Summary
Industry delivers the most stress-inducing episode of the season – a frantic character study that finds one man in a self-destructive spiral that we’re all dragged along by.
I’d like to make it clear that I despise Rishi Ramdani and everything he stands for to a degree that causes me to physically bristle, which means Industry is performing precisely as advertised. Episode 4 of Season 3, “White Mischief”, is an unusually character-focused chapter that plays out like a close-up panic attack.
This season has been great in basically all areas, and Episode 3, “It”, was a standout in how it ratcheted up the tension to new levels by taking all the core cast – except Rishi, as it happens – out of Pierpoint and assembling them at a green energy conference in Bern. “White Mischief” has the same effect with the opposite approach. The camera never drifts away from Rishi as he circles the drain of London’s financial heart in a ceaseless and frantic downward spiral.
There’s an argument to be made that this is a needlessly showy episode, a way for Industry to flex its creative muscles by pulling off tricks it doesn’t need to. But I’m not buying that. If it was flourish for its own sake then maybe, but the presentation of “White Mischief” is the perfect way to get audiences into the headspace of a delusional, narcissistic addict at a personal and professional breaking point.
It’s also the first episode not to focus on Lumi. The aftermath of the company’s failure – it has gone into administration, with Pierpoint in general and Eric specifically considered the public-facing architects of its downfall – still looms over the trading floor, but Rishi’s issues have nothing to do with it. No, those are entirely of his own making.
To recap, Rishi is broke. The episode makes this clear immediately by showing his payments being declined when he tries to pay for more of Sweetpea’s OnlyFans, and then spends the rest of the runtime reiterating the point and showing us how he got there. He’s on the hook for millions at work and is taking so much cocaine his nose is dripping blood on his son Hugo’s face.
At no point does Industry Season 3, Episode 4 try to make us feel for Rishi, but it does rather frankly depict the problems a person of color would be inclined to run into were they to try and keep up appearances in the circles Rishi has claimed membership of. His wife Diana is a posh white woman, and Rishi is consistently treated as if he has kidnapped her. The locals in their rural neighborhood don’t want him to renovate a cricket pavilion he has bought, and his neighbor Nicholas has changed his dog’s name from Rajah to Roger.
Industry | Image via HBO
The reason Nicholas has the dog is because Rishi thinks it is causing his ongoing back irritation, which we’ve seen glimpses of in previous episodes this season. Given his lifestyle, the dog is the least likely cause, but you don’t come to this guy for self-awareness. If he had that quality, he wouldn’t owe several millions on his company accounts, over two hundred grand across various lines of credit, and be upside-down on a 20K repayment to a local bookie named Vinay (Asim Chaudhry, quietly menacing.)
Rishi’s also in the doghouse at Pierpoint because someone has started an anonymous subreddit that shares prehistoric and aggressive language overheard on the trading floor, and almost all of it can be attributed to Rishi. He sees it as manly straight-talking, and thinks it should be allowed given how much money he makes, but when someone like Eric thinks you’re going a bit far, you should probably listen.
And, crucially, Rishi isn’t making the company any money. One of the key threads that unfolds in “White Mischief” is his gambling addiction, highlighted particularly in a mesmerizing sequence that sees him win a stack of cash, get beaten up, and then gamble his winnings away immediately afterward with one eye swollen shut and blood staining his shirt. He treats Pierpoint’s accounts the same way.
Rishi’s on borrowed time. In the end, a very fortunate trading deal secures him a fortune and gets him out of the red at work. The windfall also endears him to his coworkers again, at least the more unscrupulous ones like Eric and Robert. Poor Anrah points out that Rishi is just lucky, but that might not be the right word. Venetia, meanwhile, quits her job at Pierpoint but makes sure to tell Rishi on the way out that she was behind the subreddit and that Sweepea told her he was a “five pump chump.”
I mean, there’s nothing lucky about Rishi’s wife fantasizing about an ex or cheating on him with the neighbor who prunes his hedges at 5 am and renamed Rishi’s dog. There’s nothing lucky about Rishi finally paying off his bookmaker’s debt only to re-bet a sizeable chunk of it on a new fancy. Rishi keeps his relationship, and his house, and gets that dog back, but he learns nothing and remains on the precipice of complete disaster.
The point of Industry Season 3, Episode 4 isn’t that Rishi technically gets away with it all. It’s that he exists in a culture that will eventually ruin him, all in an effort to blend into another culture that’ll never accept him. He’s the worst, but he’s the symptom of several diseases that might never be remedied, and in that sense, at least, he’s the biggest victim of all.
The story continues in Industry Season 3, Episode 5, which is quite the trip.
