"Everything on Industry should be done loudly with no subtlety"

Finale predictions and a season-long assessment of Industry with Jayson Buford.

Kinda need the Harper/Yasmin Net-A-Porter edit. (Photo: Nick Strasburg/HBO)

Can Harper and Petra short Pierpoint? Can Yasmin turn the tables on the publishing house that bears her last name? Will Eric pay attention to his children? Can Sweetpea and Anraj, I don’t know, escape? Spreadsheets, decks, shorts, longs, putting a hat on the head of a woman as a cute gesture — A lot is going on heading into the Industry finale on Sunday night, but honestly the season’s peak for me was Petra and Anna falling out, despite Petra being the “godmother of fucking Bodicea!”

Industry can be hit or miss for me, but

Jayson Buford

(writer of the newsletter

Jayson Buford's LOTS OF COMMAS

and friend of Hung Up) is all in. “Succession had a compelling and unforgettably charming run. Oh, what a show about family bonds, secrets, history: It truly captured the essence of the nepotism baby spirit, the relentless drive of the interloper, and the weight of your parent’s broken promises,” he wrote recently. “[But] in the Industry era, Succession might become culturally dormant.” We met in a Google doc for a fun conversation about Harper, Yasmin, and yeah, the HBO show that is Industry’s closest comp. 

Hunter Harris: We are gathered here today (in this Google Doc) to discuss the upcoming Industry finale and the season so far. I know that you are of the incorrect opinion that Industry is better than Succession — don’t worry, we’ll get to it — but I want to start by talking about the penultimate episode that aired on Sunday. Eric turns on his longtime boss Bill, Harper is back to her old tricks (insider trading), and Yasmin and Rob go on a road trip. The Eric-Bill scene aside, this was the season’s weakest episode to me. What did you make of it?

Jayson Buford: It reminded me of many things — the election episode of the last Succession season, for one, but also, the season three finale of Mad Men, where these titans of the industry come together and try to save each other, in a closed-door, secretive way that only a select field of people can wield their way into. Industry is a show about many things; perhaps the most important thing is how everyone in Pierpoint has to abide by this white-coded, patriarchal, and masculine entity. In season two, when Eric and Rishi are planning on starting their own company with Harper at the helm with them, Eric says “kings of the industry — and queens”, as a nod to Harper. Harper responds with “kings are fine.” At Pierpoint, color and gender is devalued; the institution remains the biggest identity politic of it all. This episode was another way of hammering that home, by way of Eric Tao. 

HH: I can see that. Eric is probably my favorite character on this show, and this has been a good season for him. I liked Eric turning on Bill, his secretly terminally ill superior, when he gets into the 11th-hour save-the-company boardroom and Eric sees exactly how self-centered everyone is. He is the only person thinking about legacy and history in a room of people staging a fire sale. If everyone is advancing a plan where they’re on top, why shouldn’t he? Ken Leung is good at playing that conflict internally — what Eric doesn’t trust in Harper he doesn’t trust in himself.

But balancing this rich tension with the, I’m sorry, nothing romance between Rob and Yasmin is so strange. I watched the first two seasons as they aired and only vaguely remember them being a thing. A lot of this romance feels unearned and rushed! I like when core cast members are in relationships, even kind of random relationships like when Dan and Blair dated on Gossip Girl. But in basically three episodes Rob’s older woman paramour/client dies (and nothing comes of this, mind you), his girlfriend dumps him, and all of a sudden he’s ready to be in a mature relationship with Yasmin? I’m not buying any of it.

JB: Here’s where our disagreements start — how ravishing! It is a testament to Harry Lawley, who has been phenomenal all season — that little fruity walk he does in episode six is some of my favorite body acting all season so far — that Rob and Yasmin are compelling to watch. There isn’t a romance there, granted, but I think the writers know that: Yasmin’s response to this night going to Wales is to be annoyingly coy with him, saying that they won’t be sleeping with one another. “We’re past games,” Rob says. Rob, I imagine, doesn’t think of it as a romantic getaway; but rather, a thing to do with a friend that he unpretentiously cares about. It definitely happened quickly, the psycho transformation, especially since Nicole Craig was somewhat grooming him. I wonder if there is anything to come from that, or if Mickey Down and Konrad Kay have decided to put that relationship to bed for good. 

