With a title like “Nutcracker”, it’s no surprise that Industry episode 6 gets a bit Christmassy. It also, true to form, gets a bit steamy and bonkers and unbearably tense, introducing in its opening scene the idea that Eric himself is on the chopping block after locking Harper in a room to berate her privately. But we quickly rewind 72 hours prior to that to see how we got there, beginning with Eric giving her a $50,000 bonus early.
You’ll recall that the last time we saw Eric he was telling Harper she was worthless, so this is rather odd behavior, as is inviting her to be his plus one at the Pierpoint Christmas party – a fate Daria protects her from, much to Eric’s annoyance. It’s obvious that Eric is behaving inappropriately towards Harper, but she’s probably paying too much attention to Yasmin and Robert to notice. The latter leaves the former a little holiday gift which she stuffs in her desk, making a logical – and correct – assumption that it contains something best opened privately. Harper witnesses the whole thing.
Some of the best episodes of television are based around cramming all the characters into a single location and forcing them to interact, usually under the influence. HBO did it masterfully with Succession more than once, and “Nutcracker” is a fine example of the practice too. The Christmas party is an accident waiting to happen – several accidents, in fact, and they all do indeed happen. You can see all the signs right from the start: Greg is still stinging after being publicly embarrassed by Eric and arrested after a night of partying; Robert is enlisted by Harper to look after Greg but has to meet the needs of both his party-hard client Usam and his libido, which is turbo-charged whenever Yasmin is around; and Yasmin, while we’re on the subject, is blindsided by the arrival of Maxim, who said he wasn’t coming. It’s a nightmare.
Harper exists somewhat apart from it. She hovers around the empty trading floor and unwraps Robert’s gift to Yasmin – a framed picture of him with her panties on his face – and then when she turns up at the party she has an incredibly awkward exchange with Eric and his high-ranking Google executive wife, Candace. Later she shares a bottle of wine with Daria and lets on about Eric’s inappropriate behavior.
Yasmin remains a brilliant character, and “Nutcracker” puts her through the wringer. Maxim is hesitant to do business with Pierpoint because of how she allowed Kenny to behave during their night out, to which she responds, “Oh, f*ck off, ally.” Brilliant. She then berates Kenny and takes Robert away for a quiet and deeply weird liaison. It’s certainly a party.
For some more than others, though. Gus’s increasing disillusionment with the company is only exacerbated when he’s paraded around for good PR opportunities since he sat next to Hari. He eventually blows off some steam with Theo, who’s in attendance with his girlfriend, Alice, but Alice catches them in uncomfortably close proximity and blatantly figures out what’s up – she probably had her suspicions anyway given how unsubtle Theo is.
And then there’s Robert. Despite his valiant efforts, he can’t stop Greg from getting dangerously high at the behest of Usam, who at one point blows coke up Robert’s a*se for no better reason than he simply felt like it, and also lets on that Kaspar, Clement’s only client, is retiring, thus putting Clement’s – and by extension Robert’s – job in serious jeopardy. Combine that with the whole Yasmin debacle and Robert is having a very confusing evening even before Greg repeatedly runs into a glass window until he splits his head open and collapses in full view of everyone – something that Harper blames Robert for.
It seems like blame is something that Harper is pretty good at. But even she’s blindsided by the determination that Sara and Daria have to get rid of Eric, using Harper’s offhanded mentioning of him locking her in an office as justification to do so. She might be the high-flying teacher’s-pet graduate, but she’s being used as a pawn by much more powerful players than she is. The only question is who’ll win the game in the end.
This recap of Industry season 1, episode 6, “Nutcracker”, contains spoilers. We recapped every episode — check out the episodes tag.
