‘Industry’ S4E4: Daddy, Drugs, and Drama

Hello, welcome back to the PressU TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney. I'm Jodi Walker. And we've got all three of us here to talk to you about season four, episode four of Industry 1000 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. But before we get into episode four, which is a wild episode and a lot happens, obviously. We want to check in with our with our beloved Jodi here, who was not here last week to give her thoughts and feelings on episode three. So Jodi Walker, take us through your entire experience. I mean, my first feelings are Robinson Mahoney Fund or Mahoney Robinson Fund. I missed you. Was 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 is 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? What can I say? It's so beautiful. I learned it from you. 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 it felt like kind of a lot of setup to me. I wouldn't say that it was my favorite 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. 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 Jodi. This episode was written by Mickey Down and Conrad Kay. I've never heard of them and directed by Michelle Saville. And there is a cameo from Amelia de Meldonborg. There sure is. Did you guys see what her character name was? You know we did, Jo. 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 Moldenburg, 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 at a you know a press scrum uh her character's name is vivian poulet magazine which of course means vivian chicken shop yeah i mean just won't they do it won't they do it really really good stuff uh she was great yeah like you know she had one line and i really bought it but 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 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 um so it was fun to see them together um so you're saying send amelia to akra like why not get her on oh my god okay yeah i agree get her knocking on doors yeah maybe that is like the backdoor pilot of this episode you're right jody even episode four is a lot of setup it turns out um 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 uh jody has studied abroad in the uk so she is much more seasoned than I am in the culture. Jodi is an adult woman talking about her study abroad experience offline. I'm just glad it wasn't in Barcelona. I took a trip to Ibiza. 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 publications. So keep emailing us. Jodi, where can folks reach us if they want to? Oh, they can reach us over at harpsichordstrapon at gmail.com. They sure can. Is that right? Yeah, they really can. I'm glad you have heard that someone, because my mind had always kind of been in the Daily Mail chord 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 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 character. So I thought I would just run this down. So Ricky Martin with a 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 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 to not find a good thing said about this guy, Morgan McSweeney. So this is the power behind the throne. The idea being that like the prime minister, Kirsten is like a very inexperienced politician and Morgan, even though he's not elected at all, is sort of running things behind the scenes to a certain degree. And that was very much the impression that was given in that seen. 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. Yeah, 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 Bevin, 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. She is a favorite of McSweeney, so I definitely see her as future Prime Minister 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 Bridget Phillips and education secretary. So and last but not least, Lisa Dern, who shows up again in this episode deeply against her will. The cop here is Angela Rayner. Rayner 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, standing up for herself, especially against those the 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 Rayner and a Lisa Dern versus Ricky Martin with a Y with a Jenny Bevan as sort of a pawn in the middle of this power struggle struggle is like an interesting dynamic being set up here um 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 Keir Starmer's uh approval rating uh negative 57 currently in the UK. And there's a lot of concerned op-eds about the rise of Nigel Farage. So the fact that we saw an actor 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, Farage-ism 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 chilled 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, 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 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 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, Jodi, or how do you feel you understand that? I actually deeply understand that. And what I would call it is Yaz's relationship to semi-sheer turtlenecks, which is also something that I'm a big fan of. And I really think she was wearing my preferred brand, Marcella, New York City. And so I felt really connected to her in this episode. I was 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. So fresh. 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 do want to ask you, Jodi, were you aware of the Ghislaine Maxwell connection to Yaz 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 the her father's death on a yacht, etc. Yeah. Okay. So I think, well, what I think is happening here is like, though we are taking very clear world-world inspos, 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 it 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 edge 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 wire 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 is 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 the 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 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 and 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, what he was doing. And here we don't have that. And like with, you know, I don't know. It's just this this episode was it was really good and it was really hard to watch. Like 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 Sweet Pea doing corporate espionage. Yeah. Right. I do feel like the show, though, I feel like this is part of why, to me, it's as consistently great as it's ever been. Jodi, I know you were saying last week felt like a little bit more of a setup episode for you. I think we're just in such a zone of constant anxiety attack, deep character study, all of these broadening elements with the espionage and journalism parts of this story. that like something about industries is 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. If there is a great takedown of Tender, we even get kind of that – 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 