Henry Muck is a hard man to love. He is given to prolonged periods of dark depression, during which he is completely unreachable. His addictions have made him both unreliable in the clutch and deceptive as a matter of course. His unresolved anger over his horrifying upbringing and his repeated public humiliation leads him to bouts of explosive, uncontrolled rage. His attempts to be a good person always fall just shy of the mark because being thought of as a good person by others is his primary goal. In the meantime those efforts simply alienate those around him, all of whom hold no pretense of goodness whatsoever.<\/p>\n
Still, I don\u2019t think he deserves to be the fall guy for an international financial conspiracy he had nothing to do with, hung out to dry by all those who purport to care about him. Do you?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In large part, there\u2019s nothing Henry could have done to stop this from happening; he was effectively selected to be a fall guy in case the company\u2019s mastermind Whit Halberstram needed one. That elaborate supervillain letter Henry received last episode is just confirmation of how Whit sees both Henry and the world. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m in the room with a reptile,\u201d Henry says the next time they\u2019re together.<\/p>\n
But Henry helps seal his own fate, I think, by blowing up at Yasmin. He underestimates just how over his bullshit she is \u2014 his flakiness, his disappearances, his infidelity, his mismanagement of their money. (He sunk it all into Tender stock!) But there\u2019s a moment when he screams at her and she just shuts down, suddenly telling him yes Henry, of course Henry, you\u2019re right Henry. It feels like the reaction of someone who\u2019s faced abuse. All night long she stares at the ceiling without sleeping a wink.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
However, Yasmin is no longer the powerless little girl she was when her degenerate father tormented her. Now she\u2019s a canny operator, a proven survivor, and, most importantly, an utterly shameless liar. If she gives Tender the push it needs to finally collapse, she can time her own exit gracefully with no damage to her own reputation. Henry, unfortunately, will be the last man standing in the rubble.<\/p>\n
So Yasmin engineers a completely made-up government scandal, in which the benevolent Labour official who opposed Tender all along, Lisa Dearn (Chloe Pirrie), is framed for an imaginary cover-up of memos decrying the company. Yasmin engineers all this to protect Jenny Bevan, the Labour minister who really is implicated in the scandal thanks to her chummy relationship with Yasmin and Henry themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jenny refuses to play ball with the scheme. When she meets with Yasmin, Lord Norton, and the rabidly right-wing tabloid editor Kevin Ruhle, she\u2019s so horrified by their willingness to print straight-up lies in the newspaper that she flees the meeting. Yasmin instead uses Harper\u2019s connections to Burgess, the crusading FinDigest editor, to get the story out anyway. Harper and Burgess are both sharp people, but neither of them sees through Yasmin\u2019s ruse, perhaps because it gets them exactly what they want, which is Tender\u2019s head on a platter.<\/p>\n
The handmade corruption story does its job. Lisa resigns at the behest of the slimy, unnamed Labour Prime Minister. Tender\u2019s stock tanks. Yasmin resigns from the company without telling Henry. When he calls Whit from the office, he finds the man\u2019s phone left behind in his desk. Everyone\u2019s flown the coop and left Henry holding the bag.<\/p>\n
His position could be physically dangerous for him. For one thing, Ferdinand, Tender\u2019s connection to its Russian backers, shows up at Whit and Henry\u2019s hotel room with that guy who was present during Rishi and James Dycker\u2019s bender, making it clear he gave Dycker a hot dose to kill him. They tell Whit escape is not an option, and that he now lives (and, implicitly, dies) at the pleasure of their paymasters. Tender still has value to them, you see: It has the vulnerable personal and financial data of all its users, and that\u2019s something the fascists can use. These people aren\u2019t going to hesitate if Henry looks shaky.<\/p>\n
For another, Henry is a threat to himself. In a ghastly phone call, a tearful Yasmin and Lord Norton justify their participation in tanking Tender despite knowing Henry will never come back from the shame of it. \u201cHe\u2019s never faced consequences,\u201d Yasmin says, as though framing him for crimes he didn\u2019t commit is the same as using tough love to make him take responsibility for his mistakes. They do this knowing who Henry is, knowing what he\u2019s like, knowing his family history. As far as they\u2019re concerned, they\u2019re murdering him.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not easy on Yasmin to do this, to be fair. When she calls Jenny and tries to land a job in her comms office, the politician indignantly blows her off. (Assuming you\u2019ll just waltz right into the office of a woman whose mentor you publicly destroyed over her express wishes is classic Yasmin.) \u201cYou abandoned him when he needed you the most,\u201d Jenny spits at Yasmin regarding her addict husband, \u201cso you take that for a dance around your conscience.\u201d You can see this blow to Yasmin land almost physically.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So Yasmin does what she always does when she has nothing else: She returns to Harper. Their conversation is a meticulous unpacking of the unhealthy psychology that has long driven their relationship. Harper admits she\u2019s happy to have all this power at Yasmin\u2019s expense \u2014 after all, Harper is going to make a fortune when Tender tanks \u2014 and Yasmin thanks her for her honesty. Both say they envy each other: Yasmin wishes she had Harper\u2019s intelligence and confidence, while Harper wishes she had Yasmin\u2019s looks, pedigree, and ease of access to the world. Harper has always resented Yasmin for making her feel less than; Yasmin loves Harper for showing her how she can be more.<\/p>\n
Most importantly, they zero in on Yasmin\u2019s damage. Why does she feel this constant need to be in control, \u201cto dominate\u201d as Harper puts it, to \u201cnot be at anyone\u2019s mercy\u201d? She grew up at somebody\u2019s mercy, Yasmin laughs through her tears, and can\u2019t bear to live that way again.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The two go out clubbing, getting fucked up and dancing all up on each other to Daft Punk\u2019s \u201cVeridis Quo.\u201d That\u2019s just one of any number of colossal, impeccable needledrops throughout the episode, also including When in Rome\u2019s \u201cThe Promise,\u201d A Flock of Seagulls\u2019 \u201c(I Ran) So Far Away),\u201d and Enya\u2019s \u201cOnly Time.\u201d (I\u2019ve heard the odd complaint about the older and somewhat more obvious music on the soundtrack this season, but I find the application consistently thoughtful and the song choices unerringly rad, so I\u2019ve got no issues. Bring on the goddamn New Order, I say.)<\/p>\n
The two frenemies end their outing by resting against each other on the sidewalk outside, smoking cigarettes in the early morning light.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have no idea how good I feel right now,\u201d Harper tells Yasmin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here forever,\u201d Yasmin replies, \u201ceven if we can\u2019t be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s see if they feel this way about their lives, and each other, by the end of the business day.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com<\/a>\u00a0on Bluesky and\u00a0theseantcollins<\/a>\u00a0on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and\u00a0elsewhere<\/a>. He is the author of\u00a0Pain Don\u2019t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Henry Muck is a hard man to love. He is given to prolonged periods of dark depression, during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,129413,20488,127369,153981,154080,127370,154081,119075,3169,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-306290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-kiernan-shipka","12":"tag-kit-harington","13":"tag-konrad-kay","14":"tag-marisa-abela","15":"tag-max-minghella","16":"tag-mickey-down","17":"tag-myhala-herrold","18":"tag-needle-drops","19":"tag-recaps","20":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}