I'm shocked none of us tried to talk about this show the first time around (or I'm just terrible at searching the archives tonight). Though anecdotally I did try to put it on my local TV minded friends and they found it too cynical or more importantly steeped in jargon to latch on to. But if you buy in just a bit, the comedy is even darker and gamesmanship far dirtier than Succession, while the soundtrack last season put me on to some real bangers with licenses and created some extreme tension with original compositions.

I totally admit that I'm the last person to find finance bros and gals relatable in 2022 so I was really surprised to see this show had a second season coming (and wasn't surprised that HBO seemed to keep it kind of quiet) but these Brits throw shade like an All-Star lineup of UK reality show cunts yet find a way to loop it back to letting the audience worry about whichever archetype you attach to. I wouldn't say they rely on tropes either, but they do tease them endlessly to make the sex, drugs or plain moral protest to hit in a way that feels kind of new.

Maybe it's not, maybe it doesn't. The lack of a first season thread probably obviates the former. It's attractive British folks in their early 20s making millions and doing more drugs than 99% of folks would find physically or mentally comfortable. That's not it for a lot of people.

But the music, acting, writing, plot surprises, alien world of British finance and lemme go back to the music (with a heavy, secondary nod to how they tease the HBO expectation of sex-ploitation with either weirdly inventive edging or embarrassingly sad big fucks) has me hoping the pandemic high of Succession and subsequent praise for season 3 can translate to this show. Because it's not the masterclass writer's workshop that show is...but it's probably more relatable, despite still being about rich, hot and despicable people.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I'ma give it a spin.

I'll keep dropping this line until it drowns, I think.

Assuming this is still a nascent show for a lot of people, S1 has this strange blend of aspiration, sexual tension and big dick swings because all of its primary characters are interns trying to figure out what they're worth.

So what was fun about it was how those people pretended to be acquiring power, or misguidedly wielded what little power they had, interacting with the people who actually pulled the strings.

By now some of those people have it, others know what it tastes like, others know how fleeting it is...a lot of these actors are still pretty obscure and this episode really plays that up getting in the weeds of returning to work during COVID and the interminable jargon of finance. The open office aspect is one of the show's biggest secret weapons.

Again, can't emphasize enough that the music does a ton of work for this show but this episode...man, they figured out how to make the inscrutable jazz from last season make the show dance this season. It's hilariously weird how much this show can convince you to...invest in a bunch of bros and broads getting rich.

You could almost skip the whole show and watch just this episode (Season 2, Episode 2) to get what's alluring about it, though. Everybody nails everything. I'd hope it means enough that I realize how stupid it'd be to say this show is honing in on marrying Mad Men to Succession in fascinating ways but...slowly, it is.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

The characters are not people I would choose to be around in real life but I am invested in their stories and their many challenges. I agree about the music. It is one of the reasons I was sucked in to the first season. It matches up pretty well.

But I do think I recognize a Harper, Yasmin, Eric and/or Gus in my life. Even if I didn't, I find the focus on a squad of unestablished strivers always fun, especially when the Brits do it: the dweeby early-00s teen in me gets reminded of the first couple seasons of Skins watching this show. A charming blend of ensemble chemistry, individual character work and unique worldview.


Part of what I find so intriguing about this show is seeing character archetypes I completely recognize from the post-9/11, post-2008 striver culture be so naturally portrayed within a construct that's so absolutely foreign and almost toxic to me...as a somewhat satisfied bartender guy drifting about, it's oddly refreshing for me to watch these imaginary practitioners of Money English speak in a sort of anarcho-capitalist code language steeped in persona paralysis and Tony Sees Some Ducks paranoia/existentialism. Even if it's not addressed, these characters carry that sense that their impulses are as important as their reverberations, because any random event might end those impulses, whether via drugs or promotion or unaddressed mental illness or simply being a piece of a shit property of nepotism and/or old cash.



BUT, and I expect if this thread goes anywhere I'll wind up using "but" a lot, I also get that I'm finding an unapproachable analog to Mad Men in this show as well. Unapproachable in that those characters were ultimately mostly failing to pay mortgages if not plain rent other than the partners; these characters are finding those same debts in the people they claim to care about. In their world, capitalism and economics have made fool's gold of actual friendly gestures or interactions. It's a neat trick.

It's not important for me that I like these characters, so much as I like watching them act while they pontificate and bloviate about actions, relationships and the potential for human achievement that are as fictional as they are real, and false, and true, and dumb and most of all an absolute north star for a privileged life. Yet that's never the conversation, instead it's almost re-imagining Sisyphus building a boulder out of pebbles rather than landing with a thud behind the boulder immediately. Even beyond that, most of these people are already talking about and/or receiving unimaginable sums of money. "But" what do we see them do about it? Beg for more. Even if it's an obvious poem, I enjoy humming along.


