the whole giant sydney sequence was so unnecessary this season continues to be very middling to me. at least i don't hate it, i guess?
spent a lot of this season wondering how they got sweeney to agree to doing half the shit cassie is doing lol. definitely been a ride so far.
A lot of this season feels like fetishization and fantasy fulfillment played for shock value. So many characters that we knew as high schoolers now find themselves associated with sex work in some form or another. So much white supremacy symbolism on display. But it's like the show doesn't have anything compelling to say beyond "look how far we can take things on hbo and still get away with it." Sam Levinson is ill equipped to write about sex work and racism, but I can't tell if it's because he's a white man, or simply because he's inept in general. Maybe in the long time away we deluded ourselves into thinking this show was ever anything more than just the spectacle
I feel like Euphoria has always been a show about desire, mostly centred around sex and drugs. Now as the show moves away from high school it makes sense for the focus to switch slightly from interpersonal relationships to making money and it's not that surprising to me for this show or these characters to turn to sex work. I think it does a great job at showing the allure and ease sex work has for young women, as well as the way it can snowball into increasingly intense and unsafe situations. I also think contrasting what Cassie and Jules are doing as women who appear to have more agency than the girls at the Silver Slipper like Kitty or Angel is great, both the similarities and the differences, and what it says about those characters. Similarly bringing Maddie and Alamo together is fun, and I'm interested to see where that goes. I don't think the fetishes are just there for shock value at all, I think it's an important part of the story being told and something worth exploring. These are all things women are doing for money and even those who start out with the intention of just posting "pretty pictures" could end up fulfilling some dudes weird fantasy if the monetary incentive is right. Meanwhile her husband can go from hating the idea to relying on the money it brings in and encouraging her to go live in a house built for content creation. I think the giant scene in particular is a very fun, creative way to mix another fetish with the psychological effect Cassie's growth in popularity is having on her. As her initial shock and concern grows into confidence and ambition. I think the show has always tried to explore how short term pleasure or desire can cause people to make poor decisions and the consequences of those actions. This season feels like a natural progression of that. As for the white supremacy stuff, has there been much more than the stuff at Laurie's? That just feels like pretty basic character building that doesn't seem out of line with who those guys are. I may have missed some other stuff though, but yeah it doesn't seem to be saying much about racism really, other than that it exists lol.
Is this plot with Nate supposed to be a metaphor for the middle class and masculinity or something? I haven't read too deep into it.
I think you’ve put more thought into this season in this one post than Levinson has for the entire season.
just finished the rooster finale before the new episode and i could tell who was playing alamo's mom from voice alone before they showed her haha
I don’t think she’s been very good this season (not entirely her fault, Sam is barely writing anything for her) so I don’t mind the character taking a backseat
I don't usually notice or care about this stuff, but in the apartment scene where Jules hits Rue, the background city view is sow lifeless and clearly a backdrop and idk why but it was bugging me/making me laugh how obvious it was lol
Catching up to the new episodes and while I can say I'm both entertained and baffled from one scene to the next, which is the experience I was expecting to get, my god I can't stop wondering what this show post-season 1 would've been like with other (better) writers at the helm. Sam can't help but infuse heterosexual toxic nonsense into each episode to the point of self-parody, and it still feels like he doesn't know how to write women in a non-degrading way.
Up to the latest episode... and I now think I like this more than S2? This is bonkers and there are so many things that bug me about certain characters or arcs, but I'm captivated anyway. Just need the rest to stick the landing, but at this point I don't even know what that would mean. Have no idea how this could end in a satisfying way with only two episodes left. Rue, Alamo, Maddy and Cassie are carrying this. Intrigued by Bishop as well. Nate... feels like a completely different character to the one I remember and sadly, Jules seems wasted so far.
I know 0% about snakes but did they honestly think we’d not notice they CGI’d a rattlesnake onto a clearly nonvenomous snake?
This is simultaneously the best episode of the season, and also proof that the entire rest of the season has been filler. Jacob Elordi & Hunter Schafer have been entirely underutilized, it feels like everything interesting about Cassie's plot was crammed into this episode, and it's clear the rest of the season has suffered for a lack of Colman Domingo. The reveal that Alamo is trafficking women as "living sex dolls" would have a lot more impact if it wasn't obvious he was a supervillian from the moment he made Rue cover up Tish's death. Adewale still gives a compelling and charismatic performance, but the character's too cartoonishly evil to get invested in. It's very clear no character will leave this season with a happy ending, but if we're lucky Rue & co. can start some new beginnings. I'm especially scared for Maddy, Faye, Kittie, & Leslie after this episode, because I don't think they're afraid to kill off lead characters now. Nevertheless excited to see how this story ends.