gray to black. There's no like we're living in the ambiguity of this moment anymore. They are manipulating the market for gain. And so if Tender, a clearly busted and fraudulent company that's doing God knows what, frankly, as far as what they're leveraging and inaccurate 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 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 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 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 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 Leeds accent as Jim. these like and then like when we see uh his editor first when he's talking on his phone he has a mug that's like the brentford bees 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 lgbtb or lgbt or something like that like you know there like very like we 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 hear, um, you know, this Irishman and this guy from Leeds talking about taking down the elites and, and, 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 in class warfare uh or the way it deploys its irish characters inside of this show um 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 um and then my i guess my question for you guys is okay so jim is dead we'll we'll come back to Joe, 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 um oh interesting you know like is he with an axe now to grind will there be enough information between uh investigative reporter sweet pea um you know this editor who has uh will have a chip on his shoulder about it and uh 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 it does it's so hard to know really who or what to root for in this situation like right with Jim dead yeah it seems like a lot of that goes down because what is what what is Harper gonna do what are Harper and Sweet Pea gonna do to like expose this story and what we know is like they're exposing it for their own gain I I think it's interesting to look at Sweet Pea now doing corporate, corporate espionage, because I think about in, I think it was season, yeah, she came in in season three, um, 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 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 having fun. One can only hope. She seems, unlike everyone else on this show, energized by the work that they are doing without 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 Pea, like I would like protect Sweet Pea at all costs. Yeah. 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, yeah, there's 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, I just she she feels like the collateral damage of the statement. Not a single one of us gets out a lot. Right. She she is she is much more so dabbling in the sort of black area, the gray to black area than than anyone else. And she seems to have some intentions that could be right and morally sound. but she's in the bed with these people. And you talked about it, Joanna, but the word of the episode is hypocrisy and it's people using other people's hypocrisy to sort of defend their own 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 Muck's few jobs 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 um wipe the fucking crypto component off it i've given that note three fucking times um love to give notes again and again and again do we think henry again his hypocrisy he's like constant grandstanding of like this is an app for the people this is i am here to sort of like balance the scales of society via my work here uh 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 Wilhelmina Fassbinder, Fassbinder, Fassbinder, from who was the one who sort of gave Eric the boot last season from PurePoint? What do you think, Jodi? I mean, another one of industry's iconic gingers. They really, you know, it's not recessive there. Um, I did. I, yeah, I, I always enjoy when the, when the smaller characters come back. And I think that I, it was so like, it was so like shocking, even on just an audio level to hear your point reintroduced into the mix and then to see it in that very like startup tech sort of font on the UI of the app. And like that we're, 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 Wilhelmina 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 and probably well evidently really painful uh 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 just way worse and way more insidious in so many different ways and so it's better at it i mean he's much better at it and he's clearly trying he's 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 like 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 PowerPoint and 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 pure point stock like is there a future of pure point on the show owned by the muck family or so you know do we want pure point coming back in some sort of significant way or do we like the idea of moving on from it the way that we like 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 is it's seeming really unlikely that they're gonna succeed there i i continue to have this like very weird hope i know it is weird I know. For a Yaz and Harper alliance. Based on the show, 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 cards 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 coming in with a therapy doc constantly. Oh yeah. 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's set up here. Certainly. And there's something about, yes there is my dumb dumb optimism that harper and yaz 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 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 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, Whitney's 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 gats being 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 uh i know we're not reading f scott's jerald we're watching um industry and so this could be a completely different story where we're uh you know ingesting here but what do you guys think i mean we're still chasing the blinking green light off in the distance one way or another joe i i wish i could share your optimism about gazz and harper in particular i i think my read on that scene though was fundamentally different where i i read that much more as like if you'll if you'll pardon the detour into the world of sports i don't even watch like the weigh-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. 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. Okay, I want to hear what Jodi thinks, but I just want to say that there was a moment in the in the meeting with with the Norton Publishing Group, right, where she's she's pitching them this story. Whitney's on the speakerphone. 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 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, Jodi? 