Here’s what I am not quite buying: Although “Nikki Beach” was a powerful episode, the Charles and Yasmin scene where Charles jumps over the boat and into the water felt a tad underwhelming. The perversion of Charles was real; the suicide joke wasn’t. Then, tonight with Eric, the mind trick he plays on Bill seems a bit too sophisticated of a move. Everything in Industry should be done loudly with no subtlety. After all, we’re in finance, baby. Did you buy those two scenes? They’ve become so important, especially since we have no idea what is next for Yasmin and her father’s company. (At the end of the episode, Yasmin makes a move that Hunter and I will surely discuss).

HH: Industry season one relied on subtleties; Industry season three relies on soap! I mean the fact that Bill is literally dying and that Margin Call episode just happened to be during the 150th anniversary party? No, I’m sorry, this show is closer to The Idol or Euphoria than it is to Succession — it relishes in going over the top. The season premiere ending on a power blackout was a dispatch from the nation-state of Ijbolia. The mind trick that Eric played on Bill seemed actually very simple, and therefore pretty deft to me. I mean we are speaking about a show where Harper literally overhears the smoking gun of the season (that Pierpoint is overleveraged) in the bathroom. That was like Ryan Murphy-level of absurd.

Yasmin’s dad making a suicide joke and then her taking him up on it was a bit much, sure, but I like Yasmin’s story this season. She and Eric are following very similar beats: is there more to them than meets the eye? They are preoccupied with their guilt, but it’s often their engine. (I also feel like it’s a bit of revisionist history that Yasmin is suddenly bad at her job. She seemed like a worthy competitor for Harper in season one, or was she just coasting on being very connected? I remember it as being the former.) This seems like the thesis of Industry, why it continues to beat up on Rob, what keeps Harper so unhinged: how often is shame or guilt an encumbrance in this office where it’s all currency? It’s not usually for Harper, she doesn’t let herself feel it, so she succeeds. It inevitably is for Eric and Yasmin and everyone else, so they constantly fail.

And speaking of: The Yasmin-Eric scene at lunch outweighed the Yasmin-Harper scene in their kitchen for me. Eric wanting to feel alive and Yasmin trying to feel numb made for a much more tense conversation than Harper and Yasmin both getting to a pretty predictable place. (Harper knew she’d fucked Yas over, and it’s easier to give Yasmin more reasons to hate her than to seek forgiveness. Harper’s observation of Yasmin’s flaws are pretty apparent, and also all over the Dail Mail.) But the Harper-Yasmin-Eric triptych is the best part of the show, and I’m glad they didn’t oversimplify any of it with sex.

JB: So, you bring up a good point on Succession. It certainly fits more within the frame of Euphoria, the sensuality and the youthful faces being a cutting board for soap and pulp. Where I think Succession lost me, a tad bit, wasn’t the craft of the show, but rather the theater culture that surrounds the fanbase and its actors. It’s also sexless, as I outline here in my Substack blog. If Succession fans hang out in Clinton Hill or Hamilton Heights, wishing to be on Broadway with Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook, then Industry fans stumble out of Time Again, LeDive, or even Ray’s, judging the outfits of Yasmin and the selfishness of Harper. There’s more real-world, working-class identities involved in Industry, and it is ultimately a cooler and more dirtbaggy show because of it. (Here’s where Hunter’s readers declare me public enemy number one). 

