The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Industry’ S4E4: Daddy, Drugs, and Drama

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Rob, Jo, and Jodi break down all the madness of 'Industry' S4E4: daddy energy, cult vibes, and pure coke-fueled chaos. Intro (0:00)Jodi Walker check-in (1:02)'Chicken Shop Date'! (2:49)U.K. politics and show overlap (6:09)Jim Dycker: Coked and collapsing (13:24)Comms catastrophe (20:23)Sweetpea espionage (21:14)Henry thinks he’s Steve Jobs (23:46)Pierpoint takedown? (27:01)Yas-Harper divide (28:07)Glazed up and confused: Henry x Whitney (33:58)Whitney Halberstram cult leader (37:16)Jonah’s exposé (38:47)Hayley’s power play (40:40)Elevator encounters (42:09)Yas's manipulation tactics (45:45)Daddy energy overload (52:11)OnlyFans side quest (54:11)Rishi: Curse or chaos? (56:43)Hitchcock: Suspense or surprise? (1:02:13)Needle Drop Corner (1:09:08)Outro (1:15:36) Email us! [e-mail] or [e-mail] Follow us on IG and TikTok! Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Prestige TV Podcast and so much more! Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob MahoneyGuest: Jodi WalkerProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Justin Sayles  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Terms and more at Apple.com. Hello, welcome back to the Pressing TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney. I'm Jody Walker. And we've got all three of us here to talk to you about season four, episode four of industry 1,000 News, 1, Maryland. A character in this television show says there should be a fucking tariff on podcast equipment. And he is fired before the episode is over.

Coincidence? Who's to say? I might agree with him to some degree, though. But before we get into episode four, which is a wild episode and a lot happens, obviously, we want to check in with our beloved Jody here, who was not here last week to give her thoughts and feelings on episode three. So Jody Walker, take us through your entire experience. I mean, my first feelings are Robinson Mahoney Fund or Mahoney Robinson Fund. I missed you. Was so wonderful to hear you guys talk about the episode last week.

And, you know, to be loved is to be known, to be known as to be loved, and to hear Joanna specifically shout out the exact line that made me write it in all caps in my notes that I didn't need to be taking. How does it feel to finally have the power, a constant nerve jangling desire to enshrine it? Utah. It's so beautiful. I felt loved. I felt loved.

It was beautiful. I learned it from you. I was like, I mean, that is the episode to me. what a line and what an encapsulation of these people just chasing power and hoping to enshrine it, chasing enshrinement and hoping to find power within it. Like that, you know, I will say the episode felt, episode three, it felt like kind of a lot of setup to me.

I wouldn't say that it was my favorite episode. episode, but when I, at the time of watching it, but when I look back on it now following episode four, I'm like, what a fun and innocent time that was to last episode three. I think that episode four has basically undone any rest and relaxation I got from my vacation. And I'm horrified and thrilled to be here. Journalism is dead. So is Jim. It's very sad. So is Jody. This episode was written by Mickey Down and Conrad Kay. ever heard of them and directed by Michelle Saville or Saville.

And there is a cameo from Amelia Demeldenborg. There sure is. Did you guys see what her character name was? You know we did, Joe. Well, I know that Rob did. I did. Rob, would you like to share what Amelia, for folks who don't know who Amelia is and what her character's name is, Rob?

So Amelia de Moldenberg, best known for successfully flirting with every guest to appear on chicken shop date. Correct. Just impeccable. Just one of our great flirts. And her character's name, as she appears randomly as a journalist in this episode, out of, you know, a press scrum, her character's name is Vivian Poulet Magazon,

which of course means Vivian Chicken Shop. Yeah. I mean, just great work. Won't they do it? Won't they do it? Really, really good stuff. She was great. Yeah.

Like, you know, she had one line and I really bought it. She did take me out of it. Because it's like, how can you, if you know her, how can you not be? jarred awake in that moment. Well, I don't know. To me, she did kind of fit into the world. And, like, I felt like she and Sweet Pea could be sisters.

Oh, there's no doubt. And we could have, like, a whole different spinoff happening here between these gals. It was so, it was, these are, those basically are my two favorite pieces of British culture. So, I was fun to see them together. So you're saying, send Amelia to Akra, like, why not? Get her on the lane. Oh, my God. Okay.

I agree. get her knocking on doors. Yeah, maybe that is like the backdoor pilot of this episode. You're right, Joie. Even episode four is a lot of setup, it turns out. Yeah. We got a lot of feedback from listeners about, you know, speaking of favorite pieces of British culture,

we are constantly, or I am constantly as an American saying, please, you know, I just found out before we started recording, Jody has studied abroad in the UK, so she is much more seasoned than I am in the culture. Jody is an adult woman talking about her study abroad experience offline. I'm just glad it wasn't in Barcelona, you know. I took a trip to Abiza.

Abifa. So, you know, I'm doing my best as an American fumbling around in the dark, but I did ask a question about what newspaper we think it is that is printing these like Nazi op-eds and smear campaigns on Jim Diker, et cetera, et cetera. We got a wide range of answers. So it turns out no consensus really from the UK listeners on whether this is the telegraph or the Times or the Daily. mail, there was like a really compelling, this is the Daily Mail or the Sun. And that's like a

wide range of publication. So keep emailing us. Jody, where can folks reach us if they want to? Oh, they can reach us over at Harpsichord strap-on at gmail.com. I can't. Is that right? Yeah, they really can. I'm glad you have heard that someone out, because my mind had always kind of been in the Daily Mail cord as, you know, one of the papers of record for me and my kind. And I think because of maybe some of more of the stuff from last season where there was so much like commenting happening and like so much paparazzi of Yaz and like it just didn't. And it would make sense to me that the people behind it

would see it as like a great old media publication and the people reading it would see it as otherwise. Well, paparazzi is a noble calling, as we know. That is holding power to account. the only way that we know how to do it. We did, however, get a pretty good consensus from listeners on the political sort of figures that we've been meeting this season. So I just wanted to do a very handy rundown we got from our listener, Shane, because I was

asking about Ricky Martin with a Y, who we met. I was, like, really interested in this particular figure. We got a pretty good consensus on who that was. Shane sort of built upon that with a couple other characters. So I thought I would just run this down. So Ricky Martin with the Y, who we saw swan into this meeting that he was. not invited to and just like throw his dick and a newspaper on the table and just sort of like run the meeting from from his chair. This is Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister's current chief of

staff. According to Shane, basically exiled all traces of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of labor and has a political perspective generally hostile to the left and seems to socially court voters who are Nigel Farage curious. So I poked around could not find a good thing said about this guy Morgan McSweeney. So this is the power behind the throne. The idea being that the Prime Minister Kirstama is like a very inexperienced

politician. And Morgan, even though he's not elected at all, is sort of running things behind the scene to a certain degree. And that was very much the impression that was given in that scene. Any thoughts on that before I move on to the two ladies who are also in that meeting?

Well, with our deep awareness of British politics, I think we can only concur. Okay. Do you concur? I totally agree. Thank you for telling everyone what we already knew. And I would say you couldn't find a single thing about him. But Morgan McSweeney, like Ricky Martin, pretty strong name.

Oh, great name. A strong name to walk into a conference room and announce yourself first and last name. Absolutely. All right. So Jenny Bevan, who we've met a number of times over the last two seasons, Shabana Mahmood is the comp here, the current home secretary, often the third most powerful person in UK politics. I don't think she's not home secretary, so she's not that high up.