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 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 Yas 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 in 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 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 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 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. 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 when when Henry gives this big speech and he's like, and that's why we're leveraging a whatever. It's still an app, you know, it's still just an app. But when Whitney explains to Henry that he needs to give total transparency, which is also what the app is offering. 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 masterman like Whitney just genuinely master manipulator like really impressive watching him actively steal Henry out from under Yaz inside of this episode um 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 uh perhaps alerted to with uh our email address uh from the beginning but you know like jonah's dropping some coded language here we get the very close proximity that in which he and and henry say like when yaz walks in with them like nearly kissing a distance apart when he 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 it's a real showdown but i love i love the comp between you know ken harrington our short king like yaz is towering over him in episode three and she just sort of like laughs 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 while 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 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 they're most powerful is the number two. But that's just the person who's been most romanced and that's henry like he is creating his number two there oh and yasmin is gonna be a terrific number three to you know take the fall forever 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 you know in the toxic triple act that we have created We need the special, the very special essence about you. Wow. We need that from you. She's written in you in real time. Real time. This is incredible to see. If only I could tower over you. anything you want to say about jonah specifically rob like in terms of jonah's scene here with sweet p or anything that he specifically says um before he gives over you know a bunch of documents to 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 he 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. He is pliable in a lot of different respects. And I think Sweet Pea does a great job of walking a line and being just up front enough. 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 Pea when she goes, oh, he's replying. about Jonah. Very, very good shit. Such a great line reading. 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. And that comp for sort of 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. Well, and Sweet Pea 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 like little bicep touch all of that stuff definitely is a part of it classic bicep touch but i think this is where i'm i find myself wondering hayley has a game and whitney has a game and how much are they the same game is something i was left with in watching this episode and to what extent are their motivations or actions intertwined and is what hayley is going after and what she's kind of the way she's spun Yaz 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. One is the most obvious, which is that Haley has told him and like the look she, I mean, like I would not be 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 witty has access to you know what i mean like even in the hitler room we heard squelching he might have heard the squelching you know what i mean like we might have all squelched together yeah sure let's talk about hailey um why the hell not can i give you a karen and shipka quote that she gave our pal katie baker right please yes uh the most fun scenes 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 about 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 um not to like rehammer a point but I do just want to like possibly enter this scene between Yasmin Haley in 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 scene. It's not great, Bob. I don't think about you at all. I want to burn this place down. Like all these iconic moments happen 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 You have an American actress said, you really raped me. You really raped 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 that was a strong moment. Jodi, your thoughts on the elevator? I mean, yeah, I had the same thought about the word choice. And in the show like industry, you kind of feel like it has to be intentional. um 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 we just have to say hospital not the hospital there everyone will laugh at you um so like it makes enough sense that she that she would say it but i do think that the similarity to the word rate like maybe not on hayley's level but on the writing level has to be there. I, there is something I, 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, there's just, there's something about Yaz that she's, um, 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 I in such the worst, it's like the worst instinct in me. I love it because she always 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 like 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 to hate 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 looking straight forward the whole time and watching that look come over her face. Yeah, there's like equal parts mad men type elevator scene and like uh describing the qualities of the joker and the dark knight 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 i find myself with these two jody you said 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 scene works and is so satisfying is because it's precipitated by the scene you talked about joe or that kieran and shipica talked about where you see yaz almost go like full dark side try magnesium the try magnesium like you know you you're appealing appealing to her you have to protect your agency from this douchebag reporter like shifting all 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 to this point. 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 girl girl? Oh, even forever. Even when those girls are Yaz and Harper, you know, I trust this podcast. We always. Oh, absolutely. And there are so few women's rights to support on industry that we simply must support their wrong. 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. You know, like, of course, representation matters. Representation does matter. But again, I think part of the reason that that scene works, part of the reason all of the comeuppances 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 I was like, calm? Yeah. What's happening? An absolute calm screen. 