‘Euphoria’ Season 3 Premiere

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1:31I need supports to have to clear the room.

1:35Andy Greenwald:Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me in the studio with a green apple on his head, it's Andy Greenwald. I'm excited. I'm excited too, man. We are releasing this on Sunday night. It's The Watch. We're really just talking about the first episode of Euphoria tonight. And by first episode, you mean the first episode ever. You're like pure driven snow. It's unbelievable. Do you think you have a ton to add besides the fact that it's your first episode? How long is this episode? People can email us at thewatchatspotify.com.

2:12They can follow us at thewatchpod underscore on Instagram. You can watch us on ringer-tv on YouTube. and you can watch us on Spotify where you can also listen to us and you can also listen to us on a bunch of other podcast platforms. Greenwald, we are here for a grand experiment. Rarely in the history of this podcast.

2:33Andy Greenwald:The 14 year history of this podcast. Do we basically like say, hey, this show in the middle or end of its run that one of us hasn't watched ever before, we're just going to jump right in And I think it will give us a unique, if possibly not particularly functional, take on this show. First episode of Euphoria, the third season, much delayed. In between, Sam Levinson did The Idol. Zendaya made one of the best movies of the year, the drama. She's in Dune. There's obviously a roster of actors on this show that have pretty much exploded. Sidney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi, etc. I have been watching the show more or less since the beginning.

3:15I think I caught up on season one a little late. I was a real fan of some specials that they did, some like one-offs that they did, and really loved season two. I'm seated. I'm seated not only for this show, but I am seated for your—

3:32Andy Greenwald:Seated? Yeah, I am seated. That's how you meant like the tournament. Yeah, like, you know, like I have my popcorn and my soda. I just can't wait to hear what you have to say about this, because I don't know what the experience is watching this without the lore, without the context, without anything. And I want to be clear. I didn't Google anything. There were multiple times during my viewing of episode 301 where I briefly wondered perhaps the path, the history of a character. How does Maddie know her? Yeah. I don't know who's Maddie. Alexis Demme's character. Who's Alexis Demme? She is the manager of Dylan, the little actor guy.

4:08Oh, right. Okay. You did watch this episode. Yeah, but I didn't know who was a character or not.

4:12Andy Greenwald:Is that actor guy important? Has he been on the show before? He hasn't been on the show before. Okay, see? This is what I'm saying. Nor did I do my other tried and true method of watching television, which is continually text you during the experience. Now, some might say that I didn't do that because you were on stage in San Francisco talking about basic instincts with Mallory Rubin. Yeah. But others might say because I was showing great restraint. Sure. And respect for the purity of the experiment. Maybe next episode you'll want to look up some stuff. Nope. Okay. Here's why. This was exhilarating.

4:44Andy Greenwald:I loved this experience. It felt freeing. And just, I feel uncaged. And as someone whose opinions are famously caged, get ready. Here's genuinely, what I mean is, what I love most about television, ongoing television, why I talk about it, why I work in it, why I watch it, is that experience of cumulative narrative storytelling. and the investments that we make in a show and we make in the emotional lives of fictional people and in the creators to continue to deliver what we grow to expect from these characters or to surprise us in ways that delight us and rapture us even further. That commitment, that relationship, Chris, can also be a yoke.

5:35Andy Greenwald:It can drag things down. And at its worst, it's what we see with the kind of toxic fandom that exists online or even inside of our own bitter hearts where shows cease to be what we want them to be or more charitably cease to match the highs with which they announce themselves. And the experience of watching it becomes one of diminishing returns into resentment and disappointment. I have been guilty of this in my personal life and I've been guilty of this on this podcast as well. when shows that I have loved missed the mark or missed the mark, perhaps arbitrarily, that I have set for it. And it is very, very hard to engage beyond that point.

6:17Andy Greenwald:So to turn on a show with no prior knowledge other than the fact that, I mean, I will cop to the fact that I am aware that this is the chaos menu of seasons, that this was many years in the making, that the wrangling of talent was quite difficult, that there were aborted other versions of the show in which maybe they were still in high school if the timing worked out differently. I think there were different pitches. There was a detective show we had heard about, which sounded interesting to me. I am also aware that the filmmaker, creator, auteur behind the show, Sam Levinson, made The Idol. I will not be referring to that show again during this podcast.