In other words, TL;DR: after almost 20 years of shows featuring, highlighting, spotlighting or starring unlikable people...I think it's critically honest to admit not liking a cast or the characters they portray, or to be tired of being asked to do the following...but bad characters making great TV has been the norm for most of our lives posting or otherwise, from the cops on NYPD Blue to the lovable losers of New Girl. Of all the things Industry is doing, I'd argue this levee between character and viewer is the least unique aspect of the show if not a lot of the point - Harper in season one is such a demographic tease, as Black American woman trying to make her way in the apparently cut throat and drug laden world of British finance with apparently questionable credentials yet an insane acumen for how that world operates...but her character often makes choices that teases the viewer for caring about her. As unquestionably as she is well suited to the world she's trying to invade, it's agonizing to know that when she gets called out on a mistake there's no pretense there. Unlike a lot of anti-hero TV characters, it's as easy to root against her as for her, because it's so obvious why and when she suits either role in a story.

She's honestly a super, wildly cool character to wrap a show around IMO.

YES, she's a fish out of water Black gal, but she can still be an ass, and the people that call her out for it can be right for doing so. Maybe that's the thesis I've been working towards, because again I think this show is there but not quite THERE there: like a lot of HBO's very best, Industry isn't afraid to embarrass its heroes, nor is it eager to indulge antiheroism by merely weaponizing "past trauma" as an excuse for current behavior.

It's hilarious to me that I'm gonna press send on this post because I'm not oblivious to what's silly about the show, or why it falls on blind eyes, or what conceptually makes it less accessible than equally gate-worthy shows like, again, Mad Men or Succession. It's definitely missing that enveloping thing, whether it's worthwhile narrative or consistent character development or time and place world building or whatever else.

BUT FORGETTING ALL THAT, BEING HONEST, IF THERE ARE LESS SEASONS OF INDUSTRY THAN THERE WERE OF GIRLS I WILL GO TO CODING SCHOOL WITH A MASTERS IN DIGITAL ESPIONAGE, MINOR IN ARTIFICIAL CHAT INTELLIGENCE, AND I WILL TRAIN A REDDIT/TWITTER/ICQ BOT TO BOOST SHARES OF INDUSTRY BY 0.125% END OVER END QUARTER AFTER QUARTER UNTIL...

.......

"I agree about the music."

It's really so stupid good, right?

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I hadn't given this show much of a thought or a chance initially thinking that SUCCESSION was all I needed and that this in no way could hold a candle. I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Nodima's a much better write than me so I'll let them tell it but I'm salty I slept on this show and now doubly salty that I have to wait three more days for the next episode. Last time I binged a show like this to the point it affected my sleep was EUPHORIA.

I feel like I gotta pause because nothing's worse than the one friend shouting about a thing the crew doesn't care about (edit to acknowledge I neither paused nor fucked off, lol)


But I'll just let this be the moment I noticed the sub conversation in the Saul thread about there not being another show for this little crew to obsess over when this show is RIGHT THE HELL HERE


So until next episode I'll just say again that the show doubles down on jargon in a way that would evoke Mad Men if it were contemporary but instead might alienate Succession fans because it doesn't give a fuck about being relatable


And I guess my only rebuttal is that I'm the guy that kept $10 in a savings account without ever knowing why, loves seeing big numbers in his checking account just for the immediate comfort of it, because I just can't wrap my head around investments, escrow, portfolios. This show is shooting wide, wide, wide of my natural interests. Yet, I'm absolutely infatuated with a show that explicitly frames me as an idiot, because these people all seem to recognize that they're also not money people because of the money but because of the grift that makes the money move. It's VERY impressive how they've harvested enjoyable characters out of this weird scenario in ways that would edge a Silicon Valley fan and frustrate a Billions fan at the same time.


I've really tried to pin this down and I think I've got it? If Succession or Mad Men played to or established what an imminently watchable show about people being or trying to make it rich looks like, with Harper as the anchor character Industry can accept it's fascinated by a culture it fully hates. Season 2's 2nd and 3rd episode make super clear what the entire first season set up: it absolutely must be fun to insert yourself into the marketplace of ideas, but if you're fighting your way into that world with any kind of self-awareness are you honestly happy when you laugh or sad when you cry?


I find myself talking about this show so high-falutin'ly it's worth acknowledging again that this is also a show where a woman edges a man at an employee party until he spurts on a wall mirror, more than one prospective hire DOES enjoy the money so much they overdose, many of the comic relief characters (naturally, which is also impressive) become key plot drivers and it's not out of line for most characters to get themselves off one way or another. WHICH ALSO, like, thematic storytelling? Something like that?