She's a little more junior, for sure. Yes, is a favorite of McSweeney. So I'm definitely see her as future Prime Minister of material, partly because she is political politics aligned with more powerful interests, has delivered increasingly anti-migrant rhetoric in recent months. Her politics can largely be described as, quote, blue labor. Bevin may also have a few traces of Bridgett Phillipson Education Secretary. So. And last and last one at least, Lisa Dern, who shows up again in this episode, deeply against, her will.

The comp here is Angela Rayner. Rainer is seen as soft left of the party, has a working class upbringing, and is often comfortable presenting herself in such a way, often demeaned as a, quote, troublesome, mouthy woman by the establishment. Isn't shy. Is it shy, standing up for herself,

especially against those of more affluent means, potential future leader, but the likes of McSweeney are desperate to prevent that from happening. So a McSweeney, Morgan McSweeney versus Angela Rainer and Elisa Dern versus Ricky Martin with a why with a Jenny Bevin as sort of a pawn in the middle of this power struggle is like an

interesting dynamic being set up here. Last but not least, Shane said, I think it's notable that the prime minister is conspicuous by his absence in this show. So far it appears that if you've been paying attention to UK politics, it's not difficult to see where season four of industry is going. I don't know what that means because I don't want any spoilers, I guess, for where this is going. But I did look up Kier Starmer's approval rating, negative 57, currently in the UK. And there's a lot of concern opt-eds about the rise of Nigel Farage. So the fact that we saw an actor I like Edward Holcroft playing, you know, a backbench minister from Farage's party sort of in episode one,

we could be seeing like a swing from labor to, you know, Farageism if we prefer that, which we don't. personally on this podcast, but, you know. Yeah, we really don't. Yeah, as soon as you said the word like Farage Curious earlier, it said it's chill down my spine. So, but look, it fits the world. Even we Americans know. This is what I love about industry, though, is for the,

it was it Shane who wrote that email? Like, for Shane, he's like, you know, if you know what you're looking for, then you see where season four is going. And I, of course, do not. And like, you can really watch the show in so many ways. And when I, I still run into people who are like, I just, you know, I tried to watch industry,

but I didn't know what was going on. And the real thing you have to do is just get comfortable with that. If you happen to know what's going on, then that might enhance your view. But if you don't, you'll never know if it would. You're just going to have a good and scary time. I think you will too. And especially if what scared you off early

is the finance element of the show, which we're not moving away, but maybe generalizing and adding in like a bunch of corporate espionage. Like I feel like the world of industry has balanced out in so many weird opposing forces that you almost need to be less scared than ever about getting too bogged down in the jargon of one particular area because you're going to be swimming in it across the board and it's going to be fine.

There are going to be so many things that you don't understand and that's part of it. Is one of them, Yaz's relationship to shoulder pads, Jody, or how do you feel like you understand that? Oh, no, I actually deeply understand that. And what I would call it is Yaz's relationship. to Simi Shear Turtlenex, which is also something that I'm a big fan up. And I really think she was wearing my preferred brand, Marcel in New York City.

And so I felt really connected to her in this episode. I felt so confident that you would come through for me on this one, and I really appreciate you. I'm trying to figure out if it's a flex or not a flex to be like, I identify with not only Yaz's style, but the very specific retailer and brand in which she would purchase from herself. And the precise reason that she's wearing them, which is that she's trying to be taken.

seriously. As we all are, voices on a podcast. But it's still going to be semi-shear. So to sort of push back on Shane's point, I will say, though it's clear that Mickey and Conrad are taking countless real-life

inspirations, and I did want to ask you, Jody, were you aware of the Galane Maxwell connection to Yaz's previous? I missed it entirely, so. No, I wasn't. And I was so glad to hear you talk about it and that you had done the research because I think that obviously that feeling of that character was really starting to come out in the last episode and much more

so now. And like it's really taking that hard pivot into like I was a girl and now I'm a woman and look at all the bad I can do here with Yaz. But I did not know about some of those like very specific details that obviously make it so intentional, like her father's death on a yacht, et cetera. Yeah. Okay. So I think, well, what I think is happening here is, like, though we are taking very clear world world inspo, I'm not convinced that the outcome will be the same because I think they're like, they're building on this bedrock and then they're taking into a what if space.

And the best example of that is with Jim Dyker here because, you know, reading our pal, Katie Baker's recap on the ringer, reading the Bloomberg recap. They were all talking about the same journalist Dan McCrum who took down Wirecard in 2020 and how he's like a clear comp for Jim. But Dan is alive and well, right? He did not take fentanyl lace blow from someone obviously trying to kill him. But the comps are there. Like this is a quote that Dan gave to Global Investigation Journalism Network in like 2020, I think, or something like that. He says, we realized one wirecard executive was connected to Russian spies

and there were personal safety concerns so I wouldn't stand on the end of a tube train platform precautions like that. We realized at one point there was a team of 30 private detectives running around London trying to capture evidence

of us talking to our sources looking for evidence of us supposedly colluding with short sellers. We wouldn't talk about the story with our phones in the room going to meet sources. I do things like duck into a tube station

and run out the other side to shake any tails. So Dan went, through this, went about this a bit more responsibly, I guess, or cloak and daggerly than Jim managed, poor Jim managed to.

But like, that's the comp, but the outcome's different. So, like, just because there was a great sort of downfall of wire card, will there be a great downfall of tender? Just because we kind of know who these political comps are, is that how the political landscape's going to go on this show? You know, like they don't have to follow exactly

the comps that they're drawing from. You know what I mean? Well, especially when you create a character in the mold like Jim, but Jim himself is like so much more of an amateur in terms of his investigation, right? Like he's he's so concerned and yet he's talking to Harper on the phone and being seen with her in public and you, but also using an air-gapped computer because God forbid anyone finds out anyone he's talking to. Well, and his ethics are all over the place. I mean, I think, and this could be the, you know, naivety of telling ourselves stories in order to live.

But like in the real world, those comps, they kind of have a good guy in a a bad guy. And like in the show that we're watching, sometimes the bad guy has a comp and then what's on the other side of it is just another bad guy. Like and so, you know, in the in the sort of real world comp of the journalist, like as far as we know, his, his ethics were sound in what he was reporting and what he was doing. And here we don't have that. And like with, you know, I don't No, it's just this episode was, it was really good and it was really hard to watch. Like these, this was, this was a lot of the people that we know being in like their most monstrous elements. It felt like there was no reprieve.

I mean, the reprieve was almost like Harper and Sweetpeed doing corporate espionage. Yeah. Right. I do feel like the show, though, I feel like this is part of why it, to me, it's as consistently great as it's ever been. Jody, I know you were saying last week felt like a little bit more of a set up episode for you. I think like we're just in such a zone of constant anxiety attack, deep character study, all of these like broadening elements with the espionage and journalism parts of this story. Something about industry is just working for me better than it ever has

before. And certainly the performances have always been great. The writing has always been sharp. I feel like we're just getting somewhere new with this show that I wasn't, I wasn't even sure it would be able to get to. What's the new that you're seeing? I think it's just the culmination of those elements. And to Jody's point about the ways in which every player on the board is fucked up, and yet because of their circumstances, you're forced to confront who you want to win and why. Right?

Like, if there is a great takedown of tender, we even get kind of that, like, called, the line is called out pretty directly in this episode in terms of stern tau's, like, their own investigative practices have gone very clearly from grade of black. Like there's no like we're living in the ambiguity of this moment anymore. They are manipulating the market for gain. And so if, if tender, a clearly busted and fraudulent company that's doing God knows what, frankly, as far as like what they're leveraging and in Accra to what effect, if they go down, lots of people win who probably shouldn't win.

