industry is not a show that is easy to write about. Oh, it is an absolute joy to watch – beautiful to look at, a cast packed with talent, gripping financial thriller storylines and the proverbial strong sexual content we all love. And it is equally enjoyable to think about, discuss, take apart and put back together. You could work out Eric’s feelings for Harper or Yasmin’s sexual persona or the show’s whole bitter commentary on capitalism with someone over a drink for an hour. (I don’t even want to think about how long you can last on cocaine.)

But it’s not an easy thing to write about, for the simple reason that it’s just too good. There’s so much going on, and much of it is so rich and engaging, that it’s hard to know where to start. I often reach this point with shows I really like, quite late in a season or series, and I get to the point where all I can do is rattle off a list of superlatives. I’m now on my second review of industry ever, and I feel like I’ve already reached that point. What’s next? I swear I’ll avoid this kind of meta-self-referential nonsense in future reviews of industry as much as I can, but after this episode? Come on.

Let’s start with sex, because as always with industryit takes us back to the traditional plot. Treating sex as an integral part of a character’s life, nourishing it and being nourished by it: imagine that!

Anyway, Yasmin is one of the flashpoints here. The brief blackout at the start of the trading day has derailed Lumi’s IPO as the main sales team is unable to sell. (Presumably this was the reason for the blackout.) During the chaos that ensues, a distracted Yasmin hears from Sweetpea, the new graduate of the desk, that her friend Treacle (God, the names on this show) has told her CEO of Lumi and – I’m quoting the show here, don’t shoot the bearer of bad news – “posh cunt” Sir Henry Muck that he “has a thing for urine”. (“What are you thinking about?” Eric asks her when he sees the faraway look in her eyes. “Urine,” she replies mindlessly before correcting herself. This is a fun show!)

So when Yasmin teams up with Robert to cajole Sir Henry, who has locked himself “in the disabled toilet” after a few hours of bad news on a psilocybin trip, like a CEO, she knows what to do. By simply entering the toilet and adopting a sexually dominant stance, she is able to talk him into a staged meeting with a powerful energy executive at an ultra-exclusive gentlemen’s club. Her own notoriety ensures that the paparazzi capture the moment, boosting both Henry’s tarnished reputation and the health of his company’s stock.

Grateful and frankly lascivious, Henry invites Yasmin to dinner. At first, his attempted seduction seems to be a disaster: He brags that the lurid article about her supposed party with her fugitive father (whose status she was unaware of at the time) was deleted because his uncle owns the paper, and she cries silent tears of apparent horror and disgust. But then she lures him into the bathroom, makes him look at them both in the mirror, tells him that will never happen… and then goes into a stall and pees while he listens. He rewards her with a bottle of wine so rare that the sommelier won’t even serve it to her. She eventually corks it and drinks it straight from the bottle on the night bus – where, of course, she is immediately photographed. The soundtrack is Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film.”

But in truth industry In its own way, this storyline is a Russian matryoshka hiding a dark surprise. Rather than revealing the secret of what happened between Yasmin and her father Charles, the wine triggers a Proustian flashback. After catching him in the act in her bedroom, he finds her to apologize, but in typical Charles fashion, can’t stand her not falling obediently into his arms. He shoves her, pushes her down, lies on top of her. She spits in his face and verbally attacks him. He throws the contents of a wine glass in her face, gets within kissing distance and tells her she’ll keep coming crawling back before he sneaks off himself. So it’s not as bad as we might have feared, but it’s still damn bad – in some cases, horribly bad, life-destroyingly bad. The fact that Harper was on the boat can only complicate things further.

And indeed, it seems so. In her ongoing effort to ingratiate herself with Petra, the star trader at her boss Anna’s ethical investment firm, Harper advises her to exploit Yasmin’s emotional pliability to hedge against the IPO that Yasmin is risking her butt to revive. She also uses her knowledge of Pierpoint’s system to get lower prices on the deal through the desk’s junior trader, Anraj (Irfan Shamji), knowing that a) his supervisor, Rishi, will be too busy to make the trade himself and b) the junior traders in the space are working with slightly outdated information, allowing them to get the lower price.

Harper and Yasmin agree on one thing, though: They both get snubbed by their bosses, Petra and Eric, for not taking the rules seriously. Eric tells Yasmin she doesn’t have to lower herself to be an asset to the newsroom, although the looming presence of Bill Adler, who’s joining the IPO team, suggests she should use any tactic she can to survive. (She and Eric have a nice little friendly moment afterward, remembering their friendship-building coke binge the night before.) Petra, meanwhile, angrily tells Harper they’re smart enough not to have to cheat, and her gleeful resentment of her old colleagues is misplaced. I’m not sure who needs to hear which lesson more.

At the same time, Robert is still shocked when he woke up in the arms of his dead lover Nicole. earlier that day(It is important to remember that not a week of narrative time has actually passed since the events of the premiere!) His increasingly passionate, increasingly comical notes to Sir Henry not Giving interviews to the press while the stock is floundering like a fish on the bottom is ignored. HE and Henry become so angry at each other that they Curb your enthusiasm-like physical altercation in the daycare playroom that ends with Robert Henry half-suffocating with a stuffed Lumi doll while buried in the ball pit. The decision to use Kit Harington as a sort of comic wrecking ball shattering our heroes’ lives this season pays off thanks to that physical comedy alone.

The boys end up making up, but Robert has a lot more on his mind. A call from his girlfriend Venetia alerts him that the necklace she gave him was left at the scene of his lover Nicole’s death. When he breaks into her garden to retrieve it, he’s interrupted by her daughter Pip (Edie Lambden). First she rightly berates him for being one of Nicole’s toys, then she mocks him for actually liking her. Seconds later, she’s kissing his neck and fumbling with his pants, desperate to be touched, but Robert rebuffs her. Seconds later, she reveals she’s 15. The creaking sound you hear is the door to another psychosexual warp zone opening in Robert’s brain.

This happens when start with the sex stuff industry. By the time you’ve explored all the threads that tie these scenes into the rest of the show, you’ve practically talked through the whole thing. From the bedroom to the boardroom, everything fits together. It’s like another great HBO drama once said, “All the parts matter.”

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, vulture, The New York TimesAnd everywhere he goesreally. He and his family live on Long Island.