When Konrad Kay, the cocreator of HBO’s high-finance drama Industry, says that “the cubicle has a weirdly spiritual dimension in our show,” he somehow isn’t referring to the typical squarish workstations where office drones peck away at their computers. Yes, these Industry cubicles are located in the workplace, and they are small, confined spaces where someone in a high-stress environment like the fictional mega-bank Pierpoint can take phone calls, or sit and strategize, or huddle with colleagues and clients. But they aren’t desks—they’re toilet stalls. Busy ones. Arguably, haunted ones.
“It’s, like, where Hari dies,” Kay says, speaking by Zoom over the summer and referring to the stress-fueled keel-over of a first-year investment banker in the series’ 2020 pilot. “It’s where Rob goes to have some sort of transcendental moment,” he adds, describing a Season 3 scene in which another employee trips balls and is visited by ghosts of bathrooms past. “We kind of love it in there!”
For viewers of Industry, there’s a whole lot to love in there, too. Ever since the tense, torrid show first premiered, practically every episode has followed characters into washrooms as they do their business and/or do their business. “I think the bathroom as a space, or just like, the ideology of the bathroom as a space, is a really prominent feature of the entire show,” Harry Lawtey, who plays Rob, tells me over Zoom. “There’s so little room in the universe of our show for intimacy and for privacy and vulnerability. And maybe that’s why these characters so often seek that space as an outlet.”
Which is a genteel way to say: Rob and his friends and associates and superiors and rivals bang in seedy pub lavatories and take nudes in well-lit vanity mirrors. They sell stock from locker rooms and lock themselves in “the disabled loo” to hide after a busted IPO. Epiphanies are had, and company secrets are overheard. Mirrors are befouled and tears are shed and sins are washed right down the drain.
“It’s a bit like the lift in Mad Men,” says Kay, referencing the hallowed, humble elevator that backdrops iconic lines like Not great, Bob! and I don’t think of you at all. “It’s actually just a very easy writerly conceit to just throw people together. It’s like—whenever we wanted people to meet.” Though sometimes even the meeting part’s optional: In Industry’s most recent episode, which aired Sunday night, big swinging dick boss man Eric makes a quick visit to a restaurant toilet mid-lunch to, ah, better acquaint himself with himself, complete with firm handshake. (Guy’s a closer!)
That episode was titled: “Nikki Beach, or: So Many Ways to Lose.” And Industry itself might as well be subtitled: “So Many Ways to the Loo.” So many ways, in fact, that certain patterns of bathroom use and abuse have emerged in the show over the years—patterns that can, in the spirit of Pierpoint, be quantified. Behold The Ringer’s proprietary model, the WASHROOM Index, which seeks to evaluate the industriousness of any given Industry restroom scene based on a basket of factors:
- Waterworks: One point earned if a character uses the facilities as a place to (a) cry, (b) “piss and think of England,” or (c) barf. (We’ll get to that other bodily fluid momentarily.)
- Actual work: Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime … Is the bathroom doubling as a Pierpoint boardroom? Is the commode a place of commerce? One point if yes.
- Style: A point awarded for any scene de toilette that has a strong aesthetic point of view. I reserve the right for “strong aesthetic point of view” to just mean “nice tiles.”
- Horniness: You’ll know it when you see it, and when you do: Notch another point.
- Rails: Any lavatory drug use, cocaine or otherwise, counts for a point here, but only if the consumption occurs within the confines of the loo. Dance floor doesn’t count. Sorry, Rob.
- Onanism: I actually learned this word from Succession’s Connor Roy, who is ostensibly canon in the Industry universe, just like his brother Kendall. A point is given in this category if the character is (a) crankin’ it (self-love specific) or (b) at least going through some psychic torment related to the word “WANKER.”
- Overhearing: One point for that tried-and-true trope of a character overhearing shit talk and/or secrets from inside a stall.
- Meaning: In the grand scheme of things, does it all matter? What happens in the bathroom really ought to stay in the bathroom, but plus one point here if big consequences attach themselves to a scene like a piece of toilet paper to a heel.
In summary and conclusion, “Lots of shit goes down in bathrooms on our show,” says cocreator Mickey Down. So how about we round it all up and see what it tells us about Industry? Put a value on that shit! That’s what the free market is all about.
Season 1: Mean Girls, Dead Guys, and Dropped Trou
Like all the best pilot episodes, the first installment of Industry has a clarion vision that has held strong through nearly three full seasons. By which I mean: OMG, so much bathroom content, right from day one! Let’s take the plunge.
Episode 1: “Induction”
The scene: Sized Up at the Sinks
The WASHROOM Index: 2 (A, M)
It’s stressful as hell when you encounter a superior coming out of the bathroom stall. Eye contact in the mirror and smile, or focus reallyreally hard on drying your hands? Small talk, or respectful silence? Fresh Pierpoint hire Harper stays quiet—and chooses poorly. “You’ve been here three weeks,” snaps middle manager Daria, “and you’ve barely said a word to me.”
