‘Industry’ Adds Golden Showers to Its Library of Sexual Kinks

After the cum-licking and panties-dawning escapades of Industry’s first season, the show was challenged with reaching for more and more obscene sexual scenarios. After the bust of Season 2—at least when it comes to sexual exploits—the crusading horny minds of Industry have found their way. This season, the kink in question may be yellow and streaming.

Episode 5 of Industry’s third season opens with Yasmin Kara-Hanani and Sir Henry Muck, the two equally posh lovebirds, standing face-to-face in the shower. The two share a slow, sensual kiss, with the creaky shower head sitting feet below Henry’s head. And then, he asks: “Can you relieve yourself on me?”

Yasmin is confused, though she should’ve expected it—Sweetpea told her the piss kink gossip mere episodes ago! Henry explains: “I’m not a pervert, I’m practical. This is the one situation where I get to control my helplessness.” So the old adage is true, at least for Kit Harington in some corporate ESG drag: The ones with the most power also want to be the most dominated.

After Yasmin agrees, Henry gives her some simple advice, that she “just piss and think of England.” With that, the urine flows. The camera cuts to their legs touched together, with Yasmine’s yellow pee dripping down the fleshy skin. The sounds are shocking: We don’t just see, but hear, the pee. And better yet, we see Henry’s reaction: Pure ecstasy, his eyes rolling back into his head.

Nick Strasburg/HBO

For Industry, Yasmin’s golden shower is a return to form. She’s been a hotspot of sexual provocation since Season 1, when she sent a photo of her boyfriend eating her out to fellow graduate Rob. That relationship spiraled into a season of domming, demanding that Rob drape her panties over his head and lick up his own cum.

Other than that, the sexual antics of Industry have veered tame. It even gets some glowing culture-shifting coverage. Writers wax poetic on how the show demonstrates unsexy intimacy and accurate Skype sex, a breath of fresh air. But Industry isn’t some bastion of social progress; it’s a prestige soap. Henry’s piss kink is a return to the scintillating.

While Henry’s orgasmic reaction to the yellow stream is knowingly provocative, it’s not the first golden shower in media history. While early shows didn’t show the piss, they alluded to it: Sex and the City asked John Slattery to play a pee-loving beau to Carrie. She’s not into it, though she offers to replace the experience by dribbling warm tea on his leg.

Later, Girls was one of the first times to show the piss in motion, though it wasn’t exactly desired. Adam, Hannah’s good-for-nothing boyfriend without an inch of sensitivity in his brain, pees on her while they’re showering together. Adam laughs; Hannah screams. He explains that urine is sterile: “A lot of people urinate on wounds to heal them!” Disgusted, Hannah runs away.

Of course, these are both explicitly sexual moments: The age-old tradition of golden showers in media traces back to jellyfish stings. In Friends, Chandler promises to pee on Monica after a sting, before the camera cuts away. Over dinner, they promise to never speak of it again. Later, in 2012’s The Paperboy, Nicole Kidman pushes off some strangers peeing on Zac Efron’s sting, before peeing on it herself.

By now, though, some pleasurable and consensual golden showers have made their way to television. Netflix’s You is filled with kink and subversive sexuality; in the fourth season, Joe catches Lukas Gage’s Adam getting pissed on while wearing chunky goggles. It wasn’t Gage’s first foray into on-screen sex, either: He famously provided the butt Murray Bartlett munched in the first season of The White Lotus. Industry now joins the pack with Yasmin and Henry’s shower.

Once a hidden corner of the sexual tapestry, golden showers are now a household name. We can blame Trump for part of that: Nothing like a presidential sex scandal to bring a new kink to light. For those not steeped in the political hubbub, though, they need just turn on HBO on a Sunday night.