The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Euphoria’ Season 2, Episode 6 Recap

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Joanna and Nora put on their umbrellas to unpack the latest rainy episode of 'Euphoria.' They tackle wine-drunk moms, Nate's wild actions, and Rue's forgiveness with Ali. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Nora Princiotti Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. To the Prestige TV podcast feed, I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Nora Pryanti. And we're here to talk about Euphoria. Episode 6. I don't know what the title is because we are recording this way, way in advance.

Because Nora, I heard there's something called the Super Bowl. Am I pronouncing that correctly? The Superb Owl. The Super Bowler. The Award Prize for the World's Best Owl. And since Nora is on the NFL beat, we had to record this one a little earlier, even earlier than usual. So I do not know what the title of this episode is. I wish I did.

But it is a lot happens in it. So we will talk about it all. First and foremost, though, this is going to fall up to the way our last week's episode ended, where we were wondering why they used it never rains in Southern California to close episode five. It rains for almost all of episode six. What does it mean? I don't know. I have questions.

I think it means that sometimes it rains in Southern California. Let's change the lyrics. Sometimes rain. Yeah. a baptism, maybe, new, new beginnings, fresh beginnings. We'll get to all of that. We're going to break down this episode for you. We've got a little bit of listener feedback, not the usual, because as I said,

we're recording this way, way in advance. So you guys haven't had a chance to write into me about last week's episode. But we have got some older comments that I sort of worked into the run down of the show. We're going to break this out almost by parental figure. We talked last week about this idea of this season, and sort of integrating the parents a bit more than it did in previous seasons. This is a hell of an episode

for the parents of Euphoria. And we're going to talk with like our new most problematic parent, Marsha. So it's Marcia and Nate. Marsha played by the great Paula Marshall. Now that Cal's out of the picture and Cal we sort of zeroed in

as maybe the most toxic force in Nate's life. And now we get to see that you know, you can't. do something alone. Takes two to tango. It takes two to create someone like Nate. And we learn a lot about Marsha and who she is and what she thinks.

First of all, she likes in vogue. And that's one mark in her favor. And that's about the only nice thing I can say about Marcia. Just initial thoughts from you, Nora, about this Marsha neat dynamic. It's a great scene that I don't believe would have happened, I guess. Are we introducing believability to euphoria six episodes into season two? We actually are because this is going to come up for me a lot in this episode. Okay.

This episode had me, I really enjoyed it. And it had me wondering, is this like an absurdist comedy that we're watching in certain ways? Sometimes. It really feels like yes, but other times it feels like no. The absurdity in this episode is ratcheted up to a 10. which I had a lot of fun with, but there were a lot of things that strained my credulity,

I guess. Maybe they felt like we needed it after last week. I needed it. I really liked it. And I'm happy to, I will inject as much, you know, collagen and rubber

into my credulity and stretch it as far as they would like if it's going to be sort of ridiculous but somehow kind of charming. Yeah. I had some questions about exactly what would have needed to happen for Marcia and Nate to just be getting absolutely slammed in their kitchen together, talking through all of this stuff when they've apparently not had a real conversation since he was eight years old. And all of a sudden she's just asking every probing question about why he's angry and sharing all of this stuff and absolutely spilling. all of the beans, except when she's unwilling to ask explicitly,

did you know about, like, how much did you know about what Cal did? Well, she says she knew, she says that she could tell by looking at his face that he knew about Cal's infidelity, that his brother was having, like, was horrified by Cal's, like, meltdown. Also, I think the pee is still on the floor through this episode. Yeah, like, they have it. No, just, this is. Okay. But this seems like close to immediately.

Well, it's not, it's not immediately after because Nate has time to go work out. There's a lot that's unclear. She knew that he had a different reaction to Cal's departure than his older brother. But there was something after that where it seemed like she was about to ask, like, was that the reason you had been? such a happy kid and then became angry. I felt like there was something that she was not asking him in this scene when she's been willing to basically say all the things that for years they've left unsaid, but that

was somehow a bridge too far. It's the way that she reveals some of this stuff. Like when she was like, when she's talking about Maddie, we're going to talk a lot about Maddie and Cassie in this context. When she's talking about Maddie and she's saying she liked when Nate dragged her off, she's like, but you didn't have to choke her. don't choke me. It's all thing.

And Nate's like, you know, this is the whole thing that Nate, you know, when you, Nora, keep talking about, like, all the stuff that Nate did to get out of trouble last season, like, this is a thing. Like, he did all this stuff to get out of trouble of, like, choking Maddie and leaving bruises on her neck. And Marcia reveals that she knew the whole time, not just, like, was in denial, but, like, actively knew. And as he denies it, she's like, okay, sure. Oh, okay.