Daria asks Harper to accompany her to a dinner with a brassy, handsy client named Nicole—a bad-faith invitation that has ramifications that carry all the way through to the Season 1 finale (and beyond). This is the first time we get familiar with the Pierpoint trading floor loo: the orchids on the counter, the giant tiles on the wall, the stall doors that for plot reasons go all the way to the ceiling but not all the way to the floor. It will absolutely not be the last.
The scene: The Stall-Nighter
The WASHROOM Index: 2 (S, M)
Like so many generations of first-year bankers before him, the ambitious character Hari is shown pulling an all-nighter at the office. He pops narcolepsy meds to avoid nodding off, fiddles with org charts in PowerPoint—“make sure the font’s Helvetica 12 or the MD will freak,” someone commands him—and then retreats to the bathroom floor for a pathetic 2 a.m. power nap. (Smart life hack to use the ubiquitous Micro Puff vest as a pillow, I guess.) It’s a beautiful overhead shot, but the sound of that iPhone alarm should be illegal!!
The scene: Love in This Club
The WASHROOM Index: 1 (H)
Rob takes some ketamine from a girlie on a dance floor, yada yada yada; I’m too shy to post a screenshot of what happens next in the dingy club bathroom, but he is apparently a generous, if indiscriminate, lover.
The scene: Boot and Rally
The WASHROOM Index: 1 (R)
Without stopping to sleep, Rob heads back to the office, juuuust missing out on getting a Waterworks point when he pukes on the sidewalk instead of in the Pierpoint locker room. He brushes his teeth with a spent baggie of white powder, checks out his dong in the mirror, and tries to convince himself: “You’re sound.”
The scene: Death by Helvetica 12
The WASHROOM Index: 4 (W, A, S, On)
Oh Hari, we hardly knew ye. The beleaguered lad’s final moments highlight both the grim tragedy and the pointless absurdity of working oneself to death.
Preparing for a meeting, Hari notices that in his sleep-deprived state, he forgot to change the font on a single page to Helvetica 12. His reaction is (a) such an over-the-top meltdown that you’d think he accidentally included, like, a Xerox of his ass in the pitch book, and (b) pretty much exactly how my friends who went into the i-banking mines after college fretted about work for the better part of three years. (They all have second homes now.)
Anyway, Hari flees to the comfort of his trusty bathroom cubicle bedroom in a panic. Sitting there, he notices some good old graffiti. Look Right, it says, so he looks. Look Left, it says, then: Look Up. Hari does as he’s told. Written in pen up near a skylight is just:
So simple, almost elegant in its petit cruelty, and the last thing Hari sees before he expires. I wish I could offer an extra point for Meaning here, given the shocking nature of Hari’s demise, but Industry makes it dismally clear that there is none. Back to work is the gist of Pierpoint’s messaging to Hari’s teammates and friends as he’s wheeled out on a gurney.
The scene: You-RYE-null
The WASHROOM Index: 4 (W, A, S, M)
During my conversation with Lawtey this August—not long after I apologetically spring on him that I’ve been pondering all of his (and others’!) bathroom scenes in Industry—he circles back to the topic. “I was just suddenly thinking about one of my scenes in Season 1 that I had,” he says. “There’s a scene where someone, like, rips off my pocket square. That shoot was in the bathroom, and that’s one really weird interaction.”
He’s remembering an exchange between Rob and an eccentric older character named Clement, who can be found standing sentinel at the urinal with his pants pooled around his ankles and little mid-calf garters holding up each dress sock. “Never seen a grown man drop his trouser at a urinal?” Clement asks, pronouncing it you-RYE-null, before dispensing a few best-practice bons mots.
“People seem to have forgotten the more you enjoy sales, the more money you’ll make,” he muses, but he reminds Rob that if the lad is going to roll into work straight from a night out, he could at least have the decency to “iron the box lines out of your shirt”—and lose the pocket. “You’re not here to fix the lights,” he says, ripping said pocket right off his younger colleague’s chest. This is all helpful advice—but it is also the beginning of a doomed relationship that will ultimately end when Clement dies from a heroin overdose.
So, a weird interaction, indeed! Oh yeah, and it’s only after this entire exchange that Robert finally notices there might be a dead guy in one of the stalls. Happens to the best of us.
The scene: Underrated and Overheard
The WASHROOM Index: 2 (Ov, M)
Based on all the movies and TV shows I watched growing up—from RoboCop to Ally McBeal, from Scream to Lean on Me—I was kinda under the impression that life in high school and beyond would involve much more overhearing-things-I-shouldn’t-have from inside a bathroom stall. Luckily, Industry more than scratches this itch, right from the pilot. In this scene, two characters (the beautiful, damaged publishing scion Yasmin and some rude rando) stand by the sink talking shit about a member of their cohort; one of them posits that she simply must be some sort of pity hire. They’re talking about Harper, who is in a stall nearby and hears the whole thing.
“I’m so sorry,” Yas says when Harper walks pointedly out. “I was the less cunty one.” A rough moment, yet also one that motivates Harper to go back to her desk, pick up the phone, win Pierpoint some business, and show them. And quite frankly, it’s the perfect start to what has become a beautiful, volatile, Carrie-and-Miranda-level friendship between Harper and Yasmin—and I say that sincerely, and with reverence.
