If Chappell Roan had not been at the headliner for the Laneway Festival, I would've been at home on Friday night, watching television like a sensible person.

Instead, I spend a full day at a music festival (my very first!), and then needed a full day in bed to recover.

Related, due to RSI, I have dictated the first draft of this newsletter. Obviously, I plan to go through and proofread it, and correct the many many errors. However, I expect some will slip through. Apologies.

Let's watch some television!

Halfway through season two of Industry, my flatmate, who has watched it before, turned to me and said "I think this series was written by an AI trained only on Succession, Mad Men, and, for some reason, Skins.“ And I can't disagree with her.

The thing is, I still don't think it's very good, but season two of Industry is a big step up from season one. Or maybe that's just my expectations. This time I went in expecting a show that wasn't very good, and wasn't about nice people, but was mildly entertaining. What I got was a show that isn't about nice people but is mildly entertaining, and executed a story of self sabotage and capitalism gone terribly wrong very well.

Is that enjoyable to watch? Sometimes. The performances are all great, and there is a core of emotional truth to the story that I don't hate, even though I very much want to take every single character and put them in a box where they can't hurt themselves or other people anymore.

I will be forever confused by the insistence of British television right now on portraying Tories as basically decent people who care about social justice. But that's just me and the reality-based universe that I occupy.

I don't wanna be a backseat hijacker or tell Idris Elba what to do with his life, but if I was blackmailed into hijacking a passenger train in Germany, I might try to learn some German.

The nonsense continues to be high quality. This is the greatest show on television. I am not joking.

Remember a few weeks ago, when I talked about the Save the Cat guide to story structure, and how Star Trek: Starfleet Academy was using it effectively? This is what I mean. We're at the midpoint of the story, and now everything has changed. The intensity has been ramped up. Terrible truths have been revealed. Someone is dead.

This is also the first episode to focus in a serious way on one of the adult characters, specifically Holly Hunter's Nahla Ake. Paul Giamatti returns as Nus Braka, pushing and pulling at her psyche, trying to manipulate her so that she doesn't see the trap he is setting. He's only partially successful, but we learn a lot along the way. She could have saved her son, and instead prioritised her duty to her crew over his life. She has lived with that for 120 years, giving everything to Starfleet including, ultimately, her principles. It was then that she had to walk away, and now she's back, trying to build a better institution.

This knowledge is as devastating as Hunter's performance, sitting in silence as Giamatti monologues at her about herself. It's hard to watch, especially if you have ever found yourself in the position of sitting and sitting quietly listening to a blowhard, knowing that your job depends on your ability to tolerate him. But it's also very, very good, both in terms of writing and acting. I was doubtful about Gio's performance in the first episode but here he finds a more nuanced and menacing mode.

On the kids side, Caleb and his team are caught in a hostage situation with the risk of with a side of cannibalism while, back on the Athena, Tarima’s intense psychic bond with Caleb could save lives, but destroy their relationship. The outcome is devastating.

It turns out that what makes Tarima different from other Betazoids is her ability to generate a damaging high-pitched psychic wail. She is the reason her father is deaf, and she is the one who saves the away team from the cannibalistic pirates holding them hostage.

As superpowers go, this one's pretty naff. As a metaphor for how women's voices are policed and silenced, it's incredibly effective. Which brings me to this.

First, Kate Mulgrew does not manage her own socials, but I assume she approved this message, and God bless her and her team.

Second, I made the mistake of looking, and “Captain Mumbles” is how the worst people in fandom are making fun of Holly Hunter’s manner of speaking, which you might recall is a consequence of her deafness. But even if it wasn’t — isn’t it just so apt that this comes up alongside the episode where Tarima finds her voice?

Of course, to be a properly feminist story, Tarima needs to figure out how to use her voice without harm to herself. As the episode ends, she’s in a coma. But, you know. Baby steps.

Oh what's that? Another motorcycle accident? I'm not saying it's foreshadowing, I just feel like the final moment of this season is going to involve Robby jumping on his motorbike and then a semi trailer takes him out. And then season three opens with Robby coming back to work after several months of intensive rehab. Just putting it out there.

This week saw the focus shift more to the nursing staff, as Dana continues to guide new nursing grad Emma through her job — from knowing which patients can have food to how to clean a body.

Alas, poor Louie. For a homeless alcoholic suffering liver failure, dying in hospital with medical practitioners who know and like him is probably an okay way to go, but it’s rough. For him. For the team. For the audience.

One thing The Pitt does very well is provide dignity to people who might be overlooked — the homeless men who have come in as patients, the malnourished prisoner that Al-Hashimi and Dana are protecting. But it also highlights the points of failure that cause indignity — Harlow, the Deaf patient, has her ASL interpreter reassigned; Princess knows a little ASL, but not enough to translate Harlow’s symptoms for Santos.

I’ve seen a theory that season 2 of The Pitt is about systemic failures, and I agree, but I also think that’s equally true of season 1. Everything is interconnected — the hospital won’t hire enough staff, so everyone is overworked, so Santos is overwhelmed by charting and being dismissive of patients while not double checking the AI-generated notes she’s sending upstairs, which in turn gets her in trouble with her superiors so her stress levels increase and the quality of care she provides goes down. And she’s just one woman — expand this sort of problem to a whole hospital, or a whole society.

Checking in on everyone else: