A year ago, around the time of Zendaya‘s Emmy win, I wrote an article largely praising the (even at the time) controversial HBO show that is Sam Levinson’s Euphoria. I wrote about how it felt like an honest reflection on the intensity and melancholy nature of being a teenager growing up in the new millennium. I liked that the show presented us with darker themes but then portrayed them through the lens of someone who is still a kid, trying to act like an adult, while wishing to still be a kid, while wishing that they could actually just temporarily die for a while but maybe not forever. That conflict, that feeling that you are the only one who can truly see the ugliness of the world, while still being presented with moments of true beauty, that was what made the first season of Euphoria so unique.
That emotional optimism and relatability is what Levinson has unfortunately pulled back on this season. With the tone vacillating wildly between vacuous melodrama and something that can only be described as camp humor (it isn’t but I don’t know what else to call it), multiple characters lost the very things that made their stories compelling in the first place. By the end of the season two finale, I found myself wondering, what was the point of all of that?
Even in season two, Euphoria is still a beautiful show appearance wise, the acting is spectacular, there are genuinely poignant moments scattered throughout. This is what in particular makes the season so disappointing. The previous season ended on a somewhat ominous note with Rue’s (played wonderfully by Zendaya) relapse playing out in a series of volatile flashback fights between herself, her mother and her sister and culminating in a harrowing song and dance note that featured Rue literally falling from up high while wearing the hoodie that she had preserved from her dead father. One of two special episodes that premiered over Christmas focused on Zendaya, then in the middle of a relapse, meeting with her sponsor Ali and having a refreshingly introspective and emotionally honest discussion about drug use, trauma and essentially what it means to be a good person. Rue has always been the strongest character on the show, thanks in part to Zendaya’s charisma as a main character, but partially because she is the character based off of Sam Levinson’s own childhood drug addiction. It’s so easy to hurt yourself when you’re young, your body is still so elastic that every scar you give yourself can still find time to heal, your heart will continue to beat, as much as you abuse it, your body still has the ability to gain back any strength you have given up. It’s harder when you’re older, to self destruct, you have more to lose. But when you’re young it feels like you have the world, and you don’t really know what to do with that weight just yet.
So Rue sobs and screams and begs. She takes fentanyl and gives herself a kidney infection and attempts to manipulate the nurses at the hospital into giving her her drug of choice. Her self destruction leaves aftershocks that destabilize everyone around her who cares for her. Rue can’t help it; as much as the pain she causes others makes her hate herself more, that destruction is part of the addiction. It’s part of how the disease survives. This is one of the storylines in season two that still manages to captivate at times, but those times are few and far between. Despite being the main character, Rue doesn’t get nearly enough screen time for her story to be paid the proper time and respect, leading to an ending that feels rushed at best, disrespectful at worst.
Instead much screen time is afforded to the unnecessary and bizarre love triangle introduced between Maddy (Alexa Demie), Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) and the physically and emotionally abusive Nate (Jacob Elordi). The storyline itself feels immediately like a retcon considering the place that each of the characters left off at last season. Cassie in particular is done a disservice, having finished season one in a place of triumph. After having grappled the entire season with the male gaze and her desire for male attention and validation, a product of her fraught relationship with an absentee father, Cassie seemed to have ended on a note of evolving wisdom and self respect. That is all undone immediately in the first episode when she decides to have sex with Nate after being witness to the literal bruises he left on her best friend Maddy. She spends the rest of the season as both an object of titillation and ridicule, fawning after Nate, screaming at her mother, sobbing, fearful and mostly naked. I defended the sexuality displayed in the first season because, let’s face it, teenagers do in fact have sex, that is actually a very common experience for a high schooler to go through. But the way that Cassie’s body in particular is treated this season verges on pornographic, not just for the sexual situations she is in, but for the way that her pain is portrayed as so intertwined with sex. We get it, she’s hurting herself. At what point does it just become torture porn?
On the flip side, Sam Levinson still can’t decide how he wants us to feel about Nate. Personally, I think that I am beginning to know how Sam Levinson feels about Nate. Worse, I have a very good idea of how he feels about Nate’s father Cal (Eric Dane). Sam Levinson loves Nate and Cal, how do I know? Because of the amount of goddamn screen time afforded to both Nate and Cal by drastically cutting down on the time we spend with complex and sensitive characters like Jules (Hunter Schafer, wasted this season) and Kat (Barbie Ferreira, almost entirely absent). I could easily write 2,000 words or more on how deeply we do not need a redemption arc for an abuser. In Nate’s case, we aren’t… exactly given that. Rather the season is spent attempting to create sympathy for him while still showing him doing atrocious things to young, vulnerable women without ever receiving a single consequence for his actions. It is strongly hinted at that Nate may have been molested by his father, a horror that is impossible for me to imagine. And it is absolutely true that often times those in pain end up inflicting pain on others, something that can and should be explored in media, but what is not helpful is to turn a character with that degree of emotional baggage and suppressed rage into an object of desire for two women with very traumatic sexual histories.
Which leads us to Cal, who Levinson did in fact attempt to give a redemption arch this season. Cal Jacobs in the first season is shown to be physically abusive to his son as well as someone who films his sexual partners without their consent. That he didn’t know that Jules was underage when he had sex with her does not matter, he is an abuser and an adult and quite possibly the most vile character on the show and Levinson decided that all of this was excusable because he is a closeted gay man. Let me clear, gay men (and gay women and every other member of the LGBTQ community) can absolutely be abusers, they can be pedophiles and they can be villains. But more often than not, they are victims and more often than that, they are just regular people living regular lives, and we don’t really get a lot of that on tv or in the media in general. So for this to be portrayed on one of the most popular television shows comes across as irresponsible at best.
Speaking of Jules (because Levinson isn’t interested in talking about Jules and literally has Rue say “I don’t want to talk about Jules” at one point), after being given the second most compelling storyline next to Rue in season one and her own co-written special episode over the holidays, Jules is unceremoniously shoved to the side as a character and forced to share screen time with a brand new character named Elliot (Dominic Fike) who adds literally nothing to the show whatsoever. At least she is given more screen time than Kat who has a total of three scenes to herself (a product of a possible behind the scenes dispute between Barbie Ferreira and Sam Levinson that has yet to be clarified.) It is particularly disappointing considering the amount of pathos given to Jules who a couple of years ago was a breath of fresh air as a trans woman with a starring role on a popular show whose gender identity didn’t become the entire focus of her character.
Just as there are a couple of episodes and several more scenes that still manage to fare well this season, there are a few characters who emerge triumphant despite the tonal wreck that is Euphoria season two. Angus Cloud‘s character Fez was mostly a supporting character in the first season but this season has been afforded a traumatic backstory (a rite of passage for all Euphoria characters) and a potential love interest as well as building on last season’s murder of violent drug dealer Mouse. This is Cloud’s first ever role and he plays it almost effortlessly, despite Levinson’s need to inject melodrama into a storyline that really didn’t need it, I was oddly compelled, not just by the intensity of this plot point, but by the actor playing it.
Maddy is also given time to shine this season, with Alexa Demie giving such inner strength and maturity to her character that, like nearly every other character on the season, I was left wishing we spent more time with her. Her storyline isn’t life or death like Rue or Fez’s (though there is one scene where we are briefly teased with the possibility of her murder — a writing choice I will get into in a minute), but the image of Maddy tearfully begging Cassie to talk to her after finding out about the latter’s betrayal is still gripping, and reminded me of the weight that was originally given to these characters and their struggles in the first season.
I’m reminded of something my dad said after we watched Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland together (never a good way to start a sentence) — “Tim Burton just let Johnny Depp run wild and it ruined the movie”. Euphoria has no writer’s room. The only episode of the show to have a writer other than Sam Levinson, was “Fuck anyone who is not a sea blob”, Jules’ special episode, co-written by Hunter Shafer which was arguably the best episode of the show yet. Why was it the best episode of the show? Because it was an episode about a trans woman, written by a trans woman. Sam Levinson knows what it’s like to go through the horrors of addiction, but he doesn’t know what it’s like to go through the horrors of addiction as a woman, and he certainly has no fucking clue, what it’s like to go through a drug addiction as a black woman.
Sam Levinson is so interested in exploring so many different facets of trauma (the majority of which it is now clear that he knows nothing about) that he doesn’t bother to pay the proper time or respect to any of them. This is a problem by itself, but an even greater problem is the joy he clearly gets from soapy slapstick drama. The result of this combination is a tonal whiplash that makes it impossible to take any of these incredibly serious topics seriously at all. The issues in his writing style pile up until the two part season finale where Lexi (Maude Apatow) puts on a play that becomes a two hour long recap of everything we have just seen happen throughout two whole seasons of Euphoria.
The effect is almost parody like, and only serves to rush the closure of several different storylines including the possibility of Rue getting sex trafficked (yup) as well as Ashtray’s fate (that’s right, ANOTHER character we barely know). Cassie becomes a laughingstock, Kat isn’t there at all and Jules is entirely sidelined so that Elliot can play a four minute long guitar solo. Rue tells us in a voice over that she stays clean for the rest of the year. Ok, cool. See that’s something I would have liked to have seen, instead of Lexi’s bizarre school play. Last year I felt heartbreak and catharsis seeing Rue’s fall from grace, this year I felt absolutely nothing and worse, it made me feel nothing about everything I had seen previously too.
Here is my biggest problem, what made the first season good was its focus on one character’s tragedy while she watched those around her go through their own tragedies as well. But it was all filtered through her, and she is a seventeen year old girl. All the tragedy she sees feels heavy, but it also feels nearly disaffected, and at times transcendent. There is beauty in the pain around her, because there has to be. That’s how she survives it. In contrast, this season feels like a long dark tunnel with no way out. Even the disjointed humor feels mean spirited and spiteful. Like Sam Levinson is laughing at us. Look at what you are willing to watch just because I put it on your television. It doesn’t seem as if he cares very much about what he’s saying anymore. And if he no longer cares, then why should we?