And lots of people will be successful who, I mean, I don't know that you'll find like a better summation of Harper than ultimately what Yaz says about her morals in this episode and how flexible and fluid they are. Every character feels that way at this point to me. You mean, Yaz's looking at herself in the mirror and saying that line? First of all, Yaz would never look at herself in the mirror except to adjust that sheer turtleneck. And she wouldn't do anything else with the mirror either, so don't ask.

Don't ask about it. Let me wrap up the journalism piece really quickly and say on this sort of interesting like Norton publishing group versus FinTech here, I think it's interesting to go back to some of the conversations we had. I have a lot that I want to say about this episode in terms of like American strivers and how they're sort of represented in this show and in this episode.

Full of shit, you mean? Aren't we all? But I mean, I think the conversation you have between Jim's editor, David Wilmot, played by David Wilmot, his editor is Edward Burgess, an Irishman. And then Jim, Charlie Heaton using his lead's accent as Jim, these like, and then like when we see his editor

first when he's talking about on his phone, he has a mug that's like the Brentford B's football club, which is a West London football club that is very like working class, like family oriented, progressive politics. Like they have a like a booster group called the LGBT or LGBTs or something like that.

Like, you know, they're just like very like, we're proud of our West London like heritage. That is his team versus the Norton group. And they're each calling out each other's hypocrisy. And, um, and the way in which we're, we hear, you know, this Irishman and this guy from Leeds talking about taking down the elites and the horrible people at the heart of finance, but also we hear the horrible people at the heart

of finance calling it the hypocrisy of these guys. And I just think, once again, industry's interest in class warfare or the way it deploys its Irish characters inside of this show is something that I faintly have a grasp on because, again, I'm American, but also I think is always constantly intentional. You know what I mean? And then I guess my question for you guys is, okay, so Jim is dead. We'll come back to Jim, I promise.

Jim is dead. His editor, though, like, is played by an actor. Rob and I, like, really like and recognize. So hopefully we'll come back. Jim had a source, a reluctant source over there. And I wasn't sure he was using a male pronoun. He was saying he. I wasn't sure if that was, like,

actually Haley in some regard. But also a common theory I'm seeing floating around is that this is fired comms guy, Robin, Robin Williamson. Oh, interesting. You know, like, is he with an ax now to grind? Will there be enough information between investigative reporter sweet pee? You know, this editor who has, will have a chip on his shoulder about it, and Robin, who is fired from the comms department. Any thoughts and feelings about that, Jody? I think that would be exciting because, yeah, it feels like it does, it's so hard to know really who or what to root for in this situation.

Right. Like with Jim dead, yeah, it seems like a lot of that goes down because what is what is Harper going to do? What are Harper and Sweet P going to do to like expose this story? And what we know is like they're exposing it for their own gain. I think it's interesting to look at Sweet P now doing corporate espionage because I think about in, I think it was season. Yeah, she came in in season three. All of the hand-wringing she did over whether she told Eric about the things that she had kind of heard from her friends that made her understand what was happening at Pierpoint. And she did it in the most moral way possible.

She did it to kind of try and look out for what was right. and where did it get her? You know, like you see the lessons that she's learned and, oh, it got her to Harper and that's probably not a better place to be. But it seems like she's gotten fun. One can only hope, you know. She seems unlike everyone else on this show, energized by the work that they are doing without, you know,

medicinal accompaniment to get up in the morning. If there's one person, honestly, one person that I feel like most pure of heart to root for at this point in Sweet Pee, I would protect Sweet P at all cost is how I feel. And I don't know why that is because, yes, of course, she's in deep in corporate espionage. She's catfishing Jonah.

She's doing like all sorts of things. But I don't know. There's something about her where I was like, but there's something here worth protecting, worth defending. I don't know. What's a little light to medium catfishing in the world of industry, frankly?

Nothing. It's nothing. I mean, yeah, she feels like the collateral damage of the statement. not a single one of us gets out a lot. Right. You know. Great, great.

Great. She is, she is much more so dabbling in the sort of black area, the gray to black area than anyone else. And she seems to have some intentions that could be right and morally sound. But she's, but, but she's in the bed with these people. And there, you know, you talked, you talked about it, Joanna, but like the, the word of the episode is hypocrisy. It's people using other people's hypocrisy to sort of defend their own.

Right. And as a means to make their own right. And there is, of course, the iconic line from Henry's uncle who says public stoning of hypocrites is like bloodletting. It makes us feel better about our own hypocrisies. Yeah. And don't we love it? Jim going out complaining about consent and Haley, I was like, oh, great. What a way to go.

All right. Let's talk about what I'm calling Henry Muchkew's job impression, right? So before we get to the conference, the Web Horizon presentation, we have this UI design conversation, the return of PurePoint kind of into the conversation here, wipe the fucking crypto component off it. I've given that note three fucking times. Love to give notes again and again and again.

Do we think Henry, again, again, His hypocrisy, he's like constant grandstanding of like, this is an app for the people. I am here to sort of like balance the scales of society via my work here, just as I was trying to do with Loomy before it or whatever. But do we think he was personally hurt by a crypto scam, first of all? And secondly, did we enjoy the return of the excellently named Will Hamina Fastbinder? Fast Binder, Fast Binder, from who was the one who sort of gave Eric the boot last season

from Pierpoint. What do you think, Jody? I mean, another one of industries iconic genders. They really... Yeah, they do love it. You know, it's not recessive there. I did. Yeah, I always enjoy when the

smaller characters come back. And I think that it was so like, it was so like shocking even on just an audio level to hear at Your Point reintroduced into the and then to see it in that very like startup tech sort of font on the UI of the app and like that we are pulling this dinosaur into the future.

But it's all banks, babes. Like, you know, you can say we're killing the bank as much as you want to, Whitney. It's all banks. And I think that Peerpoint really represents that. And Willamina had become so the representation of the sort of new age. company man, like, you know, the company man that can fake woke, but it's still capitalism. And I think bringing back that in this moment was really good and probably, well, evidently, really painful for him.

It seems it. I mean, along the lines of the fake woke that's still capitalism, I mean, that's just Whitney throughout this episode where I was just constantly confronted with the idea of, like, sure you don't want Jonah running your company, but Whitney is fundamentally much more dishonest than Jonah ever was. Way worse. Just way worse and way more insidious in so many different ways. He's better at it.

I mean, he's much better at it. And he's clearly trying to get tender over the line of something, of almost like a too big to fail so that when inevitably the investigations come or the House of Cards starts to have some structural integrity problems, that they'll just be too much propping it up for it to actually. crumble. But in doing so, he's just like consistently a piece of shit across the board, and I love watching it, and I'm enjoying seeing him basically try to pull everyone's strings at once to the point that I don't even know who he's not attempting to control at this point.

I think that's interesting, but I think I have a question about peer point in its role on the show going forward, because like, do we want it going forward as just like merely a footnote, you know, on the tender UI user experience? Or when Henry talks about buying a PurePoint stock, like is there a future of PurePoint on the show owned by the Muck family? Or do we want PurePoint coming back in some sort of significant way? Or do we like the idea of moving on from it the way that we fundamentally have this season? What do you think, Jody?

I don't know what idea I like, but I know what idea Eric and Harper would like, which is that they get to really take down peer point once and for all. Right. And it's, you know, direct connection to Tinder gives them more of an opportunity to do that. But it's, it's seeming really unlikely that they're going to succeed there. I continue to have this, like, very weird hope. I know it is weird. For, I know.