Oh, sure. And it's just the way she says it all That is so twisted and upsetting And like she thinks it's hilarious This dark, dark shit about her son And she thinks it's amusing And she's in favor of some of his behavior It's just

It's a really revealing conversation With Marsha But she says she prefers Cassie Who she calls the blonde one to Maddie. And she says, Maddie's the type that would keep a baby

just to spite you. And this goes to a message we got from one of our listeners, Suzanne who wrote in, Suzanne wrote in, Marcia and Derek, meaning Cal's like

childhood friend slash crush slash boyfriend, Marsha and Derek exchanged dirty looks in the gym during Cal's flashback. Some people theorize Marsha intentionally tried to get pregnant

in order to trap Cal. That's not a theory that I would have, like, love to feed into until Marsha says this shit right here. here where she's like, Maddie is the type that would keep a baby just to spite you. And I'm like, is your brain going there?

Because that's something that you did, Marsha? Like, is that what happened here? And do you disapprove of Maddie because she reminds you too much of yourself? Well, she does have that quality that's similar to Maddie where all of a sudden in the scene, right? Like Marcia knows almost everything. She is incredibly casually talking about all of the dirty laundry that. that Nate either didn't think she knew or they just didn't speak of.

Except clearly there are these little areas where she was kind of clueless. And that's similar to Maddie. Right? So I think drawing that parallel is something that they do pretty clearly. She tells Nate,

she's like, you know, you're angry. Don't take your anger out on me, you know? Again, just like laughing. She's like, it's all fine as long as it's not on me. You know what I mean? Completely like burn it all down, chaos, DGAF, like scary attitude. And then she says, you know, and then when he draws a line, like, when he refuses to agree with her on something, then she, like, turns a knife on him. And she says, you used to be such a sweet little kid until you're about eight or nine.

You know, your dad's fucked up, but you're even more fucked up. Do you wonder how something like that happens? like almost blaming him, like, how did you get more fucked up than even your father, etc.? And I'm wondering if you feel like, you know, when we first meet, when we get Nate's backstory season one, this inciting incident for him is like finding his dad's collection of videos and watching it. Do we feel like this is like that he found those when he was eight or nine and it changed him forever and forever sort of rotted him at the core? Or what do you think? I completely felt like that that was the implication.

And it seemed to me, that was where I felt like she was almost asking, but couldn't quite ask as explicitly as she was talking about all these other things. But I felt like what was going on in her brain was, was there something that happened that had to do with this that you knew and that you'd known for that long that, you know, not just did you know that you know that your death? dad was unfaithful and you didn't say anything or you were living with that. But like, was that the thing that sort of changed you fundamentally as a kid? And it did add this little bit of sort of poignancy to a kind of funny but also disturbing scene that that was the line that she couldn't cross even in fuck it, burn it all down mode. Even as in vogue is playing in the background. Um, what are our listeners? She's like swilling Pinotigio.

She's like, oops, time for another bottle as he's like hitting the whiskey, hitting his dad's like whiskey reserve. One of my listeners, Kendra run in with this pretty popular theory, actually, that, and again, Euphoria is not really a theory show, but wrote him with this theory about asking. I think it's becoming a bit of a theory show, though, just because there are more loose ends and there are more things that are harder to explain, I think, in season two than in season one. That's true. is true. She asks, did Nate kill his little brother?

Is a popular theory based on Cal saying, like, your whole life's a mystery or whatever to Nate. You know, for those who don't know and haven't been listening to previous episodes that we've recorded, I guess, there's a family portrait with Nate, his older brother, Cal, Marcia, and then a mysterious younger brother who we've never seen on the show does not appear to exist. And not only that, but as we discussed a couple weeks ago, when Cal, makes his dramatic exit from the family. He takes that same portrait off the wall. So if that were like a, because that's a pilot reveal, right? Cal comes back into the home after his encounter with jewels, and we see that family portrait on the wall as a way to tell us that, holy shit, this is Nate's dad, right? So that's a pilot production image that if they decide to then not put a little brother in that family, they should probably have altered for later episodes,

which is like that happens all the time. You have an idea for a pilot and you change it and then later things change. But not only do they not alter that photo or just remove that photo, Cal picks that same photo up off the wall as he walks out the door. And we still have never mentioned this little brother.

But my feeling is like when Marsha's like two bottles of Pinocrighe into the night, would she not bring up a child who, is no longer there as we're airing all of our dirty laundry. It feels like that now was the moment for Marcia to say something about the youngest son,

whether he died from an accident. Like, he has to be dead. They've never mentioned him. Like, what's happening? What do you think? I don't really ascribe to that theory because everything that Nate's parents say about him is just like, you're a mystery.

We don't understand you. Not you killed your little brother. We get. why you're so fucked up and traumatized. Yeah, yeah. But I do think that because I took Marcia's, what Marcia said about, you know, you used to be such a sweet kid until you were about eight or nine,

because that read to me as her kind of stepping up to the line of this question that she has, but not being even when she's drunk in the kitchen off white wine, like not being willing to ask it, she still has lines. Like they still have secrets. There are still things that they don't speak of in this conversation. It's not actually fully, I don't care about anything anymore.

