- Hello, my beautiful doves. (chuckles) ♪ Like a person again ♪ ♪ Stranger ♪
(intense moody music) Today, we're gonna be
talking about "Euphoria," which, I know, I know,
some of you may be excited. The other bunch of you may be surprised, because I've shaded
the show multiple times in previous videos of mine,
so you may be wondering, "Mina, why would you cover this show? Like, I thought you
didn't like this show." And it's complicated, okay? I never said I didn't like "Euphoria." Maybe I did. Who knows? I don't remember. Don't dig up any receipts,
because I honestly, like, I plead the Fifth. My relationship with
"Euphoria" is complicated because on the one hand, no, I don't condone what I perceive as the over-glamorization
of illegal activities, the underage camgirling
in season one with Kat, and Jules also lying about her age and seeking out sex with older men. And I know they're young girls and therefore not the
ones fully to blame here, but I didn't like those storylines, and I don't like how
neither of them really deal with any consequences,
which leads me to believe that it is a glamorization
and not just, like, a depiction of something
messed-up that teens sometimes do. Without further ado, I wanna say to anyone who hasn't watched "Euphoria," to really understand and enjoy the show, you're gonna have to have some degree of suspension of disbelief. Like I've said, this isn't
an accurate depiction of a high school or even a community. There's literally a 12-year-old
drug-dealing genius. The characters can all afford really nice, expensive clothes, even though their parents don't work jobs that would correlate to them having this much disposable income. Like, hello? Maddy's mom
is a nail technician. Lexi and Cassie share a bedroom. Where do they get the
money for Dior and Miu Miu? The school administration has
also virtually disappeared in season two, and like
in the first season, all the kids are
regularly doing hard drugs and having lots and lots of sex. And before any of y'all say, "Oh, well, kids at my school did have lots of sex and did lines of coke
in the bathroom," great. I mean, that's not great, but,
like, that's your experience. I'm not going to deny
you of your experience. But my problem is not that these activities are depicted at all. It's, once again, that there's
no realistic consequences. There's no actual disciplinary force in this show whatsoever. First of all, Rue is the
only person on the show to suffer any kind of
consequences for doing drugs, even though Elliot is also doing heroin and no one seems to care about that. Also, he appears very put-together. So is the message here "You can do heroin sometimes because for some people, it
doesn't affect them that badly"? Anyways, I'm not gonna
go too deep in depth with how I view "Euphoria"
from an ethical standpoint because I've already made that video. You can check it out. It's called "the problem
with teen dramas." The only ethical argument that
I will address in this video is the question that a lot of
people have where it's like, why can't this show take
place in a university setting, in a college setting? The truth is, and this is not a truth that many of us wanna
hear because it says a lot about how depressing our
society is, the truth is that "Euphoria" relies a
lot of its marketing value on the shock value of the show itself. There's, for instance, a
lot of memes that go around where people are like,
"Oh, only on 'Euphoria.'" Like, "This would happen on 'Euphoria.'" "When you go to Euphoria High." This is all a huge win for the marketing, and unfortunately, in our society, shock value derives from situations that deal with younger people. If I saw a TV show about honestly a 21-year-old drug dealer, which I think is, like,
still pretty young, because I'm in my mid-20s, so I think anyone younger
than me is really young, I'd be like, oh, okay. Yeah, you know, I've run
into one of those before. A 12-year-old drug dealer? Not so much. Like, that's crazy to me. I remember watching
"Euphoria" for the first time, season one, and being like, who greenlit the creation of Ashtray? Who greenlit this? This is ridiculous. This is not real. - Y'all come and go. I'm just trying to stack my
cash, pay off our mortgage. So what the fuck you want? - Another reason, less cynical reason, is because "Euphoria" deals a lot with family drama and family dynamics. Like, think of Cal and Nate. Think of Rue and her mom. Think of Lexi and Cassie. A lot of family dynamics come into play, and college is a time where I find a lot of students are more
estranged from their families, so it wouldn't really work for "Euphoria" unless they completely
changed up all the storylines. So yeah, in saying all that criticism, no matter what you think about the show, the cinematography does go hard. It's a visually stunning show. It takes a lot of risks aesthetically that we don't get in a lot
of TV shows these days. I myself don't know much
about lighting and filmmaking. Like, I can confidently say that. But I did read an
article with Marcell Rev, who is the show's director of photography, and this interview was
published on Artnet. So he tells us that "season
two, unlike season one, was shot entirely on film,"
and "they even had Kodak convert one of its