Episode 2: “Quiet and Nice”
The scene: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
The WASHROOM Index: n/a
Yasmin studies her body disapprovingly in the Pierpoint gym locker room mirror. I’m just being completist here!
The scene: [To the tune of “Paperback Writer”] Toilet Paper Dispenser!
The WASHROOM Index: 3 (A, H, R)
Harper and Robert duck away into the restroom during a Pierpoint dinner so they can do lines off a toilet paper dispenser. Can someone please gift these messy children one of those 24k gold Bic pen caps?!
Episode 4: “Sesh”
The scene: The Burgundy on My Dress Shirt/When They Splashed Their Dye Onto Me
The WASHROOM Index: 3 (S, H, M)
Robert and Yasmin go to a Pierpoint recruitment event for university students. (One is Venetia, who will later join Pierpoint, get harassed by Nicole, hook up with Rob, and get fed up and leave the company. Smart cookie.) After a protestor at the event throws red dye on them, Rob and Yas clean off in a charged bathroom scene that sets the will-they-or-won’t-they stage for the two characters.
Both are fundamentally insecure people who are looking for more stability than they were raised with, and each approaches this goal from a different direction. Yasmin seeks control and dominance, bossing Rob around and negging him. Rob tries asking Yasmin out for a bevvy and, having been rebuffed and left alone in the lavatory, appears to reciprocate a suggestive glance from a bright-eyed college lad … developing …
The scene: Call Her Mommy
The WASHROOM Index: 1 (W)
Harper calls her mother in tears from atop a toilet after attempting to impress Nicole at her niece’s school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “You always put so much pressure on yourself,” her mother replies, the mommest comment possible.
The scene: [Giggling] What the Fuck?!
The WASHROOM Index: 1 (W)
Let’s start with the decor of the bar bathroom in which Yasmin finds herself removing her red thong underwear. I’m kinda digging the heady juxtaposition between the ornate mob-wife mirror/rustic tile and those contractor’s-special vessel sinks, a real feast for the senses. (On the one hand, so hard to keep clean! I feel like I can see the unreachable mildew from here! But on the other hand, maybe it’s a functional choice that keeps all the virile financiers from one of their very favorite activities: fornicating atop any countertop they can find!)
Now let’s get to why Yasmin is removing her red thong underwear: She’s about to give them to Robert and tell him to sext her a pic of him wearing them on his face. (This is a good moment to stop and mention that my parents and my sixth grade teacher read all of my articles. Hi, Mom, Dad, and Mrs. Greener!) In fairness, even Yas seems to understand that this is ridiculous. She looks at herself in the mirror, giggles, and says aloud: What the fuck?!
Speaking of which, let’s mention what’s new with Rob since we last saw him, roughly six minutes earlier in the episode. He hooked up with the flirtatious young bro from the bathroom, who told him afterward: “You taste like a hangover.” This all happened off-screen, which means it’s all according to Rob, which means I keep changing my mind about which strategy would be bolder: lying to save face, or telling this truth on himself.
Episode 5: “Learned Behaviour”
The scene: Send Nudes
The WASHROOM Index: 3 (S, H, M)
Ugh, Yasmin would have a gorgeous bathroom with tasteful, flattering lighting and adjustable mirrors in one of her umpteen residences. Like, imagine how good those thick slabs of quartz or marble or whatever would feel against your cheek in the middle of the night during some scorching case of norovirus that my kids, oops, no it’s your kids in this hypothetical scenario, brought home from their classroom. So cold, so clean … so sorry, I’ll stop with that smut and refocus your and Mrs. Greener’s attention to Yasmin sending Robert artful nudes.
The scene: Amsterdamn!
The WASHROOM Index: 3 (A, H, On)
Rob, who is on a business trip in Amsterdam, is sleeping in a tiny bathtub—until, roused by Yasmin’s content, he gets himself right to work.
The scene: Oh Right, I Forgot to Mention That Yasmin Had a Boyfriend All This Time :)
The WASHROOM Index: 5! (S, H, On, Ov, M)
Yasmin relaxes in a bathtub, watching a video of Rob donning her unmentionables and reciprocating his enthusiasm the best way she knows how. Unfortunately, this being Industry, nothing is ever so simple.
Seb, Yasmin’s plant-daddy live-in boyfriend, is elsewhere in the house trying to make dinner when the Bluetooth speaker pairs with Yasmin’s phone and sends out the sound of some other man’s (Rob’s) rhythmic home video grunts. It’s certainly one way to divide the household labor: He cooks, she cucks.
The scene: From Your Lips
The WASHROOM Index: 3 (W, A, S)
This scene is nothing exciting, but I really love this shot; with all the traveling and gallivanting the Industry main characters did in the preceding episodes, it had been awhile since we’d hung out in the Pierpont commode. There’s nothing like your home-away-from-home bathroom, you know?
Episode 6: “Nutcracker”
The scene: Six Feet in Heaven
The WASHROOM Index: 6! (A, S, H, R, Ov, M)
“Cubicle, now!” commands a dude to some fellas, and soon three bros in suits and ties are shuffling into a stall. It’s the Pierpoint holiday party, and Rob is, as usual, getting up to some bathroom shenanigans with the help of a colleague (Greg!) and a bossy client, Usman. Out by the sinks, an older gentleman who either is or was a member of the House of Lords overhears this commotion, sees six shiny shoes beneath the stall door, clears his throat several times, and, who knows, perhaps ever so briefly remembers what it was like to be young and stupid once.