So I can see her not mentioning it. But I don't think that I've gotten things that feel like hints at Nate, like, killed his brother. Her dad died and ours just stopped calling. I don't know which is worse. And if you weren't such a fucking loser with no self-respect, you drop her because she treats you like shit. Enough.

Enough. I can't say it to her, but you two can say it to me? I never said you didn't have any self-respect. You don't have to. All right, speaking of wine drunk moms, let's talk about my faith. Sue's and Cassie and Susan Cassie and Lexi, when you ask, is this episode an absurdist comedy? I will point you towards the visual of Sue's shoving of bowl full of knives into Lexi's arms and telling her to hide it in a bush in the backyard

to protect Cassie. Obviously, self-harm is not a joke. Obviously, it's a real thing. Obviously, it's something that this show has taken seriously at other points, but this is supposed to be an absurdist moment of this show. And then later, when Cass is in the kitchen with the corkscrew and Sue says a corkscrew ain't going to cut it, like that, I mean, all of this is, I think not irresponsibly making light of, I think just taking a different beat on these very heavy issues that these kids are dealing with. And, you know, but Sue's in her own way is just as destructive of force as Marcia. What do you think? Well, that's interesting because I do think one of the reasons that they're able to take a different beat on something like that in this case is because

for the last several episodes Cassie is getting an unsympathetic at it. Like, not only has she done very bad things, she's kind of an idiot. Like, she says the most vapid stuff to Rue before Rue drops the bombshell

of how long have you been fucking Nate Jacobs. She is completely pathetic with Nate. She has no sense of, you've called this person 50 times. He's not calling you back. So it is a, it's been a kind of a sharp whiplash on her, I've felt, where she used to be a character that I thought this show had a lot more sympathy for. And she does feel like a little bit of a punching bag. I guess in this case, it is easier to have that absurd, darkly comic effect of something like

the bowl of knives when the character is behaving in ways that we're not taking as, you know, it is the expression of deep emotion in some ways, but it's not like Jules. Cassie is in certain ways being incredibly ridiculous, so we're willing, to take a ridiculous treatment of it, I think, more easily. I have been surprised by just how unattractive of a character she has turned into.

But the laughs worked for me. Like, I think the absurdity is kind of fun. And I occasionally have questions on whether or not it's intentional, but I do think it works. And again, I like, honestly, if there's an MVP, not. like acting MVP is Zendaya, but if there's like, I guess, a comedy MVP of this season for me is Alana Yovacus Seuss Howard. Like I just, I think she's so good in this episode. And the visual of Cassie in the bath with the face mask that has like the tear stains running down it. Incredible stuff. I also like these confrontations between the sisters, Lexi and Cassie,

where, you know, what crosses the line for Lexi is the fact that she thinks she believes Cassie ratted out, Fez because of Nate. I don't know that it's a clear one-to-one on that because Cal was like Cassie is the kind of person that might have broken in front of Cal anyway, honestly. You know, he was doing his full intimidation performance, but it's enough to put Lexi on the other side of sympathy for her sister in this moment. And, you know, Cassie is certainly not doing yourself any favors in this episode in terms of trying to win sympathy. Her defense.

She lies about, like, you know, that they started on New Year's, all this sort of stuff. And, yeah, you know, I mean, Team Lexi always, but especially in all of this as Cassie is just spiraling. All right, anything else in the, I mean, we'll return to Cassie at the end. We'll definitely return to Lexi. But anything else in the Howard household that you want to talk about? Just like you said, shout out, Suez. Yeah. So there isn't really a parental figure for Maddie unless we're counting Mika Kelly's character, Samantha.

So let's go ahead and say like this is another sort of mother-daughter-esque moment. This whole season we've seen Maddie sort of playing dress up in this house. This is the only place we don't really see her. Well, we see her in her bedroom in this episode. But otherwise, we're not really seeing Maddie at home. She's always over baby. be sitting at this at this house um something we discover in this episode is that when mattie's been dressing up in um samantha's clothing in the closet is like that uh there's been a camera on her

the whole time and uh there's like a little camera in in the clock radio or whatever that's in the i don't know if like we saw that before but i didn't notice it uh if it was there before no i think this is the first time this the first time i noticed it too it sort of feels like i mean you mentioned last week that like there was that camera on Rue as she does the B&E and you know later Jules talks about the camera that Cal had on her. I don't know, this whole like surveillance culture or like the kids constantly being on camera. I have a lot of questions. So like what I mean how does that change how you think about Samantha knowing that she knows that Maddie like goes through her closet when she's gone? We don't know that much about Samantha, but we know that she

is looking for something emotional friendship, connection, someone to talk to from Maddie, which is a little weird, right? Like, it would almost be, if she hadn't seen it, it would almost be weirder for her to come back and say, I think we should have some wine and, go for a swim. Very odd. I've been a babysitter. That didn't happen. No. No. It's an odd thing to say. So I think there's more to come in terms of what her motivation is, but I have not gotten, I know some

people sense quasi-romantic sexual vibes. Yeah. I don't. That would surprise me, but she wants something more than a babysitter out of this relationship. And it is certainly enough to overlook Maddie playing dressup. And it might even indicate that she likes the idea that this girl kind of wants to be her. Right, right. Yeah. I think I speak for the nation when I say that if Micka Kelly asks me to join her in a pool with a bottle of rosé, I will like there. No one's saying no to that.

