UMNIA's watching Euphoria so you don't have to (Episode 1 Review)
A show I hated on it's debut, and started to warm up to in Season 2, is starting to crack at the seams -- and it's "creator"'s desperation is clear.
Sam Levinson really needs this to work, huh?
Euphoria is no longer the show about "the reality of Gen-Z"; it meanders, Tarantino-ly, around genres and stories, trying, in one last-ditch attempt, to regain the glory and respect Levinson mistakenly accrued when Euphoria debuted.
Much like many things I dislike with a passion, I always want to be proven wrong – to turn up and have to eat my hat. I hated all of the Safdie brothers' output, and was ready to hate Marty Supreme, only to find it one of the most refreshing films of last year, if a bit juvenile. I wanted to come to you about the first Episode of Season 3 of Euphoria with a similar opinion, if only for the havoc it would wreak.
Alas, Season 3 falls even further off the track than its predecessors, instead being a Sam Levinson showreel for potential directing guest spots on superior TV shows such as Yellowstone (I hear), The Studio, and perhaps a Desperate Housewives revival. The actual story of Euphoria, if only for this episode, suffers greatly because of this.
There's also this very funny Pseudo-conservative overtone across everything, and I can't tell if it's an ironic or sincere nod – a certain group of "Blue State Liberal" artsy types did a full turn tilt into the MAGA-sphere just after lockdowns, likely in response to cancellation, what with the Tradwifery, the Raw Milk, and the like. If ironic, it's astute satire, for sure. However, I fear this was not the intention.
This crowd makes everything political, but because they don't see themselves as political, they don't see that they're being political. So, in between very clumsy attempts at right-wing critique and very lazy attempts at liberal critique, there are some gems (again, not sure if they're intentional), like Nate speaking to the housekeeper like a dog while his fiancée pretends to be one.
Somehow, everything in this first episode swirls around sex work. Everything. In a way, it's a very honest accounting of California that few people discuss, but it starts to feel like women are always just going to drift toward sex work in Levinson's world.
Also, there is something sort of inherently MAGA about a white man writing the line "I bet you run those b_tches like a n_gga, don't you?" for a black pimp to say to a mixed lesbian drug addict.
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