Yeah, They've Completely Re-Tooled It For The US Market.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-15450147/Marisa-Abela-topless-HBO-Industry-Season-4-screening.html

In the first Season they had this really clearly narrative momentum. A group of graduates join the bank's graduate program. It then builds towards the Reduction In Force (RIF) at the end, who will go on to work for the bank and who will be dropped from the program.

It's other hallmark was very graphic and provocative sex scenes. Including gay male sex scenes, far more graphic and realistic than those in; "Heated Rivalry." In Season 3, Episode 5 the "Rob" character tells the "Henry Muck" character how the "Yasmin" character made him eat his own ejaculate from a mirror in a work bathroom. That's a scene that's shown in Season 1, along with how his ejaculate came to be on the mirror.

Incidentally, isn't the "Henry Muck" character just a constant reminder of how painful the writing can be? In the UK someone from that background of wealth and privelage is sometimes refered to as; "Mr/Mrs Mucky-Muck." So a UK show having a character named; "Mr Muck" is like a US show having a character literally named; "Ritche Rich." The writing's meant to more subtly show his wealth and privelage.

In the second Season they'd lost the narrative momentum of RIF whilst facing Covid and, by the sounds of it, a fair few other problems. Amid that mess they really clung to the very graphic, provocative sex scenes. However they did it in such a way you found yourself going; "Oh, it's the graphic, provocative sex scene. The show must be about 20 minutes in." Attempts to shock really lose their impact when you can set your watch by them.

Even broadcast on the non-FCC regulated HBO all of those very graphic sex scenes had to go for Season 3. This is clearly now a show made for the US market first. They're still trying to shock with provocative sex. However they've been reduced to telling us about it, rather than showing us it. So it now has things like a topless woman making very brief reference to anal sex. Although with a, frankly, unhealthy obsession with people talking about peeing on each.

As for the interest in pyschedelics. Dare we suggest they're still having trouble interpreting the realities of their environment?

All insults I'm able to level because I'm still watching it, of course.