‘Industry’ S4E5: Golightly to Ghana

Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson. I am Rob Mahoney. I'm Jodi Walker. Today we're here to talk to you about industry, episode five. Did I, this last week, watch an entire Galen Maxwell documentary in order to try to prepare to understand Yasmin better? Yes. Is Yasmin in this episode? No. So sucks to be me. I went through all of that for nothing, but hopefully it'll come back around. That's going to come in handy, Joe. I wouldn't worry about that. It's evergreen, you know what I mean? But before we get into Eyes Without a Face and we've got some mailbag stuff to get to, I want to start with a question for Jodi. A couple weeks ago when you weren't here, Jodi, Rob and I talked about our go-to room service order. In this episode, we find out that Kwabana has racked up a huge chicken wing room service bill. So I'm curious for you, Jodi, what's your go-to room service order? so if it's non-breakfast i will say i was sort of coveting eric's like what looked to be a club sandwich and fries order that that would be my typical go-to i feel like you can't get it wrong you also can't really get it right um it's never very good but it is food in the morning i have a great time room service coffee and just like whatever array uh you can usually get like a pastry basket. And even on that note, I've recently been thinking, how do I get a hold of one of those silver thermoses that they use for like in a nice hotel for the coffee service? Because those things will keep coffee hot for like four hours. You want like a silver carafe? Yeah. Just like there's work. We can better. We can do this for you. I feel like I have to steal it. I feel like I have to steal it. But what you're telling me is no. Well, maybe you can expense it. In fact, now that it's been discussed on a podcast, it's work. Can I tell you the true, true? It'll feel and taste better if you steal it. So you should. And that is where we agree, Joanna. And if I expense it and then steal it, cut the mic, cut the mic. I didn't say that. All right. So before we get into some emails that we got from folks, Rob, can you remind folks how they can reach us with their thoughts and feelings? I would love to, Joe. They can always reach us at Prestigetv at Spotify dot com. But especially for industry, you should email us from, I don't know, your work email, perhaps at harpsichordstrapon at gmail.com. harpsichordstrapon at gmail.com. It's popping off. People have a lot of thoughts about industry, a lot of feelings about industry. And I welcome more of them. Although in the vein of this week, I don't even know what we should be soliciting. Like, what is it that comes out of episode five that we need answers to? I think Eric knows what he's soliciting. but I think we'll discover as we discuss what fun facts we might want to get some insight on from our listeners. You're saying the daddies should email us in? Nope. Never want to hear from the daddies ever. I'm going to go ahead and say no on that one. Thanks so much. We're going to put a daddy, in fact, there's going to be a daddy filter now. Thank you for putting that a curse thought out in the world. That goes for DMs as well. You're welcome. Yes, that's a no. An absolute no from us. Um, yeah. So a couple of emails is really quickly. Our listener Ian wrote in to let us know that he thought the the the newspaper comp we've been sort of fishing around for like what this UK publication might be. We talked about how we felt kind of good about the Daily Mail comp. um ian wrote in to say to talk about the spectator which is not one that i'm very familiar with right but he says um the spectator is known as a highbrow but right-wing publication which would love nothing less nothing else than to undermine any labor government of the day the current editor is an ex-tory mp michael gove and previous editors include a certain boy boris johnson that probably tells you all you need to know so um the spectator has entered the chat um doesn't sound like something I want to read, but sounds like something that exists. So that's good to know about. And then Jeremy. Jeremy is the one who emailed us about the Daily Mail. And he just gave some extra intel about the Daily Mail. Said it famously supported fascism in the 1930s. Fun. And has been owned by the same family for all of that time. More recently, it has led the charge against woke immigration, LGBT and trans rights. It's read largely by old folks. The op-ed from the Austrian cry wanker. This is mostly included so I could say Austrian cry wanker. The op-ed from the Austrian cry wanker would be pretty moderate compared to some of the other content that has appeared there over the years. One headline read, hurrah for the black shirts, referencing Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. So just really tremendous stuff coming out of the UK on the journalism front. Anything you guys want to say about either of those? Just email us at Austrian cry wanker at gmail.com. We're going to snatch that one. Also, no. Also, don't do that. Don't steal when you're working and don't do that from your work email. I'm struggling to find it in front of my face now, but there was a comment, I believe, on the Ringer TV YouTube of our last episode saying that like this, I think it's Norton Media Group. So it is likely that we are in fact dealing with multiple papers because it's a media group. So the best placement for each thing, the sort of more tabloidy stuff about Yaz goes to one of the papers. The more noble, you know, finance investigative journalism goes to another paper. And that made a lot of sense. And the cry wanker op eds. Those go directly to my inbox. Just to Jody. Just to Jody. All right. Our listener Sri wrote in to talk about sort of this idea. And Shree gave her credentials as, quote, I'm an American of Indian descent, though became a British citizen last year from Houston, originally married a Northern Irishman, moved here in 2011. So talking about her experience as an American and as a woman of color who's American in the UK and sort of like how she's perceived that way. She says, I'm the director of both philanthropy and alumni relations for philanthropy is actually pronounced that word. I thought you were doing the British pronunciation. for a private school, but previously worked for different charities, both a major donor corporate giving. I wanted to comment on how people keep trusting and giving money to Harper. I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at my job, but I'm not blind to the fact that British people, particularly aristocracy, old money, don't mind the, quote, vulgarity of asking for money when it comes from an American. My experience being a person of color moving in these circles, but not being of them myself, is that having an American accent automatically puts me outside the class system for better or for worse. I work for a girl school that is similar to Harrow, named dropped in the last episode. And I can vouch for the fact that the people of this ilk bring up where they went to high school the way we would bring up where we went to college well into old age and often before they say where they went to university. So I thought that was a really interesting comment about this idea of like how the Americans in this show, your Erics, your Harpers, et cetera, might operate outside. We touched on this a little bit, but might operate outside of the rigid class system that exists in the UK that is so, that you give yourself away by your accent and they know exactly where to put you. Whereas if you come from America, there is just something that puts you outside of that particular sort of immovable system that exists in the UK. Anything you guys want to say about that? I think it also speaks in this episode to how quickly Harper goes from, we need to raise more money to we need to raise more money by fraud, Right. Because it's like if all these doors are closed to her, given that she's giving herself away as an American, given the crassness of overtly asking for money in a desperate situation, like the forcing function is they have they have 48 hours to come up with something in order to maintain their position shorting tender. And and clearly the side door that she has found is the one that is like clearly illegal, like clearly will get them in the most trouble possible beyond the millions of dollars they already have stake. And I think this gives an insight into like why that, why she in particular would jump to that sort of conclusion relative to other characters. That's interesting because I think I thought Cherie's point was that she's better positioned to sort of like ask for money. And I thought that was the that's the wording of her email. It's just sort of like that it's not considered vulgar because it comes from an American source. That is one person's opinion. Got it. Maybe I misunderstood. Yeah. Well, it's sort of like as an American, the