6:54Andy Greenwald:Today, during the next five minutes. Okay. No. So to turn on this episode and be greeted with a riot of color and outrageous situations was fun, thrilling, exciting. I didn't have any baggage. I was not laden. I was not weighed down by anything and certainly not by dozens of tightly packed balls of fentanyl. That's right. Although stay tuned for the after show in which, so it was a, you could hear me get excited about this project over the last few weeks and it actually is super fun. And you can tell me your feelings coming at it from a different place, but I do have a sense that entering into this season, this premiere with this attitude is actually helpful.

7:46Andy Greenwald:Because if I had investment in these characters as young people over time and not just the normal time between seasons, quite a long period of time now since the show debuted, I would probably feel a type of way about where Sam Levinson has chosen to pick up their stories again. As just, I'm entering a new world where these are the stakes and this is the aesthetic and this is the tone. Okay, let's see. Yeah, I think that there's been some well-reasoned criticism of this season so far. I've only watched the first one. Critics were given the first three to check out. There's six this season. I'm sort of saying, like, what is the reason for euphoria beyond being euphoria?

8:28like beyond making more of an incredibly successful series that HBO has a financial and vested interest in having stay on the air. It's got three of the biggest stars of their generation on it. You really, like, you know, like you can't let that opportunity get away from you. And cracking the story, like you mentioned, has been something that has gone through several iterations, reported iterations. There's a Kim Masters piece in The Hollywood Reporter that came out after the Idol that went through some of the, you know, at least behind the scenes stuff that was being anonymously, for the most part, talked about, but like that you like mentioned.

9:05Rue becoming a private detective, Rue becoming a surrogate mother. What are we going to do? Is it going to be like shortly after high school? Is it going to be a massive time jump? You have to accommodate, you know, these people's schedules, but also them aging, but also their different artistic interests as the years go on. I was kind of curious for you. you know obviously there's like the no it is not um jumping into the two towers without ever having heard anything about hobbits and just being like i guess now i'm just watching this although i do wonder if somebody could do that because there's just like this big fight i like it with this like did you find yourself being emotionally caught up in it at all or was it simply wow what a what a boisterous, riotous, daring piece of filmmaking this was?

9:53Andy Greenwald:It's the right question to ask. I think Zendaya is such a, this is not a hot take. This is a freezing cold take. I think she's an incredibly unique and charismatic star. When she is on screen, like all great movie stars, I'm invested in her predicament. And one of the things that this season, in this episode does very well is drop us right into a circumstance that is outrageous and thus complete. It's like jumping. It literally is cannonballing into a pool. She is, I'm meeting her and she is a drug runner trying to cross the border from Chihuahua into Texas. Yes. In a manner that is quite risky.

10:43Andy Greenwald:It's purely cinematic. It's like the idea. She drives her car up to this sort of, up this ramp up to the top of the border wall. She can't get the car to get down to the ramp going down. So she is symbolically stuck between stations on the top of the wall. And the car will neither tip backwards nor forwards. And she has to do this incredible balletic move out of the car and down the ramp so that the car doesn't fall on her at any given point. And there's a bird. And it's like a really good silent movie sequence. Chris, cinema. It speaks to a point that you made that I was, some might say, gently resistant to.

11:23Andy Greenwald:Others would say outwardly hostile to. In our discussion of a show, I said I wouldn't mention again, The Idol, that you were making the case that Sam Levinson, on his own, is a filmmaker to watch, is an interesting director and creator and visual storyteller. separate and apart from the drama and soap opera of that show, this opening sequence makes the case for itself on its own terms. And frankly, that was kind of my feeling about the entire episode. Am I particularly invested in the things that seem to motivate him? I would say through one episode, fairly strong trending no. But the way in which he is telling the stories, particularly the Rue story, which maybe this is intentional and maybe this is a good thing, is just so much more compelling than any of the other stories that are a part of the show.

12:17Andy Greenwald:And maybe that's an argument for why continuing, you know, season three makes less sense than let's just tell a new story with Zendaya, whatever the case may be. I thought that there was such a dynamism and such a flair. And, you know, it's the kind of thing that our old friend Sam Esmail would often say on the podcast, which is when he approaches things, If the visual storytelling is not just worthy, is noteworthy, is eye-catching, is dramatic, is invested, is full of specificity, he's in. And generally, that's not how I approach television because maybe it's a conservative mind or maybe it's just the more writer-driven mind.