The rowdy lads’ party favor of choice doesn’t appear to be their usual Bolivian marching powder, but rather something called “2C-B,” which I immediately googled on my company-issued laptop for professional reasons and learned is some sort of synthetic psychedelic that people call “Nexus.” (We love a drug name that does triple duty as a Seinfeld reference and a decentralized blockchain network.) “Are we sure about this?” asks Rob.
“Are you my coverage?” retorts Usman. “So, you fill my orders,” he adds. There’s always that one client who uses key bump performance indicators as measures of success.
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The scene: Gus Thrusts
The WASHROOM Index: 3 (H, Ov, M)
Throughout much of Season 1, the character Gus—an Oxford grad who cites Margaret Thatcher and Jesus as … strong influences in his life in his initial Pierpoint interview—has been surreptitiously sleeping with his colleague Theo. But when Theo’s devastatingly sweet partner Alice goes to get the boys a drink at the Christmas party, Theo and Gus overplay their hand, dashing up to the village cubicle for a quick shag in everybody’s favorite stall. But not quick enough: When they return to the party, Alice glimpses them canoodling in the elevator, and you can see in her expression that even if she didn’t technically overhear them in the bathroom, she may as well have. The message is loud and clear.
The scene: [Giggling] What the Fuck?! Part Deux
The WASHROOM Index: 3 (H, On, M)
OK, it’s starting to feel like *I* am the one subjecting myself to a humiliation ritual here. Must I really narrate what happens between Yasmin and Robert in the ol’ Pierpoint gym locker room? We’ll do the Cliffs Notes: It involves fishing for compliments; heavy breathing; a pearlescent glob on a mirror; the command “Eat it” followed by a concerned “Sorry, was that too much?”; and, later, a janitor who looks like he’s either going to—or already did—burst into tears. The aristocrats!
Episode 7: “Pre-Crisis Activity”
The scene: The Hair Holder and the Hangunder
The WASHROOM Index: 4 (W, S, Ov, M)
I totally love this scene, which captures precisely how it feels when you realize—really, really realize—that a relationship is kaput.
True, Yasmin has already pulled almost entirely away from Seb by the time he tries and fails to host dozens of their closest friends for a fancy, festive dinner. But there is something about the way Yasmin bursts into the bathroom and finds Seb leaning over Olivia, his gal pal from “uni,” that so specifically marks the end of the end of an era. Even because—especially because!—the two aren’t even boning. It’s way more intimate than that.
Olivia is retching and writhing, Seb is holding back her hair, and they’re … laughing? Sad, drab Seb is suddenly all aglow, making dad-grade jokes about how this can’t be a hangover, so it must be a hang … under, ha ha. This is excruciating stuff for Yasmin: She may speak six different languages, but turbo-normie banter has never been one of them. Things go from bad to worse, and by the end of the night, she makes it clear to Seb that their relationship isn’t just stuck or stalled or hung: It is over.
The scene: The Conscience in the Toilet
The WASHROOM Index: 3 (W, A, M)
“Now, do you mind if I piss before we get personal?” announces Nicole before a meeting with Daria and Harper—the latter of whom follows the client into the loo for a long-coming confrontation. It was back in the pilot episode that Nicole first tried to force herself on Harper; now, Harper wants an apology for it. “You’ve found your conscience in the toilet, have you?” Nicole fires back. “Funny how you ignore it when you need my money.” Nicole storms out and informs a stunned Daria that not only will there be no meeting, but Pierpoint will no longer have her business at all.
Episode 8: “Reduction in Force”
The scene: The Hug
The WASHROOM Index: 1 (A)
Bookending Harper and Yasmin’s stilted bathroom interaction in the Industry pilot is a scene in the Season 1 finale that crackles with standoffishness and suspicion and culminates in a big, cold hug. It also underlines why Yasmin will wind up resenting Harper for a time: Harper throws Daria under the bus as a way to get her can’t-live-with-him-can’t-live-without-him mentor Eric rehired at Pierpoint, and in doing so eliminates one of Yasmin’s most important supporters at the firm. (I’m realizing this is the first time Eric has really come up in this piece; maybe he’s one of those guys who prefers to poop on a different floor.)
The scene: The Cleanse
The WASHROOM Index: n/a
As Season 1 winds down, Yasmin washes that Seb right outta her hair and smiles in the shower. I confess to not being sure about where she’s showering, but the water pressure looks nice.
Season 2: Bats up a Sundress, Jesus on a Shower Curtain, and Weird Little Vases
There are notably fewer bathroom scenes in Season 2 of Industry compared with Season 1, for a few probable reasons. First, a few of the show’s main characters, like Eric and Yasmin, have started spending more time on different floors, making the elevators a more likely place for them to cross paths with the coworkers we’re familiar with. Second, Season 2 seemed to have more license, and probably more money, to break out beyond the confines of lavatory studio sets: Characters travel abroad and go on grouse hunts and host weddings. The result is that the bathroom scenes that do remain are real doozies!
