I couldn't make it through the first episode of "Industry" (but it's not the show's fault)
If Industry — HBO’s new drama about a bunch of recent grads fighting and scheming to succeed in the cutthroat environment of London finance — is your jam, hey man, I get it. It’s a setting rife with conflict and tension, with plenty of opportunities for backstabbing and “how’re they gonna get out of this one?” situations. Industry is not a bad show by any means; it’s telling exactly the story it wants to tell and it does it well.
But if you’re like me, an anxious person who hates the idea of constant work pressure, who likes to work in harmony with her coworkers, and really doesn’t want to think about the precariousness of employment and mental health, you might wanna skip this one.
The first episode features one person so terrified of not getting hired full-time that he never leaves the office, allowing himself just brief catnaps on the floor of a bathroom stall. Another person is hit on by a client she just tried to pitch to, and when she doesn’t respond, she worries she’s lost any benefit she has to the company. All the main characters get yelled at by their superiors all the time, which is clearly just part of the job.
Again, this doesn’t make it a bad show, but it certainly makes it Not For Kats.
Similar to when I tried out Amazon Prime’s Utopia and quickly peaced out, I had to turn off Industry before the first episode was over. It stressed me out too goddamn much. Maybe one day, far in the future, I’ll be able handle that kind of tension in my TV watching, but for right now, I just wanna wrap myself in a cashmere blanket, sip on my white wine, and watch nice people be nice to each other, with some good jokes thrown in there. Heck, I’ll even take some sci fi drama in outer space, as long as nobody on the spaceship is worried every single moment that they’re gonna get yelled at/fired/thrown out the airlock. To paraphrase a very funny Paul F. Tomkins bit, is there anything worse than getting yelled at? Let me stop you right there, because no, there is not.
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That’s all for me today, gorgeous! Talk to you soon.
Love,
Kat
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