“Pre-Crisis Activity”, the final episode before the much-talked-about Reduction in Force Day, is fittingly titled. With the prospect of everyone losing their jobs on the horizon, the graduates are prepared to do almost anything to secure their positions at Pierpoint. But none of them have learned their lessons since “Nutcracker”, and another party, this one hosted by Yasmin and her suffering dullard boyfriend Seb, once again tests several relationships right before crunch time.
Eric is gone, at least, replaced by Daria, who immediately starts making changes that annoy Clement, whose fears about losing his job – spoiler alert: he loses his job – he writes off as a kind of culling of the male gender, himself and Eric victims of a burgeoning woke matriarchy. Or something. It’s kind of unclear.
Clement isn’t entirely wrong, though. The environment at Pierpoint is exceedingly political, all about optics and impressions, which is part of what’s putting Gus off. The fact that Sara and Daria both know that Harper received twice the bonus that everyone else did is a prime example – telling her to keep it quiet only fosters an environment of secrecy and deception. And of course, Harper doesn’t keep it quiet anyway.
Nobody in “Pre-Crisis Activity” seems capable of sticking to their word. Yasmin and Seb throw a swanky party to which all of Pierpoint are invited, but it quickly becomes an excuse for a very drunk Yasmin to humiliate Seb in front of everyone and tantalize Robert.
Speaking of Robert, he’s trying to stay sober so as not to prove Harper right about him being an addict, but that lasts all of about five minutes. By the time that he’s snorting lines of coke through a £50 note, he’s close to several edges.
His next ill-advised decision is to go upstairs with Harper. They start getting it on and are promptly interrupted by a rather shocked Yasmin, who nonetheless suggests a threesome. Robert thinks all his Christmases have come at once, but then swiftly realizes he won’t be coming at all when Harper, seeing he only really has eyes for Yasmin, makes her excuses. Talk about a mood killer.
Of course, the glare of the morning after is always harsh, especially for Harper, whose blabbing about her bonus has been found out. Daria tells her that she’ll need to repay the $25,000 now, which doesn’t really make sense since if everyone knew she got the extra money anyway, why would they believe that she’d returned it? But whatever. Feeling a bit betrayed, Harper once again turns to Nicole for help and gets a bit too forward, which puts Nicole off Pierpoint altogether, thoroughly angering Daria.
Just to add to the general depravity of Pierpoint’s workplace culture, Yasmin’s manager Hilary takes her aside and lets her know that her messages to Maxim have revealed Kenny’s disturbing behavior during their night out. Is Hilary offering to support Yasmin in dealing with this obvious trauma? Hahaha. No. He’s not-so-subtly suggesting she keep it quiet or risk losing her job.
There’s a reason people don’t like bankers, isn’t there?
This recap of Industry season 1, episode 7, “Pre-Crisis Activity”, contains spoilers. We recapped every episode — check out the episodes tag.
