Review: Industry, “Both, And” | Season 4, Episode 8
"baby you can change and still choose me"
Hey free subscribers - William Goodman's coverage of Industry's fourth season comes to an end, with a fifth and final season on the horizon. As a reminder, yearly subscriptions are $44 until I find the time to announce the rest of our spring schedule and reflecting on our fourth anniversary.
“The world is showing you what it is.”
What is the world of Industry? That’s a bit of an existential question, but one that the series, I think, has defined and redefined with each new iteration. Season one was, by design, limited to the world of the trading floor, a liminal space wherein the outside world hardly mattered beyond what information could be gleaned or leveraged to gain an advantage. As the show progresses, the aperture around the series' reality expands accordingly—and with it, a chance to mold it into something new. Last week, Harper and Yasmin wondered aloud how the two of them even ended up where they were in that moment. Now, in the wake of “Both, And,” the show feels even further away from the (relative) safety of that trading floor.
Look, I don’t want to beat around the bush, as there’s so much that happens in the finale. So let’s jump right into it. Most of the discussion around the episode is going to, rightfully, come from the second big Harper/Yasmin moment of the season. The Yasmin, as (ostensibly) Ghislaine Maxwell, comparisons have floated around since season three, wherein parallels between Charles Hanani and Robert Maxwell naturally arose. Much like Robert, Charles was a publishing magnate who went missing from his yacht, which he named after his daughter. The writing was always on the wall. But for Mickey and Konrad to actually decide to go through with this, in the way in which they do here, is equal parts electric and crushing. Industry is a show that loves to depict its characters descending into the depths of hell (as I wrote last season, “White Mischief” is basically a tour of Inferno with Rishi as Nero), but watching Yasmin and Harper go back and forth was like going into hell only to be thrust into a previously unexcavated level.
