Euphoria Season 3 Finally Feels Like Euphoria Again

 

nderstatement than saying that the week Rue was born, in September 2001, was a pretty significant time in modern American history. In its first couple of episodes, Euphoria season 3 felt like a different show altogether: a gritty neo-western crime thriller about trigger-happy loan sharks and drug-smuggling cartels. Everyone was acting out of character: Rue is suddenly a horny idiot, Maddy is a Tinseltown pimp, Cal is cordial and repentant, and Nate is now pining for Cassie’s approval, not the other way around.

Those first couple of episodes were jam-packed with missed opportunities. I’ve lost count of how many montages we’ve seen that would’ve had so much more life and luster if they had a Labrinth score behind them. Nate and Cassie’s wedding was relatively drama-free; two of Nate’s old flames were there, and the sister who betrayed Cassie was there, and yet, everyone got along. The only real source of conflict is a champagne cork (and a mountain of debt).

But last night’s episode — season 3, episode 4, “Kitty Likes to Dance” — was a return to form. Picking up where episode 3 left off, with Nate’s pinky toe reattached as a weak metaphor for his already-crumbling marriage, this episode finally felt like classic Euphoria.

Euphoria Season 3, Episode 4 Finally Felt Like Classic Euphoria

The most jarring shift from the previous seasons to this one has been the absence of a high school setting. Everyone in the cast may have gotten too old to play a high schooler, but the high school setting brought the ensemble together to catch up in the hallways or gossip in the bathroom. You don’t need a high school to put all the characters in that kind of communal space, but the first three episodes of Euphoria’s latest season never tried to find a replacement.

Euphoria S3 Review: Losing High School Was A Huge Mistake

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In episode 4, when all the characters were hanging around the pool, trading banter and one-liners and criticizing each other’s life choices, it felt like they were back in high school. Cassie, Maddy, and Lexi all living at the same place, and inviting everyone else in their circle to hang out there, is a more age-appropriate substitute for the high school hallways.

Everyone Except Nate Is Acting Like Themselves Again

One of the biggest problems with Euphoria season 3 is that the characters haven’t been acting like themselves. It’s like Sam Levinson took such a long hiatus between seasons that he forgot what his characters’ voices sound like. But in episode 4, everyone besides Nate is finally acting like themselves.

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Nate is still acting bizarrely out of character. When he notices that a city councilor is personally spiting him, and it’s costing him his livelihood, the old Nate would’ve entrapped and blackmailed that councilman, and had him sent to a maximum-security prison for the rest of his life. It would’ve been hard to watch, but it would’ve been delicious drama, just like the whole Tyler ordeal. But instead, season 3 Nate gets down on his knees in front of his neighbors and peers and begs.

But everyone else is in fine form: Rue bumbling her way through her new role as a DEA informant, Jules unwittingly bringing obscenity into Lexi’s workplace, Cassie desperately competing for an influencer’s attention. It finally feels like the messy, chaotic, engaging, energetic show we know and love.

This Episode Brought Back Euphoria’s Signature Hitchcockian Tension

One of the things that made Euphoria’s first two seasons so much fun was Levinson’s use of Hitchcock’s bomb-under-the-table techniques to turn mundane everyday situations into a cinematic thrill-ride. The pinnacle of that Hitchcockian tension is the iconic scene where Cassie is hiding in a bathtub to prevent Maddy from finding out about her affair with Nate.

“Kitty Likes to Dance” has two sequences like that: when Maddy is breaking down the bedroom door, and when Rue is recording the poker game. In the bedroom scene, Levinson uses Leone-style cross-cutting to keep you hanging in suspense, and the poker scene is set up masterfully with some earlier Mission: Impossible-style exposition explaining how the DEA’s surveillance app works. If this episode is a sign of things to come for the rest of the season, then maybe Euphoria can still be redeemed.