"Fire: Part 1" (Episode 7.01)

"Fire: Part 1" is the first episode of Series 7 and the 56th episode overall.

This episode primarily focuses on Effy Stonem as a young adult, taking place around three years after she graduated from Roundview College.

It focuses on her flirtations with her much older boss, her professional life as a Hedge Fund worker and the secrets she uncovers, and her friendship with Naomi Campbell.

Plot
Covering spring and summer of 2013, we see Effy and her life in London. She works as an assistant in the finance field and lives with Naomi, who is still living the life of joints and drinking at lunch-time. Effy, meanwhile, has finally found a way to channel her intelligence into something useful and has completely devoted herself to her work. As the most wayward of all the teens we met along the way, it’s strange to see Effy being the responsible one, but even stranger is that she’s completely recognisable.

Despite her vastly different surroundings, Effy is still the deceptively smart, enigmatic, bitingly sarcastic and of-few-words girl we once knew – she just has too much on her plate to be as self-indulgently stroppy. She still has that inexplicable beauty that drives men to mutiny and murder (quite literally in series four), but seems to have finally realised how to control it and use it to her advantage, rather than just let the men run wild and cause chaos. Sweet, naive analyst Dom takes centre stage in this first part and, while Effy seems quite fond of him, we also see her use him to get ahead a couple of times.

The first time involves her learning everything she can about finance, then taking a chance and holding an unsolicited meeting with an investor. Her female superior fires her for the insolence but then, as is usually the way with Effy, her intrigued and enamoured boss offers her the chance to be a trader- her boss, who, coincidentally, greatly resembles her murdered original love, Freddie. And just like that, and with the help of a little insider trading, she’s happy and successful at age-twenty-two. Can we leave her there? Of course not – this is simply the rise before the inevitable fall, and we see that downward spiral begin before the first hour ends.

Meanwhile, Naomi gets a shock after months of living a reckless and party-filled life: she has cancer.

Music Featured in "Fire:Part 1"
Ellie Goulding - You, My Everything