For a Yaz and Harper alliance. Based on the... Show. No, look at the look they exchanged. Yeah. When Jim in his final days was there kind of grilling Whitney. Yep. And Whitney's saying some shit.

And Yaz is realizing what a house of card she has hooked herself up to. And Harper's looking at her like, do you see what you've gotten yourself into? And the way in which Henry's entire presentation, which by the way, Kit Harrington told Katie Baker, quote, you get the feeling there's a whole storyline which you never see where he's sort of in therapy talking about all of this. Because Henry's just commenting with a therapy doc

constantly. I deeply relate. I love that for him. But he gets up there and he's like basically, I am tender. My failures and my honor and my intentions are what tender is and I am now selling tender to you based on who I am.

And Whitney is certainly happy to set up Henry and Yaz for the fall here, right? He's like, at the very end of the episode, he's like, us three ride or die. We live and die together, right? Well, he says we ride together, we die together. Right. Dot, dot, dot, bad boys for life.

But also you guys die and I don't is probably what he's hoping he set up here. Certainly. And there's something about, yes, there is my dumb, dumb optimism that Harper and Yas might work together. It's all I ever want. But also, there's this question of, like, who gets to win in stories like this? Is it an American striver like Whitney?

Or is it the people who are deeply insulated by their money and privilege? Like, yes, and Henry. This is like very much in a demented way. He's not nearly as romantic as Gatsby, a Gatsby versus Daisy and Tom sort of thing, where it's just sort of like, you've got Whitney in here saying shit to Henry about like, we are worth more than our origins.

I'm badly paraphrasing, right? But like a very Gatsby-esque, like, I'm better than where I was born. And I want to prove that to everyone. Jonah talking about the way in which his entire self-worth, when his entire self-worth would rise and fall based on the stock valuation of tender. Right. So he's got like everything riding on this. He's just like green light Gatsbying his way into a new life,

trying to put these other people on the hook. But I just don't think that Tom and Daisies of the world like ever. are held responsible for things when they go wrong. But I know we're not reading F, Scott and Sterell, we're watching industry. And so this could be a completely different story. We're, you know, ingesting here. But what do you guys think? This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business.

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Say it with me, the active cash credit card from Wells Fargo, be a 2%er. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash terms of play. I mean, we're still chasing the blinking green light off in the distance one way or another, Joe. I wish I could share your optimism

about Gaz and Harper in particular. I think my read on that scene, though, was fundamentally different. where I read that much more as like, if you'll part in the detour into the world of sports, I don't even watch, like the way in for boxers when they show up and sort of face off

in anticipation of the fight, this felt like more setting them up on opposite sides of the collision that we all know is coming. And I don't think the way out of that collision is going to be they find some side door to work together, in part because I personally would love to find the joy in my life and my heart that Yaz shows in this episode

at just the mere suggestion that Harper might have fucked up. Like the absolute smile that erupts on her face from Whitney, I just don't think that she wants that at this point. How was it? Okay, I want to hear what Jody thinks, but I just want to say that, like, there was a moment in the meeting with the Norton Publishing Group, right, where she's pitching them this story,

Whitney's on the speaker phone. Robin comes in and tries to talk for him, and he's like, don't talk for me, very scary. But when Whitney comes in with a, yeah, I have photographs. Didn't Yas look a little like, I didn't know I was going to burn Harper this badly? I walked in here without all of the information.

What do you think, Jody? And kind of what she said. Yeah, I myself am a romantic like Joanna, who roots for female friendship. And just really hoping that this one can still somehow make it out alive. But I almost found it kind when, not kind, but when Yasmin, I think, is, presented with the idea of the photos and what might be going on.

And she says that Harper is probably being spurred on by her former boss and explains them as a poisonous double act, as though that could not also explain them, Harper and Yaz, or almost everyone on the show. But that she knows that's Harper. Like, she knows that's Harper, you know, and Eric is being spurred on by her and really trying and some, you know, fucked up father way to tether her to the ground. But there is this instinct

that is ongoing, I think, in Yaz and Harper, to protect one another. But the intentions of that protection are always only within themselves. They have this way of being like, I just want what's best for you. I know what's best for you.

And they keep, can't allow the other person to be a whole person. They can kind of only see the best in them or only see the worst in them. And it, for me, like, the most meaningful line and sort of interaction in this episode that really brought it all together for me was that interaction between Henry and, and Whitney before he goes on stage to give the speech. and it's ultimately Whitney who inspires Henry in the way that Yasmin has been so eager to. Yep.

Because Whitney sees Henry. He sees that Henry actually wants to be appreciated for the things that he does feel confident in, that he feels confident are true of himself, which are his upbringing, which are his name. And that's what Whitney sees in him. He says, I don't know what it is, man, but I look at someone like you and I believe you,

and that's kind of messed up, but it's why we're here. And in explaining the app, it's so funny every time they like, when Henry gives this big speech, and he's like, and that's why we're leveraging AI or whatever. You know, it's like it always,

it's still an app, you know? It's still just an app. But when Whitney explains to Henry that, that he needs to give total transparency, which is also what the app is off. And he says, you're giving people the dignity of being able to choose for themselves, which is what Whitney is offering. But what he's really offering is manipulation.

When you are manipulating someone, you are giving them the idea that you are giving them the dignity to choose for themselves. And what you are taking away from them is their dignity. Like Whitney just genuinely master manipulator, like really impressive. watching him actively steal Henry out from Undergaz inside of this episode. And in the same episode, hearing from Jonah, the sort of like heartbreak that Jonah felt of like, I loved him. Like, you know, and there is this like a thread of Whitney's queerness that we should have probably

been perhaps alerted to with our email address from the beginning. But, you know, like Jonah is dropping some coded language here. we get the very close proximity in which he and Henry say, like when Yaz walks in with them, like, nearly kissing a distance apart, Whitney has his hands on Henry's arms and he snaps them down, like, oh, no,

I've been caught manipulating someone else's husband. Manipulating the manipulator's husband, specifically. It's a real showdown. But I love the comp between, you know, Kit Harrington, our short king. Like, Yaz is towering over him in episode three, and she just sort of laughed. She's like, it's just the shoes or whatever.

When Whitney comes super close to him and is like also a little bit towering over him, and in that same exact exchange that Jody was just highlighting, he mentions fascism and he says, you are more and I am less. Even though I'm literally standing inches above you right now, I look up to you, you are more, I am less, like wild towering over him. And that's just a better understanding of Henry's vulnerabilities than Yaz has. He's just better at this control game than Yaz is.

and better at controlling Yaz. And Yaz is getting a slight sense of it, I think, inside of this episode. Henry has no fucking clue and is just like, you know, absolute putty in Whitney's hands. And it's fascinating to watch, honestly. That scene, not the one in the sort of green room before the speech, but in the final scene between Henry and Whitney, where they're in the office and he's towering over him. as a studier of cults, it felt so cult leader-like that like this was an unusually charismatic,

this is an unusually charismatic man who doesn't have all of the means or the background to get precisely where he wants, but what he has is the power to romance people, to manipulate them, to move them around. And he's like, you know, the most, powerful person in a cult

other than the leader is always the number three but the person who feels like their most powerful is the number two but that's just the person who's been most romance and that's Henry like he is creating his number two there oh and Yasmin

is going to be a terrific number three to you know take the ball for everything. Why do I feel like in the toxic cult of this podcast I am the powerless number two as the two of you really run this show in the toxic triple act that we We need the special, the very special essence about you.

Wow. We need that. She's winning you in real time. Real time. This is incredible to see. If only I could tower over you. And anything you want to say about Jonah specifically, Rob, like in terms of Jonah's seen here with Sweet P or anything that he specifically says before he gives over, you know, a bunch of documents to Sweet P with one mere phone call. What do you think?