vulgarness precedes you. Certainly. When you live outside of that class system of the UK, you lead with nothing. You know, like you don't lead with anything good or bad or pretentious or low class or anything. It's like you're just American and a blank slate can both work in your favor and work against you. And I think for the most part, Harper finds the ways to make it work in her favor. It's interesting thinking about that point and then thinking about Harper immediately pivoting to fraud. And Eric, who's in a somewhat similar position, also as an American in London, saying, no, that's still fraud. Like we have other options. They're not the options you want. And they're not the options that in this sort of hypothetical scenario in your head prove to your mom that you're undeniable. But they are still something that's not fraud. Jodi, I wasn't ready to go there yet. I haven't stopped thinking about it since she said it. I will be charging my therapy bill to HBO this week. Yeah, you can fill that under undeniable. Thanks. Yeah, thanks so much. On that Harper front, we got this interesting email from Rebecca, sort of about the Mad Men comps that we've been making. Rebecca was saying she thought it was curious that we put sort of like Eric in the Don Draper role and Harper in the Peggy role. And I think I was thinking of that just mainly in their sort of relationship with each other, especially like what we see in this episode. But Rebecca was saying she's been thinking of Harper more as the Don Draper, right? She has, quote, she has nine professional lives and is always failing into a new opportunity. She's completely cut off from her emotions and trauma and uses sex as an anesthetic. She keeps getting opportunities because everyone thinks she's a genius, but really it's just that she's audacious. Despite the parallels I'm seeing, I think it's harder for audiences to relate to Harper than to Dawn for the obvious reasons. She's a ruthless black woman, not something we're used to seeing on screen. But also we knew what Dawn's childhood trauma was early on in Mad Men. Harper's past is still a black box. This email came in before this episode. I still feel like I know nothing about her and why she is the way she is. In any case, I really hope we get some more about her family this season, did in this episode, even though she really shuts Eric down about it. like last week. So on that front, I will just say inside of this episode, as we're tracking this concept of like story and storytelling and narrative, Harper's the one who gets in line. We don't need proof. We finally have a compelling story to tell, right? I've got a pitch that I can make and I can weave a little Don Draper-esque spell at this woman's conference that I'm going to go to. Jodi, any thoughts on that? I mean, my immediate thought is that's such a great point. And like I'm I'm it's really recalibrating my brain a little bit. And where my brain always goes is memes. And I'm thinking about the Don Draper meme like in front of the whiteboard, like doing his his ad pitch hands. And he's about to say something that is as stupid as it is smart. And like, yeah, that's Harper. And I'm trying to think of what her meme is like she. Yeah, she's standing in front of a Bloomberg board, just like manically chewing gum. And she is about to do something that is both ruinous and, you know, might make everybody tons of money. I mean, it might be what we're about to see presumably next week in terms of her getting up on stage and trying to match Lord Buck word for word, basically, in terms of how he was able to win over an audience. I'm fascinated by this idea, though, of the story that Harper is telling and how much she herself believes it. Because she's kind of convincing people, especially Eric, throughout this episode about, oh, we should blur these lines because these institutions are blurring these lines. Like, what are ethics even in this world where everyone is operating unethically? Does she believe that what they are doing is righteous? Or does she believe that she has a story and that story is that what they are doing is righteous? I think that's the story she's telling herself and that's sort of what Eric calls her out for right he's like that's that sounds more true than any story I've ever told myself before I think is like a paraphrase of what he says but I think you know a movie that the creators of this show have brought up a lot as a comp for this season is Michael Clayton and we got a comment from a listener not an email but a comment on either the YouTube or the Spotify video about you know Jim's This overdose that's not an overdose is a plot line from Michael Clayton where Tom Wilkinson's character, Arthur, is made to appear as if he's had a drug overdose. In fact, it's like the shady powers that be have have killed him. So he was up to something, though, Joe, because that was way too many baguettes for one man to be carrying at that point in time. So who's to say who really did what? You can't OD on baguettes, Rob. It's impossible. I will not allow it. I have affection for Harper in my heart. And so I hate to say my immediate thought, which is this, that like Harper, I think that Harper believes in nothing. She believes in what she has to, to kind of get through the day. I hate to invoke, we tell ourselves story in order to live two episodes in a row. And yet here I am. But Harper tells herself stories in order to survive. And she gets to decide what survival is. Like, is survival putting food on the table and just keeping yourself alive? Or is survival hypothetically being undeniable to your mother who is now dead? Like what is survival to Harper? And when they're talking about Tinder and obviously we'll get to it and, you know, Sweet Pea is screaming in a parking lot in a craw and they're screaming, each lie relies on the next. I'm like, at any point, is this going to click in for Harper that this is how she's living her life and guiding her fund and doing everything. She's telling herself stories and each story relies on the next. It doesn't matter whether they're true. It just matters whether she convinces people that they're true. I totally, I totally agree with you, Jodi. And I think the reason I brought up Michael Clayton was that George Clooney's character, Michael, you know, the titular character in that in that film is like like an unethical crusader. Right. He's not like he's not led by his virtue. He's led mostly by his own financial needs. And then, you know, he has, you know, his morality comes through, but he's not a crusading good guy. And I think what we hit in this episode a number of times, like Sweet Be saying, I need the short to work. I didn't get a job. You can imagine why, you know, Harper saying, well, crucially, we're not lying to the world to profit off of it. Right. That's the story she's told herself that that like hypocrisy that they sort of drill down on or our famous owner of a Great Dane. Is that what that dog was? A massive dog? A majestic great Dane. A perfect reveal. It's saying that like, you know, talking to Sweet Pea, this whole endeavor is, quote, not best led by a person who stands to be compensated. So this idea that like what could take down something like Tender or something, someone like the Mucks or something like that. It's probably not going to be anyone led by virtue. It's probably someone who is going to get their own payday at the end of this, that there isn't like a good guy. You know, as I said last week, I'm always rooting for Sweet Pea and I still am after this episode. But no one in this show is doing something because it's, quote, the right thing to do. They're all doing something so it can profit them personally. And in profiting personally, can I tell myself what I'm doing is better than the other people who are trying to profit personally? And that's where I think we find your Harpers, your Eric's, your Sweet Peas, your Quabinus inside of this episode. Yeah, I mean, they all have their reasons to be involved in this, right? And I think it is financial gain for certain. It's also, you know, for Harper, yet another effort to be undeniable for Eric, an effort to have an actual human connection with a person in harper in particular and for sweet pea like in addition to just kind of like avoiding everything in her life that she needs to avoid i think the thrill of discovery at whatever the cost is kind of the drive for her more than it is actually revealing something incriminating or actually like revealing something even that would make her money or give her job security it's like she's just like an adrenaline junkie for these 48 hours in a way that i think anyone can find deeply relatable on some level door bitch she knocked on the fucking door. She did scream in the parking lot. Like she has her kind of triumphant moment and then she gets to go home and have the breakdown. Yeah. And I think like, are those things mutually exclusive is a different