Lila Garrity, I will obviously go wherever you say I will follow. But what's interesting is that if, like, Marcia compares herself to Maddie in its own weird way, Samantha here is saying that when she was in college, she was a Cassie. I don't know how I feel about this Maddie Cassie binary because the two don't seem like, I feel like it's, or maybe this, that's the interesting message of the show because, like, Cassie in the iconography and all this other stuff is being set up as this Madonna to the Maddie whore. but like then also, I mean, that's a binary that I don't love to buy into at all. But like, what's also true is that Cassie is not like the virginal Madonna at all in her actions in all of this.

And so I think that Cassie Maddie binary is not as much of a binary as maybe the show would have us believe. But I don't know. What do you think of Samantha's admission that she was a Cassie once upon a time? I think it's interesting for Maddie because, and I'm going to read a little bit more into this based on what you just said than I initially got just from watching it. But we know that Maddie would like to, in certain ways, grow up to be Samantha. She wants to live in a nice house with nice clothes and all of that is appealing and aspirational to her. Maddie often gets the power that she has, and I think she equates that with a certain type of power. Maddie often gets her power from not caring, from not being sort of desperate and wanting in the same way that Cassie is.

She doesn't call Nate. Cassie calls Nate eight bazillion times. Maddie does not call him once. She has the self-restraint with the phone that we all wish we could have had at that age. Yeah. But I think it's sort of interesting especially. Like, this is the point that I don't think the show is really trying to make about like male-female power dynamics and men ultimately choosing a woman who's needier and who really wants to be loved in a Cassie sort of way when Maddie feels. like she gets up to that point, like feels like she gets her power

from sort of not wanting that. I don't, I think that's overstating it. But I think that it at least gives her this question of, is it quite as definitive of like her path and who she wants to be that she doesn't have those needs

that Cassie has? If the person who she's kind of like, you seem like you've got it pretty good, is telling her, I acted like that because I didn't think that, you know, someone was going to see me as someone they wanted to end up with. And then they did. Like, I think that's very challenging for her.

I loved watching. Like, it's been a really interesting Maddie season because as much as she's in the plot, she's not central, the central figure in her own plot, it seems like. But now that she knows, like Maddie's moving close to the center of everything that's going on here, And I thought Alexa Demi's performance in that, I mean, and then in this next scene we're about to talk about, but in that pool scene, I thought it was really, really good.

Like, you could just see Maddie absorbing lessons. And again, it goes to that, like, what Nate says about, like, she's smart. She's very smart. She's really smart. Yeah. He's deeply flawed. And somehow, somehow, some way, we raised a child who's even more deeply flawed. Do you ever wonder about that?

Do you just like, what went wrong? Do you ever think about that? No, of course you don't. Because your fucking dumb-ass dad didn't believe in therapy, so self-reflections off the table. It's just, it's just a mystery to me. Because you were such a sweet little baby. All right, so let's talk about this wild shit that Nate does.

Now that we're done with these like three mother pairings, let's talk about the rest of Nate's plot in this episode. So he breaks into Cal's, office. He picks up a model of a house and like I don't know if it was dumb of me to not connect the plot the the the the the the the the the boss before but like does that mean that the housing development that he and Cassie have like we've seen them in or we've seen shots of her in like that that's cows. That's something that hadn't occurred to me. Yeah and like what that means that like Cassie is in this like empty housing development in her scenes and Maddie is like in this other person's

house that is like a fully built house. I don't fully have my ducks in a row of my thoughts on that, but I think the show is trying to pull a contrast between those two things. He takes the gun out of, I mean, Cal left him a note in the drawer. Great Cal move. And the gun. And Nate takes the gun to go get the disc from Maddie. And we saw earlier in the episode that Maddie had the disc and was sort of like thinking about what to do with it.

Because this is a card she has like to play that Nate. has done this extreme, like perpetrated, a huge betrayal, and she has this disc. And it leads to the scene where he has broken into her room and threatens her with a gun to get the disc back, lays on top of her. I think, I mean, I meant to go back and triple check it. Does he take all the bullets out and then load her necklace into the chamber? That is what it looked like. That's what it looked like to me.

Yeah. Me? Yeah. It was, I have to. to say I missed, it took me a minute to understand that there weren't bullets in the gun. But like, firing a necklace into your head at close range, like, that would still, or would it not because you need be, I don't know. I don't know how guns work.

Maybe you need the gunpowder or whatever. Anyway, I don't know. It just didn't seem great. I'll just say that deranged Russian roulette scene. It was insane. To get Maddie to give up the disc. I have an email sort of about this or a message about this from a listener, but I want to see what you wanted to say about it first. It just, it is jarring how, I mean, I don't know, I guess, I guess maybe I'm supposed to take more from the fact that the gun was not loaded.

