In this weeks Industry, Harper boulders on with her A-game, not only continuing to thrive in her professional relationship with Mr Covid, but also bedding her co-worker and Eric’s former protégé, Daniel. Meanwhile, Eric looses his grip entirely during a trip to Pierpoint’s New York office to confront his seniors face to face about his teams bonus cheques being capped.
But first, let talk about Yas. She confesses to Harper that she spent her entire ‘year out’ (Covid year) partying and shopping for pyjamas, without a care in the world for the thousands of people dying of Covid-19. She quite literally buried her head in the sand, but instead of sand its cocaine. She has clearly developed an unhealthy relationship with the party drug, snorting lines of Harper’s coffee table when everyone in the house is heading to bed. Her cocaine-loosened lips drastically expose her privilege as a rich girl in London, a privilege she barely acknowledged until she gets a whiff of doubt from a conversation with Maxim that maybe all the money is actually gone. With a lavish and tempting breakfast spread in front of her, she confronts her father about why he is being so cagey about money and giving Yas access to his accounts for Pierpoint. He admits that there are ‘some women’ alluding to the truth that he has paid off a lot of women he has had affairs with, without explicitly saying so. But she doesn’t care about that. She doesn’t care about her father potentially harassing or assaulting women for sex, she only has one question; ‘are we still wealthy?’ to which the calm and simple response is ‘of course’. She’s happy. Her job i
s safe, her lifestyle is safe and her future is safe. Phew.
Upon the unsurprising reveal that Celeste has a wife, the mentor/mentee relationship between she and Yas becomes even more flirtatious. It’s really unclear what Celeste’s intentions are with Yas but Yas seems pretty up for whatever it is she wants her to do. In a highly charged moment when Celeste drops the note they were using to snort cocaine with, she orders Yas to pick it up for her. Looking down at her, Yas dropping to floor, pausing on the way up, pouting and giving it back to her. We know that private wealth management is about keeping clients happy, but what is the boundary here? And will Yas know when and if she needs to cross it?
Meanwhile, Robert has himself become romantically involved with his only client, Nicole. She is doing enough to keep Robert in the job and Pierpoint happy and in return he is seeing to her needs, sexually. However, he learns that Nicole made similar advances to Harper which she managed to quickly nip in the bud, something that Robert did not do. Instead, he acquiesced her and now he’s thinking that maybe he doesn’t have to do it after all? Did he even have a choice to begin with? His desperation has lead him to do something that he doesn’t really want to do, no matter how much he is enjoying it.
The big moments in the episode come from Harper and Eric. For the first time, we see Eric away from the CPS desk, grilling some meat on a BBQ at home. He has a lovely home, two beautiful daughters, a loving wife. He has been on leave for two weeks and is now heading back to work. However, he learns that in his absence Daniel has been giving out the bonus cheques, not only that but the bonus cheques have been capped and that the bonuses are not high enough to reflect the efforts of the team. He flies to New York to talk with them directly and learns that it is actually on him as to why the cheques are lower, he isn’t producing enough money and as a result his whole team suffered. As it goes in finance, only the current quarter matters regardless of however many years of service and how much revenue you have made in total. So Eric is offered a new position with a good salary, less hours and less stress meaning he is now off the CPS desk for good.
Harper meanwhile enjoys a night out with Daniel and they go back to her house for some good old fashioned sex. Its unclear what this will do to their relationship going forward but Harper doesn’t see people as anything more than tools or objects, things she uses to get what she wants. What does she want from Daniel? He is likely to see this as something more than Harper has. There are two versions of Harper – the one on the CPS desk, demure, hair back, no piercings, tattoos covered, polite, hard working, respectful. Then you have the Harper at home – hair down, nose ring in, tattoos on show, sexually dominant, drinking, doing drugs. Daniel started his night with ‘CPS desk Harper’ and ended it with ‘home Harper’. I expect she will be fairly cold towards him when he wakes, but expect sex from him next time they’re out together.
Its unclear what the future holds for Pierpoint but with Eric gone from the CPS desk, its likely to send waves throughout the whole company. Harper no longer has her mentor covering her back but she does have a new ally and friend in Daniel and with Jesse as her client she is pretty untouchable right now. Perhaps the acquisition from the New York office will go ahead and we could see the rest of the season across the pond?
Industry continues to be one of HBO’s best kept secrets. Catch it on Monday nights at 10pm.