But they're also telling stories Euphoria seems afraid to tell. There's a moment in this season's 3rd episode where, if you've used that drug, been on or off it, this show gets it and doesn't either fantasize about it like Euphoria or exploit it like Girls. Both characters react to it with their history of using on their shoulders. It's boring, and boringly beautiful.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

This show is awesome.

But there's no point in griping over Saul ending an era of collective TV watching here when A) y'all gonna go on and do it with Dragon it seems and B) this show is RIGHT here.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

>RE: Obviously I am. Just don't want to be THAT guy.
>But there's no point in griping over Saul ending an era of
>collective TV watching here when A) y'all gonna go on and do
>it with Dragon it seems and B) this show is RIGHT here.

The Kenny/Yasmin payoff was perfect. I was wondering why they were hammering home his apology tour so hard all season. They nailed that.

Was how urgent they made little moments feel. I liked to harp on the score and soundtrack choices a lot because so much of that season was that small story about some interns trying to find their way in the world of money.


This season is taking a LOT of big swings by contrast, both on character and plot levels, and sometimes I find myself thinking about other shows as much as this show specifically. Mad Men is an obvious one because they directly referenced it with Yas' going away party, Succession of course just because, but sometimes cringier stuff like Newsroom just because of the real world/fake world lines they blur at random.


I'm far from less than all in, but as an early adopter I will say that this season seems like it's unloading some common tropes/devices at such a clip some scenes can feel predictable from the first shot. Or maybe I'm just watching every episode anticipating zero engagement on this board and internalizing it all as some slight against me for thinking this should be the biggest show on the planet LOL.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I actually started to think about exactly this during the opening scene of this episode, when they were in the office copying documents.


>I'm far from less than all in, but as an early adopter I will
>say that this season seems like it's unloading some common
>tropes/devices at such a clip some scenes can feel predictable
>from the first shot.

I'm about half-way through. I'm digging it so far. It kinda makes me wonder about the what could have been. There was a path for me to get into finance instead of accounting, once upon a time....


I hate sales tho.

Whoo! I need this thread to pick up, cuz I gotta talk about this shit.

I just started season 2, but still. We gotta talk about this shit.

That is all.

And I also take back a bit of what I said before. Turned out the show was playing me like a rube at times. Lot of scenes that have new angles in the full picture.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Then I NEED a conversation.

lol

And I won't filter it through season 2, because I'll do that when you're caught up.


First of all, I'm still so impressed that this first season was a master class in making jargon that's not just industrial but actually dislikable feel like playground banter, but that's kudos to the players and camera people. Without looking past this episode too specifically, Myha'la Herrold's makeup more than her hair is such a tell. It doesn't always matter what she accomplishes, others see in her or she says to others - sometimes she looks ridiculously vulnerable.


Herrold is so amazing at presenting the character as an audience surrogate though that when she catches Eric off guard in the elevator, then Daria, then Yas, in such quick succession, in that moment back then she flipped the table exactly the way anybody watching that season recognizing just how out of her element she was wanted her to. If it's in the bag, it's a clear answer to Peggy's first season of Mad Men, or at least a nod to 2019 not being exactly like 1961. Harper doesn't need to wait to make her play, she doesn't need to tell her feminine equals what the play is, and her male superiors might even be disposable pawns in her game.


Forget everything else about Season 1 (which, I'll say here, demanded to become a multi-season series but could be a rare example of a show saying everything it wanted to right away) those last 30 minutes...yea, I'll grant without fully knowing the other characters some of it is more of a soft open palm than a closed fist. Still, if someone were truly desperate to join the conversation those 30 minutes say a LOT about Harper and the way she sees how the world she's aspiring to join sees her. But accepting that Harper is the audience avatar, again even just those last 30 minutes of the 8th episode of a show now 2 seasons long weirdly works as a short film about ambition, language and civility that I expect we're about to blow the lid off of in the conversation following your full catch up.


To the rest of you OKP PTP dopes who might accidentally click on this thread while it's at the top of the pile: smarten up. Coming from a guy that got perhaps too romantic about the 2nd season's early episodes then tempered it with some structurally sound but thematically misguided criticism, allow me to slide you a lukewarm, proper Boddingtons and offer you a fuck off translated into the queen's English.


Get over your nostalgia for the half-decade when the water cooler swarm chatted incessantly about fantasy - this show's actual dracaris.


(I think I did OK dancing around the actual conversation. Season 2 finale, below. Start us off!)


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

There are plenty of good references I could make to the rest of the season if we weren't a few weeks removed from this, but it is what it is so I'm specifically working off this episode and my memory of what led to it.