12:58Andy Greenwald:Or maybe I'm just nervous about people who are going to have to do it 24 to 48 more times. I want to see if the thing has legs. I don't really care so far with this. the audacity of the opening was enough for me. Yeah, this is a show that does not have, or at least to my knowledge, does not have a blueprint. It is not a show about X and Y needs to happen for X to be a complete statement. I mean, I'm sure that this will probably be the last season of Euphoria. I'm just because of the complications behind the scenes in terms of mounting it, but it can do whatever it wants. I think the heart of the show is Rue's addiction story.

13:41And it's been the most gripping parts of it for me. I know people who are like, I liked Euphoria, the fucked up version of 90210 that it was in the first season. You know, and the kind of post Tumblr kind of take on Teenage Dreams that it was in the first season. But it, to me, left the atmosphere when it became a far more cinematic rather than televisual storytelling mechanism of if I want Rue to run across the city all day for an entire episode, like we can do that. We can make an episode about that. There are obviously all these other plot lines. But to me, she's the heart and the head of the show.

14:26And the stuff that's happening around it, it's interesting to try and make the two meet. And if I had like any problem with this episode, it's like seeing how they're going to get those two like sort of roads to converge eventually. With only six episodes, I'm sure they'll figure something out. But I really, really, really, really am invested in the Rue character. Her performance is remarkable. And then, you know, as far as like what you're talking about with like the visual aspect of it, not only do I think he's a talented filmmaker, I just really like the way he shoots Southern California.

14:59Andy Greenwald:Yeah, the light, the yellows. It's really, really dramatic. And even the more garish stuff, like the, you know, Sidney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi's house. Yeah, and like the idea of like bulldozers moving sand back and forth. And, you know, this was relevant to a conversation we were having in our previous episode about, you know, a completely incomparable show like Your Friends and Neighbors that I'm going to comp anyway. which is like when characters are having hyper real, let's say charitably conversations that I don't recognize as conversations that human beings have with each other. If you put them in like a garish 80s cocaine Narnia, I'm paying a different sort of attention because the hyper reality extends past the dialogue.

15:44Andy Greenwald:It becomes the whole point of the scene. So the way that they're living in this place that is like a combination of the house from Wild at Heart and also an old age home, imbues the entire thing with a sense of, yeah, cinema, but also of a comprehensive storytelling. You might not like the story, but someone's telling you something. Yeah, and he's able to push the limits of what's in a frame. So when Cindy Sweeney and Jacob Elordi are having their big dinner where she's explaining to him that she is going to join OnlyFans to pay for her flower budget at her wedding, what was the candle budget in that scene that was what I was going to say is that you could do that and say like there's low lighting or there's five candles and they have like 80 candles going and that might be why these shows take so long and cost so much and you know the amount of times they may have to go in and whether those are fake candles but like it's just pushing it to the limit of what people can accept you know and then seeing like the results of that on screen is pretty impressive.

16:48Andy Greenwald:If you have, this is a tough argument to make, but I'm going to try to make it. The best version, I would think, of an opportunity to have a budget, an HBO Sunday night show, ascendant stars like Elordi and Sweeney, the best version would be to have something incredibly compelling because you have all of these, you have the best ingredients at your disposal. The worst outcome would be timidity. We have the best ingredients, but I'm just going to, to make the food analogy, I'm just going to make a, I'm going to try to make a lobster mac and cheese. I'll put some truffle oil on it. You know what I mean?

17:30Andy Greenwald:The second best option is I'm going to, you know, paint their faces like I'm a fucking Dutch master and I'm going to have them gulping down giant 80s martinis and shoveling spaghetti into their mouths while they talk about online pornography. It is a choice. A widely held misconception that OnlyFans is only pornography. I've heard this a few times in this episode. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for? That's when Prime's same day delivery has your back.