But after all that has happened, Nate will still go so, so, so, so far. Like, he's still so violent. He's terrifying. It's just very jarring and doesn't seem like he has learned anything from anything that has happened. So we have this message from a listener. They did not leave their name, so, you know, I apologize. But they wrote this, I'm zagging so hard on anything season two, Nate. Nate doesn't work as a flesh and blood character, given his actions on the actor.

I think Nate never will work as a flesh and blood character on the show. In that, no matter what, we will not be invested in he. him or his machinations. What Nate did work as is a plot device, a loose wire, an exterior threat to all characters we did care about. He was also an amazing living, breathing commentary and toxic masculinity. I mean, seriously, how intriguing was it that our stand-in for toxic masculinity could also be a stand-in for Superman and both his unreal good looks, size, stature, etc., which is why abandoning the plot line about him potentially struggling with latent homosexuality, and indeed wondering whether this was nature past or nurtured by the discovery of his father's

lifestyle is nonsensical. You trade that line to fold us into the toxic love triangle that is going nowhere, then will dead end us. We can't root for it before it inevitably crashes and burns. So what is the point of it besides many episodes of eye rolling cringe and frustration? I'm sorry, there's no question. I just need to vent. Thanks for being my euphoria therapist temporarily to whine slash vent to. So this question of like Nate as a as a real feeling character, because you mentioned the absurdity of this show and of this episode. And what's true is that even as this episode is absurd in many different ways, almost all, I mean, maybe not Cassie,

but almost like feel like real people making real decisions. But what Nate does in this episode, and we'll get to like the conversation with Jules, which is like its own thing. But like what Nate does in this episode, it's like, how do we take this seriously as a human character? character in a human show that we're supposed to care about. Especially when his stakes are so different from everyone else's.

Like, how is he allowed to go back to school after doing this? Like, what do you, what do you think? Well, and it really is, so where the thread of what we know about Nate as a person carries through is that ultimately, like, when we do know that the, the gun is not loaded, it is, again, an example of he actually, he has. a person capable of enacting real violence. He's physically powerful. And he's done that.

But usually his real violence is emotional and it's manipulative. And even when he has a physical gun, he is actually hurting her mentally. Yeah. Like what he's doing is not, you know, there's no actual real threat of physical violence, but he can do just as much by messing with what she thinks. The problem with Nate's character development with this is that

if we're supposed to believe that he cares about Maddie, like this is not sudden rage like when he chokes her. He planned this out and thought it through and it did strike me as very difficult to believe that even someone like Nate would literally just

press a gun into her forehead. Like, they can't, I mean, it just doesn't make sense. Like, even if he is supposed to care about her in a deeply flawed way, it struck me as nonsensical. We get this scene where he then takes the disc to Jules.

And he has at least a self-awareness. I really, as much as I have trouble with Nate as a character, and I do. I found this scene incredibly powerful based primarily on the performance. of the two actors in the car. I did too in terms of the scene of it,

but it's just, again, like, how can, if he, the only way that the stuff with Maddie would make sense would be if having the tape feels like life and death to him. Like, if he can't preserve his family's reputation enough so that he can control the business, like if that is so important to him

that he will literally do anything, that's the only those are the only terms on which I can even try to understand what happens with Maddie. And then that makes absolutely no sense with just taking and giving it to Jules. You make a good point. Make a great point. I think he makes a right assessment, though, and that Jules would never put it out there for herself. But, no, you make a really good point. He takes his Jules.

He says he's not a good person, which I really enjoy that line delivery from Jacob Alorty, who has like a really... And the mirroring of something that has come up with other characters, namely Rue. Exactly. We're back again to who's a good person who's not. And then he says everything he ever said to her was true. And she says, Ditto. And I think that that is true. We talk about how manipulative Nate is, but I don't think that's an act of manipulation.

I think that's an act of rare honesty from this character. I don't know what it means. And I don't know if it's the episode trying to bring us back from the brink of being like Nate could die immediately and I wouldn't be upset about it with this sort of expression of vulnerability, but it's not that it doesn't do that job for me. It makes me feel something and I couldn't quite articulate it, but it doesn't, it doesn't do something to make me feel like Nate is a character I want to see prosper and thrive. I still think he needs major, major repercussions for all the things that he's done.

What do you think? Yeah, I just, it's not that the individual is seen didn't do that for me. I just had a really tough time squaring Matt with the scene with Maddie. That's how little I trust you. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm going to go. Okay.

Hey, for what it's worth, everything I ever said is true. Same you. Okay, so to go back to some of the rumors, wild rumors that people have sent me that we discussed last week, one of them, and I have no way to substantiate this, was that initially the plan was for Jules to be in the Cassie role in a certain way. The dark secret of affair was supposed to between Jules and Nate this season, not Nate and Cassie, but that due to maybe certain actors not getting along or whatever a change was made.

