Euphoria

[therewillbeblus]

Matt Zoller Seitz on S2E7, perhaps the first piece of film criticism I've ever read in which something is compared favorably with Rebel Without A Cause, but does not receive a full-throated recommendation

What a well-written and yet blatantly ignorant piece- MZS is right about a few things, including Levinson’s self-disclosures in identification with characters; but he- like all the sensitive union of critics forever upset by Malcolm and Marie- chooses to miss the layered value and courage of engaging with oneself that way, in favor of the superficial reading of attention-seeking. Similarly to how the heap of criticism against Malcolm and Marie ironically diluted the merit of Zendaya and Washington as collaborators and boomeranged back at the critics as problematic for making declarative defenses for the actors who weren’t looking for protection, MZS is devaluing the experiences of these youth in the way he talks about a madcap theory that Levinson’s exploiting them in unrealistic ways. MZS leaves that pointed criticism there without indulging in the necessary responsibility he has as a critic to approach the youth themselves with curiosity- even more ironically as an editor-in-chief at RogerEbert.com, indebted to a man who hailed this unconditional empathy as vital to engagement with the medium. His call back to the Ray masterpiece of youth is funny because he violated all these complaints about Euphoria by admitting that film implemented them and did it ‘right’. Why, because you can identify with it easier? Sounds exactly like the solipsistic backlash wagered against Malcolm and Marie- while accusing that of being solipsistic!

I feel like the final line of the article also undercuts the entire body, and I’m genuinely confused by this thesis. Did MZS really indicate to any other readers that he feels that “the deeper Euphoria goes up its own ass, the more sublime it becomes” with any formulations or examples mentioned earlier in the piece?! Because I’m not only pretty sure that he just spent a page saying the opposite, but that this very statement- supposedly asking to be taken at face value- is not-so-subtly but perhaps subconsciously another dig at the show! The guy just can’t shed the narcissistic bias he’s lobbing elsewhere

[Never Cursed]

Interesting article about the curious and in some cases positively deranged ways viewers of Euphoria have talked about Sam Levinson

[therewillbeblus]

I like how Zendaya pitched that “all the characters are just different facets of [his] personality” and that McKay “felt seen” against white critics hypocritically shaming Levinson for being white and curious about another’s experience, since I’ve always believed he’s doing both of these things, with the criticisms and charitable readings most pronounced with Malcolm & Marie. Levinson’s humanistic curiosity and engagement with the actors (including using their own stories) clearly makes this more of a collaboration even if Levinson is doing the actual writing behind closed doors.

[Altair]

Just out here waiting for twbb's take on the two-part theatre finale...

I just loved the use of the overture at the beginning of the first part and the cutting between stage and flashback, at certain points leaving it ambiguous which is which. The second part aimed for a full catharsis which, because of the myriad characters, I don't think it quite hit: after the explosion of tension in Fez's house at the mid-way point, there was a long de-escalation, each scene feeling like 'the ending', only for another scene to play out, trying to resolve another character conflict. The scene between Rue and Lexi in their bedroom was heartbreaking though and a reminder of how well-written and acted the show is - Levinson shows that he doesn't need the formal dynamism and pyrotechnics to affect the viwer. I kind of wish it had ended on stage, with the mother taking a photograph of all the children sitting outside of Rue's house, and the image flashing up overhead. That's such a gorgeous moment, that the final shot with the voiceover felt a little weak in comparison.

(Can't believe I just wrote a take on the finale without having to spolier anything!)

[RIP Film]

One nice byproduct of the show’s success is seeing those who get their ethics from twitter contort themselves into pretzels. Sexualizing high school students might be a more pointed argument if it hasn’t be done since at least the 70s in horror movies, trashy comedies like American Pie and everything in between. What makes Euphoria different?

[therewillbeblus]

What makes Euphoria different?