facilities to remanufacture an out-of-production film
stock for the product." And that sounds like a super
costly aesthetic choice, but there was a reason behind it. Marcell explains, "By its
nature, film is more intimate. The way it captures human
skin tones and the face, it's just a more organic
and more lovely look. Also, it has a very unpredictable nature, which I tend to like. Obviously you have to know your stock and be able to control
it to a certain factor. But it also gives you nice
surprises all the time, which is exciting, and I'm all for that." There were a lot of shots this season that had a stage-like quality, a lot of spotlights, which culminated in the finale with an
actual stage production. That was really cool. Also, this shot of Cassie? Magnifique. Looks like a panting. Ties in some magical realism. Love that shit. My experience watching "Euphoria" is that the second season
did feel more intimate, but for some characters and not for all. We saw more of Fez this season, who is, he's one of my favorite characters, so I was happy to see that. More of Cal, Nate's dad. More of Cassie, more of Lexi. But we saw less of Jules. We saw less of Maddy. We saw less of Kat. Something I would've
liked to see this season, especially with Kat, is more
of her struggle with self-love in a time when girls,
especially fat girls, are supposed to be the leaders in that. - [Rue] But the problem
with hating yourself is you can't really talk about it, because at some point recently, the whole world joined a self-help cult and won't shut the fuck up about it. - I think the topic of self-love is one of the most
widespread and true issues that's shown on this show,
and it would've been cool for them to dive deeper into that. And I understand that there
are a lot of characters on this show and there's not
an unlimited amount of time to explore each of these characters, but I felt season one did a better job of balancing all the screen times of the different characters that I was left
disappointed for season two because I knew what they were capable of. And what I've come to theorize about why season one was better
than season two with this is because the episodes
were more complete. Every episode had a point. So for example, episode two, we're introducing Nate's backstory. Episode three is all about Kat. Episode four is all about Jules. Season two was way less episodic, and a byproduct of this new
format that they're going with is that the script is just not clean, and I think part of the
reason is definitely because Sam Levinson is
the only person writing and directing the entire
show, which is crazy. That's a huge responsibility to have. I also think in general, Sam Levinson was a little too focused on making everything
pretty on the surface, including Cassie's boobs,
that he paid less attention to the important stuff under the surface. I also did hear the rumor
that there was drama offscreen between Barbie Ferreira,
who plays Kat, and Sam, which may explain why Kat was not onscreen as much this season. I also heard a rumor that Hunter Schafer, who plays Jules, and Jacob
Elordi, who plays Nate, had some offscreen drama as
well, which might explain why their two characters didn't
have that many scenes together. And regardless of whether or not there's any substance behind these rumors, I think it's very, very telling that so many people are
willing to believe them. I think it just goes to show how sloppy the writing direction is, because we are looking for an explanation for why some of these choices
in the script were made. And, you know, if Jules
and Nate had a good number of scenes together that
built off of the dynamic that was created for them in season one, then no one would be really
questioning whether or not Hunter Schafer and Jacob
Elordi were getting along. Also, for anyone who wants a recap, there was a clear romantic connection between Nate and Jules in season one. Nate catfishes Jules, but
he does get super invested in this text thread
that they have going on, and then he's like, "Oh, you know, it all meant a lot to me." - I kinda feel closer to you than I do anyone in the whole world. - So it felt like they
were setting up some kind of romantic connection
between the two characters. But instead of continuing down that path, for this season, we get Cassie and Nate, which came out of left field for me. That didn't make any sense at all. One of the reasons why
it didn't make sense is because I very vividly
remember how, in season one, one of the reasons Nate
apparently loved Maddy so much was because she was loyal. He was even making fun of
Cassie with his guy friends because he believed Cassie
got around and wasn't loyal. - You want my advice? You like the she is. You kick her ass to the curb. - Ew! - So I think they added
the Cassie/Nate storyline to further Cassie's development
and not to move the plot in any tangible or expected way. Season one also had Nate exploring his sexual
identity and his queerness, and that was also just not
addressed in season two. Okay, I could literally
talk about all the things I didn't like about this season for hours, but we're just gonna go
through a quick list of them so we can get to other
