Spoilers follow for Industry season three, episode six, “Nikki Beach, or: So Many Ways to Loseâ€
With its array of tortured characters jockeying for professional and personal standing, Industry does not lack for moments of long-simmering tensions boiling over into full-scale blowouts. Even by these standards, though, “Nikki Beach, or: So Many Ways to Lose†is one of the series’ most explosive episodes. It begins with a flashback to Yasmin Hanani and her father, Charles Hanani, litigating their toxic father-daughter relationship on the deck of their yacht, culminating in Charles’s watery accidental death. It follows this up with a fiery showdown between Harper Stern and her former Pierpoint boss Eric Tao, who storms into Harper’s office upon learning that she’s shorted Pierpoint’s stock to exact revenge against the company for firing her. And it caps things off with a venomous clash between Harper and Yasmin after Harper exploits Yasmin in a vulnerable moment to get the privileged information she needs to validate her Pierpoint short position; Yasmin is fired for the divulgence.
Yasmin and Harper have been through a lot over the course of their complicated on-again, off-again friendship. They’ve lived and worked together, been entangled in a pseudo-love triangle with their colleague and housemate Robert Spearing, and tracked down Harper’s twin brother, who left her family without a trace. They’ve also, as of this episode, covered up Yasmin’s possible criminal neglect related to her father’s death. Thus, when the two of them fight, they have no shortage of latent resentments to weaponize against each other. The result is a vicious exchange of verbal (and, eventually, physical) haymakers loaded with so much baggage that it’s impossible to unpack each one in real time. So to help identify who came out on top, we ranked the brawl’s five most devastating punches.
5. Harper: “I did everything in my power to try to stop Petra. I did. But this is the business. Sorry, the world is showing you what it is without any of the protections that you are so clearly used to. And I am genuinely sorry that you think I am so sick that I could somehow get off on your unhappiness.â€
Even before Charles revealed to Yasmin that she was a nepotism hire at the end of season two, she was an insecure mess at work. She fetched coffee and lunch to demonstrate her willingness to do grunt work, tolerated abusive management to be seen as a team player, and bounced between departments to find a role she excelled in, to no avail. After learning she didn’t get her job on merit, though, Yasmin has been especially desperate to prove herself professionally in season three. Thus, when Harper tells her that she’s been too sheltered to develop an understanding of “the business†— on the same day she was fired for her professional incompetence — it’s a harsh blow. Validity aside, this critique is undercut by the fact that Harper is only levying it to deflect from her guilt for taking advantage of her friend.
4. Yasmin: “Fuck you. My pain is useful to you. Even today, of all the fucking days, my pain was useful to you. And the more I sit with it, the more I realize, of course. Of course. That little voice in my head was right. You revel in my disgrace. You revel in other people’s pain. It fucking nourishes you.â€
Harper probably wouldn’t be thrilled to be labeled a heartless sadist by her only friend under the best of circumstances, but to get this criticism so soon after Eric, her former mentor, lobbed a similar insult her way must sting. “I don’t know what your angle is, but it’s somewhere in the area of causing the most harm to as many people as you physically can,†he says when he crashes Harper’s office earlier in the episode. “Everyone’s collateral, right? Even the only girl stupid enough to call you a friend.†Even as Harper made an out-of-character attempt not to use Yasmin as collateral this episode, she can’t keep Yasmin from wisening up.
3. Yasmin: “Oh my God. You’re mental. You are hardwired to exploit people’s vulnerabilities. And all the mental gymnastics of whatever — I don’t know — genetic blame game, or how you were brought up, or ‘Oh my God, my brother, he’s an addict’ shit that you spin does not absolve you of how you choose to act now.â€
Once again, Yasmin’s assessment of Harper here echoes Eric’s from earlier in the episode. “I’m guessing you live with the feeling that you’re a monster,†he snarls at her. “And now there’s nothing stopping you on your path to whatever behavior provides you with an externalized fantasy of what you really think of yourself. Every moment of every day, I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that what you think about yourself is true.†The two are in agreement that Harper is a sociopath, but Yasmin takes it one step further by reminding Harper that, if she doesn’t have empathy for others, she doesn’t get to have empathy for herself either. Still, as the only person in Harper’s current life to have met Harper’s brother and potentially appreciate how much his absence from her life has affected her, Yasmin reducing her abandonment trauma to a mocking cry of “‘Oh my God, my brother, he’s an addict’†taps into a level of spiteful pettiness that even Eric can’t muster.
2. Yasmin: “You think that, if I wasn’t around, Rob would want to be with you? He thinks you’re deranged. Being a narcissist with an inferiority complex doesn’t make you an underdog, Harper. It makes you completely fucking nauseating. And, trust me, I know narcissists. My dad used to pity himself too.â€
Irrespective of whether Harper continues to have unrequited feelings for Rob, she set herself up for this nasty barb by saying he “deserves better†than Yasmin’s treatment of him. But more damaging than the line itself is the condescending faux pity with which actress Marisa Abela delivers it: The way she cocks her head and shifts her register as if to facetiously say, “You poor little thing …†It’s not a tone that the prideful Harper can stomach. The line also happens to mirror a sentiment Yasmin hurled at Harper during an early season-two argument: “Good-bye, Harper. Good luck finding someone to love you.â€
1. Harper: “Like father like daughter, right? Your arrogance is just you overcompensating for the fact that you could not be any more fucking ordinary. And guess what? The world can only hide that shit from you for so long, Yas. You are talentless, and useless, and a fucking whore.â€
What are the odds that Yasmin laid out the details of her final argument with her dad to Harper in the immediate aftermath of his pseudo-suicide? Given Harper is the only one who knows the truth of what happened — and she was cosplaying as Yasmin’s therapist at the time — I’d say pretty high. How else to explain the fact that the names she resorts to calling Yasmin here (“talentless†and “whoreâ€) are the exact same ones her dad called her before jumping overboard? That Harper whips these names out — on the day Yasmin had to identify her father’s body no less — is a sign that she’s against the ropes. She’s no longer striving to make valid points, she’s just swinging wildly in hopes something connects. And in this case, her gambit is successful. Yasmin isn’t even able to summon the ineffectual retort she screamed at her dad (“I speak seven fucking languagesâ€); she just loses her grip completely and slaps Harper in the face. Harper returns Yasmin’s slap before storming off, but it’s an unnecessary retaliation. Just by getting Yasmin to lose her cool first, she’d already won.
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