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18:28Andy Greenwald:I have another cultural comp, but I do think in the service of, if we are even servicing it, like, can I talk about the storylines? You can tell me or not tell me. Yeah, I mean, I have not rewatched two, so I will do my best, but I am not the keeper of the lore. I'm not going to fact check you, brother. I don't even want to know the lore. But from my understanding, here's where we're at. I knew ambiently that Zendaya's character was named Rue and had addiction issues. If I were watching this cold, I am. I would not be aware of her addiction issues. I would be aware of the fact that mistakes made in her past have made it impossible for her to have a future.

19:01Andy Greenwald:And that's where she is. So she finds herself outrageously running drugs and being a courier for drugs along with a friend for... a mild-mannered woman who seems to also have a lot of... Played Laurie, played by Martha Kelly. Who has a lot of redneck farmer associates where they cook or make pills. At the same time, although we don't yet see the overlap, Jacob Elordi is living with his fiancée, played by Sydney Sweeney. Cassie. And they're living in, as we can't keep describing this mansion, this funhouse mansion anymore. And she is trying to make content so that she can have income as well, both to pay for their wedding and to find value in this world.

19:43Andy Greenwald:and he is sort of a hairy... He's taken over for his father's construction company and is trying to become a developer building retirement and old age homes in Southern California. He's sort of like a would-be Rick Caruso type. Sure. Trying to build here. That's interesting. Thank you. Way of putting it, yeah. We also are seeing Maude Apatow's character working for a television executive played by Sharon Stone making a... On like a CW type nighttime soap. A nighttime soap. Something that definitely doesn't exist anymore. But sure. In this world it does. And that's... And then someone else is managing an actor and that crosses that storyline.

20:25Maddie is managing one of the actors on LA Nights. Maddie and Lexi are still friends. And I will say one of the hardest times I laughed was when Maddie accompanies her client to a premiere and it looks like an Amazon straight to streaming movie called If I May, If I Might.

20:44Andy Greenwald:Yes, but I believe it's all HBO and HBO Max and everything's on the Warner Brothers lot. Yes. Look, I think... And that's really, I mean, like, you've got, like, on the surface level, you've got it. So Rue has become basically indentured to Laurie over the course of the end of the season. It really turns into the Uncut Gems second half of Goodfellas sort of vibe of the show really comes out. and Rue gets in deep with this character, Laurie. There's some stuff that I think will be explained later that happened perhaps in between the two seasons and some of that is going to be related to the character played by Angus Cloud who tragically passed away in between season two and three, the actor himself.

21:29You don't know about Jules. I won't spoil anything about Hunter Schaefer's character. The only thing I would just really say is that the Coleman Domingo diner scene is sort of a...

21:40Andy Greenwald:It's a callback to the others. It's a callback. It's like a continuing, a variation on the theme of what their special was. I mean, there was two sort of standalones. One was Rue's kind of trying to accept a power greater than her part of the 12 Steps. And the other is about Hunter Schaefer's Jules character. And this conversation that they're having in the diner about Rue kind of needing to get her head around the idea of a god and God being in control and not her is obviously fundamental to her saying, I thought maybe God might be this other drug dealer or rather a pimp who will pull me into this other world and away from Lori.

22:22And that's our guy, Mr. Echo. That's our I-N-E-M-E-S-E-C-O.

22:24Andy Greenwald:Who shows up where she delivers drugs and uses the bathroom and then becomes friends. Well, I think she gets, first she's nearly killed because it turns out that the drugs that Lori gave her to give to this new guy was fentanyl. Or laced with, touched with. A young woman dies of an overdose. And everything in the scene is beyond over the top. And again, because of the absolute DGAF, DGA meets DGAF, which is how I would describe Sam Levinson's aesthetic. For sure. I'm weirdly okay. Like even the candle scene, I'm looking at my notes that you're referring to, I wrote, ah, this is everything. Looks good, is stupid.

23:06Andy Greenwald:Yeah. But okay, fine. Like I was enjoying it. And again, when you have - I still laughed. Like the thing that he does as much as he gets great images, he knows exactly what people are good at. Or he sees people in a way that I think is very specific. So the Zendaya performance we can talk about, I'm pretty mesmerized by her at this point. I think just coming out of the drama, one of the things I love so much about her is her lack of vanity. Totally. is as far as like Rue who's like run ragged throughout the series but also like in the drama like her interest in taking on difficult roles but like more like roles that fuck with her public persona a little bit.