things in this video. The biggest, biggest, biggest
unaddressed problem here is that Rue literally loses
$10,000 worth of drugs and Laurie, the drug
dealer, even warns her what would happen to her if
she doesn't get the money. - If you screw me, I'll have you kidnapped and sold to some real sick people. I'm serious. - Yeah, we're not concerned
after that episode passes. They don't mention it again
in any episode afterwards. And the finale, Rue kinda
ties up the rest of the year with a little bow. - [Rue] I stayed clean through
the rest of the school year. I wish I could say that
was a decision I made. In some ways, it was just easier. I don't know if this
feeling will last forever, but I am trying. - I don't know. Is that plotline just supposed
to deflate or something, like every plotline we got in season one? The high school administration
also just allows Lexi's theater production
to finish after all the shit that happens onstage during it. Where is the principal? It also baffles me that
the teachers even greenlit Lexi's production to begin with, because I think we can all agree Cassie was very bold for
what she did onstage. But honestly, I thought she was justified, because I'd be so frickin' mad
if my sister produced a play just making fun of me for
the entire school to see. Lexi deserved this moment. She was borderline
bullying, in my opinion, and her intentions were bad, especially because she decided to include the carousel scene, which added nothing to
the production whatsoever other than to further humiliate Cassie. Maddy's character arc is kinda weird. I was a little disappointed. I loved Maddy for the
majority of the season. Again, I would've liked
to see more of her. But I did like seeing
this other side of her of her being a really
fun, nice babysitter, of her looking more ahead
and not being trapped in this toxic cycle with Nate. But then the choice for her to get onstage to beat the shit out of Cassie and kind of revert back to this unhinged, aggressive Maddy that we saw in season one kind of makes this
development of her maturing and her getting over
high school shit, like... (soft poignant music) It makes all of that very pointless because we're just back to
where we started with Maddy. The death of Ashtray. First of all, why does this
12-year-old not go to school? Isn't it a law in America that children have to go to school? Secondly, Fez's grandma,
their legal guardian, has been in a coma for several years, so in that case, someone,
before Fez turned 18, should've been appointed
guardian for the two of them, but there's no indication
that they ever had one because surely if they did have one, then Ashtray would have his
ass in middle school right now instead of shooting up the FBI or whatever like he's in the trenches of World War II. Thirdly, I felt like there
was no reason to kill him off. Again, that was one of
those shock value decisions, in my opinion. It felt overly dramatic. He's literally a child. Like, he's literally 12 years old. And then this scene. Congrats to Dominic on the new song, but the scene itself
was so awkward and long. I actually ended up fast-forwarding it because I think after 45 or 60 seconds, I was like, oh, my God,
this song is still going on. And it wasn't even an interesting scene. Like, there was no montage or anything. It was just Elliot singing and then to Rue and then back to Elliot, to
Rue, and it was just weird. It was awkward. I don't know why they put it in, other than I guess a promotion
for Dominic's new song. Yeah, I think the last time
I remember seeing a scene that was so awkward with music
is probably "Twin Peaks." ♪ Just you ♪
(mellow music) ♪ Just you ♪
♪ And I ♪ But even that was... That was just camp at a certain point. That was better. Yeah, this scene sucked. Okay, I think that's all I'm
gonna say about the writing, because I do want to talk a
little about the costumes. At the beginning of season
two, there were a lot of memes circulating around TikTok and Twitter- - [Squidward] And why
aren't you in uniform? - about the way the "Euphoria" students, namely Maddy, let's be honest,
were dressing to school. I think this is really
funny, because look, I understand my experience in
high school is not universal and different schools
had different tolerances for dress codes and et
cetera, but at my school, a lot of people did dress
in the same vein as Maddy. They didn't wear, like, pants with cutouts or anything like that
because that wasn't a style that was popular in the
2010s, but you know, girls were wearing, like,
American Apparel disco shorts that would just ride up your entire ass. They were wearing crop
tops, showing some midriff. There were these muscle
tanks that were popular. I don't know if anyone
else remembers them, but they're like tank tops that have a really large arm hole. So then girls would wear
neon bras underneath them. Showing your bra straps
was a really popular thing at my school for some reason,
from what I can remember. So yeah, the craziest thing
to me about Maddy's wardrobe is not what she was wearing
to school, but the fact that, one, in season two, we
don't actually see her wearing a backpack as often
as we do in season one, so I don't know what happened there. Like, did she just give up on academia? Like, where's your textbook, girl? - I found this clutch if you
