Spoiler alert: this recap is published after episode five of Industry season two airs on BBC One in the UK. Do not read on if you haven’t watched it.
If Industry has felt a little tentative so far this season, all is now forgiven. This Christmas episode brings us everything that we’ve been hoping for: sex in the opening seconds, basically zero office action, and a truly brutal come-to-Jesus awakening for each of our central three.
In one gripping hour, the key turns on every character, unlocking the fundamental lack that has driven them to Pierpoint in the first place: Yasmin’s absent father, Harper’s missing brother, Robert’s late mum. Every character makes a play for what they want, and finds themselves with worse than nothing.
Meanwhile, the stories that have been bubbling along, often impenetrably, in the background – FastAid v Rican, Mr Covid’s uncertain stake, DVD’s play for London, and Gus’s line to the Tories – all pull together this episode and advance towards what is setting up to be a fantastic finale.
Let’s start with Rob, perhaps the closest to redemption. He is tasked by DVD to go home to Oxford to attend a recruitment dinner and “accio undergrad talent” to Pierpoint. (DVD’s painfully self-conscious, Hogwarts-centric “Brit shit” on the floor is a masterclass in transatlantic misunderstandings.)
He takes along the most recent “brilliant new grad” Venetia, but is too distracted to notice her disillusionment with Pierpoint – or her flirtations. His mentor Clement from last season has died, and left him “a number of items” without having invited him to the funeral: the meagre remains of a life spent at Pierpoint.
“He was the first aspirational man that I had in my life,” Rob tells Venetia – as he makes secret plans to see his publican father pre-dinner. He strived to get into Oxford and then the upper-class “to honour” his late mother; now he wants to prove to his father that it was worth it, throwing his weight around at the bar when his dad does not drop everything to have a drink with them.
After a bottle of champagne and some coke, Rob runs his mouth off at the recruitment dinner, dazzling the grad with his hard sell of Pierpoint, “the market leaders in the worst stuff” – but revolting Venetia, who has seen for herself how hollow it is.
“We can make you big in your own life,” he promises the starry-eyed grad, before passing out on the ground outside his dad’s. It is, make no mistake, a bad night – but Yas and Harper’s manages to be much, much worse.
After their tense standoff over “some women” last episode, Yasmin has thrown her lot in with her odious father, if only to secure her own move off FX.
A trip to Berlin to hand over Anna’s account to Jackie is the final hurdle; and Daddy Dearest (having already “ceded St Moritz to Mum”, who has blocked Yas on all platforms) has agreed to let her and her colleagues stay in his “favourite bolthole”.
Better to be in “a museum” of traumatic family memories than “a fucking Marriott”, seems to be Yasmin’s conclusion (housekeeping comes daily, after all) – at least until Harper inadvertently points out what was hiding in framed sight: Dad was sleeping with the German nanny.
Harper, meanwhile, has talked her way on to the FX trip to track down her long-lost twin, whom she believes holds the key to her contentment – and who she believes, from Insta-stalking, to be working at a restaurant in Berlin.
Miraculously, she finds him – but John Daniel, sober and settled, is far from pleased to see her and even attempts to ditch her when they go to a club.
In an excruciating, drug-fuelled exchange, Harper discovers that the brother whose memory she has long cherished as a tennis prodigy – and her ally against their negligent mother – blames Harper just as much for his psychological torture in her care. “I ran away from her, too,” Harper pleads with John Daniel – but John Daniel was running from Harper.
A longtime meth addict, John Daniel is so damaged that we don’t necessarily accept his word about Harper’s complicity and narcissism – not least because we have seen her suffer from the same pressure of “100% perfection” herself.
Much of the dialogue this season has been somewhat stagey (cf. Rob and Venetia), but this is a heartbreaking and believable depiction of how siblings can be driven apart by shared trauma.
Having set out to investigate a conspiracy theory, Harper finds that she was indoctrinated in a cult, and now that she has been rejected by her brother, she has no hope of escape. Maybe you just don’t like what you’re looking at, John Daniel tells Harper, then Harper tells DVD; but it’s the face in the mirror she reviles.
Yas, meanwhile, is doing her own substance-fuelled truth-seeking. She tracks down the nanny who cared for her while both parents were “away from home”, and confirms not only the affair with her father but the payout and, apparently, a child. That the nanny “was legal” is small comfort.
Yas and Harper’s ashen faces at the meeting with Anna that afternoon are pitiable, but this is more than depleted serotonin: it is an existential comedown, as the guiding lights that led them to Pierpoint have gone out – and the slivers of hope have been lost.
Meanwhile, in the cold light of day in Oxford, Rob and his dad have an uneasy exchange. It seems that Rob has not been honest with others about his dad, or with himself about his mum, “a tyrant”. His father’s attempt at reassurance that “it’s always day one with us” instead highlights the gulf between them; Rob attempts to fill it with cash, then bolts to communion.
The return of the prodigal son, the crosses behind Harper as she begs her brother for forgiveness, even Yas in robes seeking a room at the pied-a-terre (too much?): it all points to a shot at absolution for our Pierpoint trio. In a Christmas miracle, they could yet be born again.
Closing up
Gus has retained his conscience for another week, starting work at Aurora’s office early and finishing late so as to help as many “real people” before she sweeps him up to Westminster. Jackie is a hit with Anna, and assumedly enjoyed herself at KitKat Club. Rishi got a good deal on a new car.
Closing down
Pretty much everyone.
Most impenetrable City speak
The Rican-Amazon pharmacy stuff that you might have been glossing over is coming to a head. We know from Aurora that Amazon is about to buy the FastAid pharmacy chain, potentially costing Rican the NHS contract in which Anna and Jesse have a stake; but Harper has been dropping the ball.
Let’s hope that Gus, prepping for the anti-competition committee, gives her the heads-up back at the flat.
Best burn
Yas, on herself: “Ja Rule? I thought it was Ya!” My biggest laugh of the season, but perhaps I’m just rooting for Harper and Yas to repair their friendship. Their tentative attempt at connection over a “juicy chilled red” is a breath of fresh air. Now that both their lives have been blown apart, they need each other more than ever. Or, as Yas sells it to Harper at the club: “I can’t be objective about my own shit, just yours.”
Boldest power play
“I know London thinks it’s standard operating procedure to hit cruise control in December …” says DVD, slave-driving the London team though we know he still plays for the Yankees.
Having ousted Eric to a “baby-kisser” client service position, DVD has now selflessly assumed his reports and is also having regular sex with Harper, the most junior.
Going by his gooey eyes and requested “permission to be vulnerable” (DENIED), DVD seems to be developing feelings for Harper, but she’s not aware of his betrayal of Eric; the final scene, forcing the three of them into an elevator like hunted animals, suggests that she’s about to find out.
The question is, will she care?
Lowest ebb
This episode was almost unrelenting, back-to-back low ebb – and yet no one looked as if they hated their life more than Eric, asked to “comprehensively consult the binder” of art for his office.
• Industry season two is on BBC One in the UK, HBO Max in the US and Binge in Australia