Episode 1: “Daddy”
The scene: The Prodigal Daughter Returns
The WASHROOM Index: 1 (M)
COVID lockdowns have already been over for a little while as Season 2 begins, though it takes Harper longer than most to finally return to the Pierpoint office (she only does so because she’s threatened with termination). Once she’s back, she runs almost immediately into her old nemesis turned confidant turned critic Yasmin, at where else but their old familiar stomping grounds, the bathroom sink?
“Welcome back,” says Yasmin as she blows past Harper sans eye contact, still bitter about Harper’s stealth maneuvering at the end of the first season. “Bitch,” Yasmin mutters as she gets to the door. “Cunt,” Harper mutters back. It’s truly the “Mule!” “Nag!” of our time.
The scene: The Nakey Wakey
The WASHROOM Index: 2 (W, M)
The actual bathroom shot here, in which a naked and almost certainly still drunk Harper awakens in the middle of the night and staggers to the loo in the dark, is minor compared with most others in the show. (Though drinking from the bathroom sink with her hands is a move worthy of a Waterworks point.) It’s what happens just before and afterward that matters more: Having seen firsthand the squalor of Harper’s hotel living arrangement after walking her home that night, Robert offers her a spare room at his place to help her readjust to the post-COVID real world. She accepts, putting her in closer (and more chaotic) contact with Rob and Gus as the season progresses.
Episode 2: “The Giant Squid”
The scene: Pogdaddy911: The Investigation Continues
The WASHROOM Index: 2 (W, S)
Harper has just hooked her most exciting client yet: contrarian investor Jesse Bloom, whom she met during her hotel era and who finally says yes to a huge trade via Pierpoint. Great news, right? Yet Harper’s next move is to go sit in the bathroom with her AirPods on and gently weep for a while. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
As she sits there in the cubicle, we see one big thing that’s contributing to her stress: messages to an Instagram user named “pogdaddy911” that mention Berlin and have a cryptic, maybe even vaguely threatening tone. (Later, pogdaddy911 will turn out to be Harper’s unstable brother, and her reunion with him in Germany will start well but end badly, as reunions so often can.)
Episode 3: “The Fool”
The scene: Like a Bat Up Your Nightdress
The WASHROOM Index: 4 (A, S, R, M)
“I’m just wiping!!!” screams Rishi as someone knocks on the door of yet another bathroom, at yet another pub, where he and Harper are about to do yet another quantity of recreational drugs. “Don’t you think people, like, underestimate you?” Harper asks him. “No, because I’m printing biz,” Rishi replies, and so is Harper, now that she’s turned into the Jesse Bloom whisperer at Pierpoint. “Today you touched the face of God, and for a moment, became him,” Rishi says. Harper does a bump: “This really works!” she yelps. “Like a bat up your nightdress!” Rishi agrees. And I think we can all agree that all of this is one of the most cocaine conversations ever put to film.
The scene: Jesus Is Watching You
The WASHROOM Index: 5 (A, S, H, On, M)
There’s a fair amount of ground to cover on this one, and I don’t just mean the bathroom floor. Poor Rob is just trying to brush his damn teeth when Harper comes home all gakked up from her bat/nightdress hangout with Rishi. She starts making out with Rob, but her friend-roommate-colleague isn’t quite rising to her level, and so Harper does what Harper does best: she takes matters into her own hands, laying down for a frenzied solo sesh right there on the bathmat under the gentle, watchful gaze of Shower Curtain Jesus.
Harper spends the night on the floor using the bathmat as a blanket—at some point she even acquires a pillow?—before being awakened by a call from an animated Bloom, who is ready to stir things up.
Episode 4: “There Are Some Women …”
The scene: You Dropped This, Queen!
The WASHROOM Index: 5! (A, S, H, R, M)
“I’m a sexual person!” Yasmin whined to her ex-boyfriend, Seb, back in Season 1, and as we come to learn, she really isn’t kidding. But she has nothing on Celeste, the tres-French private wealth management advisor who has such an erotic aura that she makes Yas look like (pre-carnival) Sandra Dee. The first time Yas and Celeste meet, Yasmin just assumes Celeste is a high-end escort.
Together at a party, Celeste and Yasmin retreat to a vase-filled powder room to do some drugs, and—whoops! Celeste drops something. “Pick it up,” she purrs (not unlike Yasmin directing Rob to “eat it”) and Yasmin, with a thrill, does as she’s told. Thus begins a speedrun of a dalliance: By Episode 6 they’ll be in bed together; by Episode 7 the fun will be gone. But they’ll always have that bathroom, and those weird little vases.
Episode 7: “Lone Wolf and Cub”
The scene: Daniel Van Deventer and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day (From Hell)
The WASHROOM Index: 5 (W, A, S, On, M)
Of all the characters that didn’t return for Season 3, the one I miss the most is definitely Danny Van Deventer, a.k.a. DVD. In Season 2, DVD nails that uneasy equilibrium of being middle management in the world of finance: No longer just a kid, but not yet a total Fed. DVD perceives himself as a man who hasn’t yet lost his moral compass or submitted fully to the greed and cynicism of his employer and his industry, but the mirror shows only one angle. By the end of Season 2, he starts to realize that he’s not above the fray—he’s inside it, getting hit from every direction.
