revelation that Bill Adler has an aggressive brain tumor. It’s jarring to be reminded that Bill Adler, who has only ever swept into scenes as a head honcho with the power to make deus ex machina plot twists, is a person, too. Most importantly, he’s a person to Eric, who came up in the bank with Bill. Eric begins to cry, though I’m unsure if he’s crying for Bill or his own sorry self. This is one hell of a midlife crisis.
All of this leaves us with one last person to cover: Yas. This episode opens with Yasmin peeing on Henry Muck in the shower, which had me crowing in disbelief. I’m telling you. The writers of Industry are GOING THERE. I’m sure Henry loves what’s going on, but for me, it just served to cement how kinky Yasmin can be (more power to her!) and also how needy Henry is (blech).
All things seem good in Yas-land until the Lumi inquest comes with it a set of allegations that Henry sexually harassed an employee. Somehow, this is a shock to Yas. Maybe she and Robert are so drawn to each other because they’re both frustratingly naïve. Anyhow, she storms into Henry’s post-inquest party to question him about this, is mollified by his proclamations of adoration, but ultimately turns over a table in anger when smarmy-DJ boy (who I learned last week is supposed to be the heir to the Lindt Chocolate fortune? Reminiscent of 30 Rock episodes where they discussed the Sbarro heiress.) snarks about how Henry gets everyone to pee on him. This is a bad look for Yasmin. She can easily look past women who are hurt by the man she loves, but she can’t look past being made one in a sea of many. Yasmin hasn’t grown all that much from last season when she ignored Venetia’s claims of Nicole’s assault, has she?
Yasmin ends the night at home, where she, too, seems to be experiencing a moment of muddled clarity. She crawls into bed next to Robert in an achingly platonic fashion, obviously smarting after her breakup (?) with Henry. Robert lovingly ribs her, saying she’s destined to marry her father to which she responds that would be impossible, because she killed her dad.
?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????????????????
All the chickens are coming to roost! I assume the next episode will finally unravel this murder mystery that has been slithering alongside us all season.
Loose Change
• What is Yasmin supposed to be dressed up as? A very frumpy Princess Diana? Someone please tell me.
• Yasmin says, “Why can’t you just fall in love with me? It would make everything so much easier” to Robert, and it is so … obtuse. He is in love with you. You are not in love with him!! That is the problem, girly! You can’t see this person as a person because he doesn’t have the cash or the power trip that you apparently need to see someone as a romantic partner! UGH!
• Speaking of Robert and cash, what a poignant note to learn that his house was bought with money Clem left him. For those who may have forgotten, Clem is a Scottish banker from season one who took Robert under his wing. He was fired by Daria and we never saw him again. In season two, Robert receives news that Clem died (sensing a theme here; Clem’s death, Nicole’s death, the original trauma of his mother’s death) and left him something in his will. I had always wondered what that was, and now we know. It was money, which is so bittersweet. I suppose Clem really did see Robert as a surrogate son in some way. That scene of them in the tailor measuring Robert’s first real suit in season one destroyed me.