But ultimately, Pierpoint is more Sterling Cooper [Draper Pryce] than Waystar. At its heart—and with all due respect to its subplots about January Jones withering away in upstate New York—Mad Men is an office drama, and Industry is following that mold. Every plot twist and character motivation spins out of that trading room floor; it’s why, after two-and-a-half seasons, we were more than primed for a spotlight episode on a typically supporting character like Rishi; it’s why a character as compelling as Gus ultimately has to go the way of Salvatore Romano once his arc drifts too far from the company. For every Cyd Peach, Karl, or Frank, Succession didn’t live and breathe in the boardrooms in quite the same way. Form-wise, Jesse Armstrong would never greenlight an episode from the perspective of, say, Karolina the beleaguered Waystar comms head. He didn’t even indulge flashbacks. But doesn’t the way the pieces of Yasmin’s hellish yacht vacation slowly play out across Industry season 3 evoke the mystery of Peggy’s pregnancy in season 2 or the Dick Whitman mystery of season 1?
These are narrative games Succession never luxuriated in because it is, by design, a colder, more mechanical show, about cold people living mechanical lives. Characters rarely launch into lofty monologues; they grunt, shrug and curse at each other with a familiarity that reveals their shared history as effectively as flashbacks or exposition could. We never even truly went home with the Roys; although Succession shot on location in glorious New York City Architectural Digest dream apartments, you can count the number of sweeping residential establishing shots on one hand. (Shout out to The Summer Palace, though.) Outside of the central tragedy of Tom and Shiv, romance was often a secondary subplot—Kendall and Naomi Pierce developed a relationship mostly off-screen, the same manner in which it finally fizzled.
Succession and Industry both share a bleak outlook on the human condition—these are terrible, ruthless people we’re made to invest in—but their approaches are fundamentally different. On Succession, the characters’ rottenness is more or less a foregone conclusion, whereas Industry’s third season poses, in actual dialog, whether Harper is a good person. The series is as much about the tension around that question as it was for Don, who often offloaded his pain on those closest to him. When Eric and Harper share that aforementioned emotionally charged non-call, they’re estranged, working at different companies after Eric unceremoniously fired Harper at the end of season 2. It reminded me of the gravitational pull that persisted between Don and Peggy even after the latter left SCDP; at her new position, Peggy often took a vindictive glee in professionally screwing Don over, payback for the emotional abuse he inflicted on her even as he molded her into an advertising superstar. Harper Stern embodied that energy and magnifies it with the demonic glare she fixes on Eric after finally gaining an upper hand on him in this season’s third episode. And through Harper’s machinations, Pierpoint finds itself in the same pickle Sterling Cooper often found itself in, needing to merge, evolve and purge any affinity for the old days to survive.
The lines you can draw from the Golden Age-era AMC titan to HBO’s new pride and joy are endless—like the way appeasing big-fish clients like Jesse Bloom or Henry Muck becomes a 24/7 mindfuck for our trader heroes much like Conrad Hilton tormented Don. Mad Men is a certified classic, the best show of all time in my book. Succession is a new classic; Industry is well on its way to being one. I’m sure Kay and Down welcome the comparisons to any revered series as their brainchild shifts from a perpetually on-the-bubble niche favorite to the network’s new culturally acclaimed flagship show. But you don’t have to look deep to find the kinship between their series and the one that gave us Don Draper. Industry just scored its quickest new season renewal yet for year four; without spoiling, I have no idea where the story will go from here based on where Sunday’s episode leaves off. But Mad Men reached a new creative peak in its fourth season—let’s see if Industry rises to the same heights as its biggest influence.