The higher-ups want their asses covered; Harper is no longer interested in being a source of ass. (Which might be for the best: After one hookup, with DVD asleep in her bed, she goes so far as to call Jesse Bloom to tell him not to listen to DVD’s advice because “he’s a sales guy: it’s his job to be convincing.”) “I’m just having the day from hell,” he vents over the phone while standing in the Pierpoint bathroom. “It’s the whole fucking culture, man,” he explains. “I feel sick.” Someone else enters the bathroom, so DVD retreats into a stall. Whereupon his eyes catch on instructions to look right … look left … look up …
Really, it’s enough to break the best of ’em. DVD’s face crumples, and he cries. Probably because he’s starting to realize that the shit-eating never ends: You either develop the palate for it, or you lose your meal ticket altogether.
Episode 8: “Jerusalem”
The scene: Pick Your Poison
The WASHROOM Index: 4 (W, H, R, M)
Rishi’s wedding is nigh, which means he’s busy blowing lines with Harper in a pub bathroom. It’s all fun and games until, in response to Rishi’s nerves about holy matrimony, Harper suggests that he ought to just think of it all as just a chapter in life, rather than the whole book. “That’s a wildly calculating thing to say to a man about to be married,” Rishi says, looking more panicked than I think I’ve ever seen him. “That’s psychopath logic. You compartmentalize heinous shit!” Then he grabs Harper and kisses her, and the belts come undone, and the sound design goes all the way up to 11—I made sure to award a Waterworks point in honor of those ambitious squelches—and then it’s over, just as quickly as it began.
“Sorry, I just had to get the poison out,” Rishi admits, an all-timer of a post-coital sweet nothing. “Me too, me too,” Harper says. All this time, she is operating under the impression that Rishi is about to be fired from Pierpoint thanks to some scheming she did out of self-preservation. But she’ll soon be reminded that Rishi is quite the operator himself: By the conclusion of Season 2, it’s Harper who finds herself cast out of Pierpoint—thanks to Eric’s maybe-strategic betrayal—and Rishi who is back at his desk.
Season 3: Golden Showers, Eavesdroppers, and Bloody Noses
Over Zoom, Lawtey tells me about one hazard of this particular job: The bathrooms can sometimes appear to be too real. Industry’s main location, the Pierpoint trading floor, is a set, but it doesn’t always feel that way: “It’s really exciting, actually,” he says, “because the trading floor that we film in, it’s kind of completely livable in the sense that it’s a 360-degree set. You can walk anywhere, and there is no, like, facade, and you can kind of exist within it universally. And so I can logistically walk from my desk to the bathroom without encountering anything that feels or looks fake or phony. You do have to then remind people: Don’t use the bathroom, because there is no plumbing. So that’s like, the crucial rule that is laid out to all new crew members who maybe joined the show in Season 3. These are not functioning bathrooms.”
They may not be functioning in real life, but fear not: in Industry’s third and current season, the loos are still as functional as ever.
Episode 2: “Smoke and Mirrors”
The scene: The Safe Space
The WASHROOM Index: 3 (A, R, M)
Industry’s biggest, newest name in Season 3 is Henry Muck, played by Kit Harington of Game of Thrones renown. Henry is a man of privilege who’s had a coddled, stilted upbringing; it is almost impossible for him to ever know the true depths of failure and ruin. Which is exactly why he’s not at all prepared for his company, Lumi, to go down in flames.
Henry reacts to this in a manner befitting his immaturity: by eating mushrooms, locking himself in “the disabled loo,” and refusing to come out. It is Yasmin, sensing opportunity, who steps up, scolding Henry into compliance by appealing to his desire to be told what to do. (The scene reminded me of when Gerri in Succession realized that she could manipulate Roman in a similar way.)
The scene: Surrender to the Flow
The WASHROOM Index: 6! (W, A, S, H, Ov, M)
Yasmin goes another step further in exploring her powers over Henry when the two go out for a fancy dinner. Henry has convinced his publishing magnate relative to squelch a paparazzi photo of Yasmin; as a thank-you, she nods him toward the restaurant bathroom. (Which is gorgeous, by the way, those damn vessel sinks notwithstanding.)
High finance is ultimately a game of information acquisition, and Yasmin, thanks to a gossipy colleague named Sweetpea, has some important intel on Henry: the man loves him some urine! Yasmin goes into a stall and relieves herself, knowing that he’ll hear, and the plan works like a charm. But there’s one question I do have: Is this a Jimmy Dugan–length performance from Yasmin or what, because how does Henry have enough time to leave the bathroom, grab the waiter, pay the bill, and leave Yasmin with a fully-cleared table and a bottle of wine so rare that even the sommelier is flustered—all before she’s emerged from the loo? Not my business, I suppose.
Episode 3: “It”
The scene: Is a Sauna a Bathroom?