I mean, yet another way that someone is being manipulated. but he feels, it feels like his eyes are open, despite the fact that he is under the influence, that he's too loaded for riddles. Like, he knows exactly what's happening and he doesn't care because Sweet P knows just what to appeal to? And it's that sweet, sweet sense of revenge. Because what could possibly be more powerful than that? He's also hammered.

Yes. And mid lap dance. You know, like, he is pliable in a lot of different respects. And I think Sweet Pee does a great job of, like, walking a line and being just up front enough. And like, I mean, she's pretty straight with him. when she gets him on the phone, ultimately, about what they're after, but also kind of massaging the truth a little bit.

I want to give the line delivery of the episode to Sweet P when she goes, oh, he's replying about Jonah. Yeah. Very, very good shit. Such a great line reading for, because, like, for a minute, I was just kind of like, oh, she's talking to Jonah. And then I was like, oh, she's talking to Jonah through only. Yeah, exactly.

Now I, and I, and I, that, that comp for sort of, uh, sex work. and the relationship and what's understood there and what's not understood. And it makes sense that that is almost the most honest form of communication that we get is between those two people where one knows that they're being manipulated and is playing into it. And therefore, is that really manipulation? I don't know. And Sweet P, in that capacity, is doing the least manipulation via sex and via physical

intimacy of almost anybody on the show, to be frank. And she also says it. She's out front with it. She's like, this is the job. Who would you say is doing the most? I mean, I think Whitney, in the implication that we were just talking about, just like the classic little bicep touch, all of that stuff definitely is a part of it. Classic bicep touch move.

But I think this is where I find myself wondering, Haley has a game and Whitney has a game. And how much are they the same game is something I was left with and watching? this episode. To what extent are their motivations or actions intertwined and is what Haley is going after and what she's kind of, the way she's spun, Yaz's about in particular, is that an

extension of her working with Whitney in some way? Well, and how much does Whitney know when he says, Haley's supposed to split the load with Henry so let her take half the load off you? There's two options here. Okay. One is the most obvious, which is that Haley has told him. And like the look, I mean, like, I would not

surprised at all. Absolutely not surprised at all if she did. Uh, the other option is that there's, like, next level levels of surveillance on all of these people that Whitney has access to. You know what I mean? Like, even in the Hitler room? We heard squelching. He might have heard the skulching. You know what I mean? Like, we might have all squelched together. Yeah. Sure. Let's talk about Haley. Um, why the hell not, can I give you a Kieran Shipka quote that she gave our pal Katie Baker, right? Please. Yes. Uh, the most fun, fun season. to watch back to back, Shipka said, the scene in the FinTech Conference

where I'm like a scared little deer in headlights talking to Yasmin about how uncomfortable I am, what we did, and I'm appearing to be so naive and innocent and conflicted and torture, and the elevator scene where you go, oh my God, girl is wicked. She's psycho in the best way possible.

She's absolutely deranged. Not to like reharm her a point, but I do just want to like possibly enter this scene between Yaz and Haley and the elevator, the thank you mommy cheek flash, all of that, into the pantheon of like Mad Men elevator scenes. Like Mad Men loves an elevator scenes. Not great, Bob.

I don't think about you at all. I want to burn this place down. Like all these iconic moments happened in the elevators in Mad Men. And here we've got Kiernan Shipka forever emblazoned in my mind and my heart for her performance in that scene in particular. I also want to shout out this very odd choice they had to have an American American actress said, you really rate me. You really rape me is such a Britishism. Sounds very odd coming from an American and sounds so close to you really raped me that I saw a lot of people

were confused by it. So I thought that was a really, I don't know how intentional that choice was, but I was like that, that is a, that was a strong moment. Jody, your thoughts in the elevator. I mean, yeah, I had the same thought about the word choice and in a show like industry, you kind of feel like it has to be intentional. And I think we saw that, like, with Harper early on, that she had certain, you know, Britishisms that she'd already picked up. And it's like, you just have to say hospital, not the hospital there. Everyone will laugh at you. So, like, it makes enough sense that she, that she would say it.

But I do think that the similarity to the word rape, like, maybe not on Haley's level, but on the writing level, has to be there. I, there is something. I should probably dip a little deeper on this with the therapist. But there is something to me about when Yaz gets her comeuppance that I find so delicious, even when it's someone else doing something terrible, even when it's like there's just, there's something about Yaz that she's,

she's discovered so many things that she's good at and positively not one thing that she's great at. And every time she learns that she's on the back foot, I just, like, in such the worst, it's like the worst instinct in me, I love it because she always, it is her privilege. She always becomes convinced that she got a home run when she started on third. It happens constantly. And so like to see her realize in real time that she is dealing with someone who is much more capable of doing what she thinks it is she's doing. And she's really realizing that about Whitney,

but I think on a slower level about Whitney because she also still kind of wants, she wants his power, she wants those things to realize it about Haley. And then for Haley to just literally taunt her. I mean, like, it is sexual, sure, but like, I mean, she moons her, you know, like she taunts her and says, thank you, Mommy.

I loved it. And I loved it as an elevator scene. Like, I loved Yaz's looking straightforward. the whole time and watching that look come over her face. Yeah, there's like equal parts, mad men type elevator scene and like describing the qualities of the Joker and the Dark Night in this. And like a like Yaz has gotten into business with someone she fundamentally does not understand who might just want to watch the world burn ultimately.

I find myself with these two, Jody, you said it that it appeals to kind of the worst parts of you to see Yaz have her comeuppance. I don't even know that I agree with that because I think part of the reason that is scene works and is so satisfying is because it's precipitated by the scene you talked about, Joe, or that Kieran and Shippa talked about, where you see Yaz almost go like full dark side. Try magnesium for anxiety. The tri-magnesium, like, you know, appealing to her, you have to protect your agency from this douchebag reporter, like shifting all of the blame and attention away from all of the,

like, at best, line walking at worst, clearly over the line bullshit that she has done with Haley, She says the price is, the price of his actions is your trauma. You can't let him take away your agency as well. While she is actively trying to take away her agency. She's doing it. The reveal that maybe she hasn't taken away any agency is, that is delicious. I do think there's something, there is something for me that's like, hmm, do I need to look inward on this?

Because Yaz is a woman. And so like when I see Yaz getting her come up and I'm like, Oh, am I also doing a Yaz? Like, am I loving seeing this woman's down? But he's a girl's girl. Always and forever. Even when those girls are Yaz and Harper, you know, I trust. We support women's wrongs on this podcast.

We always support me. Oh, absolutely. And there are so few women's rights to support on industry that we simply must support their wrongs. It's true. And yet it's delicious. See, I feel like I have no choice under these circumstances, but to support the toxic male friendship that's developing between Henry and Whitney as well.

Of course. Representation. Matters, Ronald. Representation does matter. But again, I think part of the reason that scene works, part of the reason all of the come-up in says for these characters work, but for Yaz in particular because she is so smug, is like her trying to flex in episode three

and thinking she is sitting on her throne calling the shots only to find out that she has, in fact, sat herself in the cuck chair, is just a very satisfying turn of plot for any character to be involved. Also, the way she, like, is so gleefully participates in Robin getting fired when Robin's like, hey, I'm qualified for this job and who the fuck are you exactly? Precisely, when did Yaz get so into PR? Right. Right when she discovered shoulder pads, I was like, comps, I was like, calm?