question for each person. Like, can the thing that serves the greater good and actually is right also be the thing that is good for you and improves your own life? And that kind of depends on motivations. I loved getting to know Sweet Pea more in this episode and getting that background, I felt like it was her character building. Her like very slow character building has been really well done. I struggled with some of Harper's character stuff this episode because it was a lot of telling. It was a lot of like explaining emotions from a person who we never found to be particularly good at interpreting her own emotions However some of that makes sense too And it will always come back around because I think Harper is someone who lives very temporarily She's someone who's it really struck me in this episode that she is someone who's waiting to live. And she's doing things in the meantime that fill the void. And she's waiting until she's proven to her mom that she's undeniable to then start her life. But what she may not know is that she's not really building a great foundation from which to start that life at whatever magical point she feels fulfilled. Eric has a line in this episode where, again, they're talking about. So, like, what if we prove this? What happens? And he says, so we prove Tinder is what it says it is. We get the surrogate joy. I was like, wow, what an industry phrase. We get the surrogate joy of saying your identity is bullshit. You're a fake. We get to temporarily live in the illusion that we ourselves are built on firmer ground. And that's just, that is Harper. It's Eric too, but he's a little bit older, a little bit wiser to know. He's a cautionary tale. He's just sort of like, is this really where you want to go? Is this how you want to model your path where you wind up where Eric is alienated from his own family, desperately trying to make connection with you because he can't make connection with his own family. And then barring that, hiring a very young looking like call girl and having her call him daddy. You know what I mean? And this is the way in which Eric, I will get back to the what Harper says, but Eric talking about how things don't make him feel substantial and how they're both talking about how empty they feel and making him feel big, you might say. Yeah. And then he says, make me feel big. I mean, it's just absolute. This is like tough. This is one of the toughest. Like this is like highest, highest, lowest, lowest for Eric inside of this episode. And I agree with you, Jodi. Like, I think this episode was a little overridden in terms of the way in which people were talking. Like industry always like it's no one ever talks like a normal person talks inside of industry. And that's fine. I'm not looking for reality here. But the credited writer on this episode was also credited on a couple episodes last season that I also sort of identified this tendency. So I think it's just like this writer has a tendency to write in very therapeutic language and like all this sort of stuff like that. And when it comes out of Henry's mouth and I can tell myself what Kit Harington told Kitty Baker, which is like, you just have to imagine that Henry's in a lot of therapy. It makes sense to me. Harper's in no therapy. For Harper to come through with insights felt very odd to me, while at the same time I felt slapped in the face because what she was saying is my entire life. Sometimes they're bars. Sometimes they mean something to me when she tells Eric that you have no idea how lucky you are, that you have people who expect your love, demand your love, but you don't feel worthy of it, so you can't give it. Nothing between us is going to fix that. Yikes. Yes, correct. but here like even within those bars like again i like this episode fine i did bump on the same like little writing moments here and there and in particular it just felt very direct and very neat for an episode of industry and it's not just that like overly therapized delivery from characters you wouldn't expect it from it's things like a character will bring up exactly what they want and by the end of the episode we'll get basically that exact thing or someone will bring something up like Sweet Peas Nudes. And then we just see Eric like scrolling through his email, looking at like the exact thing that was brought up, like the parallel conversations that were echoed from coked out Jim Dyker last week and Quabana this week. It's like, why are why are all these things happening other than to have like your very writerly callback moment? And I think the one that broke me was Deus Ex-Auntie, who happens to be involved with the exact business we need to break open the investigation i a little bit disagree with that i like i agree with your point but like i let's talk about kwabana like because i think it's really interesting how they've deployed this character so like it's cool it feels very clear to me that you know they knew that they were doing a story in ghana this season and so they like they cast a nigerian actor but like they cast someone um who could like interact with the story in a different way than your you know very white sweet pea could on the streets here and I I don't know Jodi if you agree with I felt something so familiar in this like very charming very nice guy just like constantly jovially undercutting sweet peas like very correct instincts and and and like work and like I was just like this is it was so aggravating and so familiar and Quabana is like a very like charming and likable in many different ways character when when she calls him out for like his glibness and says it's not as charming as he thinks he is but like i her reaction when she's like i could just not see you for the rest of the trip and that would be okay like all the little roadblocks he is like putting in front of her and all the little doubts that he's sprinkling along her path and then he fucks her and then he helps her was like a real uh you know real interesting journey inside of this episode for me. Jodi, any thoughts or feelings? Yeah, that's tough having that reflected back through your vision. I'm now, I guess, catching a few pivot points that I did find him frustrating. I also find him very charming. So like, I know I was, it was kind of like, yeah, I was on the same ride that Sweet Pea was like, why are you here? What do I need here? But of course, she's she's yes. You ask, like, do I find that familiar? Yes. The glibness of not having to worry about things that I have to worry about feels very familiar. And she calls it out. What he has said is kind of correct. That's like what materially changes in the world. If we accomplish this, why are you staking your flag in it? The thing is, Sweet Peen knows why she's staking her flag in it. she needs this because she's been undercut by the world that doesn't change one way or another. And what she says is what I really relate to. I've given this my full attention, which is a finite resource. That is why the outcome matters. Yes. You know, we've all found ourselves in a sunk cost fallacy and it matters to her. So get on board if you're there to help. See, I'm not just after you fuck her. Well, that would be optimal. I think that what sweet is after is something earnest and is not just, I have already put so much effort into this that I now need to see it through. I think it's like the choice to care about something, the election of this is what matters to me, right or wrong, that choice matters. And that choice is different than just following one bad bet after another. I think it's just, especially juxtapose someone like Kwabana, who is so laissez-faire about the whole thing. He is the epitome of I'm on the work trip and I'm just going to like freewheel my way through this thing and I'm going to do the room service food. And I'm just like here for a time. Whereas Sweet Pea is here for a mission. And like that mission is because she's chosen to make it important to herself. Well, she's chosen to it, but for like financial reasons, you know, like Kwabana is born to a ton of money and she hasn't been. And like she put her like naked body on the internet when she was 19. Totally. Because she needed money. And there are ways in which she has earned money in her life. And she's like, But here's another thing. I'm really fucking smart. And this is another way in which I can earn money and perhaps feels more empowering to me than like having all of knowing that all of these men have like seen my naked body, you know, and attached it to my face, which I did not put my face out there. But someone else, maybe Rishi is her opinion, like did. So now it is like a completely different. That's not the that's not the, you know, agreement that she made with the world when she put her body on the Internet when she was 19. But like she is I really recognize in Sweet Pea this like conviction of I'm right. But it's not I'm right because I morally believe in right and wrong in