The difference I’m detecting anecdotally at work has less to do with the show’s content itself being more intensive, and more to do with the era of access, in conjunction with the permissive passive parenting making up the class demographics that afford HBO and/or allow kids unsupervised access to social media outlets (which transcends class). I had a meeting with school personnel just yesterday where the issue of middle schoolers watching Euphoria was raising huge issues in that school system. If more young children are watching and/or hearing about the show from social media, which every kid now has access to (I have yet to meet a kid who doesn’t have a TikTok channel over age ten) it’s going to cause outrage. But like the predominant response to the Dec 17 “National shoot up your school day” threat that caused parents to keep their kids home because the kids were “scared” by what they saw on TikTok, when the schools pushed back, ‘what if you just issued controls over your kid’s access to that app’, the parents dared not consider such an intervention. I think we just live in a time where communication channels spread like a disease much faster than any adult can grasp to catch up with a proper intervention- and this extends to really all things on the spectrum of developmentally-appropriate topics exposed to youth before their brains are ready to process said information, not just a TV show. So this is just one nebulous concern that those feeling powerless over will project on to a tangible place where it can land to issue some relief.

[soundchaser]

Interesting article about the curious and in some cases positively deranged ways viewers of Euphoria have talked about Sam Levinson

The most interesting thing in this article, for me (a person who has not watched the show...yet), is the absolute galaxy-brain take that is "we've surpassed the need for [Levinson]." I don't know if this bizarre view of media as a window into fictional people's lives is a result of reality TV, but it is deeply disquieting. Euphoria never was an ensemble writing show, so I don't understand what a person calling for Levinson to stand down would want from it - for their exact wishes about each character's life to be played out on screen? For a black woman to step in and do...what, exactly? Setting aside the political implications, it just demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how television/writing in general works. I'm aware that it's just one tweet, but if it's a thought held by a majority of up and coming critics...yikes. The phrase "why characters who are diverse in many dimensions answer to a 37-year-old white man who grew up in the entertainment industry," as if these characters have any agency beyond what is written on screen, is baffling. Actors, absolutely. Characters? What???

[therewillbeblus]

Just out here waiting for twbb's take on the two-part theatre finale...

I felt similarly mixed on the finale- it was my least favorite episode of the season, though since I think it’s been perfect every step of the way and in the running for my favorite (and perhaps most tonally and creatively eclectic) season of TV ever, that's not indicative of the wrap-up chapter being particularly flawed. Overall, I felt this season took a less outlandish approach while maintaining the ‘extremism’ of style and content (with Rue’s wild episode a case in point- an unbelievably intense episode that was still believable to many degrees both within and outside the internal logic of the show - versus, say, the violent aspect of this finale that seemed overly dramatized). Unlike you, I think I need to spoiler my response in order to get into the weeds!

SpoilerShow

Fezco and Ashtray: At first, this felt like an unnecessary punishment for the characters, but I'm now of the mind that it was a worst-outcome version of the necessary disruption of complacency that can trigger growth for a person in dire need and deserving of a life change. I look forward to a redemption arc for Fezco next season to make it "worth it," in the vacuum that any rehabilitation/recovery can move forward from net zero, while not ever being able to usurp the trauma caused that it took to get there.

More interestingly, I read Ashtray’s default to violence being rooted in a) protecting his brother (so sad that they both feel like they need to protect the other; the tragic part of ‘family = everything’ when you have no other supports), and b) his actual developmental age. We see Ash as an 'adult' during the show, who has had to become externally ‘mature’ due to resilience via a harsh upbringing and forceful exposure within a social context of crime. Yet in the end he’s just a scared little kid who is in fight/flight mode and isn’t making any rational choices there, completely fueled by reptilian emotional reactiveness. We can feel how alone he feels in that bathroom, no matter his brother/protector's begging screams of affection and guidance powerlessly barraging against the door. It just breaks my heart.

Cassie and Maddy: I really enjoyed Maddy's 'This is only the beginning' comment to Cassie, upon her disclosure that Nate broke up with her before she publicly set her social life on fire to defend him. It was such an authentic mixture of pity from lived experience, sadness at the loss of a close relationship, and the realistic kind of soft catharsis from liberation of this trapping, all made room for as growth for the character emerging from her default secondary emotion of anger.

