Summary
Industry is a real trip in “Company Man”, in ways both obvious and not. The third season continues to impress and horrify in equal measure.
Henry Muck might be insistent that he’s not a pervert in Episode 5 of Industry’s rather wonderful third season, but I, for one, beg to differ. Nothing against anybody who’s into the same stuff since I’m not one to kink shame, but nobody has to reassuringly insist they’re not a pervert if they’re not, in fact, a pervert.
The title of this episode, “Company Man”, is mostly referring to Rob, who gets a lot of focus. But it could just as easily be referring to Henry, who is a company man of a different kind, defined by the companies he runs, like Lumi, the company he keeps, like his uncle and his godfather, and even in a very macro sense, if you imagine the British establishment as its own sort of company, he’s emblematic of that too.
So he is a pervert, regardless of his sexual peccadilloes. He has been perverted by money, by influence, by power, his own and that of others. He exists outside of – nay, above – the natural order. The rules don’t apply to him. And he knows it.
Things Are Not Going Well
This manifests in a variety of ways in “Company Man”, which begins on the eve of a hearing where a government oversight committee wants answers about Lumi’s government bailout and Pierpoint’s scandalous overvaluation of the flailing company in the first place. Henry should be answerable for this, but since Pierpoint knows he won’t be, Rob is instead sent as an unwitting fall guy. Two company men, one untouchable, and the other expendable.
Pierpoint is scrambling to retain some semblance of respect and trust as a viable financial institution because, as Sweetpea worriedly explains to Eric and thus the audience, the company’s assets are about to be wiped out by the maturation of an outsized prop bet, repayment of which was contingent on the success of Pierpoint’s sudden pivot to socially responsible ESG investing, which has been utterly disastrous.
There is zero effort made to explain the finer details of this, so please understand it thusly: Pierpoint owes a lot of money that it can’t pay back, and the deadline is looming.
The outcome of the hearing, then, takes on a new degree of importance, since Muck’s legal angle is to blame Lumi’s failure and any shenanigans surrounding its share price on the bank that underwrote the IPO. Pierpoint’s approach is to blame Muck first, inevitably fail to make any ground there, and subsequently offer Rob as a sacrifice.
This just so happens to be occurring on the same day as the company’s Children’s Investment Trust Charity Day, which means several main characters are in fancy dress – Sweetpea as Ginger Spice in that infamous Union Jack dress, Yas as Princess Diana, and Eric, rather obviously, as Henry VIII – just to ramp up the absolute absurdity of the entire predicament.
The Hearing (And Other Matters of Corruption)
The hearing is disastrous, as expected. Rob fares horrendously, being asked whether he’s Henry’s whipping boy, Pierpoint’s, or perhaps both, but at no point is it considered that he might be neither. Though this is, of course, the plan. Rob is the face of finance, besuited and bespectacled (despite not needing glasses); as much costumed as anyone in the office.
Things take a turn when the focus of the hearing becomes not about Henry and Pierpoint massaging Lumi’s financials but allegations of sexual misconduct strongly intimated to have been made by Caedi McFarlane, glimpsed multiple times in previous episodes. Henry, true to form, isn’t concerned about this either.
And it’s eventually revealed why. Energy Secretary Aurore Adekunle, a not-unfamiliar political face in Industry, arrives to testify and grandiosely claims responsibility for the entire debacle, having gone so far as to tender her resignation to the Prime Minister to serve as an example of accountability in politics. If you’re wondering why she would do such a thing, it’s explained immediately afterward, when Muck takes Rob for drinks with Lord Norton and Otto Mostyn, and Aurore arrives to a chorus of congratulations.
The backroom deal is clear. Aurore has taken the fall for Muck, and in exchange, Muck and his contacts will ensure she becomes Prime Minister. Rob is so appalled that he immediately tries to hoover up all of the cocaine in the vicinity, and that’s before Yasmin arrives.
Industry | Image via HBO
Henry And Yasmin
Yasmin had watched the entire hearing on her phone in Pierpoint’s bathroom, where Sweetpea had also told her about the pending maturation of Pierpoint’s balance sheet-wiping debt. Unbeknown to both of them, Harper was hiding in a cubicle, there for the first official meeting between Pierpoint and her terribly-named new hedge fund, Leviathan. Industry Season 3, Episode 5 doesn’t reveal what she might do with this information, but it’ll no doubt be something terrible.
Anyway, Yas, who was already concerned about the sexual misconduct allegations, is even more incensed when a very high Henry reveals in earshot of his friends that he had peed on her in the shower that morning – a not-uncommon occurrence, based on their responses, which kind of puts paid to the idea that Henry is in love with her, as he had earlier claimed to Rob, clearly just to annoy him.
As we know, though, Rob is in love with Yas – “She once made me eat my ejaculate off a mirror,” he blithely tells Henry when he asks if there was ever anything between them – and, in her way, she loves him back. But that might not be enough to save her from herself, as we’ll see.
Revelations
In the meantime, Henry drags Rob to an Ayahuasca ceremony where, tellingly, even the shaman can’t stand Muck but can’t tell him no. Rob trips balls for a while, revealing to the audience what we already know – he’s deeply traumatized by his mommy issues, the loss of Nicole, and his choice of career.
Muck regains consciousness in fits of laughter, reminding himself that he should find a way to monetize the entire experience. A company man until the end.
Rob, meanwhile, returns home and crawls into bed, where Yas eventually joins him. She had run off earlier after receiving a call that a body had been discovered that was likely her father’s. The daddy issues run incredibly deep. Yas also admits in this episode that she “wants to be wanted” by men like Henry because she also wanted to be wanted by her dad, and she clarifies that she means in a presentational context. I’m unsure how to take that. And I’m similarly unsure how to take Yas’s subsequent admission that she killed her father.
Is that Yas finally admitting that truth to herself, to the one person she believes she can trust? Rob doesn’t take it seriously, but Marisa Abela’s face reveals that Yasmin does. Whether she means figuratively or literally is unclear, but I’m inclined to believe the latter. And now his body has been found, she may well end up on the hook for it.
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