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 shirt, but it's sort of a dowdy shirt. She's wearing like this long waisted and high neck vest that actually 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 know, 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 yes to go back to the sort of like we support women uh girls girl yeah'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 uh you know in vienna when we go there like i can you know etc etc etc like um or sorry they were in austria we'll talk about vienna in a second but like it's so vile and like i have defended horrible women across so many hbo properties and i will probably still defend yes uh when the time comes but um but yeah i i was very satisfied by hayley turning the tables on her here and i love this for i think i think charlie heaton's really good in this episode like sort of burying the ghost of jonathan byers and i think karen shivka does a great job in these last couple episodes burying both Sabrina and and Sally Draper uh you know six feet under so I love the new folks I mean Max Vangela 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 um you know charming seductive character that the I that is one of the greatest 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 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, of, you know, the manor basically as Haley kind of very performatively was taking a snooze on a, on a day bed. 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 jumped into Yaz's bed in the first place? I think the moment it's cemented for her, or at least she was showing her hands a bit, is when she tells Yaz, you know, Whitney and Henry are my bosses. Right, I can't hear that from you. Because she could have just not taken the night off. 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 right i love that interpretation i also think it's so crucial to think about the moment that she like decided to tell yaz about jim like for sure that that that feels like a play as well absolutely definitely um all right from thank you mommy to um 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. Thank you, Mommy. And then the daddy stuff that he requires from this girl in the car is if we had any questions about the father-daughter Eric Harper stuff and how disgustingly mixed up in psychosexual power dynamics it is, this is so clear inside of this Thank You Mommy and daddy stuff we get here. But I think that like Rishi and 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 night stand 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. I'm on the hook for that. She did not bring Kierkegaard into it. Jim did. Jim made it about Kierkegaard. 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 OnlyFans person? Do you want to share with the class, Jodie Walker? I mean, And 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 over a thousand. It was like a thousand, one hundred 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 stands who is now a single parent I guess but wasn't she already is is sort of writing about this transactional nature and this is how we get half of the episode title, right? A Thousand Eats is like about Bonnie Blue and then N1 Marilyn is sort of Jim's Cokie rant that he has at the end of this episode. So this idea of like, which Jodi 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. um that's what it's all about and um that those are the bookends of this episode uh 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 uh state on a couple good points not what i'm saying not what i'm saying um 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 and 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. This is a quote from his email. He said, Rishi's fallen so far from his initial post at peer point but i'm not convinced he's materially different from other characters both harper and yaz right 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 the 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 how short is the distance between him and 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 how badly things can spin uh how far down the rabbit hole one can go how far you can fling yourself off a balcony and still not like be put out of your misery and still be like having to crawl your way forward in this life but i think that um i was thinking about that in terms of jim at the beginning of this episode when he's like popping ritalin i think and and you know just trying to get through a night of writing can you really going down wikipedia rabbit holes who could recognize this um and his losing time uh 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 uh dead from a laced batch of coke and so once again the the show is just telling us like there are different opportunities obviously for different people that's like a no no does statement but just like inside of this inside of this question you're asking i I think Eric will be okay because he's been rich enough. He, 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 anymore. Yeah. He says it's his daughter's inheritance, but it's not bankrupting him per se. I mean, I think we know what his severance was at your point. And it was more than that. So, but I think, yeah, I mean, Joanna, you said it. Cushion 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 system. 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 there, 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 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 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 oh 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 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 sexcapades in which you're asking this woman to call you daddy so she can get another bump because the mother-in-law of 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. That's about as bad as it gets. What's worse, Jodi, 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's hilarious, which is what we're watching Rishi do. It's 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 disgusting. 