Leave Your Vulnerability at the Door: Seeing “Industry.”

HBO’s finance drama, like its stock-trading bunch, wants you crawling on your knees for a semblance of life.

Contains spoilers for Seasons 1, 2 & 3 of HBO’s Industry

Notwithstanding few exceptions, I don’t talk about film and TV all that often on this blog — even less when musical references aren’t directly involved. From the middle of September onwards, I’ve felt like I’ve had nothing; in the plans, in the works, in the “ideas” section of my notes, or creatively in general. Not quite voluntarily — I also have a sudden Covid situation to thank for this — I took a couple of days to try every source of inspiration I know of which tends to mean reading, listening to, and watching, well, anything that crosses my path. 

HBO’s Industry — the provocative, London-set drama about young grads scrambling and scheming their way through corporate ascendance in the cutthroat world of finance — had been the talk of the town during the airing of its third season this past month, rising to a prestigious slot and well-deserved sensation status from its under-the-radar beginnings. But while I intentionally managed to dodge (most of) the big #IndustrySunday spoilers (primarily pertaining to who fucked and/or backstabbed who as the show’s most impactful twists typically revolve around), I wasn’t exactly planning on re-immersing myself in that universe any time soon. 

To think of Industry is to think of “bleak” and synonyms; drab and grim succinctly paint the picture, suited for inhospitable, coldly-lit offices and the gray-against-navy of business formal which, despite the show’s scarce landscape shots, convey the signature London gloom at least spiritually. Perhaps partly circumstantial, that was also the only aftertaste my Season 1 watch around this time last year left me with. In spite of its many humorous treats — predominantly stored in offhand background dialogue which, behind its veil of inconsequence, is at liberty to throw all kinds of ridiculous references and shit-talk at the viewer — Industry looks to sugarcoat nothing about the harsh reality it’s portraying. And it goes without saying that a season which starts with an ensemble character’s death and ends with another choosing professional dividend over a healthy conscience may result in kind of a catatonic viewing experience.  

Is the nihilism kicking in? Are you having fun yet? 

The most important thing the HBO series unveils about itself during its first season is that the key to enjoying yourself in the narrative realm of people helplessly transfixed on and, in some cases, addicted to generating profit and self-advancing is to leave all romantic sentiment at the door. That is true of the business, as Season 3 fully hones in on. Less than half an hour into Episode 1, trading prodigy Harper Stern (Myha’la) dubs the financial concept of ethical investment (loose translation of the ESG principle) a “utopian opiate for morons who believe in a ‘better world.’” It’s only the first in a chain of attacks the show is about to launch at the pseudo-activist facade of ESG — the “fad” that will also end up causing the downfall of Industry’s hitherto home, multinational investment bank Pierpoint & Co. — and an introduction to the third season’s concerns regarding morality in profit-making; what co-creator Mickey Down condenses down to the question, “Can you be a good person and make lots of money?” 

Of course, Harper’s blunt comment — her honest opinion — is only reserved for one of two bosses at her new workplace, (ironically) ethical investment fund FutureDawn. That’s Petra Koening (Sara Goldberg), the portfolio manager who shares her qualms and with whom Harper envisions a potential alliance. Just a few minutes prior to their confidential tet-a-tet scene, keeping up appearances with head Anna Gearing (Elena Saurel) who was particularly reluctant about hiring Harper as her assistant following aggressive warnings from her former employer at Pierpoint, Harper had mindfully reenforced what Anna wanted to hear in an assured voice: “Impact investing is the foundational ethos of this company.”     

For Harper, a fiercely ambitious, risk-loving achiever who spends the season repeating the cycle of fostering a partnership she’s always ready to sacrifice on the altar of personal gain in the blink of an eye, team playing is tedious work; only worth complying with when individually beneficial. Here’s rule number one: As per the nature of the industry, all relationships are inherently transactional. And as eccentric Pierpoint trader Rishi Ramdani (Sagar Radia) — whose brilliant single-character episode zones in on a gambling addiction and the trappings of performative masculinity — says to Harper on the phone in Episode 4, alongside a quid pro quo request, “Money heals antipathy as fast as it creates it.” 

Distrust is expected in attempting to lean into the possibility of feeling when it comes to Industry’s penchant for exploring sexual dynamics among its characters. In what could be simplistically described as a series about finance and fucking — to reverse-reference writer RS Benedict — no one is beautiful and everyone is horny. Not to be taken the wrong way, as only a fool would argue that this isn’t an extremely attractive cast in real life. Still, the show’s visual sterility, its washed out, cool-toned lighting (more heavily employed in Season 1), uncomfortable close-ups and pointedly unglamorous portrayal of its subjects and their lifestyle don’t do pretty faces any favors. Sex, regardless, is plenty, kinky, raw and thusly shot; its innate “ugliness” on full display whether through bodily fluids glistening out in the open or remarkably bold sound design. Above all, it’s detached: physical agreements between cynical people chasing white-hot highs against a dreary, besides tremendously mentally demanding, reality.

It is the latter — the perpetual, anxiety-inducing chaos of Pierpoint’s trading floor, incessant finance jargon, work-to-client-dinner-to-home-to-work-rinse-repeat routine — and its brutal visualization that fosters a pulsating, underlying desperation in the HBO drama. Diegetically and not, excitement comes in glimpses of fervent moments of glory and release, ranging from sexual pleasure, to drug-assisted euphoria, to the heady rush of ego inflation which accompanies professional triumphs. Industry, like its stock-trading bunch, wants you crawling on your knees for a semblance of life — and if that looks like anything, amid its unhinged circumstances, it is vices.