Yeah. What's happening? An absolute comms queen. I want to note one other thing on the Haley front, and I was thinking about it because, you know, we talked about Yaz's shoulder pads. And I, fashion has always played a part in this show. I feel like in this season especially, like they've, they're out of Pure Point and so they're able to really let it loose.

And Yaz has clearly dialed her fashion down, like her sort of, you know, more avant-garde fashion down now that she's back in this office. I was so stunned by the Haley Cheeks reveal because she's wearing such a terrible outfit. Like she's wearing a pretty, It is a short skirt, but it's sort of a dowdy skirt.

She's wearing like this long-wasted and high-necked vest. I noticed that when she flips her skirt up, it completely messes up her outfit. Like her vest, her vest goes all askew. Like it's not an outfit that is made to have that under it. And like that made it, it would make, it made it all the more shocking to me. And I know it would make it all the more shocking to Yaz,

who saw that outfit and said, you. Like she, you know, she would have not liked that outfit and she would have definitely not expected what was under it or what was coming. And I think to go back to the sort of like, we support women, girls, girl,

Yaz's dressing up her like absolute disgusting manipulation inside of like, I'm a girl, I'm promoting you. I tell you you can have the night off, you know, in Vienna when we go there. Like I can, you know, etc., etc., etc., etc., like, or sorry, they were in Austria. We'll talk about Vienna in a second.

Like, it's so vile. And, like, I have defended horrible women across so many HBO properties. And I will probably still defend yes when the time comes. But, yeah, I was very satisfied by Haley turning the tables on her here. And I love this for, I think Charlie Heaton's really good in this episode, like, sort of burying the ghost of Jonathan Byers. And I think Karen Shipka does a great job in these last couple's episodes, bearing both Sabrina and Sally Draper, you know, six feet under.

So I love the new folks. I mean, Max Mangela, too. Like, obviously he's been great the whole way through. But this episode, I was like, you know, wow, he can really play this sort of, you know, charming, seductive character. That is one of the great, you know, Rob, you were talking about that, like, season four is really working for you. That is one of its greatest successes is how seamlessly it has brought these new characters in.

Yeah, and I think with all these manipulations, and that's clearly always been a part of industry, like the ways in which these characters are revving each other up or tearing each other down or trying to point them in directions that would be beneficial to them personally, baked into the DNA of the show. But with everything happening right now and so many sides playing each other, even within the same companies, it's turned into the kind of show where I want to go back and I want to isolate, like, what was the exact moment when Haley realized that Yaz was playable for her? Right? Like, was it literally from the first time they met in the hallway of, you know, the manner, basically, as Haley kind of very performatively was taking a snooze on a daybed. Like, was that part of the play from the jump? Was it already kind of like in the works at that point? Or was it something she calculated from the line testing she did and suggesting she jump into Yaz's bed in the first place? I think the moment it's cemented for her, or at least she was showing her hand a bit, is when she tells Yaz, you know,

Whitney is my boss. Whitney and Henry are my bosses. I have to. I can't hear that from you. Because she could have just, she could have just not taken the night off. She could have taken it. She could have said nothing. But she does tip a little bit like, I'm not yours. And I think she does it not to show Yasmin that she's more in charge of this, but to show you, show her, you have to make me yours more so that then she gets even more power over. Right. I love that interpretation. I also think it's so crucial to think about the moment that she, like, decided to tell you. Yaz about Jim.

For sure. That sort of more as well. Absolutely. All right. From Thank you Mommy to all the disgusting poppy daddy stuff that's happening with Rishi and his partner in the car. A lot of... I did think you were about to read an email from Thank you, Mommy.

No, no, no. Just like, thank you, Mommy and thank you. And then the daddy stuff that he requires from this girl in the car is like, if we had any questions about the father-daughter, Eric Harper stuff and how like disgustingly mixed up in psychosexual power dynamics it is this is so clear inside of this thank you mommy

and like daddy stuff we get here but I think that like Rishi Rishi in this young woman in the car and then Rishi and his ex-mother-in-law and this idea that like his existence is being sort of erased from his like whitewashed out of his son right, his son is now not going to have his name at all.

He's being deleted here. And it's an interesting parallel. We're going to get to like two bad dads doing a lot of cocaine together. But like interesting parallel to Jim's, the mother of Jim's child being in the episode is like nobody knows you exist. No. Right. And then Rishi gets deleted here. I love that line.

And I wanted it said to every single character. Right. Yeah. I was like, I love this woman who we know nothing about who is a one. nightstand coming in and just telling someone, no one knows who you are. And I would like it said to every person on the show. Right. I'm also ready to read her story about modern dating vis-a-vis numbers, vis-a-vis Kierkegaard. Like, I'm on the hook for nothing. I was like, she did not bring Kierkegaarding to it. Jim did. Jim made it about Kierkegaard. I was listening.

But thematically, it's not about Kierkegaard. I was a little bit like, how does plagiarism work? Because this is a beat that I'm kind of on too. And I wrote about dating and numbers and height somewhat recently. And I was like, she's, I'm listening. Do you know about Bonnie Blue, this UK only fans person? Do you want to share with the class, Jody Walker? I mean, I just know about her to the extent that, and I would somewhat separate that from the transactional state of app dating, but yes, that she, I believe has done a few specials where she has slept with an astronomical number of men. I'm not sure the heights that it's reached. She tried to break the world record for a number of men slept with within a day and got to like, yeah, and got to over a thousand, it was like a thousand,

100 and something or whatever. And then another woman like beat her record like, you know, within like she broke her record and then she broke her record or something like that. But anyway, this is like a very well-known UK only fans personality and, and Jim's one-night stand who is now, a single parent, I guess. But wasn't she already, is sort of writing about this transactional nature. And this is how we get half of the episode title, right? A thousand, a thousand

units is like about Bonnie Blue and then, and one Marilyn is sort of Jim's cokey rant that he has at the end of this episode. So this idea of like, which Jody brought up earlier about this idea of transactional nature of sex and how it relates to all

of this capitalist pursuit of power and securing of legacy if you prefer, et cetera, et cetera. That's what it's all about. And those are the bookends of this episode.

Coked-up Jim, super weird guy. I don't particularly want to hang out with him. I certainly don't agree with everything he's saying, but like the end points he starts to reach for. Jim had some good points. Rob Mahoney would like to state on the podcast. A couple good points from Jim. Not what I'm saying.

Not what I'm saying. The gestures he makes at the volume and scale and dissociation of modern life. Basically this idea of like once you can have an infinite amount of the thing you think you want, what does literally anything mean anymore? I do find some resonance in that idea. And I do find some resonance in that idea as it applies to all of these characters in their aspirations for power and their aspirations for a little more money or a little more control.

And we got an email that I thought was really interesting from Isaiah who was asking specifically about Rishi, about, this is a quote from his email. I said, Rishi's fallen so far from his initial post at Pierpoint, but I'm not convinced he's materially different from other characters. Both Harper and Yaz also regularly make choices that would land them in jail. Is Rishi just unlucky, or is there a better reason for his incessant failure? And I think, like, all of these people are addicts in different ways, and they're chasing after different things, and they make compromises all the time.

I don't know how the two of you feel about this, but to me, it's like a pretty faint line between Rishi stumbling down the path that leads to like worse and worse and worse and worse outcomes and ultimately like the kinds of endeavors that Harper or Yaz or Eric are these other characters. Like Eric is a great example. Like he is an inch away from losing basically his life savings. And once that happens, how short is the distance between him and Rishi? Well, yeah, Rishi exists as this thing that we love to see in fiction, which is like, there before the grace.

