Henry Muck is a hard man to like. He is given a long period of dark depression, when he is completely inaccessible. His addictions have made him unreliable in the clutch and cheating as is. His unresolved anger over his horrible upbringing and repeated public humiliation lead him to explosive, uncontrollable rages. His attempts to be a good person always fall short of the mark because of being he thought as a good person to others is his main goal. For now, those efforts only alienate those around him, all of whom don’t pretend to be good at all.
Still, I don’t think he deserves to be the son of an international financial conspiracy he had nothing to do with, hung out to dry by all those who claim to care about him. Is it?
For the most part, there was nothing Henry could do to prevent this from happening; he was successfully elected to be the fall guy in case corporate mastermind Whit Halberstram needs one. That detailed supervillain book Henry found last episode just confirms how Whit sees Henry and the world. “I feel like I’m in a room with a reptile,” Henry said the next time they were together.
But Henry helps seal his fate, I think, by blowing up Yasmin. He underestimates that he is more than his villain – his cunning, his disappearance, his dishonesty, his mismanagement of their money. (He soaked it all in Tenders stock!) But there is a moment when he yells at him and he just shuts up, and he just tells him that yes Henry, of course Henry, Henry is right. It sounds like the reaction of someone who has faced abuse. All night he stares at the ceiling without sleep.
However, Yasmin is no longer the little girl who was powerless when her deteriorating father tormented her. Now he’s a canny operator, a survivor, and, most importantly, a shameless liar. If he gives Tender the push he needs to finally fold, he can time his exit gracefully without damaging his reputation. Henry, unfortunately, will be the last man standing in the rubble.
So Yasmin staged a completely staged government scandal, in which the kindly Human Resources official who opposed the tender all along, Lisa Dearn (Chloe Pirrie), created an imaginary cover-up of missing memos criticizing the company. Yasmin is doing all this to protect Jenny Bevan, who is actually the Labor minister is something who is involved in scandal because of his chummy relationship with Yasmin and Henry themselves.
Jenny refuses to play football with the scheme. When he meets Yasmin, Lord Norton, and right-wing newspaper editor Kevin Ruhle, he is so horrified by their willingness to publish outright lies in the newspaper that he flees the meeting. Yasmin instead uses Harper’s connection to Burgess, the editor of FinDigest, to get the story out anyway. Harper and Burgess are both sharp people, but neither of them see through Yasmin’s trick, probably because it gets them what they want, which is Tenda’s head on a plate.
The story of hand-made corruption does its job. Lisa resigned at the behest of the Labor Prime Minister, who has not been named. Tender stock tanks. Yasmin resigns from the company without telling Henry. When he calls Whit from the office, he finds the man’s phone left on the table. Everyone flew out of the cage and left Henry with the bag.
His position can be physically dangerous for him. First, Ferdinand, who is connected to Tender to its Russian fans, shows up in Whit and Henry’s hotel room with the guy who was there when Rishi and James Dycker threw it, making it clear that he gave Dycker a hot dose to kill him. They say that Whit’s escape is not an option, and that he now lives (and, apparently, dies) by pleasing their paymasters. Tender still has value to them, you see: It has personal and financial data at risk for all its users, and that’s something fascists can use. These people will not hesitate if Henry looks shaky.
For one thing, Henry is a danger to her. In a harrowing phone call, a tearful Yasmin and Lord Norton justify their participation in the tender despite knowing that Henry will not come back from the disgrace. “He has never faced the consequences,” said Yasmin, as if naming him for crimes he did not commit is like using a strong frame to answer for his mistakes. They do this because they know who Henry is, they know what he is like, they know his family history. In their opinion, they kill him.
That’s not the case it’s easy for Yasmin to do this, to be fair. When he calls Jenny and tries to get a job in her comms office, the politician gets mad at him. (Assuming she’s going to walk into the office of a woman whose mentor publicly rejected Yasmin’s past for her desires.) “You left her when she needed you the most,” Jenny gushes to Yasmin about her scheming husband, “so take that as a dance around your conscience.” You can see this beating of Yasmin in the world almost physically.
So Yasmin does what she always does when she has nothing else to do: She goes back to Harper. Their conversation is a careful dissection of the unhealthy mentality that has long driven their relationship. Harper admits that she is happy to have all this power at Yasmin’s expense – after all, Harper will make a fortune when the tanks are tender – and Yasmin thanks her for her loyalty. They both envy each other: Yasmin wishes she had Harper’s intelligence and confidence, while Harper covets Yasmin’s looks, pedigree, and easy access to the world. Harper has been resentful of Yasmin for making her feel inferior; Yasmin loves Harper for showing her how to be better.
Most importantly, they don’t get involved in Yasmin’s damage. Why does he feel this constant need to control, to “dominate” as Harper puts it, “to have no mercy for anyone.” He it grew with someone’s kindness, Yasmin laughs her tears, and she can’t bear to live like that again.
The two come out bumping, chasing each other and dancing all the way to Daft Punk’s “Veridis Quo”. That’s one of any number of big, flawless needle drops throughout the episode, including When in Rome’s “The Promise,” A Flock of Seagulls’ “(I Ran) So Far Away),” and Enya’s “Only Time.” (I’ve heard the odd complaint about the older and more obvious music in the soundtrack this past season, but I find the programming to be always thoughtful and the song choices impeccable, so I don’t mind. Bring on the Good New Order, I say.)
The two gangsters end their outing by lounging on the sidewalk outside, smoking cigarettes in the morning light.
“You have no idea how good I feel right now,” Harper tells Yasmin.
“We are here forever,” replied Yasmin, “even if we will never be.”
Let’s see if they feel this way about their lives, and each other, at the end of the business day.
Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and @seantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Doesn’t Kill: Reflections on the Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.