Nate and Cal: The red herring of the loaded gun seemed necessary to demonstrate Nate's development on the scale away from reactive violence and towards acceptance, since the character himself has needed to hold both options together in order to balance options. This reflexively serves as a metaphor for his complex internal psychology craving sensitivity/a submissive role being taken care of by a partner or parent, as well as protect himself with a hard exterior/hold a position of dominance, sexually and socially via toxic masculinity, stopping anyone from accessing these soft internal needs he himself doesn't quite understand. Here he finally yields tangible power to external resources, just after becoming brutally honest with his father re: the rape nightmare, a far cry from the ominous secretive visits to people, threatening with violence and blackmail to get his needs met in a closeted space. Revenge can mean liberating himself through the help of others. I have hope for this character, who has come to emerge as the most fascinating against the grain of all the subjective triggers he possesses for me.

Rue and Lexi: Rue's conversation with Lexi was the highlight of the episode, and a wonderful example of what people in a program of recovery call a "living amends" (as opposed to the classic "I'm sorry for doing __" one-off amends), embodying a supportive resource of spiritual affinity in the role of a Friend for Lexi. Lexi and her feelings about her dad have been sidelined by the show just as people like her and their trauma are in real life, if not preached on social media or declared loudly in visible and disruptive actions that intrude on others- which is what gains attraction and the kind of recognition breeding intervention.

I love how Lexi capitalized on exhibiting herself as the star of her own movie to empower others to see themselves as she sees them in their best qualities away from this 'loud' drama (that, to use Maddy as an example, sees past the secondary surface-level emotion of anger and thus her character as a "crazy bitch" to a sensitive and loving friend with her own complex emotional core). This, in turn, reveals that we actually can discern and make tangible these characteristics if we care to observe others with curiosity and unconditional warmth. It's what Levinson has been doing all along with this show, and it's a shame some people don't see that intention, just like it's a shame many of us don't see what Lex does in the souls of her peers within her social environment, or that these subjects don't see these qualities themselves.

For Lexi to aggressively and, in a sense, narcissistically force these subjects into her orbit allows Levinson to hold such developmentally-appropriate narcissism as a natural and resilient quality divorced from its predominantly judgmental connotation, as well as a valuable and ironically charitable one with utilitarian consequences, if not exactly purely altruistic in its roots.

[Never Cursed]

Interesting article about the curious and in some cases positively deranged ways viewers of Euphoria have talked about Sam Levinson

The most interesting thing in this article, for me (a person who has not watched the show...yet), is the absolute galaxy-brain take that is "we've surpassed the need for [Levinson]." I don't know if this bizarre view of media as a window into fictional people's lives is a result of reality TV, but it is deeply disquieting. Euphoria never was an ensemble writing show, so I don't understand what a person calling for Levinson to stand down would want from it - for their exact wishes about each character's life to be played out on screen? For a black woman to step in and do...what, exactly? Setting aside the political implications, it just demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how television/writing in general works. I'm aware that it's just one tweet, but if it's a thought held by a majority of up and coming critics...yikes. The phrase "why characters who are diverse in many dimensions answer to a 37-year-old white man who grew up in the entertainment industry," as if these characters have any agency beyond what is written on screen, is baffling. Actors, absolutely. Characters? What???

