Industry (Season 4)

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⭐ 9/10

My 3 season binge meant that I got to watch this fourth season weekly for most of it, and I forgot how exciting it is to have ongoing shows to look forward to every week, specifically Sunday night. This and Knight of the Seven Kingdoms were such a treat. With this show specifically I forgot how much I love a multi-season show. If I have to pick between movies or TV I will go movies 90% of the time, but with something like this you are really rewarded for the tens of hours you spend with these characters. Seeing how they evolve, and even how the show evolves over time, is something that is basically impossible to do in movies.

Speaking of evolution, this show continues to amaze. The first season is a bunch of kids at an internship trying to score this soul-sucking job. Season two we move higher up in the company, the rot on the trading floor trickling down from the board rooms above it. Season 3 we keep going up, the upper-upper class and their relationship with the media and financial world and politicians, corruption and entitlement beyond belief. That was a perfect 3 season arc, and my main strike against this season is how it feels like it needs to one-up itself. There is a new tech company with an evil CEO who is actually a puppet of Russia or some deep-state shadow organization, and the company kind of ends up being a front for it? Stretched belief a bit, and introduced us to some comically evil people that are impossible to empathize with, which has been a super power of this show. We even get some nazis! I think the conclusion is fantastic, but there were a couple episodes where I felt it had gone in over its head, even if these machinations are probably actually somewhat realistic.

My boy Rob is nowhere to be found, a strike against the show as well, but its like sending a sick dog to the farm, I love knowing he is nowhere near these disgusting people. Kit Harrington filled that void, and he is incredible, so much so that I can't stop thinking about a Thrones rewatch. He is phenomenal here, goes through an insane amount of change, and has one episode centered around him that is a real masterclass in acting and writing. He is so good, and becomes a tragic figure like Rob, so I was very attached to him.

The show has always been about Harper and Yasmin, especially since Rob's departure, and they hit all-time highs by the end of this season. Harper has tremendous and singular success, but finds it hollow in the destruction that she causes along the way. Seeing her tenacity fall away, almost numb as she summits the mountain, was a perfect choice. She has been kind of robotic and tough to understand in the past, but I think her character is now perfectly centered going into the 5th and final season. Her relationship with Yas is mostly remote, but the economics of the season boil down to Yasmin wanting a company to succeed, and Harper trying to bring it down. Awesome stuff!

Yasmin's 3 season arc was perfect, and in this season she is unleashed. I can't begin to list all the crazy stuff that happens, but her as a foil to Harper was perfected here. She sinks lower than I could have ever fathomed, but it perfectly tracks what we know about her, this girl who desires to be useful and important using the only currencies she has ever understood to get what she wants. By the end of the season she, like Harper, has also summitted, but what's the opposite of the summit of a mountain? She is truly despicable, in a way that can only be described as Epstein/Maxwell-esque, and I applaud the show for being relevant. In the final Harper and Yas standoff the disgust of Harper is so genuine, and the apathy of Yas so shocking, it made me so excited to see how this show closes off the story next season. The incredible thing is how true to the characters this feels, not stretching to try to be relevant or shocking. Everything we have seen from her, her weaponization of her own sexuality and her manipulation of people vulnerable to it, as well as our exposure to the way she was brought up, it all tracks. Just fantastic writing over multiple seasons.

I'll say again this show is impossible to recommend because of the depravity of the content, but its even more clear in this season that all we have seen serves a purpose and enriches the story. The real question is if you can empathize or even be entertained by people this sick. It's corny to say that this represents politics and capitalism, but it does! The show is disgusted by the state of the world and the people who run it, and it is unflinching in showing you where these people come from and the systems we live in that they control. One of the best shows out there hands down.

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