I am having a really hard time imagining that plot line, working. or that swap working. I mean, obviously there would be some major changes. And there definitely seemed to be a place where, like, Jules having trouble letting go of this person that she fell in love with over text message in season one is definitely something that the show was interested in exploring that even when she finds out who it is, she's trouble letting go. Or this idea that, like, of all the women that Nate has, you know,

encountered over the course of the series, the person who you really, like, feels connected to. too is jewels. I think that's in the water. I'm just not sure I can really feel the, the jewel swap for Cassie completely. Would that work in any way in your mind? I don't think so. I think it would have been really tough, particularly because if that had been happening, how could that have happened simultaneously with the introduction of Elliott and the creation of that love triangle? I think those would have been hard to do at the same time. But I don't know. I also think that I imagine there was significant pressure might be the wrong word,

but significant interest for good reasons with elevating Sidney-Sweeney and this. So I can certainly see wanting to give her lines, give her screen time. It just, I don't know if that would have been weird. The other part of all of this, again, unsubstantiated gossip. is an idea that Jacob Allorty wants to leave the show, leave euphoria, and that he wants Nate to be written off the show. So I guess we'll see at the end of the season if it feels like Nate is no longer going to be part of the show.

I don't think the show needs Nate. In fact, I think, again, as he continues to roll through life without consequences for his actions, I think it kind of hurts the show. But we'll see. We'll see if at the end of the season, Nate is no longer in the mix in euphoria. But his storyline in this episode ends with him calling Cassie, telling her he loves her. God damn it. Like, telling her he loves her, asking her to move in.

She packs up and goes. We see Sue's watch her go and Marsha watch her arrive. Any thoughts or feelings about Cassie moving in with Nate? I mean, he just gives her so little. Like even when he doesn't say, like, I love you and the way that you would tell someone that you love. He's just like, love you on the phone. And ostensibly that's the first time that that has been uttered. And it's so, she gets so little and she's so grateful for all of it.

And it's just so tough to watch. It's strange to me that she moves into his house. I don't really understand that. I mean, Brenda moved into the beach house with Dylan in a 2-1-0. That's all I can tell you. But overall, I don't think it's something teens are doing as far as that. I know. Or something that Seuss would let happen without any kind of, like, fight.

I don't know. But maybe that's the whole thing is like Sue's just too. Although I guess she can watch Millionaire Matchmaker in Peace now. All right. Speaking of things that might have changed in the season for reasons beyond the plot, let's just talk about this cat and Ethan scene really quickly. Goodness gracious. What is the scene?

What is happening to Kat's character? I genuinely hate it. Tell me how you feel. My notes in the moment I just wrote down Kat. dot, dot, question mark, what the fuck? Yeah. She just is so completely unlikable in being mean about her friends. She's mean about Cassie.

And she's just horrible to Ethan, who she has allegedly summoned under the shroud of an emergency necessary discussion to some restaurant. And then says that she has a brain disorder? A terminal brain disorder. A terminal brain disorder. He obviously knows that this is BS and is like, I think you're trying to break up with me. And then he breaks up, like she gaslights him that he's annoyed about how she's acting. Yes, she says that he's gaslighting her. And then he ends up breaking up with her.

I don't know. It is probably the single strangest scene of you for it. I've ever consumed, and that is saying quite a bit. I have no better read on the scene other than this feels like a writer who does not like an actress, honestly. Like, this is just a complete decimation of a character that season one did so much to get us, like, emotionally invested in in all her messiness. I hate it. I hate it.

I mean, if that's what it is, it is really cutting off your nose to spite your face because this did not need to happen. This did absolutely nothing positive for the show. All right, let's roll over to something that I think we do feel more positive about, which is in her scenes back at home. In her scenes back at home, Lexi, as she's dealing with her sister, is slowly getting ready to go somewhere. She's got rollers in her hair. She's putting makeup on over the course of all of this, and we find out that she's going over to see Fez to talk to him about her nerves about the play because Cassie is coming unhinged. And she's like, well, this autobiographical play about my sister push her over the edge. And then they watch Stand By Me and they sing and they hold hands as Fez plays the air violin.

It's the cutest fucking thing you've ever seen in your life. I'm terrified for them. How are you feeling? It was so cute. So cute. I love Fez when she's just like, should we watch Stand By Me? It is, oh, my gosh. they make my heart so warm.

When Fez goes, my grandma has it on DVD. Like, please just, I've lived all the life I need to live. Like, thank you. Because like, come on now. Come on now. It's my favorite. Oh, my God. Yeah.

So cute. But also, like, I liked that they didn't kiss. They hold hands, but it's just so the specter of danger is so present that I was almost like, this just can't go. I will be, this will lose some of its charm if it goes too far because I'm just so scared

about what's going to happen. As all this is happening, Faye, like his house guest, goes to take the trash out in, as we've said, it's been pouring down rain. And she meets Custer,

who was like, Mousses associate, who says he's now working with the cops to sort of pay. No, he says, this is like one of the campiest but funniest moments.