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 forward if you've heard me say it before. But Albert Hitchcock had this thing he liked to talk about, which is 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 and the bomb. then we on the we at home are just like on the edge of our seat knowing something's coming and that he prefers suspense to surprise so i will say when this shady dude shows up outside the pub i'm oh yeah the bomb starts ticking when he throws that his like sachet 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 out 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 koki nonsense like all the stuff that jim was saying um 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 saw some truth in that you're taking notes and he's like this is a magnum opus and to me i'm like it doesn't point it doesn't really matter what he's saying here because like what we're watching is the final like horrible desperate minutes of someone's life and i like jim is also despicable uh you know to use jody's very accurate word here and so like my limits for empathy uh do exist but also like i don't know they're he's he's being snuffed out by someone far more powerful because my interpretation of events is that this guy that they meet outside the club who's like let me save you from this grifter i myself um a guy hired to kill you yeah put a corporate assassin presumably you know is hired i i have to assume by whitney to do this after jim makes some very fine points uh you know in front of amelia de mill de morgan he's like you will not embarrass me in front of chicken shop date um and you know cranks at the volume cranks at the volume in order to either call in the noise complaint 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 dash of coke in the bathroom that he finds, which I think saves him from the fentanyl coke. Saves him, quote-unquote. But this is... We just watched an assassination of a character and I thought it was really, really well done. I really, really liked the end of this episode, as horrible as it was to watch. for sure jody what do 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, like, heart-stopping over and over and over. The suspense is so high. And it is the undercurrent of it all is Jim's Cokie 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? It 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. What person that says that would ever be the problem? You know? Yeah. You know, he also has some very fun points. What I really want is a frictionless, transparent access to the full suite of banking and investment products. You know, that is what I really want when I wake up in the morning. I think that's a means of uplift. Absolutely. What do you want to say about Jim's many five 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, or whether basically of whether this mystery man's inclusion in this scene and like intrusion on their lives. 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, you know, and when he comes back out, I mean, yeah, I, 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, 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 the dark blue yeah dark blue makes total sense yeah and we should say the reason any of these characters are in a room together is 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 into jim's apartment his flat maybe taking his car keys to find more information either for himself or for stern to we don't really know well like in what capacity he's doing any of that he's been ghosted by yeah harper so i would like to retry like when harper said to sweet pea you don't won't have to see rishi again like and i was like she's lying well um i'm sorry it looks like harper kept one temporarily kept one promise by not returning some phone calls from rishi i'm gonna give her one grain of credit for that i guess as soon as things got complicated i just have zero doubt in my mind that harper is returning that call i agree but it's it's moot now um can i take you to needle drop corner here please um i know at this point it seems like i'm just trying to like date the music supervisor on this show but i just want to let you know that vienna from my ultra box 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 uh yellow jackets twice um 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 huge epic like sweeping uh romantic there's a violin solo inside of this like new wave song uh sort of moment but um i love it's easier they use almost the entire track play, which is very unusual. I thought it was a really, really good pick here. Our pal, Katie Baker, identified something really fun and interesting about a different track that I completely missed, Forever Young, which plays at the very end when Rishi's on the ground. Also fabulous. Alphaville, 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 McCrum's very first Alphaville post, this is Katie's incredible recap. Please read her coverage. I couldn't help but notice a similarity to Diker's article. So, like, basically, Dan McCrum's first Alphaville post is, like, very sexually 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. Ten out of ten, 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 journal, the financial journalism. I mean, just because we talked a little bit about Amelia, 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, we're going to hit this podcast. We're going to do the TechCrunch event. 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 we see the Chalky Pinstripe. Chalky Pinstripe, another great fashion moment for the episode. That's just free advice though. That comes with the drugs. yeah yeah uh yeah i was uh forever without even all of that context i was like oh huge hit with with doing forever young with the broken ankles um 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 when 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 you're like, maybe. I know. I was like, maybe. Are you going to hit water? How does, how do physics work? And they work like that. They work like that if you jump. Can you be waterfront on this side of the building and this side of the building? Is it a wraparound? This is a houseboat and I never knew what's going on. And it wasn't. And I mean, this is morbid, but you're it's like oh no not the sweet relief of death no 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 where he's like oh look at that 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 you know i'm in the pit you know i'm into it uh yeah jody had the information on the rooney connection to the pit before it's absolutely true you know all right um 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 uh devon ronaldo uh dev came dev popped in with a marty supreme reference of course for forever young uh in the chat so of course we should shout out marnie supreme um thank you to justin sales uh first work this episode thank you to uh industry music supervisor ollie white uh for just incredible constant impeccable work and we'll be back for more coverage of the pit uh later this week we 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 sometime thereafter. We will let you know when. But we will see you soon no matter what. Harpsichords drop on a gmail.com. Press GTV 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, you know. Certainly not fashion. And Jodi is an impeccable source in that. I am confident. Locked in. We know, no, no, no, no, no, no. I request more. Any anyone who is also on the fashion beat of industry, please email at harpsichordstrap on its email. I just personally would love. Fashion in and of itself. Oh, yes. Just a big, big ticket fashion over the course of the season. I would like to see the shoulder pads rise episode by episode as as Yaz's esteem and projections in the workplace can only rise to compensate for. She's like Miss J 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.