There is a sequence from the series’ pilot I keep going back to; which jumps out as emblematic of Industry’s constant alternations between dramatic peaks and valleys with unpredictability that rivals its stock value fluctuations. At the end of the episode, titled Induction, baseball bat-wielding, veteran trading floor manager Eric Tao (Ken Leung) who has taken Harper under his wing during her trial period at Pierpoint urges her to never forget the feeling of scoring her first deal: an incident depicted minutes after the damage control briefing regarding the dead body of a grad discovered at the bank’s headquarters. 

Arguably the show’s thematic anchor, Eric and Harper’s rocky bond is one that reflects multiple shades of interpersonal dynamics and projections; where each party is, at least for a time, comforted as much as challenged by the other’s kindred spirit and how it transforms into drive, perceptiveness, audacity, mutiny, understanding. Eric, for all intents and purposes, is Harper’s superior at work, yet his outright interest in her as a protégé and tough-love approach towards mentoring shares the underpinnings of (by no means exemplary) paternal guidance. “Now, I see you,” he tells her in the afterglow of her first print, in the kind of condescending tone that can only come from a withholding father, and in his face, Harper’s own motivations to keep (literally and metaphorically) winning begin to crystallize. 

It’s a long way that doesn’t feel like it at all to Season 3’s Episode 6 and Eric bursting into Harper’s office with “You’ve got Daddy’s attention now,” after discovering her scheme to short Pierpoint in pursuit of her Season 2 finale-born vendetta against him. Around these parts, it doesn’t take much for the Succession comparisons to start ringing valid. Fragments from HBO’s lauded, award-winning dramedy built on the premise of the Roy siblings’ fight for control over the media conglomerate helmed by their withering patriarch are mirrored in the way Industry approaches workplace relations; inexorably defined by hierarchy norms and power imbalance even when resembling familial dynamics. In worlds whose structure revolves around the domineering masculine impulse, where the word “fuck” can be positioned to signal anything from actual sex to corporate alliance to betrayal, and where a mask of unyielding toughness is a weapon to be revered, everything can be boiled down to a dick-measuring contest. Whoever has what it takes to survive, may win Daddy’s approval.  

“Eric… look at me.” | Harper and Eric in Industy Season 3 Episode 3

The motif is repeated in this season’s première, when resident “soft lad” Robert Spearing (Harry Lawtey) breaks down crying on the desk, having clocked into work after just experiencing the sudden death of his older lover (and Pierpoint client) Nicole Craig (Sarah Parish). Immediately, he’s pulled aside by Eric, himself newly-made partner and in search of the mandatory team fire (as in, opposite of hire) that will appease bank higher-ups and win him “hardness” credit. “I’m a man and I’m relentless,” Eric makes Robert chant after calling him a “pussy,” until they’re both screaming the mantra at each other and the younger looks ready to go do his job. The latter, he does. Assigned green start-up founder and aristocrat Henry Muck’s (Kit Harington) “whipping boy” as Pierpoint leads his company Lumi’s IPO, Robert is subjected to public scrutiny by becoming a scapegoat when said IPO spectacularly turns into a catastrophe. The reasoning, of course, is that he’s “fuckable.”  

It’s a journey for Robert, Season 1’s 365-party-boy (severely bumpin’ that), to slowly uncover how his budding career in finance and his intrinsic vulnerabilities fit against each other, or don’t. The working class Oxford grad’s arc, throughout the series, is partly tethered to a will-they-won’t-they romancequestionmark with the Pierpoint ensemble’s volatile heiress Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela). Yasmin, whose predatory publishing tycoon father’s mysterious disappearance — revealed death, revealed could-be patricide — casts a shadow over Season 3, steps into the spotlight as she deals with the lingering ghosts of dark secrets and media-induced paranoia. Using her detested yet powerful status and connections to temporarily save Lumi’s stock value, she becomes entangled with Henry and privy to some of his rather peculiar psychosexual weaknesses, including but not limited to a piss kink which, too, couldn’t symbolize anything but a carnal need for exposed vulnerability.

In the season finale, Yasmin and Robert get an approximation of fulfillment to their longstanding back and forth, as they go frolicking, fucking and confessing “I love you”’s around the luxurious gardens of... Henry’s uncle’s Somerset mansion. It’s a moment of closure for the two and for the audience alike, but by the time it’s arrived, Yasmin (whose friendship with Harper is also put to the “Can work ruin it?” test this season) has already made her ultimate decision; hours ago, in fact, while registering the sight of Robert trying his luck with a scratch lottery ticket. When she proceeds to find Henry, in a private reconnection scene, she purposely drives his marriage proposal right as the newly sober aristocrat comes clean about how his brief love affair with higher-consciousness ideations and psychedelic experimentations failed to cure his depressive streak. “It’s escapist nonsense, Henry,” she says, “and we should be practical.” Her goodbye with Robert is nonchalant and bittersweet, as he drives away towards a banking-free future and she retreats into the privilege she knows she cannot escape. 

To understand Industry, a grip on the ghastly nature of capitalism is key. So is, nevertheless, the allure of its meritocracy myth. By the conclusion of Season 3 with the demise of Pierpoint, the net that once brought this group of people from entirely different walks of life together, it is apparent that the show has lost a character. The high finance workplace, with all its rigid, seemingly internal laws, acts as a space which allows for the interrogation of relationships formed within it, and the HBO drama runs into textually-loaded walls when it grabs the chance to explore how those function in the wild class jungle outside of it. Of course, the latter is unavoidable; in Industry, personal matters bleed into work and work bleeds into everything. Nothing that a stripe won’t sort out, luckily. 

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