HARPER GOT FUCKING PLAYED. One of the most painful moments of this episode is early in these 40 minutes, when Eric tells his buddy that Harper is the key to their enterprise. Eric is all side eye and Harper just doesn't see it. She also doesn't see that she's often in quiet rooms with decision making men years into the game while leveraging a single client and emotional/sexual abuse on the strength of her word...forgetting that she twisted, for profit, those situations into abuses and the client she's bragging about always presents himself as an absolute mercenary.


Which is the thing that caught me so off guard about this season. Because Herrold is so charming as Harper it's easy to forget that she's often just as if not more toxic and consuming as Yas openly is, but she has no fallout shelter other than being the main character. Speaking of: yes, the actress and character of Yas could probably toy with me very similarly, but she contrasts so well with Harper because she's so outwardly terrible at playing the game Harper is trying to play, she's simply outfitted with too many social and political parachutes to fail the way Harper can.


Ken Leung plays Eric so brilliantly that he convinces the audience she really is this finance prodigy, when the CHARACTER is more brilliantly realizing he can massage her ego while hinting at all his homies and the real players that she's not the Sue Bird of UK finance if they don't say she is.


So I don't think how this wraps up necessarily excuses the moments when season 2 seems to be satisfying tropes (from a few different types of shows, to its credit, rather than a single recipe) but in the bigger picture it does a pretty nasty job of reminding you this is despicable business the show is about. On rewatch, my favorite moment might be when Jay Duplass (I'm not saying his character's name because this casting in particular is PERFECT) lets Gus know he's got a seat at the table because: A) I've rarely felt so sad to see someone smile so genuinely B) it's obviously a transition from manipulating Harper to Gus and C) every scene afterward is abusers being confronted by victims and their attempts to understand their dynamics. With the big, bold faced D being: kind of like Six Feet Under's relationship with death, it's more about the accounts than the emotions. Everyone is under the same delusion, they're all trying to slip the mickey in the drink.


But of course we'll still root for Harper because she didn't belong in this story to begin with, and just like her we couldn't have realized it until it was too late. Eric's "uh oh, time's up" is maybe sadder than when he says "I'm doing this for you" moments later on rewatch because he has to play at being the biased dungeon master one last time, and probably truly likes Harper. She'll see him as Judas, but nobody sees her as the finance Messiah. It might seem abrupt but to me that's the power in it. Harper spends this entire season convincing us, and herself, that she's the Peggy to Eric's Don Draper, when she's only just what she is - a young girl in a disadvantaged position, allowing a couple strokes of luck to make her a pawn in a handful of other peoples' games.


I'm so mad they haven't confirmed season 3 yet.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

however this is probably the most humanly interesting show to me since Mad Men. the pilot didnt catch me when it aired but i gave it another shot recently and blew through the show pretty quickly.

Harper is making her mark on the "piece of shit HBO main character" rankings

I thought he was too smart for that.

Quick thoughts

Rob's moment of clarity when he closes the door and Nicole IMMEDIATELY grabs his dick? I pray for that boy.

Harper, was SO quick to toss DVD and Indian brit off the life raft, the scene with him in the bathroom was such a brilliant display of visual irony, I don't know who is writing this show but BRA VO!

Jay Duplass is un fucking recognizable. His protrayal is amazing.

GUS! My favorite character, and likely the only one really trying to be his authentic best self.

Yas. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL She found out REAL quick, what was what. She's either gonna go back to daddy with the realization what's really going on, or she's gonna tough it out on her own. Honestly, I'm here for either. It'd be nice if she dropped this aw shucks bs and realized she's a straight up 1 percenter.

There's no way this show doesn't continue to revolve around this world, and Harper is our conduit, so how are they gonna fix this?!

I cannot wait for season 3

What happens to Harper now? Does she go back to the US, get her degree, parlay her experience into a competing house?

Is the show just over now, what that series finale?

I need to know!

not sure how I missed this show up to now despite being aware of the premise; I worked a couple years on a trading desk in London in the mid-00s and was pretty much hooked instantly once I pressed play, watched both seasons in just over a week. They really nailed the texture of the show, in terms of who is on a desk, the atmosphere, the pressure, etc. Definitely HBO-ized in terms of the drugs and sex, and not nearly enough post-work pub scenes imo but overall this felt extremely true to life.

The characters are also where this show really shines, most of them not being that likeable is also quite lifelike. Cutthroat world gonna cutthroat. Season 2 in that regard was a real evolution from the "fun" storylines of season 1, and imo the last episode was pretty perfect. In a normal world that would be it for Harper, actually she never would've made it to where she did, not to mention getting the ear of a major hedge fund billionaire, but I found Myha'la Herrold such an engaging actress that I didn't mind. Still let's see what they come up with in s3, I trust them fully at this point.

Just finished S2 - stop sleeping on this

I CANNOT wait for this to come back.