the universe. It's like, I'm right because I need people to know that I am smart and I can be right about a thing. I don't know. What do you think, Jodi? Well, I don't. Gosh, weirdly, this is like reminding me of a conversation that our, you know, great friend and colleague Sophia Benoit and I had where we were basically just saying back and forth between each other. We know when we're right. Like, I know when I'm right. And I I have that gut instinct. And my history tells me when the gut instinct is right. And it was interesting. I mean, that that gut instinct is brought up several times in this episode. And at the end of the episode, when Quabana is with Harper, he juxtaposes his sort of, you know, higher pragmatic mind and all of its complexities with the gut instinct. But I think what we see in Sweet Pea is someone who is carrying a lot of complexity in her gut instinct and why she thinks it is right for her to do this thing and pursue this thing. And it's not just money. Like it's she can't get a job anywhere else. That's not just money. That's livelihood. It's also reputation. And within the bit where she's explaining why it matters to Kwabana, she says, I'm going to keep moving forward. Let the distance grow between me and the event. Let time do the work. And that's I don't know how if you're Kwabana, you hear someone say something like that and you're like, I might still know better. It's like, let time do the work. Yeah, like she's got a short term plan, a long term plan. And some of that is going to get messed up along the way, no matter what. But she yeah, she really strikes me differently than almost any other character on the show because she just strikes me as thoughtful. And there are a lot of thoughts that characters on this show are afraid to have. And they simply don't have them for that reason, for fear. And I think she really allows herself to think about the difficult things and then pursue the choices that she makes. And I think the way that she interacts with her power is really interesting inside of this episode, because we know we know how she got information from Jonah in a way that she's like very used to wielding her power. We see her kind of try that with Tony Day. Right. We'll talk about Tony Day in a second. But like, you know, she's like, you know, you can just call me anytime if you want to talk. and it's a strategic lip bite it just like does not land with him the way and even before that she kind of strikes this like emotional thing of being like oh they must take good care of you out here if you're doing that kind of like well obviously they don't so let you know like she is pursuing a very different path and then i thought it was really interesting that um you know after she has this like horrible assault experience in the bathroom like she comes back and and her approaching Quabana in this, like, you know, unbuttons a couple buttons on the linen blazer, like sort of has this conversation with him that leads to sex at her instigation, felt like this is the fastest way she knows how to reclaim power in a situation where she feels powerless, right? That she's just sort of like, what's your type? What do you like? Oh, it's me. Okay. Like, what can I get here that feels powerful to me? It's not something that she's like long-term planning. It's not like I need quabba under my thumb. It's just like, I need to my, my interpretation was I need to feel powerful and in control in this moment. Yeah. And someone who seeks control through data collection myself, I, that's a lot, a lot more than the sex aspect of it, which is something that we see with Yaz a lot. It is, I mean, she, she literally says, I want to paint a picture of the people who have seen me like she, and, And he is one of them. So she is collecting that data. She's getting those data points. How did you find yourself at me? And then the sex, which is definitely part of it as well. But that was such a yeah, it was a strange scene where I was like, why is she doing it? And I don't know. I think that time will tell whether I couldn't tell in the moment if she knew why she was doing it or if she was sort of completely propelled by it in a really intense situation. I mean, you could hardly be in a more intense situation than she was in and absolutely high on adrenaline and a dirty martini. But, you know, you're always sort of like in this show that has so much sex and so many squelching noises. You're always sort of like girding your loins for who's going to fuck and are kind of like, please, no, please don't. And they were the two that did it this week. Oh, yeah, they were. I mean, look, the scene where she's assaulted in the bathroom is terrifying. And I thought executed to exactly that effect for her to then walk out and not just go through this entire conversation to reclaim power and exactly the way you're talking about, Joe. But it did feel revealing that her instigation of reclaiming that power was bringing up the newts, right? It was like channeling this one thing that's already been so painful to her to challenge Kwabana on that point specifically. I really don't know what to make of that other than, I mean, she's clearly still going through a lot in terms of understanding that many of the people she has worked with, will work with, whatever, have basically seen her naked to this point. And that clearly it's a dividing point in a lot of her life, including with her mother. Like of all things that she would do, like we know that we've seen her charm other people, as you said, Joe, and like the implication of her relationship with Jonah in other ways. of all the things she could say and do, why would she lead with, you've seen me naked through this thing that is intensely painful for me personally? I think it's, again, I think that's so interesting. What if the Glenn Maxwell documentary I watched does come in handy this week? A lot of the survivors of, you know, that testified in the Epstein case talked about, there's this very specific thing with these like shoes that they owned that Epstein had bought for them and how they wore them and made the decision to wear them constantly to continually engage in this thing that happened to them and not sort of shove it in the back of the closet and i which was like an incredibly painful sort of definitely a hot bummer thing for me to bring up on this podcast right now but just that idea of like directly engaging with something that has happened to you that is traumatic is something that a lot of survivors do in complicated and varied ways you know what i mean and so it's not one-to-one for any singular person but i think i think cutting from that scene to a character like eric a character who we have seen ends the episode in a really rough way uh as far as i'm concerned but like in that conversation with harper is like the best version of eric the the most like genuinely paternal version of Eric that, that, that we can occasionally glimpse and then say, even Eric is staring at sweet peas tits. And not only that, but like in an email where it's like right next to her, like LinkedIn quality, you know, it's not just like, it's just like juxt right next door to something. And I just like, I hear what you're saying, Rob, about the neatness of this episode, but that cut really worked for me. Cause it was just like, we're spent so much time. This is like the sweet pea episode. And we spent so much time in this episode with her thoughts, with her emotions, with her bravery, with her ingenuity, with all this sort of stuff like that. And then cut to Eric just looking at her tits. And it was just like a real this episode slapped me several times. And that was one of those. Jodi, any any thoughts on that? That's a great way to describe it. Yeah, this this episode was slapping me around a little bit. But yeah, I think hearing you describe that about the survivors and the shoes, it's like, I think no matter what, we've all been in situations where something really bad has happened and the instinct is to want to forget about it. And you know, in your mind that that won't work. It not only won't work, but like, it's not the thing that you should do. You need to be able to think about hard things or they will slap you in the face later. but always deciding on that line between whether am I honoring this thing that happened to me by thinking about it and giving it thought or am I poking at the wound always having to think about that is an assault and it's you know is is further harm and is difficult and is like a burden to bear and I think that Sweet Pea is and this is pretty fresh is always thinking about that like do I get out in front of this? Do I make it mine by talking about it? Do I remind people of it by talking about it? And always having to think about it is extremely exhausting. That's what she says. That's what they say to Tony Day. Like you're the second most exhausted person is at Tinder because you're so burdened by all of this. And