The WASHROOM Index: 2 (A, S)
I wasn’t entirely sure whether to count this scene, in which Rob chats with a Pierpoint research analyst named Frank, played by Joel Kim Booster, who is relaxing, sans towel, in a sauna. Is a hot dog a sandwich? Does a sauna count as a bathroom? Who’s to say? I mean, it’s certainly not an elevator, you know?
Ultimately, the sauna chat fits the spirit of a good bathroom scene: Two people thrown together by circumstance, in an enclosed and mostly-private space, and one of them has their dong out. Check, check, and check! As for the actual particulars of the conversation, well, it sounds like a scenario you’d read in the ethics portion of a Series 7 exam. Rob wants inside information on the nature of Frank’s upcoming research report on Lumi stock; at the very least, he hopes Frank will massage his analysis to avoid issuing a “sell” rating on the stock. Frank just sits there, nude and jaded, and it remains unclear whether the two ever hook up; in an interview with Vulture, Booster said that in an original version of the script it had been heavily implied that they do, but that subsequent iterations suggested the opposite.
Either way, Frank winds up marking the stock as a neutral “hold”; and in the end, it barely even matters.
The scene: Most Companies Fail
The WASHROOM Index: 3 (A, S, M)
Sitting in a well-appointed locker room all by his lonesome, a bathrobe-clad Henry calls Celeste to finally pull the ripcord and sell his personal shares of Lumi. “Woof,” is all he can utter when he finds out how much—how little—he’ll net in the transaction. It’s not the money itself that matters to someone as rich as Henry—it’s what the money represents. Like being seen as a builder, a visionary, someone brilliant and respected, not just some rich kid who breaks every toy he gets his hand on.
“Most companies fail,” Henry says out loud after getting off the phone, staring himself down in the mirror. “Most companies fail!” Henry normally has a knack for getting people to listen to him and do his bidding—that knack is called “old money”—but as he tries to move on from Lumi’s very public meltdown, it’s clear that the person who finds him least convincing is his own self.
Episode 4: “White Mischief”
The scene: The Bloody Nose and the BabyBjörn
The WASHROOM Index: 4 (W, S, H, M)
Episode 4 of this season focuses mainly on Rishi, who is now married with a kid and has hella gambling debt. We follow the compulsive trader through a disastrous and injurious night of drugs and drinking and fighting and losing fat stacks of cash, but perhaps the most harrowing part takes place at the beginning, when Rishi is celebrating the holidays with his family. We see him standing at a urinal, enjoying one of Sweetpea’s OnlyFans videos on his phone—until his attempts to pay for further access get denied. The camera shifts, and we learn that this whole time, Rishi has had his baby son strapped to a carrier on his chest. When a big drop of blood lands on that sweet baby’s face, we observe that it has originated from his degenerate dad’s overused, dripping nostril. Rishi’s night might theoretically be about to devolve, but it’s hard to know how it gets much lower than this.
Episode 5: “Company Man”
The scene: Just Piss and Think of England!
The WASHROOM Index: 5 (W, A, S, H, M)
“Henry Muck must say the word vulnerable, like, 100 times in this show, you know?” remarks Marisa Abela, who plays Yasmin, during a Zoom conversation in July. She’s got a point: “Can you be vulnerable with me if I’m vulnerable with you?” is what Henry asks Yasmin as they stand together in the shower in Episode 5. And when she says OK, he continues with a more specific ask: “Can you relieve yourself on me?” It’s a bold scene, this golden shower, though it’s handled with genuine precision and dignity. “That was a holy moment,” Henry tells her later, “when we were vulnerable with each other.”
It is NOT a holy moment when a friend of Henry’s interrupts to chuckle, in earshot of several people, including Yasmin: “You got another girl to piss on you?” See, this is why so many women would just rather go be vulnerable with some bear.
The scene: Pregame Jitters
The WASHROOM Index: 1 (W)
Robert stares at himself in a restroom mirror. He is wearing a pair of Pierpoint-provided prescriptionless glasses to look more assured when he is called up to testify as part of a government inquisition into the conduct of Pierpoint and Lumi in the latter’s disastrous IPO. But instead he just looks like a scared boy who’s trying on his dad’s spectacles—and that’s before he starts puking into the sink. The effect is, unfortunately for him, less “Bill Russell always threw up before big games!” and more “Tom and Greg’s congressional testimony, except with the stomach of Eminem’s character in 8 Mile.”
The scene: Di With an Eye on Her Guy
The WASHROOM Index: 2 (A, S)
“A lot of my friends, they spend as much time in there as possible,” Kay tells me about some of his real-life pals who work in the financial industry and are no strangers to a little bathroom-maxxing. After all, he says, “it’s a bit of a treat to go and sit down for a few minutes and scroll on the phone.” (This works well at overwhelming weddings, too.) Thinking back to my own newly-post-grad career in finance, some of my warmest memories involve loitering atop a toilet (in one of the nice bathrooms meant for private wealth clients—just call me Celeste, bebe!) and composing Tumblr posts on my BlackBerry.
This is all to say that watching Yasmin (in a Princess Di costume, natch) get all comfy in a stall with her phone turned to a livestream of Rob’s testimony? It makes for a lovely serotonin boost.