wanted to use it as a backpack, since your school doesn't have books. I think it would go very well with that black dress you're wearing and those platform stilettos for school. Do you wear those in PE? - And the second thing I didn't like was how she's never disciplined
for wearing what she wears by the school administration or whatever. Because even though girls would wear whatever they wanted to wear at my school, there was still a line, and
if you crossed that line, there was a chance that if you were caught by the wrong person, by
the crabbiest school admin, you were brought into the office, and that was the best case scenario. You'd get a warning or something. Worst case scenario is
that they drag your ass to the gym locker rooms
and make you pull out a sweaty T-shirt that's been sitting in the lost and found for, I don't know, five months, and you have to wear that, because whatever you're wearing
is not appropriate enough to continue your day. And how do I know that? Because I was dress-coded myself in high school. I think it was senior year. I was wearing Forever 21 shorts, and the thing about these
shorts is they were roughly... So from a distance, and
probably up close, too, you couldn't tell they were shorts. They just looked like a
really short miniskirt. So I can see why maybe I was targeted, but they were shorts, and if I bent over, you wouldn't be able to see anything because they were shorts. And I was remember I was
pulled into the office, and this was at the very
end of the school day, so I almost made it
throughout the entire day without getting caught. And I was so annoyed, because the woman who pulled me in kept referring to my shorts as a skirt, and I was like, no, these are shorts. Like, it'd be totally different if it was a skirt, but it's not. And I remember being also really annoyed because there were
girls throughout the day who were wearing shorts shorter than mine and they just didn't get called out for it because their shorts were clearly shorts. So long story short, I did not
have to wear any gym clothes because it was already the end of the day, so I had one more period
left, so they let me go. I also had a friend in middle school who was a lot more risque with some of her fashion sensibilities, and one of the substitute teachers that we had in class one
day called her a harlot because her skirt was, I guess, too short for the substitute teacher, so I don't think anything Maddy wears is particularly out there. Also, I really wanna say that I don't like how
the camera pans and zooms to emphasize the bodies of the
girl characters, because ew. They're supposed to be teenagers. Um, let's please not do that. Please. - First of all, ew. Second of all, ew. - And I guess the last point I wanna say about Maddy in particular is, I do think her style is consistent. Every look feels very her. The clothes are supposed to convey that she's this confident bad bitch. They're tight. They
often show the midriff. Like, this Blumarine
cardigan that she wears in season two is actually
supposed to be longer if you look up pictures of it online, but it looks like Maddy got
it altered to show more torso. Similarly, Cassie's
wardrobe is really good at conveying her character. She's styled exactly how I
would've wanted adult Bubbles to be styled in the new
"Powerpuff Girl" reboot that may or may not be still happening. I don't actually know. I know they pulled back the pilot 'cause it wasn't good enough, but I don't know if they're
still filming, or... Hopefully they just dropped
the project completely, but that's asking a little too much, I think, in this reboot era we're in. Cassie literally wears the
Danielle Guizio knit set that I assigned to Bubbles in my character styling video with Tessa, and I was really excited
to see that onscreen. Cassie wears a lot of
blues, pastels, and knits. She dresses hyperfeminine,
and it makes total sense. Cassie is heavily traumatized
by her dad abandoning her when she was a tween, and because of that, I think she clings a lot
to her happier childhood, which was also probably
very soft and pastel. Cassie definitely dresses
more risque this season. She wears tighter clothes
and more low-cut shirts. In the first season, she
was pretty covered-up, and this change in silhouette is reflected by how her life has changed
dramatically since then. In season one, she was
in a somewhat stable... I don't know why I wrote
somewhat stable in this script, because looking back, it
really was not stable at all, but I guess compared to Cassie and Nate, Cassie and McKay were pretty stable, so we're rolling with it. She was in a pretty
somewhat stable relationship with McKay, who was a
guy who was very insecure about her dressing in a revealing way. - I'm gonna be honest with you, Cass. I feel like if we go to this
party and you dress like that, I ain't gonna ever hear the
end of it, in a bad way. - In season two, she's
single for the first time in a long time, and she's
definitely having some issues dealing with that, and trying
desperately to woo Nate. (dark unsettling music) And as far as Cassie knows,
Nate's type is just Maddy, because that's the only
girl he's been with. - Wait, what?