Like, you know, this is the cautionary tale of like how badly things can see. spin, how far down the rabbit hole one can go, how far you can fling yourself off a balcony and still not be put out of your misery and still be having to crawl your way forward in this life. But I think that I was thinking about that in terms of Jim at the beginning of this episode when he's like popping riddle in, I think, and just trying to get through a night of writing, can you really- Going down Wikipedia rabbit holes? Who could recognize this? And his losing time is so close to what we saw with Henry and, like, his drug trips and losing time.

But, like, there's just this great cushion around Henry that does not exist around someone like Jim. And so, like, Henry ends that ill-advised drug binge losing time with, like, a cushy new job. And, like, you know, all the stars aligning for him. And Jim winds up dead from a laced batch of coke. And so once again, the show is just telling us, like, there are different opportunities, obviously, for different people. That's like a no-dust statement. But just like inside of this question you're asking,

I think Eric will be okay because he's been rich enough. I think he's reached a height of richness where you're golfing on the same course as Donald Trump. Sure. But, like, there is no, like, bottoming out for an Eric any moment. more. Yeah, he says it's his daughter's inheritance, but it's not bankrupting him per se. I mean, I think we noticed severance was it?

Pierpoyden was more than that. So, but I think, yeah, I mean, Joanna, you said it. Cushin was sort of precisely the word that I was thinking, and Rishi does literally fling himself off of a balcony with no cushioning. He is a person of color. He is a person of color in the UK class.

And, you know, I think it's a note that the sort of like three main people of color that we followed are Eric Harper and Rishi. Eric and Harper are Americans. It takes some of that out of their, out of the story that we get with Rishi as he falls and falls and falls with no safety nets. I do also think that he's despicable. Oh, yeah. Like, I was, I mean, this, this. And it's the more of those safety nets are taken. away from him, I think the more the show opens your eyes to that. It's like we're obviously

dealing with all despicable people. And the question at hand from Joanna was kind of, is, is he any worse? Is he any less lucky? And the answer is probably no. But I think even for us as viewers, as we see wealth stripped away, as we see privilege stripped away, as we see Rolex's pond and knuckles bloodied, that also means. makes it harder as the viewer to interpret him as good or redeemable as much as purely bad. And like watching him film that woman in the car and make her call him down. It's just, it's disgusting. And like there are those lingering sort of residual feelings from earlier seasons of like maybe this man can be redeemed and you don't want to see himself break his ankles.

Goodness, did I not want to see that? but I'm also tired of him. I am tired of his bullshit, frankly. I think it's very easy to read him jumping off of a balcony and breaking his ankles in the aforementioned fashion as rock bottom for Rishi. But I think both of you have circled it, which there really is just nothing more cursed than having to interrupt your own videoing of your sex capades in which you're asking this woman to call you daddy

so she can get another bump because the mother-in-law of the, the wife that you got killed is calling you to basically inform you in so many ways that you're never going to see your son again, at least in any unsupervised fashion. Like, that's about as bad as it gets. What's worse, Jody, for a man, than having your legacy erased? Well, I was going to say, Rob, that the worst thing actually to happen is to watch someone feel sorry for themselves, and that scenario, which is what we're watching Rishi do. It's like also what we're watching, I mean, to a slightly,

lesser extent, like watching Jonah, you know, feel like the victim when he's like in a strip club in the middle of the day, rich and drunk and disgusted, you know, like, it is a show about watching people feel sorry for themselves knowing what they've done. I want to, for a second, I regret to inform you, I have to talk about Alfred Hitchcock for a second. And I have to say that like in when I talk about prestige television, one of my favorite things to talk about is Alfred, and I've said it a million times. So fast word if you've heard me say it before. But Albert Hitchcock had this thing you like to talk about, which was suspense versus surprise. And the example that he would give is like if you have a scene with two men talking in a room and all of a sudden the room blows up, that's surprise.

if you have a scene with two men talking in a room and you show the bomb under the table ticking away and you keep cutting back and forth to the men and the bomb and the men in the bomb, then we at home are just like on the edge of our seat knowing something's coming in, that he prefers suspense to surprise. So I will say, when this shady dude shows up outside the pub,

I'm like, the bomb starts ticking. When he throws that his like sashay of drugs on the table, I was like, there's the bomb. And it's just sitting there all through the Koki Rants. and I was like, I was like, Jim is not making it out of this episode of life. Like that felt very clear to me. Rishi, I was a question mark to me. Like, I wasn't sure.

But, like, Conrad called it cokey nonsense, like all the stuff that Jim was saying inside of this, right? And he says, quote, but embedded in it is a bit, a little bit of a critique of certain aspects around commodification of personhood through capitalism and now everybody's identity is now monetizable. And so, like, see, I'm not the only one who's awesome. Yeah. Rob is sitting here taking notes and he's like, this is a magnanimity. Mophas. And to me, I'm like, it doesn't really matter what he's saying here. Because, like, what we're watching are the final, like, horrible, desperate minutes

of someone's life. And I, like, Jim is also despicable, you know, to use Jody's very accurate word here. And so, like, my limits for empathy do exist. But also, like, I don't know. He's being snuffed out by someone far more powerful because my interpretation of events is that this guy that they mean outside the club who's like, let me save you from this grifter. I myself, a guy hired to kill you.

Yeah. A corporate assassin, presumably. You know, is hired, I have to assume by Whitney to do this after Jim makes some very fine points, you know, in front of Amelia Dmilde Morgan. He's like, you will not embarrass me in front of chicken shop date. No. And, you know, cranks at the volume, cranks with the volume in order to either call in the noise complain himself or whatever the case may be, leaves him there, hoping that Rishi will also take

the lace drugs, but Rishi had his, because they were in Rishi's apartment, right? Because it's his stash of Coke in the bathroom that he finds, so which, like, I think saves him from the fentanyl Coke, saves him, quote unquote. But that this is, this is, we just watched an assassination of a character and I thought it was really, really well done. Like, I really, really liked the end of this episode as, like, horrible as it was to watch. For sure. Jody, what did you think? Oh, yeah, just, I mean, an excellent, excellent showcase and suspense. Because in addition to the bomb being thrown down on the table, we're also watching Rishi look between, you know,

the volume being slowly turned up, its own amount of suspense that ultimately leads to the police arriving. And to an open window that he's thinking about throwing himself outside of, you get the sort of, it's almost like a brief reprieve of him doing that from Jim taking the drug. And then the police come. And then he does it. I mean, it is so heart stopping over and over and over.

The suspense is so high. And it is the undercurrent of it all is Jim's Coki Rant, which Rob's Awesome points in. And I guess so did I because I wrote down the line. We built an interface with the world that gives us what we want, but not what we want to want. And it's this guy coked out thinking he's making a point and he is, but he's. part of the point. You know, he's, he's snorting drugs from Rishi, a drug dealer. Like, we built all these interfaces or these interfaces were built for us and now we're a part of them and we don't know how to stop using them in order to see what we really want. And at some point,

is there a difference? And at some point, is it all just a bomb on the table? There is this, this line that Whitney has in the first episode, right? He says, late capitalism is a carcinogen. It breeds a product for everything that you think you need. But I have the product people really want. Right? Who, who, who, what person that says that would ever be the problem, you know? Yeah. You know, Rob, you know, things like, he also has some very fine points. What I really want is a frictionless transparent access to the full suite of banking and investment products. Yeah. You know, that is what I really want when I wake up in the morning.