The scene: Henry Muck Is Apparently the Only Person Capable of Discretion in a Restroom Environment
The WASHROOM Index: 2 (A, M)
Whether they’re in a bathroom or on a train or at a party, most Pierpoint employees are freakin’ yappers, leaking information everywhere they go. But when you’re a generationally shady dude like Henry, raised in a family that trades in secrets, you get good at knowing when and how to keep things quiet. To watch Henry stride around a men’s room and actually check every stall for errant eavesdroppers before getting into a loud conversation about his personal-professional life is to see that skill in action. As opposed to …
The scene: Harper the Spy
The WASHROOM Index: 4 (A, S, Ov, M)
Sweetpea is a modern Renaissance woman: skilled at OnlyFans and at uncovering a ticking financial time bomb that threatens to bring Pierpoint to its knees! She is telling Yasmin about the latter (while dressed as Ginger Spice) at the very same time that Harper, who happens to be back in the building for a meeting, is, whaddayaknow, on the john. Et voila: Harper hears everything, and that sets into motion the events that will define the back half of Industry’s third season.
The scene: Robert’s Memory Palace Has a Throne Room
The WASHROOM Index: 5 (W, A, S, R, M)
After Henry semi-kidnaps Robert and brings him to an ayahuasca guru, Rob goes on a long strange trip through the deepest reaches of his mind—which means that, predictably, there’s a good amount of bathroom-related content on his journey. His visions include, but are not limited to: the body of Hari, the word WANKER, the phrase “eat it,” his own shirtless self, and his late client/paramour Nicole, who for some reason is mid-pee in her spectral form. “I had a very nasty experience in the loo just now,” Rob says afterward. “I saw a monster. Whatever you do ... don’t look in the mirror.” Never a dull moment for our guy Robert: he really ought to consider doing some of those day-in-the-life TikToks. Might I recommend Chicago?
Episode 6: “Nikki Beach, or: So Many Ways to Lose”
The scene: The Shower Alibi
The WASHROOM Index: 2 (S, M)
“Yas, we had a party in your cabin,” stresses Harper, turning on the shower in Yasmin’s room on her father’s giant sailboat, the Lady Yasmin. “Just you and me, OK?”
Throughout Season 3 of Industry, viewers have been learning bit by bit about what happened in Italian waters six weeks earlier that led to the disappearance of Charles, Yasmin’s lecherous embezzler father. And in a flashback at the start of Episode 6, we see what exactly went down: Charles jumped ship to get attention, Yas refused to take the bait, the boat moved quickly, and that was the end of that.
When Harper finds out what happened from a shell-shocked Yasmin, she springs into action: creating an alibi, straightening up the life preservers, and sticking Yas in a shower to try to calm her down. Something tells me this might not be the last we hear of this situation.
The scene: Eric Needs to Get a Grip … Ahhhh Not Like That!
The WASHROOM Index: 2 (H, O)
We haven’t talked about Eric much here, but he’s been spiraling out of control all season, and Sunday’s episode is no different. After an exasperated Yasmin tells Eric off at a business lunch and bounces, the dude ducks into a restaurant bathroom to quickly and angrily crank it like a goddamn hormonal teen. Nooners used to mean something in this world; say what you will about adultery, but at least it’s a collaborative project. These days? It’s increasingly just a buncha gooners out there, alone in their stalls with only their own selves for love, making like jerks all the way to the top. As in finance, so in life.
And the winners are…
Here’s what I concluded after grinding the tape and crunching the numbers on all that crying and hoovering and grinding.
The Most Bathroom Scene in Industry, the only one with 6/8 WASHROOM points, is … that time those three dudes took that weird drug in a Pierpoint stall while an annoyed Lord idled nearby. (It wasn’t just Robert who had a weird night after that: there was also Greg, who bugged out and launched himself face-first into a glass partition, and then did it again and again.) That episode is part of The Most Bathroom Season of Industry, Season 1, which had at least 20 scenes set in the commode.
And then there’s The Most Bathroom Episode (Other Than the Pilot), an honor earned just recently by this season’s Episode 5, which featured a six-pack of washroom delights. But not everything is a volume play. Take Season 2, which may have featured the fewest number of restroom environs (around eight), but which made them really count, earning the honor of the Best Bathroom Season in Industry. Of the seven bathroom scenes from across the show’s three seasons that earned WASHROOM scores of 5 or 6, three of them (Shower Curtain Jesus; DVD crying; and the one with all the sexual tension with Yasmin and Celeste) all came from Season 2.
Grossest Bathroom? Glad you asked! I think it’s the one at the club in the first season where Robert took ketamine and got busy. Nicest Bathroom? That locker room in Switzerland where Henry gave himself a pep talk in the mirror looked nice. Characters We Didn’t See Enough Of in the Loo: Eric, Jesse Bloom, Venetia, and Adler. Character I’d Least Want to Make Eye Contact With in the Bathroom Mirror: Petra. Lavatory GOAT: Tough decision between Rob and Yas, though Rob came closer to hitting for the cycle. But then again, maybe we should hold off on making any more major proclamations. There are still two episodes left of Season 3, and if we’ve learned anything from this show, it’s that there’s almost certainly a lot more shit waiting to hit the fan.