It isn't so much that published critics are saying stuff like that; by and large, they are either ignoring the show, engaging with it through comically shallow rephrasing-of-press-release "reviews," or doing what MZS did in that piece upthread in admitting that Levinson has real filmmaking aptitude while also genuflecting to the popular perception of him as a nebulous entity without really exploring why people have these opinions. The thing that worries me more is that the collective unconscious of social media, including the carcinized mass of vulgar auteurists on Film Twitter, are engaging with the show in this manner, ignoring the context of the different parts of the show while describing Levinson as some sort of strange corrosive component that can and should be replaced. Most of these hot takes have been incoherent and demonstrative of a profound media illiteracy/apathy that I am more and more convinced is at the heart of both stan culture and Film Twitter. If there's one part of this whole thing that has made me go full Reverend Toller in my perception of these online spaces and conversations, it's how little any of this discourse has to do with the show as a piece of art (its artistic qualities are basically universally sidelined; it's treated as though it were approximately equivalent to a season of Glee or Riverdale) and how much it has to do with either the personalities of the people making it (yay Zendaya, boo Levinson, oh no Hunter Schaefer) or comically subjective feelings of discomfort that conflate the successful effects of the show's techniques with offense (as though a show about the miserable emotional ills of adolescence should only inspire feelings of pure positive utility).

[senseabove]

I'm aware that it's just one tweet, but if it's a thought held by a majority of up and coming critics...yikes.

This is one of the things that a journalist I like is repeatedly harping on: most journalists seem to have absolutely no idea how to, or at least make no effort to calibrate for the level playing field of social media. It's the person-on-the-street interview presented with even less implicit context. Journalists routinely pick a tweet, quote or write about it as if it's the voice of a generation, and fail to mention the actual tweet's reach. It's not even that it's "just one tweet." It's one tweet that no one has signaled agreement with, on a platform where signaling agreement is literally the lowest, easiest entry point. The account that tweeted the tweet you single out has ~1,000 followers. That's 1,000 followers a full 24 hours after being directly quoted in the NYT in an article about the most-discussed show on social media right now, in one of the most widely read papers in the world. The tweet has two likes. Two. It has zero retweets. It has been quoted in the New York Times, and it has absolutely no buy-in from the rest of the community that furiously tweets about Euphoria every Sunday night. For comparison, the next quoted tweet—a pithy, easily co-signable reiteration of a sentiment that I expect most folks here would agree to be broadly true ("we need more diversity in writers' rooms") even if not necessarily a suitably nuanced criticism for this specific show—is from an account with 16k followers, and has been, as of now, replied to 30 times, retweeted 1,505 times, quote tweeted 208 times, and liked 21.4K times (a "good" ratio, where likes disproportionately outnumber quote tweets/replies). That those two tweets are presented on an equal playing field is nuts.

[Never Cursed]

Barbie Ferreira not returning for Season 3

[Matt]

Probably best for everyone. I hope it’s just explained away as “Kat’s family moved to New Jersey over the summer.”

As much as I love season 2, I’m going to be really surprised if this show makes it to a season 4.

[Kracker]

They probably won't address her at all. They didn't need any explanation why she was being faded into the background, just have the drama of the main characters overwhelm the stage. Shame because she was my favorite character on the show.

[pianocrash]

Shame because she was my favorite character on the show.

Kat & Ethan (Austin Abrams) both deserved better, but I hope he's making bank doing those recent Wendy's commercials (still beats working for Sam Levinson!).

[Soy Cuba]

Absolutely devastated to hear about the death of Angus Cloud who played 'Fez'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66333376

[The Narrator Returns]

Production of season 3 has been indefinitely delayed

It'd be hard enough to coordinate those actors together now, waiting until they're even deeper into their movie-star careers just seems like giving up. Stay tuned for Euphoria: The New Class in 2030.

[therewillbeblus]

I have to imagine we'll at least get some solo movies for Zendaya and Hunter Schafer, like we did after the last delay, considering the affection between these principal actors and Levinson. Just dreaming now: Maybe we'll even get solo flicks for each cast member in a kind of Arrested Development S4 thing, only.. good

[Matt]

Ashtray is dead, Barbie Ferreira is not returning, Alexa Demie is 33, Angus Cloud is dead, and Zendaya, Schafer, Sweeney, Elordi, Colman Domingo, and Storm Reid are all booked and busy with their film careers. I propose the new season just be a continuation of Lexi’s play where Maude Apatow’s character makes a movie imagining her and her friends’ lives played by lookalike actors.