I think that's a means of uplift. Absolutely. Rob, what do you want to say about Jim's many fine points here at the end of his life? I think so in the real time watching this episode, I think I was less clear of whether the Coke was laced or not. Basically of whether this mystery man's inclusion in this scene and like intrusion on their lives was to kill Jim specifically or simply to like discredit him by putting enough coke on the table, turning the volume up, presumably calling the police himself to call in the noise complaint and getting the fuck out of Dodge. And the overdose was just like maybe an unfortunate side effect of the pure volume that Jim has been putting up his nose.

But as you lay it out, Joe, I think you're right. I think it just makes more sense that it's a very specific manipulation and more of a hit as opposed to just kind of taking Jim out of the picture. I feel like one snort and you're dead is like... But was it once? It seems like he's been snorting for hours. But like Rishi goes to the bathroom for a minute and when he comes back out. I mean, yeah, I agree that it, I did, I knew that guy was up to something and I just didn't totally know what it was. And the immediate death of Jim felt like, I feel like the way the camera's like, this one's on me boys and drops the session.

The dark blue, the dark blue. Makes total sense. And we should say the reason any of these characters are in a room together, specifically this room at Rishi's place, is basically that it's implied, if not altogether, confirmed that Rishi has been like trying to dig in. into Jim's apartment, his flat, maybe taking his car keys to find more information either for himself or for Sterntile. We don't really know in what capacity he's doing any of that. He also said he's been ghosted by Harper.

So I would like to retry... When Harper said to Sweet P, you won't have to see Rishi again, and I was like, she's lying. Well, I'm sorry. Looks like Harper kept one... Temporarily kept one promise by not... The temporary being the key part. Returning some phone calls from Rishi.

I was going to give her... one grain of credit for that, I guess. As soon as things got complicated, I just have zero doubted my mind that Harper is returning that call. I agree, but it's moot now. Can I take you to needle drop corner here? Please. I know at this point it seems like I'm just trying to date the music supervisor on this show,

but I just want to let you know that Vienna from my UltraVox is genuinely one of my favorite songs of all time, has never been used lightly in a TV show or a movie before. I'm not, I don't think they're intentionally alluding to, you know, it's been using the Americans, 13 reasons why, like, yellow jackets twice. Like, it's been used again and again. It's always used at a huge moment when, like, someone dies or something monumental is going on

because this is this huge epic, like, sweeping, romantic. There's a violin solo inside of this, like, new wave song sort of moment. but I love a T's here. They used almost the, they let almost the entire track play, which is like very unusual. And I just think it's like, I thought it was a really,

really good pick here. Our Palcadie Baker identified something really fun and interesting about a different track that I completely miss, Forever Young, which plays the very end when Rishi's on the ground, right?

Also fabulous. Is Alfaville, which is the name of the band that did that track, is the name of the Financial Times blog where the aforementioned financial journalist, Sam McCrum, first published his, quote, House of Wirecard series. Both the band and the website derived their names from the 1965 Jean-Luc Godard film, Alphaville, in which a secret agent named Lemmy Caution infiltrates the city of Alphaville

to bring down its computer-ruled technocracy. Anyway, looking at the text in McCrown's very first Alphaville post, this is Katie's incredible recap. Please read her coverage. I couldn't help but notice the similarities to Diker's article. So, like, basically Dan McCrum's first Alphaville post is, like, very textually similar to, like, the bit of Jim's article that we see in this show. And it's from a blog called Alphaville, which is the name of the band that plays at the very end of the episode.

I mean, Katie Baker, ladies and gentlemen, that's incredible investigative work on its own. 10 out of 10, no notes. Any thoughts or feelings about, like, we get one, two, three tracks here played at the end of the episode. Any thoughts or feelings about it? Well, quick detour on the financial journalism note. I mean, just because we talked a little bit about Amelia de Moldenberg's appearance in this episode, and, like, obviously, the scrum is like a huge confrontation moment for Jim that ultimately might seal his fate. I'm just, like, always so fascinated by industry's relationship to financial media, tech media.

Like, you have Hannah Murphy of the FT cited, like, specifically by name in this episode. And they do this balance that I think is wise for any show or any movie to do. where it is like 90 to 95% real people, real tech publications, like real outlets, real banks, and then you're just kind of shoehorning in the works of fiction to contextualize them. And we talked about this a little bit last week with Deutsche Bank as well. But it was just overwhelming here as they're formulating their rollout strategy for Tender about, oh, you know, we're going to hit this podcast. We're going to do the tech crunch event.

Like it was just like it was so specific in a way that I admire the way that mounts you in the world that the show. wants to inhabit. Joni, anything you want to say about financial journalism or new wave music? I was just thinking,

as Rob was listing off, everything like hits taken by Royal Bank of Scotland when Reachie the chalky pinstrike, chocky pinstrike, another great fashion moment for the episode.

That's just free advice, though. That comes with the drugs. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was forever, without even all of that context, I was like, oh, huge. hit with doing forever young with the broken ankles.

I, they, they know how to play out an episode and I'm still, I'm like, I'm struggling right now, like not to put my hands over my eyes, which is what I did when, win the camera. Because for a second, you're like, oh, he lived. And also, you know, speaking of the suspension, when you see Rishi jumping, you can see water. The Thames is right there. So like, maybe. I know. I was like, maybe. water? How does, how do physics work? And they work like that. They work like that

if you jump deep first. Can you be waterfront on this side of the building and this side of the building? Is it right around? There's a houseboat and I never knew what's going on. And it wasn't and I mean this is this is morbid but you're, it's like oh no

not the sweet relief of death in fact a worse thing. This is what the actor told Kitty Baker quote you sort of see that very slight smirk on his face. I think he is at ease with where he has landed. And you also, I also wondered like, oh, he's not screaming.

Has he taken enough drugs to like really not feel this horrific thing? My feet have been shattered. Wow. One can only hope. Jody, welcome to the pit. Welcome to our waking nightmares, watching body trauma on a weekly basis. You know I'm in DePitt.

You know I'm in DePitt. Yeah, Jody had the information on the Rooney connection to the pit before we did. True. All right. That is it, I think, for this episode of industry, unless you guys had anything else you wanted to mention. No. Thank you to everyone who works on this show.

Devin Ronaldo, Dev came, dev popped in with a Marty Supreme reference, of course, for Forever Young in the chat. So, of course, we should shout out Marty Supreme. Thank you to Justin Sales for his work in this episode. Thank you to industry music supervisor, Ollie White for just incredible, constant, impeccable work. And we'll be back for more coverage of DePitt later this week.

We'll also have an, we should, we're trying to have an early drop of this podcast because the next episode of industry itself is dropping early because of the Super Bowl ever heard of it. So that episode of industry is dropping Friday. Our episode covering it should drop some time thereafter. We will let you know when. But we will see you soon, no matter what. what, harpsichord strap on a Gmail.com,

press tishev at Spotify.com. If we got anything about, oh, I don't know, British politics, journalism, how much coke does it take so you don't feel your feet shattering or any other? Kierkegaard. You know, certainly not fashion. Jody is an impeccable source

on that I am confident about that. No, no, no, no, no. I request more. Anyone who is also on the fashion beat of industry, please email at harpsichord strap on a Gmail. I just personally would love over the... Fashion in and of itself. Oh, yes.

Just a big ticket fashion. Over the course of this season, I would like to see the shoulder pads rise episode by episode. As Yaz's esteem and projections in the workplace can only rise to compensate for... She's like Miss Jay on America's Next Top Model.

Niche reference, but it goes and grows as the season goes on. I got you. All right. We will see you soon. Hopefully in Accra. I'm hoping we're getting a flight there soon. And bye. This episode is brought to...

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