She's like, so are you cooperating? And he's like, I don't know if that's the right word, but I'm helping them out. Faye, for her part, seems like she feels conflicted because Fez has been nothing but nice to her, right?

Picking her up and she falls off the toilet, like, you know, all sorts of stuff. She seems at least somewhat conflicted. Custer is her boyfriend, so, you know, wear her loyalties. And Ash Trey does take his eye off the prize. He goes the bathroom, and he misses this encounter on the,

you know, Ashley, who's been very vigilant about all of this. So this is the active threat hanging around Fez is this. And it's awful. It's an awful, awful, scary thing hanging around something that is

the one pure sweet thing about the show, which is Lexi and Fez. Do you want to make any predictions? How is this all going to go? It's going to go terribly? With Lexi and Fez. Mm-hmm.

Oh. What if they just could watch movies and sing and hold hands for the rest of time? Okay. I love that. I love that version of reality. I much prefer it. Keep the bowl of knives in the bush and Lexi and says watch, you know, the complete works of Rob Ryder. I just, I never should have said that.

Rue. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Listen to me. I forgive you. You do? How do you know that I mean it? Because the hour is certain to come.

So we must. forgive graciously. And that brings us back to our core family, Rue, and Leslie and Gia, who get a visit from Ali in this episode. This episode starts with Rews in such, like, throws a withdrawal that she cannot open a Jolly Rancher, Watermelon Jelly Rancher rapper. Best flavor. Oh, cherry.

It's definitely cherry. Watermelon. We agree it's not a green apple. That's all that really matters. Yeah. Then she says this thing about how, again, to go back to this theme that you've been picking up on this idea of a good person. She says,

hospitals don't need to know how good of a person you are before helping you. I thought that was a really interesting line. She says, the world would be a better place without me. I don't disagree. All of that sort of stuff. I've been trying to leave it for as long as I can remember. Liar, thief, violent, abusive, manipulative, like all this stuff is true of me. She calls Elie.

She apologizes. He forgives her immediately. immediate forgiveness from him. He says the hour is certain, you know, per his faith, the hour is certain to come, so you must forgive graciously. And then she can open the Jolly Rancher. Like she's just infused with relief and hope. How do you feel about this first half of the Rue's storyline in this episode? One thing that struck me was, so she says that she doesn't remember everything that she said to her mom and that she doesn't want to.

but that she also says, I wish I could say that I didn't mean any of it. Then says, which does not create the implication that she believes, that she believes all of it by any means. It seems like she's remorseful and upset, but does acknowledge that there are some things there that she believes are true.

But then when she talks about Ali, Rue was basically saying, I completely regret this. this was a horrible thing to do. This is the thing that, you know, I never thought that I would do. And I thought that juxtaposition was, it stood out to me just because I wasn't quite sure what,

you know, if there's some sort of binary distinction between how she is with her mom, how she is with Ali, like I couldn't quite figure out what that was. But she had a different reaction in both cases. And I think it was interesting, you know, like he comes over to cook dinner

and we're going to talk about all of that. and the absolutely brilliant way that he, like, moves to this family here. But, like, if a core wound for Rue is, like, the loss of her father and this family, like, you know, I'm not sitting here saying you need any family needs a father and mother to be, like, whole, you know, single mom, single dads, moms and moms, dads and dads all doing, like, great work out here in the world. But there's something about this family that has a hole at the center of it and something about the way that Elie comes into the home. I mean, his whole life is a whole life. whole, but like the way that he comes into this home, the way that he focuses his attention on Gia, which is huge.

You know, he has this relationship with Roo, but he comes in and he just focuses all his attention on Gia. You mentioned at the end of last week's episode that, like, Gia was maybe the character most in need of a hug. And I think the idea that Ali senses that comes in and just puts all of his focus there. Just brilliant emotional intelligence from this person in terms of what this family really needs to try to put itself back together. What do you think about that? I had a kernel towards the end where I was like, all right, stop telling Rue's mom what to do.

But for the most part, I guess it was certainly helpful. Like, he was an absolute force for good. I guess I would have to rewatch it and see if, like, I feel like she was asking for advice, but maybe not. And maybe if I rewatched it, I would feel the same way. Yeah, I certainly, certainly. certainly like Ali doesn't have all the answers to life. And certainly his, certainly Leslie's doing like the best she, she can. But it goes back to what you were saying last week with this

idea that like Rue cannot do this for herself or even for Gia, for Jules, for her mom that she's doing herself. He says the hope is what Rue has to find. I also think that that idea kind of give is what in some ways gives him the license to say what he's saying because a lot of it, the implication is kind of like, Rue has to do this on her own. Like not completely on her own. She needs a lot of support. But there are certain things that are going to decide whether or not she makes it

that you can't do for her. So focus your, like, Gia really needs someone to hold her hand. and Gia is not in the situation where it's quite so she's got to do this for herself. Otherwise, it's not going to work. The episode closes with like Roo and Gia sort of snuggled in bed, Roos saying she doesn't feel like she feels like she doesn't know anything about Gia's life anymore. And then we hear Leslie on the phone begging to get Rue into a rehab facility.