Sweepy is actually maybe the only exhausted person at Taustern because she is the only one thinking about anything. um before we move off this uh cp quabana exchange i do want to mention because we've been talking about sort of this idea of like proximity to white power um you know this thing that quabana says right before he talks to her about his like uh you know porn curated preference uh he says forgive me dr umar and just like for some context in case people don't know um you know this is a a variety of issues but one of them maybe perhaps most controversially is interracial couples And this is a quote quote the white woman for the black man is a white surrender flag He holds up to the white power structure to say quote I am broken and I here for being taken sharp stuff from dr umar this is this was a subject of a lot of discussion but like this is something that is present for this season of television it's just sort of like as we're talking about fascism and white power and all this sort of stuff like that and having that invoked inside of this scene for this care these characters who are not directly part of that story but it is present of mind for this entire season of television i thought was hey another fucking slap from this episode of television. I mean, absolutely. So especially in an episode that is from top to bottom filled with all of the ways in which we are programmed to do the things that we do. Of course, some of those are going to be complicated, like giant structural societal level problems, like institutional racism, for example, or in the way that kind of like channels us through, I guess, pornography, but, you know, a million other kinds of like little feedback loops that we're a part of to think that we want things just because we've been essentially like structured in our lives to want them. Yeah, that that line from Jim on his co-grant last week really struck like has stuck with me about that. We're given so much, you know, so many conveniences that make us want things, but not the things we want to want. Um, and that's, it's, that's the kind of thing where you see these characters in extreme situations dealing with it, but it also hit home with me. Like, am I wanting the things that I want? Am I wanting the things that I want to want? And where do those things overlap? Yeah. Am I wanting the things that I've been told by capitalism, marketing, social media, et cetera, et cetera. And by wanting them, am I preventing myself from actually wanting the things that I want to want? Like the things that I see as good and whole and worthwhile and worthy of my, you know, finite attention. Yeah. Am I not ultimately wanting the right things because of the convenience of all the things that are served to me because capitalism wants me to want them? And that level of surging and ultimately like brainwashing is what's happening is what leads someone like Eric to sit in a room with his daughters and feel unfulfilled. to feel like this should matter to me, but it doesn't because I'm out here chasing the high. I mean, I want to be celestial. I want to tap into something celestial. I think maybe if he just quieted that part of his mind that needs to be self-destructive and chasing things at all times, then he might be able to tap into that. But it seems a little too far gone, our guy Eric. Jodi, can I take you to Fashion Corner where you are queen? As you mentioned before we started recording today, you made a reference in our group chat about linen blazers. I'm going to tell you what I thought and then I want to hear what you think. So Sweet Pea is wearing a very specific look in all of her outfits that she wears here. To me, it read like late 90s female empowerment suits to me. the like large gold buttons more than anything else on on the button down blazer and so in my head when i was like going to like sort of 90s uh crime caper movies that that you know the people who who are making this show could be inspired by i was like oh pelican brief like this is julia roberts running around in pelican brief blah blah and then i looked up pelican brief i was like actually she doesn't wear anything like this in pelican brief at all but i was like why am i envisioning Julia Roberts in this sort of like colorless button down sort of thing. And then I was like, that's her big mistake, huge outfit in Pretty Woman. Like that's what that outfit is. That's her. Actually, that's her call girl outfit. And also in this episode, Tony Day says, Sweet Be Go Lightly, your name is like almost as memorable as you are. Like this is we haven't talked about this. We haven't talked about this this season, but like this is a Holly Go Lightly Breakfast at Tiffany's, who is another very famous call girl sort of reference. So that's sort of like where my mind went on Fashion Corner. But I'm curious if the linen blazer look from Sweet Pea took you anywhere else inside of this episode. Well, it's so interesting. Well, and especially invoking Julia Roberts, because the fashion doesn't do it, but spiritually her fashion and the sort of air that she's taking on stomping around doing the white knight literally knocking on doors is of course completely erin brock without a doubt yeah which is which is you know said it outright in the episode when she marches into tony day's office after they've said that they're gonna snooker him and snaps those sunglasses off i mean i don't think we ever saw Erin Brockovich wear a linen blazer, but we did see her wear cosplay blazers and, you know, cosplay something different than what she feels that she is. And this episode also calls on the sort of like, what does Eric say, like image of a hooker? And that juxtaposition between what we see in our minds, which is the Erin Brockovich, like how she actually dresses in the beginning of the movie when every dress is zippered down for the cleavage. But like, are we not all selling something even when we're in a linen blazer? And shouldn't we all dream of being the movie version of Erin Brockovich sort of like, you know, fighting for the little guy? I do think that Sweet Pea looked more, she looked less like she was wearing a costume than Yaz sometimes does. In her blazers. In her blazers. But she is wearing a costume. And she's also sort of like doing safari chic when she, you know, arrives in like linen is breathable. But a three piece linen suit is still a little warm for the occasion. Yes. That's a lot. So I want to mention something on the casting front with Tony Day. Stephen Kimmel Moore is an actor. I think he has a perfect face for like an extremely pale ginger who has been in Ghana for the last 15 years. You know, like you can just like see every freckle in line, you know, that Jodi, you are nodding at me as a as a fellow ginger, you know, it's like no SPF high enough. But also this is an actor who I first saw in the Stephen Fry movie, Bright Young Things, which came out, I don't know, a couple of decades ago. So incredible top tier cast, like an early James McAvoy and early Michael Sheen, like just like all the creme de la creme of the Brits that you could possibly want. Peter O'Toole's here, Richard E. Grant's here, Harriet Walters here, Stephen Brey. This is based on Bright Young Things is based on the Evelyn Waugh novel Vile Bodies. But in in last week's episode, and I wrote it down because I was like, oh, Whitney said bright young things attract bright young things. And so, like, I don't know that they were like, get me the guy from Bright Young Things. But that story, which is about sort of the like coke addled, champagne fueled youth, well to do youth of in the UK between the wars and how high they flew and how much they crashed is definitely something that could be on like all of Evelyn Waugh's stuff could definitely be on the mind of the creators as they're as they're trying to like track these high flying coke snorting uh you know young kids through this financial world and what how who's gonna fly and who's gonna crash and are we all gonna crash i don't know but that's like that was something that was on my mind people might know him better from history boys which was like sort of a bigger deal but like i just um i thought it was perfect casting here rob rob how did you enjoy this this particular character i thought he was wonderful i mean it's like just the right amount of slime too where it's like you can see how this character got into this position but also why he would want to extricate himself from it and insulate himself from it as quickly as humanly possible um and i in particular like his interactions with sweet pea where he really only calls her i would say he's not responding to her implications in telling him to call her in the first place but almost like he's so curious about her being such a bad liar that he's like wondering why she would possibly be here and like for that to be the grounding of their relationship which we should say sweet pea for all of her determination. I think