All For Us
May hit like a mac truck. Two weeks ago, my father had a heart attack. Two days after that, he had a quadruple bypass. A week later, he was transferred from the hospital to a rehabilitation facility. Yesterday, he was released to go home. We are all very relieved and happy he is home, but he still has a long recovery. If you follow me on Faceboook, then you’ve seen my posts.
Now…more thoughts on season 3 of Euphoria.
Going back and re-watching the show from the first season, it’s easy to still dislike everything about season 3. But, before I started down the re-watch road, I read a post that compared “Maddy’s Nate” to “Cassie’s Nate.” Essentially, it said that Maddy’s Nate would have burned the world down, but Cassie’s Nate is so passive and docile. He still talks like he has big game, but the confidence is almost completely nonexistent.
Let me continue down this path a little more. And I will preface this next part with, I have a point, I swear, so stay with me.
Between the first two seasons there was two and a half years, which is pretty standard, and only a few weeks pass within the show’s timeline. The gap between season two and season three is just over four years. On top of the real time gap, in the show itself there is a five year time jump. Now, before its season three premier, there were lots of other shows starting/ending, so I did not do a re-watch of the previous seasons like I normally would have. I guess I didn’t think there would be such a stark difference in vibe overall. And, obviously, my memory of season two was horrible. I am not ready to walk back my original review and rating of 5/10 for the season just yet. I might, though, as we talk this through.
Season Two:
Vibrancy is gone
Character relationships are messy and in limbo (Maddy & Nate, Rue & Jules)
Rue continues to play at death’s door
she is using even more than season one after being left at the train station by Jules
Nate begins a secret relationship with Cassie, while also toying with Maddy in an effort to try to get the DVD back
Cassie begins her crashout
The show introduces a new character, Elliot
He is a bad idea
Jules’ first impression of Elliot leaves her feeling threatened because Rue and he develop a close relationship that seems secretive
Elliot is the only person who knows Rue is using
Rue and Jules begin their relationship again
Rue keeps her drug use a secret from Jules
Once Cassie has her menty b, Nate spirals and goes crazy (loony bin-style) with Maddy so that he can get the DVD back, which no doubt branded her with her most abusive, manipulative, and traumatizing experience with him
The only healthy relationship we see is between Fez & Lexi (leading to our ultimate heartbreak)
Rue enters into her debt with Laurie
Season One:
Very vibrant
Actors are young
All levels of emotion are high
Rue is already on her path of destruction leading towards an eminent demise
Rue is sidetracked by Jules
They form their trauma bond and enter into an ultimately toxic relationship
Maddy and Nate are back and forth in their (already established) toxic relationship
There is not one healthy relationship shown (friendship, lovers, familial)
The complex offshoot storyline between Nate-Jules-Cal and the goddamn DVD starts
Maddy gets mixed up in it by taking the DVD from Nate’s bedroom (ninja-style)
On Rue’s Laurie debt - it was difficult for me not to place blame entirely on Leslie, Jules, & Elliot. I immediately felt Rue’s panic, because we see who Laurie and her boys are. In this season, we started to see another angle of the danger Rue was putting herself in. Season one, her addiction & overdose were the only dangers we feared. Season two introduced another kind of fear, another kind of harm. Harm done by someone else’s hand. Rue’s head-in-the-clouds idea is actually accepted by Laurie. Her idea: a new way to sell, in which you put the dealers inside the school. Rue would become the dealer, using her friends as her way to connect through a network of high schools and parties. Laurie gives her the merchandise to sell. BIG NOPE. Rue concocts this plan in order to make the drugs accessible for her for free. She no longer has to go through Fez. Cut out the middle man. She thinks she has time to figure out HOW she will get Laurie the money or weasel her way out of it. She doesn’t know that her rocky relationship with Jules turns into full drama when Jules cheats on Rue with Elliot then he spills the beans to Jules.
Jules tells Leslie, and together they flush the suitcase full of drugs. FLUSH THEM ALL.
When you go back to that episode, you can see the the vibe switch up as Rue is running. She is running from her mom, from Jules. Rue sold her soul to Laurie the moment she touched the handle of that black suitcase.
We see that Leslie is willing to help Rue go to rehab. But, did Rue ever tell her mom about what the suitcase cost her? Did she tell Jules? Honestly, as a parent, if I found a suitcase full of drugs the last thing I would do is flush them. I’d go to the police first before that because if your child has that many drugs then it’s a whole lot bigger than them.
I don’t solely blame Leslie, but she holds blame. She can’t deny her role. The suitcase changed everything and moved Rue into a dangerous game of chess that she just was not meant or prepared for. S2E5 solidified her death. She was never going to be free from that world. We all know now that the people Laurie threatened to sell Rue to is Alamo. She ended up in his grasp anyway, just in a different role. She wasn’t trafficked like Kitty or Angel. She was stuck in a cycle that could never be broken.
Jumping back to season three, by the time Maddy mentions the DEA to Alamo he is already at a point where he just needed one more reason to confirm his suspicion. Maddy could have told him that Rue yells at random innocent little old people and he would have still done what he did. And even though he ended up on top after switching up his plans, her betrayal had to be punished.
It’s not Rue’s storyline, though, that disappoints in season three. It’s everyone else’s.
