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Watching tonight’s Rishi-focused episode of Industry, there were multiple occasions in which I paused the television, turned to my husband, and declared, “Never in a million years could I live like this.” (He then shot me a look as if to say, “Why are you acting like this is news to me? I have seen you literally cry over spilled milk.” But I digress.)
Not since Uncut Gems have I felt this degree of agonizing anxiety watching fictional characters gamble their way to near-ruin, and yet Industry season 3, episode 4, “White Mischief,” is one of my favorite entries of the season, and perhaps of Industry as a whole. Sagar Radia plays Pierpoint market maker Rishi Ramdani as such an abhorrent sleazeball—even compared to the characters around him—and yet it’s difficult not to adore him. He’s funny, for one thing: Since the beginning of the HBO series, Radia has had the privilege of delivering some of the show’s best dialogue, even when it takes place in the background of more plot-centric conversations. But he also balances the character’s most disgusting behaviors (watching Sweetpea’s OnlyFans videos over the toilet while dripping blood onto his infant is, somehow, relatively low on the list) with a pathos that’s uncomfortably easy to empathize with. Even as Rishi makes appalling choice after appalling choice in “White Mischief,” you still don’t really want him to fail. As one Reddit user put it, Rishi’s “a legend” for a reason.
But when episode 4 begins, he seems on the brink of losing that legend status—and it’s clear he’ll do whatever it takes to keep it. Throughout the first three episodes of this season, we’ve been fed little hints that something’s wrong with Rishi, but now the full extent of his trouble is clear: Rishi is hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt, and that’s not only thanks to his new home and new baby. He has a coke habit (who on this show doesn’t?) and a gambling addiction. His stress is manifesting as some sort of chronic back rash. He’s given away his dog, Raja, to one of his snobby new Somerset neighbors. And he’s desperate to prove his mettle amongst the old-money (mostly white) crowd to which his wife has always belonged, particularly as their repeated microaggressions and condescensions stack up against him. Eager to renovate the cricket pavilion that now resides on his land, he instead encounters upturned noses throughout the neighborhood. (“It’s mine, but it feels like it’s theirs,” he says.)
There are additional problems, too: Rishi doesn’t want to have sex with his wife, Diana (Brittany Ashworth), now that she’s a mother. His old schoolmate, Vinay—whom Diana believes works in real estate—has started showing up at Rishi’s house, keen to collect on the latter’s gambling debts. Then there’s an entirely separate mess at Pierpoint itself. For nearly a quarter, Rishi’s been going “long sterling cable,” which means he owns a lot of British pounds and is betting the price of said pounds will raise as traded against the U.S. dollar. His colleague Anraj (Irfan Shamji) is worried about the rising risk Rishi’s incurring: a 625 million-pound position, to be exact. That’s well over the market maker’s Pierpoint-imposed risk limit, and if his bet goes south, he’ll lose Pierpoint a truly jaw-dropping amount of money. But Rishi’s certain the risk will be worth the reward when the British government announces its emergency budget that week.
This all takes place against the backdrop of Rishi getting called into a meeting with HR, where he’s questioned about his…uh, problematic comments on the trading floor. There’s apparently an anonymous Reddit group devoted to Pierpoint’s most politically incorrect conversations, and the HR team has followed the rumor trail directly to Rishi. Rishi confirms their suspicions by screaming at them in the conference room. But that’s perhaps the least of his concerns after Eric corners him, having heard from Pierpoint’s risk-control arm that Rishi’s running a gargantuan sterling position. Eric insists he close the position stop-loss, hinting that Pierpoint “may be on the precipice of a crisis.” (An important bit of information to file away for future episodes.) Rishi shuts Eric down and, in so many words, calls him a coward for firing Harper in season 2. He’s not wrong!
The chaos only spikes from there. The government budget announcement arrives, cutting the tax rate for the rich, which initially thrills Rishi—until he returns to his desk and sees that sterling is tanking in response. That’s bad enough, but then Vinay shows up again! This time he’s joined by an intimidating friend, and Rishi is forced to squeeze his colleagues for wads of horse-betting cash in order to avoid a subsequent beating. But once he acquires their money, he pockets it, instead placating Vinay with the Rolex off his wrist. He then takes the cash straight to a casino and makes enough to square his debts with Vinay. Or, anyway, it would square his debts, if he didn’t take it with him straight to the nearest night club.
The subsequent montage is peak Industry: A deeply flawed person with a voracious appetite for risk takes so much risk that it nearly swallows him hole, but his spiral is set against the gauche glamour of flashing neon lights and lines of cocaine. The spectacle itself feels voyeuristic. Rishi drinks. He dances. He gets in a fist fight with some girl’s jealous boyfriend. Face bloodied, he converts the entirety of his newfound cash into chips, keen to restore his manhood after getting pummeled to a pulp on the night club floor. He blows all of the money on roulette, then tries to bet his baby’s birthday money. Instead, he abandons the money clip on the table and stumbles outside to face the rising sun, and his wife’s furious calls.
Back at Pierpoint, looking like he got run over by a train, Rishi learns sterling is faring even worse. Anraj is fretting about getting stripped of his license. But after a mandatory HR meeting—in which the rest of the CPS desk share their discomforts with Rishi’s inappropriate demeanor, not to mention the black eye he’s sporting that morning—Rishi gets a call from Harper, suddenly eager to buy sterling. He takes her interest as a market signal, and starts rallying the Pierpoint troops to find buyers of pounds. Sure enough, the government soon announces a budget rollback, prompting sterling to rally. The desk ends the day with a profit of $18 million. Eric, previously prepared to sic the Pierpoint security team on Rishi, can instead only shake the man’s hand.
“You’re not even a good trader,” Anraj tells Rishi when it’s all over. “You’re just lucky.”
“Yeah?” Rishi replies. “Tell me. What’s the difference?”
At home that night, he gets a small dose of comeuppance. Diana tosses plates at his head—sorry, but I laughed—as she condemns his obvious infidelity and laments the debts he’s hid from her. She claims he wants an “English country rose” as a wife, but she never wanted to be some posh twat’s wife or mother. Oh, and she’s been cheating on him with a guy in their neighborhood: Nicholas, the dude Rishi caught trimming their hedges at 5 in the morning. “It’s much easier to raise strong boys than fix broken men,” Diana tells her husband as they watch their cooing infant son, but it’s clear Diana isn’t keen to leave Rishi. Instead, she wants them to remake their cottage lifestyle in their own image. In response, Rishi takes a cricket bat to the pavilion, smashing the glasses and the frames holding smiling photos of the local “founders.” He then reclaims his dog, Raja, from Nicholas before giving Vinay a call: He has the money, but he’d like to put a chunk of it on another bet. Rishi’s feeling lucky again, and old habits die hard.
Lauren Puckett-Pope is a staff culture writer at ELLE, where she primarily covers film, television and books. She was previously an associate editor at ELLE.