Yasmin has always struck me as a sympathetic character. To me, they show her trying to fit into a culture in season one by getting men coffee and salads, despite her inherent wealth and poshness. She still has that within her: a giveaway is how condescending she is to the lady with the libra tattoo. (She’s right, but it’s still not cute: Live a little Yasmin.) She’s a woman with a rolodex, which is why she gets the job to begin with. Her dad’s screams of her being “talentless” are burned into my memory, as is the season two conversation where he talks about her getting into Pierpoint despite her mediocre grades. As Yasmin always says, she is a polyglot who speaks seven different languages. So, there is something to her social grace — important features in the media and finance world  — and conversational skills. Harper will never have the grace and smoothness that she has; she’s too Black, too ambitious, too hard-nosed. Even Petra — we must talk about Petra’s Black husband by the way — seems to understand that working with Harper is otherworldly intense because she is always scheming like someone who doesn’t come from money — perhaps because she doesn’t. Still, Yasmin does not see the finance angles like Harper or Rishi does, and it constantly enables people to take advantage of her, as Harper does, and as the Hanani Publishing executives want to do. (A Twitter user said: “Yasmin, start the PR company girl!”)

She decided, finally, to make a decision based on that. “It is them or me!” she yells over the phone, finally taking the advice/disses that Harper gave her the episode prior. What do you want to be in the world? It seems like Yasmin is ready to fight like Harper — a woman who is thoroughly unprotected. Do you buy the idea of Yasmin becoming quite like Eric and Harper?

HH: Yes, completely! If this season has done anything well, it’s to juice the desperation of Yasmin. She’s been careening out of control this whole season, trying to get over losing the dad she hated. But when Harper is out of control it only makes her more focused. When Yasmin is out of control she starts crashing out. All of that character work seems earned to me. Where Industry loses me is how, say, I’m supposed to believe that someone like Rob or Sweetpea isn’t just another pig to slaughter? I have a hard time believing Rob is someone that Harper and Yasmin are even seriously fighting over, as that scene between them made it sound.

But overall this season has too many set pieces that come apart too quickly for me. Lumi came and went in the course of two episodes, which was fine, but what was really at stake there? That the bankers pretend to want to do good if it coincides with them getting to be first? (I can’t remember who it was in one of the episodes chats, but the observation that Harper took the mic at that conference to offer the illuminating observation that clean energy is too expensive is just not good enough for me.) The most devastating moment of the season premiere, to me, was when some creepy old friend of Jon Snow’s basically corners Yasmin and says that she needs to deliver on this Lumi deal to pay back her dads bets. Harper and Petra spend a whole episode constructing what looks to be the short of the century and it falls apart in five seconds when Rishi sees a banker walk through the door and the story becomes Harper is insider trading again? These are too cunning of characters to be out maneuvered so simply!

Regarding the Succession of it all: is your argument that people who watch Industry are younger and cheaper? Perhaps that’s true, I don’t know. Succession is about the culture of the ultra-wealthy in a way Industry fundamentally is not, that’s not a comparison it’s just a fact. But Industry has so much self-loathing that it starts to feel small and circular! Succession was so much better at narrativizing the business side (the season two Croatia stuff, the season three Italy stuff) in a way that Industry just is not. 

One last question, because I know I’m rambling: What do you want out of the finale-slash-what do you expect?

JB: I’m interested in seeing what Otto — our bandit-in-chief — thinks of Harper’s insider trading and power plays. My prediction is that he is not going to fire Harper. In fact, he will see Harper as a kindred spirit. Perhaps a part of me wonders if Eric will try to poach Harper again after this deal with Ali’s family goes through. I’ll stick with the Otto pick though. I want to see that. If Harper is one of the bandits, as Otto said, then we will see if she is treated like one. Bandits don’t get punished by the SEC. I expect Yasmin’s choices will not work out when it comes to her power play with her father’s victims, but I want to see her and Harper give it a go together. What if Harper beats Petra and then Harper sees Yasmin defeat her father’s legacy and says “come join me as my PR person?” That’d be electric.

HH: I can see Otto siding with Harper and her having to turn on Petra. Harper is Teflon in this series, and the brazen way she gets away with everything is so good to watch. If Yasmin gets away with the Hanini plan, she’ll feel bad about it, and probably commiserate with Rob (who feels bad about everything). Whatever happens on Sunday night, I’ll be in the Hung Up chat to discuss!