at best has like a half-baked plan and a very underdeveloped backstory as far as like explaining to people what she is doing here, but walks into it with enough purpose and he responds to it with enough desperation that it's like we're seeing people being brought together in other circumstances when they would basically never have time for each other or never take each other seriously. But who else is he going to turn to now that Jim is dead? And contrary to what he says in this episode, I believe he knows that Jim is dead and that his really one lifeline out of here has now been severed or coked out or fentanyl out or whatever the process of that is. Just a really fascinating character to drop into the mix, given everything that he can do for Stern Tau, certainly, but really just more the ways in which he tests Sweet Pea and then her plan kind of relies on him. But also, as Harper tells it, maybe it doesn't even matter if he ultimately flips and whistle blows or not. What do you think, Jodi? Oh, I think the line of the episode of an episode of many lines for me is when he says, do you ever think that you've gotten yourself in a little bit over your station here? And she says, never in my fucking life, sir. And she's lying. She's lying through her teeth. But a great way to be over your head is to think you're in over your head. And like she says, like she's pulling a heartburn. She's just got to kind of keep pushing through and let time do the work. But I think that you're right. Like that is his interest in her is like, who is this person who is so clearly in over their head, but is not acknowledging it and is shaking some of the trees that I wish that I could shake? And could we shake them together? Or are they going to shake down on me ultimately? Like seeing this very sort of downtrodden, weathered man versus this bright young thing who's said and of course she says never in my fucking life sir you fancy paying for my nose job too uh i know what you did um was yeah i it was a it was a great episode for like being away from our main characters a lot you know like for finding these other people who are just as interesting and when they walk into the sort of i guess the hotel in accra and the music like the very quintessential industry music from like the very first episode starts playing. Oh, you know, a fear in my chest and a twinkle in my eye. Like we've got our new class here. Finally, there's the ending. It gave me chills when that music cue kicked in. And I think that like what's so fascinating about this Tony Day character to me is that the way in which he's able to see through Sweet Pea, who I agree with you, Rob, is not when you're on the con. Like, it's good to have some sort of backup story for your story or whatever. But the way he sees through, like, he's not dumb, right? He's not wildly incompetent and dumb. So I'm interested why Whitney feels like he needs to constantly be on a plane to Accra. Because, like, so Tony is clearly wobbly in some degree because he's, you know, taking calls from Jim Dyker. Like, there's something going on there. But he's not so stupid that he needs constant oversight from Whitney. So what is it that Whitney feels like needs his attention constantly in Ghana, I guess, is my my curiosity. You know, that that felt like it might be more of the handholding around the multilevel bribing that has to go on in order to perpetrate this level of fraud. And Whitney would be Whitney would be great at it. You know, it's like he's exactly slick enough to pull off something like that. Whereas like Tony, you're right. He's like, he's not dumb. He's clearly aware of his situation. He opted into this, I think probably pretty clear eyed knowing what he was doing, but doesn't necessarily strike my strike me as like the operator that Whitney is in terms of getting people to agree to do something illegal across the board at multiple levels of like government and regulation and like all of these like auditors within, you know, within across self. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think he's he's going there a lot for the fraud. and that when you, yeah, put these two men. You know, maybe the room service chicken wings. Like, I don't want to rule out any possibilities as far as why Whitney would be dropping in. Yeah, that hotel looks nice. Who knows what they might have there. I think the, yeah, well, and Whitney is someone, he is the only person at that company who knows what's going on. Jonah didn't know. None of his second or thirds know now. And the kind of control that you have to feel in that situation is like he might not be needing to go to Ghana, but he's doing these 24 hour trips, also certainly wearing himself ragged as the number one exhausted person at Tinder to keep the lie go. You know, the next lie brings the next lie and you just have to keep them going. And he is spinning a lot. He is keeping a lot of plates spinning. I was. Yeah, that's exactly the image I was thinking of. Okay, I don't have a needle drop corner this week, but I do want to talk about the title of this episode, right? Eyes Without a Face, which is the, you know, this is like the Billy Idol track that Kwabana sings at karaoke. And we hear it again when Sweet Pea is crashing from her adrenaline high at the end of the episode. That song is titled that based off of a 1960s French horror film, Eyes Without a Face, Les yeux sans visage. um but like basically a plus joe i mean come on ladies and gentlemen standing ovation please um but that the plot of that movie is about um a sort of really creepy dude whose daughter gets disfigured in an accident and he starts killing women young women all over um paris i believe stealing their faces and trying to give his daughter like a facial transplant so killing women who look like his daughter so basically face swapping young women to try to restore his daughter to uh her previous um so could we think of any way in which that might apply here to like our guy eric and his various daughter figures in this episode be that his uh daughter who got expelled be that harper or be that the the girl who calls him daddy at the end of the episode that is like one thing that i'm thinking about but also the like sort of potemkin village description that we have about what whitney is doing in tender right we're just swapping and we're swapping as we're face swapping where the money's gone just so that you can't follow it uh very well and then i was also thinking about sweet pea like eyes without a face this idea that like eric looking at her just her tits and her face isn't in that like photo at all and it's just sort of like that's that's all he's looking at and then also just last week's episode title which was 1000 youths and one maryland rob and i had been like discussing i was like i was not to uh quote my cousin vinny but i was like what's a ute i was like is a ute like exactly what i think it is as i learned from my cousin vinny or is it something else rob came up with like a uk urban dictionary like sort of definition of sort of like it's a youth right and we quabana says in this episode, 1000 youths and shisees, which is like young men in balaclavas, basically were involved in that sexual Guinness World Record breaking extravaganza that we talked about in last week's episode. Is it weird to have like heard that that phrase in this episode be the title of last week's episode? Rob, you were talking about like weird parallelism. But like, is there any part of you that thinks like part of this episode was once in that episode? or does that not really strike you as weird at all? I had that thought that maybe it was the kind of thing where either they were conceived of as like a call and response two episode sequence or it had been kind of chopped up and rearranged or some of the dialogue maybe had been transposed from one episode to the other. I think I settle on no though, just because structurally, this is such a field trip episode. And I don't even know how you would interplay this with some of the other plots. Like it feels like such a standalone kind of thing happening. but it definitely felt odd to revisit like so explicitly and maybe that's something that if you're the kind of viewer who isn't looking at an episode title you don't necessarily care about but at minimum different characters are talking about literally the exact same online pornographic event in almost identical terms that feels a little uncanny to me i don't know but it is it's a through line of the season i mean it's how we get introduced to tinder is the ways in which they interact with the OnlyFans like Sites and so much of the conversation, which the Cokie stuff that Jim is saying at the end of last episode is sort of much better intellectualized between the conversation with Sweet Pea and the sort of, you know, commodification of sex and the transactional way in which we treat a lot of relationships and human behavior now because of these convenience