Just when we feel like we're getting a happy chat. Right. She's a drug addict. She's going to kill herself. And this goes back to, I feel like. This goes back to the, you know, when we talk about the limitations of Rue as a authorial representation for Sam Levinson, we talk about class or income inequality and how you do, like, you know, that Leslie is sort of begging to get Rue into somewhere,

whereas like Sam Levinson, the way that he was brought up, like his parents at any time could get him into some sort of facility if they needed to. Whereas Leslie had been told by the hospital that this place was going to have a bed in a week or whatever and then is being told no. So, you know, I don't know exactly what the show is trying to say here, but whether it's, whether it's just to like make us feel ominous and uncertain about Rue's future or if we're trying to do some sort of commentary on our health care system, always welcome to me. But it's just like, I don't know, it's just another fucking thing for Leslie to have. have to try to navigate and a really sorrowful place to leave this episode that has a lot of tone tones swings throughout the course of it. Yeah, a real gut punch made me sad. All right. Nealdrop. I mean, it's obviously stand by me sung by Lexi and Fez, right?

There's simply no other choice, yes. Absolutely, just no other option. Favorite flashy camera move slash shot. It's not like a shot, but I'm going to give it to like, there's a point when both Maddie and Nate are driving through in the rain and he's got the gun on his front seat and she's got the disc. Like there are two weapons sort of on the front seat. I thought that was a tidy little parallel. How about you?

Do you have one? I just loved when Maddie and Samantha are in the pool. There was something just very aesthetic about that that I thought was. Yeah, I also like for a, for a, like a narrative break moment. When we talked about Rue as an unreliable narrator, or at least an incomplete narrator, the moment when she, like, goes to Jules, she's like, meanwhile, Jules and Ellen, she's like, never mind, I don't want to talk about that. Never mind.

I don't want to talk about them. Yeah, actually, that was a really, really good one. That was a great one. All right. Who is most in need of a hug in this episode? Maddie. I mean, I want to, like, preemptively give it to Lexian Fest because I'm so worried for them. So I'm going to, I'm going to give to them.

All right, acceptable, terrifying, horrifying moment of the episode. What do you got, Nora? I mean, mine was Nate with the gun. Like, it just... That scene went on for a long time. So long, and he's, like, crawls on top of her. Yeah. It's just awful.

I agree. I'm with you. All right, the Maddie Perez Honorary Fit Check. I'm sorry that I constantly give it to Maddie, but Maddie and Sam's purple dress. Yeah. The, like, I mean, just... iconic. I can't. I can't argue with it. It's beautiful. If I were Sam, I would have come on and

been like, you know that purple dress? I definitely spied on you trying on with my clock radio. You should keep it. It looks amazing on you. And who would we actually want to party with this week? Oh, wait. Can I give you my fit check? Of course. Of course. Sorry. This is not, it's a little bit different because that's the, this is not like the peak fashion moment here. but we've talked a few times about, you know, the absence of a lot of referencing of Ruse's status as, which makes her different from Sam Levinson, certainly, as a black woman middle class.

At the end when Ollie is over, she's wearing like a Malcolm X shirt. Yeah. And they never talk about it. but we are collecting little hints and evidence and either just acknowledgements of that that will never be spoken of and maybe that's what they're going to do and that's fine or it builds to something. But I just wanted to point that out. Yeah, that's a great call. And last of not least, who would we actually want to party with this week?

It's really tough. Like all the moms want to party this week. They're all like drinking with their kids. but probably the least toxic among them is Minket Kelly. So Lila Garrity in the pool. I think is where it has to be. It sounded like she had fun with her friends. Yeah.

I would have had a dinner. Or to go back to your episode one nominee, which was Lexie and Fez movie night. It's a fine alternative to Lila Gary in the pool. All right, so that's it. We leave scared for Roos, scared for Lexi and Fez, exasperated with Cassie, wanting to comfort Maddie.

The kids are not all right. Baffled by what's happening with Kat's entire plot line. Terrible. And... Ethan needs a hug, too. Oh, Ethan, my guy. Well, hopefully he will get to be in Lexi's play. We'll see.

And, yeah, because by sidelining Kat, you're also sidelining Ethan as a character. He's got nothing to do this season, except get dumped at a Chinese restaurant, I guess, in the worst way. So, euphoria. It's a show about kids that we're scared for. Nora, where can people find your superb owl coverage? On the Ringer NFL show and on the Ringer.com, breaking down the Super Bowl. All right.

You can find me possibly on the Ringerverse, maybe talking about ads we saw at the Super Bowl. that's usually how I cover the Super Bowl What movie ads did we see? Or you find me on social media at Joe Rothes so we'll be back next week I mean we're barely towards the end of the season Is that we're going to be okay? Probably not.

Tune in to find out. We'll see you next week.