Euphoria Season 2 Review: The Value of a Writer’s Room
Euphoria’s second season is an admittedly beautiful waste of potential.
The second season of Euphoria has finally concluded, and I find it safe to say that it has garnered much more criticism than the previous one. While the initial run saw discourse around its glamorization of drug use and the adult themes portrayed through high schoolers, the latest season has not only dialed that controversy up to eleven, but has attained much more in relation to the writing in particular. While still visually appealing, easily being one of the best looking shows currently airing, Euphoria’s second season is a dumpster fire in terms of writing, which made for a disappointing follow up to a promising start.
Narrative: Style Over Substance
If Euphoria’s first season was debatable on the long standing phrase “style over substance”, it’s second is the equivalent of arguing with a brick wall. This is due to the fact nearly every major plot beat feels illogical, and there are a lot of plot beats to keep track of. The first episode begins with Cassie having sex with Nate, her best friend’s boyfriend. The show puts in some effort to defend this ludicrous choice by Cassie by having her proclaim her need for love as if she’s the star of Shakespeare’s worst play. Blatant dialogue does not equal logical explanation, but Euphoria carries on, with this choice being the defining conflict of the season. This situation becomes even more unfathomable when we remember that these two are fighting over Nate Jacobs, an abusive, irredeemable character who has no reason to not be in prison or a psychiatric ward. While the first season explored the intricacies of an abusive relationship through the lens of Maddy and Nate, season two fumbles while season one strived, where these two characters clearly want Nate with very little reasoning or introspection as to why. In other words, it’s the first clue that points towards the style over substance factor of the show. No longer does Euphoria craft refreshing plots for the teen drama with nuance, but rather bases its main conflict on what will shock the audience the most. Essentially, the show is built upon a fundamentally unstable decision, and when the structure is loose, the building collapses.
The illogical decisions tragically become a pattern, such as Jules cheating on Rue with a guy she’s known for a couple of months. Then there’s Ashtray needlessly killing everyone he sees, turning one of the more mysterious characters into one of the most annoying. The list is long and tedious, and the show felt the same as a result. Again, the second season went for shock value, which could be a symptom of the fact that it bit off more than it could chew.
In the first episode we’re introduced to Marie, a school teacher by day drug dealer by night that Rue eventually agrees to sell for. Rue ends up using the drugs, getting caught by her friends and family, and losing the briefcase that determines wether she lives or dies. As a consequence of losing the product of a drug dealer, Rue is nearly trafficked before making her escape. But, that’s it. No one comes after her, she still owes a powerful and prolific member of the criminal underworld thousands of dollars, and yet she is still able to attend Lexi’s play on opening night without a care in the world. It’s as if the experience of nearly being trafficked had no effect on her. The plot handles serious subject matters with the elegance of a gazelle post-cheetah, allotting more time to a student play than a life and death situation for the face of the franchise.
At the same time, Fez is housing Faye, boyfriend of a druggy whose name I cannot bother to remember, who later shows up as a rat for the cops. It’s a plot line introduced in the first episode and forgotten for the next five, wrapping itself up by pulling the rug underneath the audience’s feet. We also have Cal’s journey of liberation, which similarly disappears for episodes at a time only to spawn from thin air in the finale. All of this while Lexi is making her play and developing a relationship with Fez, Maddy has strange sexual tension with her boss, Rue starts using again, etc. Oh, don’t forget about Cassie and Nate, that’s big too. It’s a maze of narrative threads that are never tied together, episodes containing plots A-D that not only clash in tone and content, but more often than not result in nothing but disappointment.
As stated previously, there was no conclusion to Rue and the drug ring she entered, just as there is no satisfying conclusion to Lexi and Fez (not even a kiss!). It’s a pattern with most of the stories being told this season. Maddy and Cassie’s concluding brawl is the equivalent to a slowly deflating balloon. Elliot’s last prominent scene is a four minute song to Rue that is being panned as one of the worst parts of the show. Rue and Jules talk for the first time in episodes, only for it to last a few sentences where Rue says nothing. The conflict’s presented rarely evolve, simply starting and ending episodes later with somehow little to no change. It’s not just that most of the conclusions to these threads are rushed, uninteresting or illogical, it’s that they’re, at times, non existent. Forced set up results in lazy or invisible payoffs, and the characters are treated no differently.
Characters
It is no secret that characters have been effaced from the first season. Critics and twitter have been noting not only the lack of development for certain characters, but how many have gone from primary components of the cast to barely notable side characters. The most egregious of these changes is Kat. Not only did Kat regress in her arc by going from self confident and accepting herself to now hating every aspect of her being all over again, but she has transformed into easily one of the most unlikeable characters in the show all thanks to one scene. Instead of telling Ethan she wants to break up, which is another illogical choice the show refuses to explain, she makes the worst possible excuse and manipulates Ethan until he breaks up with her. It’s downright cruel, and in my eyes, there is little that can be done to redeem her. In a world dominated by hard drugs and addiction, somehow Kat sticks out as a character I can barely stand.