factors And so I think it would have been a little heavy handed to have both of those scenes in in one episode But I like the continuation of the thought into this episode Jodi is there anything in this episode that we haven't talked about yet that you want to make sure we talk about? You know, I feel like maybe we're we're being kind of tough on Quabana. Like we're being kind of tough on him when, you know, he's not one of our worst characters, but he is young. And when he after all of that, when he gets back and he talks to Harper and that that comparison between the way that Sweepy talks to Harper, the debrief and the debrief of how he talks to Harper. however this isn't what i want to talk about but they both say something along the lines of like have i made myself clear yeah like do you understand me and what i'm asking for here um which is sort of a sign that they both are under the impression that if they make themselves clear enough that it that she'll treat them like humans and that is unlikely sweet sweet spirits um But when he tells Harper that Sweet Pea was like a dog with a bone, she was tenacious. And he says, it's really admirable how she's recovered from all that shit she went through. And the idea that because someone is tenacious, because someone is resilient in the face of challenge that they have recovered is often a thing put upon women. that because they keep going in the face of challenge, it means that actually that challenge is okay and that treating them poorly is okay. And thinking that tenacity means recovery, it just loops in with all the Harper stuff, all the Sweet Pea stuff that if we make ourselves undeniable, if we achieve so much, if we have enough tangible and obvious success, if we make enough money, then no one can hurt us because we are undeniable. But someone can still punch you in the face in a bathroom. You can still fall down the stairs chasing an Amazon package. No matter how much you chase being undeniable, life will still happen. How well are you taking care of yourself in the process? Generally, the answer is not very well in this show. And I really, I mean, I liked, I really liked seeing Sweet Pea get home and just fall apart. My move in that situation would have been to look at myself in the mirror if I did it. That always really helps get the, you know, cathartic tears going. But seeing her acknowledge what an awful situation she'd just been in, she'd already been in, is important. I think it's important for her and it's important for us to like see her do it. Completely. really loved yeah i love that harper and sweepy interaction where she's like forthright it's clear that she does feel bad about like having sex with quabana but is sort of like sort of putting a shell up of like um i didn't know if you were casual but i just thought i thought i should tell you uh no you can't come in we're not friends right like you know you're my boss like fuck you pay me but like um and i i liked harper's reaction to that bearing in mind that like early this season harper was quite forthright with quabbana but the fact that she had sex with whitney so like and the fact that he didn't tell her right he didn't have that conversation with her but sweet pea did all of those dynamics were really fascinating to me rob anything you want to yeah zero one on i mean i want to hit both of these if we can just because I think as far as the Sweet Pea Harper interaction, it felt like she came back in a different place in their relationship from this trip. And I can't quite put my finger on why, because I mean, we're what two episodes removed from them being spreadsheet detectives together. And her telling Harper, like, the only reason I'm here is because you're giving me your word personally as somebody who I guess we care about each other to here where it's like, miss me with your like pastoral compassion. And I'm trying to like, obviously, look, she's been through a fuck ton on this trip alone in particular. And who knows what else has happened in the meantime for her. But I am trying to square like why that relationship feels so different other than in a very tough place coming off of this like very strange trip. Like maybe that is reason enough. I don't know. To me, I read it as like her trying to put distance like I didn't actually betray a friend by like fucking this guy that she hooks up with. Like we aren't friends, you know, like I felt like she was putting some distance between them inside of that moment to I don't think I personally don't think she has anything to feel guilty about. But if she decided she was like, if I decide that Harper and I are actually like friends and or spreadsheet detective buddies or whatever the case may be, then having sex with Kwabana was not the move. But if I decide that that's not our relationship, then I can tell myself it wasn't that bad of a thing to do. Yeah, you know, that part definitely tracks. also with the sort of rejection, the returning from the trip and rejecting the pastoral compassion that maybe she had kind of liked in some sort of mentor way before is circling around these ideas that we've been dealing with with Sweet Pea of control and choices. And it comes from Harper saying to her, I'm so sorry that I let this happen to you. And I have to assume that Sweet Pea's thought in that moment is, I let this happen to me. It was not good. It was not safe, but I chose it. And she literally says, don't take this away from me. I love that. I think part of that is the choice, the choices that she's made. They are hers. I'm sure that's a lot of what she feels around the OnlyFans leak or the siren leak is those were my choices. Me, you know, feeling some regret about them now doesn't make those choices any different they were mine they were that of a 19 year old self whatever but also that her choices which may have been bad also have them in the position that they're in now and she and harper can't take that away from her either absolutely and she will right no i i love all that and i again uh this glenn maxwell documentary i watched which is on netflix you can watch it has like a very false happy ending because actually more things happens inside of the case than the documentary covered. But it was so fascinating to hear from like, there are so many people inside of this case who were underage. And then there's like all the women who were like 18 or 19 at the time. And all of them don't have a case that they can bring. And all of them are saying, all of them that were interviewed, like, I was 19, I was 21, whatever the case may be, is like, this was my choice, my decision. But I'm showing up to support these young women. And I just think it's such a like arbitrary, horrible line to draw that like, you know, you're 17 and 11 months and you've been violated and you're 18 and you haven't, you know. And that's just like that conversation from those women. You know, the fact that Sweepie was 19 is like, you know, I made this choice. there is an empowerment in it but there's also this like false adulthood inside of it that is just like really painful to to grapple with um i think especially joe as all of these characters we're talking about from harper to tony day to quabana in his own way are like trying to minimize what sweet pea is doing or minimize the role that she's playing or the agency she's exercising in her own life. And it's like the absolute mindfuck of I was adult enough to put nudes of myself on the internet technically legally, and I'm going to be that's going to be held against me for the rest of my life. But God forbid, I actually want to try to prove something or God forbid, I want to try to work in this other way. And no one takes me seriously. I mean, seriously. And then and then Kwabana comes back and it's like, Jodi, when you brought up like the dog and the bone comment, like, there was so much like there, there pat on the head in the way that he was talking about it. I think really the smoking gun is when Quabana, someone who from everything we've seen doesn't really care about tenacity, is praising her tenacity. It's like, that's not a word or a concept that means a lot to him. And so it's like, it's such a hollow compliment. The idea that he's saying like, look at how doggedly she pursued this thing that isn't really important to me, but sure was good for her. Nice job. Well, and when you look at Harper and Sweet Pea, we don't know a ton about Sweet Pea's background. She talks about her mom a little bit in this episode. But these ages that you're talking about, Joe, 18, 19, when you're still in a really vulnerable situation. But for some people, you have been put in the situation of needing to take care of yourself financially now. And for some people, you have not been put in that situation. And the choices that we make at those ages, because we have to be able to take care of ourselves, are just taken from very different worlds for some people and the structures and the