EUPHORIA "MADE YOU LOOK" REVIEW
Euphoria’s structure is all over the place so it’s hard for me to try and write a review as I’m watching it so I’m going to write the reviews similar to how I review movies. So we’ll start about what I liked about Episode 3.
KAT HAS ARRIVED
Zendaya is a pretty good actress but Kat who is portrayed by Barbie Ferreira is on the same tier. Her performance shocked the shit outta me. This episode so far showed the best writing for a character with Kat. Kat’s backstory was funny, clever, and really interesting. She gained 20 pounds from drinking more virgin Pina colada’s than the 1996 Chicago Bulls win total on a family vacation and they could’ve went the predictable route and have her get bullied or fat shamed but instead they exposed Kat insecurities about her weight and what love is through her obsession of screens. What she believes what love is, is through the view of sitcoms and Tumblr. The internet runs her. We see her obsessing over the views of her leaked sex tape and then makes a twerk video to try and repeat the success of her sextape but it doesn’t and you can clearly see how worthless she feels when she sees the views for it. She then sees she can get paid from fetishes online and we discover that Fezco and Ashtray run their trap through bitcoin. Kat emulates their formula as a cam girl.
Kat shows the downside of having a vivid imagination. The good side is that she’s a great writer. The bad side is that she doesn’t know how to differentiate her imagination from reality. She doesn’t know how to be present and she is oblivious to what’s really going on around her in real time. There’s a boy that sits next to her in biology and he clearly likes Kat but she has no idea because the internet runs her life.
The scene where Kat Skype’s the guy with a dick the size of my bank account was disturbing but what makes the scene good is that you see Kat go through like 10 different emotions in under a minute while this weirdo is only focused on one objective and that’s his fantasy. Any man that uses “joshing” in a sentence like this guy in this scene is unbalanced and would probably fuck a corpse. But to see Kat go from horrified, laughter, curious, disgusted, shocked was great television. She thought that it would just be a session where she shows her feet and get paid for it and it immediately she gets tossed into the fire of hornyland.
Jules is still my favorite character so far but Kat is a strong second after this episode. Kat is literally living a double life. She doesn’t have the confidence to be herself in front of her friends. She’s praised online but in reality she’s ashamed of who she is. She makes it worst by forcing herself to dress completely different and say she’s changed. That’s not Kat and I think she’s going to bite off more than she can chew as the season progresses.
THE LOVE TRIANGLE
I don’t know what to expect from Nate texting Jules nonstop as “ShyGuy” every minute of the day. He showed how violent and sociopathic he was in episode 2. He showed in this episode that he doesn’t consider himself gay even though he’s on a gay dating app (That’s hilarious). I’m not sure if he has a motive when it comes to Jules. Who knows, he could actually like her, we’ll see. I liked how Jules let’s Rue know that she doesn’t not like the fact that she abuses drugs and wants her to stop because she doesn’t want her to die but in the same breath Jules abuses her dating life and is extremely reckless meeting men in shitty motels for sex and agreeing to meet Nate at night alone at a lake. We see in regards to Jules that Rue is in the exact same position her mother and sister have been in with her addiction and not knowing if she will die because of her addiction. Jules is addicted to this dating site and it clouds her judgement. Rue clearly likes Jules more than a friend and that was obvious from the moment they met. Rue kissing Jules after apologizing and Jules being completely shocked was a good scene. You felt the embarrassment.
Maddy who’s on the outside is very suspicious of Nate which she has the right to be after hearing his phone receive more texts than Rihanna in under a minute. After receiving mediocre sex from Nate she lurks through Nate’s phone while he’s in the shower and sees pictures of his dick. She leaves immediately and it’s very vague after that because I’m not sure if those dick pics were Nate’s or they were sent to Nate and I’m wondering if Maddy thinks the same thing. She immediately comes to the conclusion that Nate is gay and we have no idea what she told Kat about Nate and what she found in his phone.
FEZCO’S CONSCIENCE
So Zendaya as Rue delivers an amazing performance in the scene after she panics and runs out of Jules house after kissing her. She’s an addict so of course she turns to drugs after going through that embarrassing ordeal and in typical fashion Fez refuses to sell Rue drugs. We’ve seen him do this in the past but he never sticks to his word. Fez actually sticks to his word and closes the door in Rue’s face. Rue just unleashes insult after insult to Fez after he refuses to serve her and you’re seeing the darkness of an addict and how sick they really are. As you watch the scene you see Fez is very conflicted and it’s eating him alive to see what he’s done to Rue and that the insults that Rue send his way about him are true. Fez is a terrible person at his core for introducing Rue to drugs but the only way to get outta hell is to keep going. He knows this has to be done. Fez actually keeps his word and does not give in to Rue and he sacrificed their friendship to save her life. It was a deep moment and I think Fez didn’t open the door because of what happened to Rue when his plug came over and made her take Fentanyl. Fez clearly blames that situation on himself and places it on his conscience. That was the turning point for him. Now I’m interested in Fezco and if he will have a backstory and his own episode. It was a really tough scene cause you kinda wanted him to open the door but kinda didn’t.
Fez might be MVP cause Fez’s stance makes Rue call Ali who’s the Minnesota Fats of crackheads. Jokes aside Ali reading Rue and seeing through her bullshit as she was high as fuck in front of her rehab peers claiming she was clean for 60 days was a great moment. Rue never gets called out and she always has a way out of everything. Ali didn’t give her the chance to bullshit him and I’m interested to see were their relationship goes.
Here’s what I didn’t like.
MCKAY & CASSIE
Outside of their first sex scene about boundaries there isn’t really anything intriguing about McKay’s and Cassie’s relationship or them separate as individual characters. The frat scene was very dumb. One I’ve never seen a black kid pledge for a white fraternity that was fucking lame and then McKay telling Cassie he loves her for the first time didn’t really mean much to me. You could take both these characters out of this show and you wouldn’t notice. I’m assuming they will have a backstory too because that seems to be the formula for the show where each character becomes the subject of an episode and the episode starts with their backstory. Kat was interesting before her backstory so I’m concerned about Cassie and McKay.
RUE AS AN ADDICT
Outside of the scenes with Fez and Ali I never really felt like Rue was an addict. It always felt like she was just playing. The writing for Rue just isn’t that great and there’s more they could do with her. Zendaya’s acting is good but the inconsistent writing isn’t doing her any favors.
That’s really it. This was a good episode. Better than the previous 2. More character development I’m always on board for.
Peace