- Uh, my class is this way. - She's trying all of her cards... Is that the word? She's putting all her cards out. She's laying out all her cards. You know what I mean. She's doing all she can to get with Nate and betray her best friend. Rue doesn't wear anything
stunning, but that makes sense. She's never been a fashion girl, and she's honestly got
a lot of other things on her plate to think about. Jules, she's still pretty
experimental with clothes, which matches her carefree
and experimental attitude. She continues to wear
streetwear and runway pieces, but I honestly liked
how she was styled more in the first season. I felt like the way that she was styled in season one with these flashier fabrics and kind of skimpier and
brighter silhouettes and colors, all this made her just
look like a magical girl, very "Sailor Moon"-inspired, which I think captures
Jules' personality very well. There was this childlike fun quality with a lot of Jules' clothing
choices in season one, and I think that quality
was lost in season two. In an interview with "Vogue" in January, costume designer Heidi Bivens was asked, "From the trailer, fans
picked up on the fact that Jules's costumes are a lot darker and sometimes less skimpy this season. What's the story behind that change?" She replied, "A lot of scenes came up where it just didn't
make sense to put Jules in the silhouette of the
costumes from the first season. Obviously, she still has a lot of those clothes in her closet. It's not like she got a
whole new wardrobe overnight. But you'll see this relationship
between the new character, Elliot, and Jules and
Rue, and how at times, their style could be
almost interchangeable. I think that was something
fun to explore in subtle ways, how friends influence each other." I mean, I guess. I can kind of understand
what Heidi is saying here because, I mean, I've
definitely been in friendships where me and my friends
were heavily influenced by each other's styles. So I'm not bothered by that. I think I'm just bothered by Elliot's character to begin with and his relationship
with Jules in the show. I thought Elliot was just
sort of thrown in there. He's very one-dimensional. He doesn't really offer much. He's boring. Yeah, he's just a pawn, I guess, to add some friction in Rue
and Jules's relationship, which I think is kind of silly. I'm not a fan. I feel like a lot of teen shows try to do this threesome polyamorous dynamic, and it never really ends up working. It's just always handled
unrealistically or irresponsibly. "Gossip Girl" comes to mind. (funky Hawaiian music) So Lexi, she finally gets a storyline. She gets more than two lines. For season two, I love
the way she's dressed. It's kinda twee, lots of
colors, cardigans, and Miu Miu. She wears some girly things,
but they're more mature and more polished than Cassie's choices. She looks very put-together, and I think the reason is
because while Cassie clings more to her childhood, Lexi forces
herself to grow up faster. And this is kinda reflected
in how the mom tends to coddle Cassie a lot and
tends to disregard Lexi. - Holy smokes, look at you! Wow. The whole point of Halloween
is to look attractive. - No, it's not.
- Oh, really? - In the end, that motivates Lexi to look more forward-thinking, more ahead to the future, whereas Cassie is often looking backwards. And finally, Kat, who gets so little
screen time this season. It's very sad. I honestly feel like Kat
has just been downgraded to Maddy's new best friend, especially because Cassie
becomes the Judas of the season. - What you don't understand,
Nate, is I am crazier. (grandiose circus music) ♪ That's clown shit ♪ - For her clothes, Kat
wears a lot of prints. She wears a darker color palette. She definitely looks more mature, and that's not surprising to me, because I watched "Vogue's"
"7 Days, 7 Looks" video with Barbie Ferreira, and Barbie talks about how they used some of her own personal clothes
to dress Kat for the show, which explains why Kat looks so good. - Usually, it's a very
collaborative process. I've literally worn things on the show that were from my closet, and a lot of it is
modeled after what I wear, of course within the color
palette and within the character. - But I think the outfits age her, which I don't really like. I do like how she's dressed
more than her dominatrix era, which was very unsettling to me because once again, I wasn't a big fan of how they depicted
Kat's camgirl storyline, and so needless to say,
I didn't really care for the BDSM wear that
she was wearing to school. And she definitely would've been pulled into the principal's office for that. I don't care what anyone says. Like, immediate, immediate suspension. Okay, that's all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. I feel like this review was
a little all over the place because this season was a mess. Season two was a big, big giant mess, and the cinematography was good, but the writing suffered a
lot, as we've talked about. And I don't know if I'll honestly
tune in for season three. I think I will, just because I wanna be
understanding the hype of it all, but I think unless Sam
Levinson gets some other people in the writing room, it's going to suffer a lot
like it did this season, because it is a really ambitious project to take on all by yourself. Anyway, let me know in the comments what you think about "Euphoria," this season, last season, as a show, as a concept, and I'll see you all next time. Thank you for joining me, and hope you have a
lovely rest of your day. Buh-bye! (gentle piano music)
