Everyone’s favourite sus 37 year old male author of teenage torture porn has gifted us another punishing season of hot adults playing miserable 17 year olds as they fuck, cry and fight for their lives. Naturally, I have bones to pick.
Why is Sam Levinson such a little fuckin sicko? I respect his artistic hustle but I do not trust him. I almost feel like he should be on government watch.
Yeah, it’s all very well dragging Sam. But why do we, as grown ass adults, love tuning in to watch children suffer? We can’t seem to look away. It’s concerning.
Doesn’t Rue owe a dealer like $10,000? A couple weeks ago she narrowly escaped being sex trafficked, now she’s giving early 2000s teen movie voiceovers about how her first love taught her things.
Why was the budget of Lexi’s school play bigger than the government funding for every single New Zealand film and TV series from the past 10 years combined?
Did Dominic Fike have a clause in his contract where he had to cringe everyone out by singing for like 10 whole minutes? We need to abolish, stigmatise and denormalise teen drama scenes where characters play guitar and/or sing to one another. As a humble audience of burned out 20-somethings desperately consuming provocative entertainment media to fill an inexplicable void, we do not deserve to sit through scenes which are that awkward and unnecessary.
Just why to Elliot in general.
The potent misery I feel about Ashtray dying will never fade. If I wasn’t so relieved that this dumb show has exited my weekly routine, I would storm HBO and punish them for their crimes.
However, why are people shocked that Ashtray, a traumatised child who never had a childhood, made a reactionary and ill-considered decision after years of being raised around drugs and crime? R I fucking P but that kid was never going to know peace. Him doing something dangerous and stupid to protect Fezco, his only family, was kind of inevitable.
Why did I think for a second that Lexi and Fez were going to get a happy ending? Or at the very least a happy couple minute? It’s quite clear that Mr. Levinson is an emotional terrorist and I should never have let my guard down or my expectations soar like that.
How did so many people forget Cal Jacobs is a pedo? His teen queer love story segment was gorgeous. It could be it’s own movie…but it was also weird to spend so much time humanising and empathising with a child abuser. None of that backstory justifies or explains why he films people without their consent and literally ‘fucks little kids’…as Rue once put it.
Kat and Jules had like 2 lines of dialogue. Way to have interesting characters with massive potential for season 2 and do absolutely fuck all with it! Like why did we get zero development or conversation after Kat did underage sex work for the entirety of season 1? After a stunning and earnest slowburn romance between her and Ethan last season, her storyline this season was literally just hating herself, finding Ethan boring and breaking up with him. A bloody tragedy and a giant waste if you ask me.
Hunter Schafer wrote that brilliant therapy session episode for Jules and Sam needed to get her on for season 2 as well. Her role this time around was just saying I love you 300 times, cheating on her girlfriend with smelly Elliot and feeling sorry for herself. Another fucking maaaaassive waste of character, especially a thoughtful, 3 dimensional trans character who was given so much complexity previously.
Fez’s grandma straight chilling while guns are blazing during the home invasion. At least some storylines are consistent I guess!
What a truly testing ensemble cast this show has. The only tolerable characters left are Maddy, Fez, Gia, Leslie, Ali, BB and Suze. Lexi used to be one of my mains but after that fuckin stupid play she’s kinda straddling the fence between love and hate for me. If only the play had discussed Nate being abusive and not just making fun (?) of how he’s probably gay.
Ethan though. How could we not talk about my dark horse king Ethan…possibly the only theatre kid who deserves rights.
Nate, Maddy and Cal came through with the three best lines of dialogue this season.
Overall, this season had a fucking excellent first episode and struggled immediately after to follow it up. It’s immaculate looking, epically soundtracked, with stunning costumes and make up and some really superb acting. But structurally, it’s always been a weird disjointed parody of itself, jumping erratically from event to event without much cohesion or payoff. I’m glad Rue seemed to feel some catharsis watching Lexie’s play, cause I sure as well didn’t feel any this entire season.
Euphoria is best when it’s about Rue’s grief addiction. Sam Levinson knows his stuff here, and he excels when he writes what he knows. When he gets raw drama and emotion right it’s poignant as hell, and overwhelms my senses in the best way – like Fezco and Ashtray’s arcs, the dialogue driven special episodes about Rue and Jules released during lockdown, and the episode where Rue ran through people’s gardens chaotically escaping the police and ended up at the sinisterly calm Laurie’s apartment.
Unfortunately, the rest of the show surrenders to shock value over substance, which is a shame considering how much potential lies in the backstories he’s built. On the other hand, at least the HBO prosthetic dick department made lots of bank this year.
I will always have a passionate love for meandering, slow, realistically paced storylines (when they’re done right) but watching Alias, a classic Jennifer Garner action show from the year 2000 with 25 episodes per season, makes me remember TV is really fucking fun when it actually has momentum and plot progression.
Uforeah will be back for season 3, despite the fact it’s most definitely going to hell. We can all do the normal people in our world a favour by shutting the fuck up until 2024 🙂
Teen Drama Bitch 