My "Industry" Mid-Watch Through Thoughts 

I will probably go more in depth on my thoughts of the overall show in another post!

I recently have been on an HBO kick, in the past month I have watched "The Seduction", "I Love LA", the famous "Heated Rivalries" and the overlooked "Irma Vep" (Majority of these will be getting posts)(also the weekly releases are bringing back television in a big way, I love you my beloved HBO Sunday nights). I unfortunately have ads on HBO max so I have seen the ad for the new Industry season more times than i can count. I hadn't heard much about this show but it always caught my eye so I'm so glad I finally got around to watching it. To be so honest, I heard New Order and I saw Kiernan Shipka and Max Minghella in the trailer and that was the big push to actually start it. 

Anyways, about the actual show. The episode I just finished watching is titled "The Fool". This is rather fitting for most of the characters in the show for thinking things will be different for them if they just work hard enough. 

A little summary of things I've noticed about the show so far, liked, didn't like, general notes.

• I don't like the style of season 2 as much, I really enjoyed the dark office, working dawn till dusk look, partying dusk till dawn but I get that its representing the changes in their careers. After season 1, doing coke on a week night is no longer cool and cosmopolitan, its depressing and a clear indicator of addiction.

• Seeing Hari die EPISODE 1 was insane! It definitely set the tone for the show but it still was crazy to be like wow he's just gone already!

• I thought Harper's forged transcript would be a much bigger thing than it was. I know it was just another thing Eric has over her, but it was also a way for him to be like "see I care so much about your success"

• How is everyone working there always getting into predicaments? Some of them are definitely not the Grad's fault (i.e. Erics meltdown- more on that later), but why are you talking about strippers and cocaine on your work chat Yasmin? Why are you doing new drugs at a work party Greg and Robert? Poor decisions all around, and as a person who prides myself on being a hard worker, I genuinely cannot imagine caring THAT much about a job that I would do any of the things the people in this show do.

• I did sort of like Greg, his character was really funny to me, he is the Industry equivalent of Ken Cosgrove from Mad Men. (I just came back to this point after writing the rest of it, oh my god I was spot on. I found out Greg is an author after he got fired, I forgot about the script he wrote that got passed around, that is deadass Ken) (if you haven't watched mad men please give it a shot I beg you, I will probably be doing a rewatch/ discussions soon)

• What Harper did to Daria was crazy but so was what Sara and Daria did to Harper.

• There is way too much sex in this show. Lena Dunham, I know you love a sex scene, but we don't need to see the entirety of it to know what's going on. I really want to recommend this show to my Dad because I think he would love it, but I would not be able to face him to talk about this show knowing we both watched what we watched.

• Some people aren't gonna like this, but this is not! a second screen show! One of the biggest reasons people think they don't like TV or that its boring is they are on their phone the entire time. In addition to that, many of us are still frying our attention spans. You need to pay attention to get anything out of this. The finance talk can be kind of confusing but you can draw a lot of conclusions pretty easily.

• I really like that you can hear people's background conversations, especially Rishi and Jackie, they have the funniest lines

• I wish they spent more time in the office in S2. I miss Jackie. I do not miss Hillary, he is the biggest nothing character to me.

• I don't usually like when shows included COVID while it was happening, but I think Industry handled it in an interesting way, it was very unobtrusive while still impacting the plot.

• Not a controversial opinion but Harper needs to go to therapy ASAP, this might be the only thing I agree with Eric about

• Thank god Yasmin broke up with that loser Seb, but immediately trying to have a threesome with Harper and Robert was an... interesting choice.

• I heard someone say that Yasmin is supposed to be Ghislaine Maxwell and I am dying to find out what leads people to believe this, or how it even got to that point.

• I hope we see more of Gus and the guy from Yasmin's party

• I do think Felim seems like one of the only Semi-Quasi-Sane characters and that's really not saying much because the bar is in hell. It is unfortunate that Harper's revenge on eric/ move to boost her career is at the cost of Felim all for Jesse Bloom who I can only guess will turn out to be evil. I do have to say Felim, why have you given Pierpoint 50 thousand chances you're begging to be let down

• I also kind of miss the partying from season 1, but I fear if they kept it up, the show would've gotten repetitive.

• Nicole finding Rob to "Match her freak?" I think that's wrong to say.

• Another HBO show with a banging soundtrack, I wish they leaned into the 80's songs more because it feels so damn good when they play

Onto my notes about this particular episode!

Let me give you a little refresher of the happenings in this episode:

• Harper, Eric, Felim, Jesse, and Anna all go to a "shoot" for Rican, Jesse's shell casing hits Felim in the face (DARE I SAY ANOTHER KEN COSGROVE REFERENCE?), and the cherry on top is that Jesse was aiming at an endangered bird they were explicitly told not to shoot.

• Yasmin is trying to do business. I don't really care. She went to Robert's to wait for Harper, but ended up just talking about how Yasmin was really good at making Robert feel like he was worth less than her (right we got that)

• The episode ends with Harper directly hurting Felim's relationship with both a Eric and Pierpoint by selling to Jesse instead of Felim AGAIN!

Seeing Harper screw over Eric was one of the sweetest moments of the show, I HATE Eric. I think one of the reasons he in particular bothers me so much is that he isn't as forward with his cruelness. The first few episodes I thought he was mostly OK but then he starts getting dressed in the office and calling Harper "Harpsichord" and just being overall ominous (sidenote: I need to rewatch the scene where they sing happy birthday to her because that was one of my first huge red flags on this guy). This isn't even touching on the whole locking-Harper-in-a-room-and-screaming-at-her-HR-nightmare. He plays off everything with her like he is just mentoring her and wants the best for her but it is quite clear, if she's doing something that isn't in service of him or his clients, he is a temperamental child. The best word to describe him would definitely be fickle.

I am so scared to see what Jesse is going to do. I KNOW for a fact he fucks Harper over, but I don't know when or how it will happen and that shakes me to my fucking core.

I can't wait to see more of DVD however, I do think his character is finito after this season

Also, seeing Jesse Bloom's son call himself a slut to Gus made me pause because that was so random. Also-also, I enjoy Gus as a character. I'm glad in this season were getting more of him outside of his relationship. I am always a little bit skeptical about every character just due to the nature of the show, but Gus being the only one there for Harper after her RIF fiasco even though she had spoken poorly of him was very illuminating. I loved seeing him dye his hair blue, and give his "Fuck BITCOIN" RIF speech, and ultimately go freelance.

In Summary

Still not sure exactly what is going on with the actual finance side of things. I'm an accounting major but they don't teach us all of that. What I am getting from it is COVID, healthcare stocks- yada yada, still not entirely sure how Anna fits into all of this or if she really is just a vessel for stock trading. I will report back on the next episode or two, and lordy lordy I can't wait for the new season.

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