systems around us. and that's yeah like that's when those vulnerabilities really come into play and the choices that we have to make that don't entirely feel like our own one last thing i want to hit is um so we get a margin call inside of this episode our guy kenny does a margin call um there is a 2011 film margin call and it does not have margot robbie and abatha but it does have paul bettany in a really nice suit so you know there's something for everyone out here in the world but i want to hit a couple things from it's a great movie jc chandor it's a it's a great movie Does it will it help you understand what a margin call is? No, but I think the context is pretty clear here. Like you guys are over leveraged. You need to show up with more money or else, you know, we're going to dissolve. You're going to take a huge loss on your on your short here. Right. But there are a couple margin call is less of like a great movie and more of like a few, like absolutely knockout scenes like sort of assembled together. And I just want to highlight two of them really quickly in case anyone wants to watch margin call. on a on a Friday evening um Stanley Chuchi's character uh whose name is Eric um has this incredible scene where he's basically involved in this in this massive financial scandal he's not responsible but he is involved and he talks to Paul Bettany about the fact that like in his previous life he built a bridge like he was an engineer and he built a bridge and he talks about the way in which this bridge saved all of these people so much commute time and he calculates all the hours that these people in this community saved because he built this bridge. And I was thinking about that a lot when I was talking, when like Eric and Harper were talking about feeling empty and the nothingness, the like, this is a, this is an industry of like fake accomplishments. There's money at the end of this, but there's, you haven't built anything. You haven't made anything. You've just engaged in this like capitalistic pageantry and there's nothing that you can show for it at the end of the day, unless you are the rare sort of like healthy work-life balance sort of finance bro, which industry would have you believe. I don't know. Who is that? Anyone who fucked up in Silicon Valley, I guess. But I would I would say no. No, not even a lot of time with the Silicon Valley bros. The other one is Jeremy Irons plays this character is modeled off the president of Lehman Brothers. This whole thing is modeled off of like what happened with Lehman Brothers with the 2008 mortgage crash. This is his great speech that Jeremy Irons gives at the end of this movie. This movie also has Kevin Spacey in it, just fair warning. But anyway, Jeremy Irons says, when did you start feeling so sorry for yourself? It's unbearable. What? So you think you might have put a few people out of business today. That's all for naught. But you've been doing that every day, almost 40 years, Sam. And if this is all for naught, then so is everything out there. It's just money. It's made up pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong. It's certainly no different today than it's ever been. But just this idea of like what we're doing is so made up. And that is what this whole, you know, we're engaging in in journalism and the tech world and a bunch of other industries that, you know, I would argue if you're a journalist, you do have something to show for your work. But like inside of the world of finance, it is just this incredible shell game that can leave you feeling so empty inside because it's just you're not actually building anything at the end of the day. Yeah. And that this is why you have to create all these stories for yourself, all these like you have to weave all these tales and all these narratives of like how important it is what you're doing, how virtuous it is or, you know, et cetera, et cetera. or fill yourself with, you know, to invoke the episode title from two weeks ago, like all these precious things that matter to you, be it a Hitler painting or whatever the case may be, all these things that you amass around you that shows you that you were here and you existed and you lived a life. Oh, yeah, that legacy, that legacy is complete. That's for you, Jodi. And the line from this episode, you know, whispered sort of wonderfully by Eric, the thing was nothing. Yeah, no shit. None of these things are things. The things are nothing. And Eric, Harper, you know, Eric gets Harper a couple of times. Harper gets him when he is just sort of opining for how his relationship with his children should be celestial and metaphysical. It's like there's nothing celestial about finance. And she says, it's surely not lost on you that you picked a hyper transactional career where the transactions aggregate to zero. Yeah, exactly. Exactly what you're saying, Joe. Exactly. Anything else you want to add, Rob, to any of this? Yeah, we haven't dug into that specific exchange between Harper and Eric that much in terms of like the one. Because I don't want to go to therapy. Well, I'm sorry. I'm dragging you back. It's part of being a podcaster, Joanne. I just got to do it on the mic. It's true. All right. This part is complimentary. I'm sorry to say. But yeah, I think the combination of yes, the like wanting to prove something to your now dead mother, but also the like, what does it mean to be a good or bad boss? I learned it from watching you like and I think Harper ultimately, even before she reveals to Eric that her mother has died. I mean, giving him an absolute undressing as much as you can do that to a man in a robe for basically no reason. I mean, I wouldn't say that Eric has been incredibly effective in his capacity at Stern Tower as of yet, but he did put up money. He is footing the bill for their office. He is participating in a kind of way. Paying for the chicken wings, baby. At bare minimum, paying for some very expensive chicken wings. And Harper is saying, you're useless to me effectively at this point. And I mean, if we're all being honest about it, I'm sure just projecting a lot of stuff about everything she's thinking and going through with her relationship with her mom, too. Yeah, that was just a lash out because she got a call from her estranged brother about her dead mom. That's a great point, though. Jodi, anything you want to add to that? You know, she talks about that her her brother when they were young is the last and only time she ever felt love. And in that scenario, it is very easy to think of people as how they are useful or not useful to you because love is, you know, the only thing that sort of doesn't have like a functional imperative and she doesn't feel it and she really struggles to give it. And I think like, you know, we I miss I actually I didn't find myself within the episode missing Yaz when the preview came up. I was like, oh, where's Yaz? And I know that Joe and I are hoping for this romantic rekindling or not unkindling of that friendship. But for me, it's because it's the closest we see Harper get to love. Yeah, I think much more so than Eric, Like that relationship has always been of, you know, subordinate. And like, it's it's the writing has always been clear in that relationship. But with Harper and Yaz, we get so close, like we get so close to love. And I want I want that for Harper. Otherwise, she is going to explode her whole world. Yeah, I think she might do it one way or the other, to be honest with you. But it won't. So you're right. Like, it won't save her. it won't save her i mean everything with harper and eric is so fucked up i did think it was interesting this episode though as you mentioned joe this is just a kind of a disaster eric episode in a lot of different respects especially when you arc it out and where he ends up he is one of the only people in the episode though who like kind of gets the thing that he's been after the thing that he's been chasing it's like what he wanted in establishing stern tau in the first place was basically for harper to treat him like a friend or a father or like to disclose personal information about her life. And yet even when she does it, he can't help but make it about him and his daughter. And it's like how quickly he just flips from the one thing he professed to want into this other thing that I guess he needs. But I don't know. Our guy is a mess. Black holes so deep inside of every single character in this show. They will never be filled. Yeah. All right. Well, that has been episode five of industry. Have a great weekend! That's the note I'm leaving it on. Of course we will be back after the next episode drops, so in a little over a week just because of the Super Bowl influence release of Industry. Do you think we'll be programmed to want anything that we don't want because of the Super Bowl? I shudder to say. Guess what? I won't be watching. So PrestiTV is Spotify.com or harpsquirtstrapon at gmail.com and we will see you soon. Bye.