Similarly, Cassie devolved in nearly every way. The audience understands she has an extreme desire to be loved, that she cannot function without the love from another, but the show apparently believes that one character trait is enough to carry a show. From the first episode her desperation is apparent, and in the final episode she’s still screaming for Nate, the only differences being more tears and louder screams that make her the epitome of annoyance. Similar to Kat, not only has Cassie become completely stagnant, and in some aspects a shell of her former self, but completely unlikeable instead of sympathetic by taking her despair to a melodramatic level. Pair this with some of the cringiest dialogue in recent memory, and Cassie’s character is only memorable for Sweeny’s spectacular performance and the level to which she has fallen in the rankings of the Euphoria cast.
Cassie’s overdramatic emotional bout also speaks to a larger issue with the second season, the melodrama of it all. While the first season was by no means completely realistic, it was certainly more grounded than the tonal maze that is season two, where every scene has a different level of suspension of disbelief, comedy, drama and tragedy that has the same effect of jarring whiplash. It’s illogical, a pattern in this season that, as we’ll see, runs through nearly every character.
Jules’ was wasted potential, period. Having a complicated relationship with Rue that ended on a sour note, the second season was at the plate ready to nail a grand slam, but ended up letting go of the bat mid swing, hitting a bird in mid air, and nailing an innocent family. Jules makes two notable decisions this season, those being getting back together with Rue, and the other being immediately cheating on her with Elliot. Despite the fact she loves Rue, Jules decides to hookup with Elliot, again, a person she’s known for a few months. After this unusually cruel action that never gets brought up, Jules is sidelined for the rest of the season, with her only other purpose being to tell Rue’s mom that Rue is using. While impactful for the narrative, it rings hallow for the characters’ relationship because they didn’t spend convincing time together as a couple, and it’s hard to tell how much Jules even cares for Rue after the stunt she pulled. She is a plot device, nothing more, nothing less.
Disappointingly, Jules is not the only character who exists for the sake of pushing the plot forward, as Elliot was introduced this season simply to make everything worse. He fuels Rue’s addiction, hooks up with Jules, and after all of that sings a song to Rue saying that she is the only thing besides his guitar that means anything to him. The problem is, when has he shown to care for Rue? Her feelings? Well being? All he’s done is hurt her, and although he acknowledges that, it’s the same issue with Cassie, where pointing out a narrative flaw through dialogue is not enough to efface it.
However, the most egregious example of lazy writing comes in the main character, which is perhaps the most onfusing part of the season. With the plot focusing on Rue’s drug addiction and Zendaya’s character being the driving force behind the show, one would expect for the lead to have a satisfying arch. Despite the lazy, overdone, bloated writing for the season, I was still hoping for the main character to cap off this car crash of a second installment on a high note, but once again I found myself glaring at the screen in disbelief for all of the wrong reasons. Rue’s addiction, as if I have to say it again, has been one of, if not the primary conflict. It is a narrative thread deserving of a show on its own, yet is boiled down to a voice over and time lapse in the final episode where the audience learns, hey, everything’s fine! Rue is clean, cutting off the toxic people in her life, and things are finally looking up. It is the most rushed conclusion possible for the show’s most interesting story, making the process of watching the finale one akin to watching a family pet slowly wither away. It’s pathetic and distasteful based on everything that has come before, and I’m frankly shocked that Levinson decided to end the season with an “it was all a dream” level of quality.
Themes
The entangled sloppy mess of a plot and neglectful use of characters made me wonder, what is this show even trying to say? Surely it’s about abuse: Rue’s abuse of drugs, Nate’s sexual abuse, Cal’s abuse of Nate, Elliot’s abuse of face tattoos, etc. It’s certainly a running theme throughout the show, but does it go any further than “abuse is bad?” I find it difficult to spin together any cohesive message deeper than that. If I were being generous, I would maybe pull out the themes of love, neglect, and how those two merge. But even then, so many character relationships and arcs feel so half baked that their narrative and thematic weight rings hallow, making me become caught up in the ridiculousness of it all rather than trying to find any meaningful take away.
Euphoria has become a shell of its former self, deciding rather than push its narrative forward in any way, to take what they had before and push it until it breaks, to a degree so melodramatic that it clashes with the very idea of the show. Every episode’s structure is similarly incoherent as a result, making for tonal shifts that shock the audience in all of the worst ways, just like every other aspect of the season. The show decides to leave some characters on the back burner while completely ignoring others, making nearly the entire cast devolve. All in all, the second season of Euphoria exposes the weakness in Levinson’s writing and the ways in which a show can go from the top of the world to the most disappointing in the world as quickly as it rose to popularity.