‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 4: Fairytale’s Over

Hello, welcome back to the PressDV podcast. I'm Joyda Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney. It is late at night on a Sunday. I've had a lot of caffeine. I'm feeling jittery and we're here to do our sort of very instant reaction to episode four of season three of Euphoria. Yes. Jovi, have you ever been to the moon? Um, no. Just wondering. Do you have a photo of me on the moon? Definitely not. Does that tell you I was on the moon? I would say like posing you as one of the fake astronauts in the definitely fake moon landing. I could buy it. I could see that as a future for you. All right. This episode is called Kitty Lakes to Dance written by and directed by and out of the whole show was created by Sam Levinson. I don't know if you've heard. I have heard. And let me tell you from this episode, I can tell. Okay. We have a lot to talk about. This felt like a very long episode. I just wanted to delight you. I promised you right before we started recording that I just like read a Reddit comment that I wanted to delight you with and it goes like this. Nate and Jules have the worst plot lines. They should just hook up. That would be the solution to so many problems. I like kind of agree. Like, you know, as much as we railed against the Nate and Jules shippers, I was like, oh, huh, do they have a point? Oh, no. The worst person, you know, as a point. Okay. Overall impressions on this episode. I don't know what the show is. We're kind of all over the place. I think I feel similarly as to previous episodes that the Rue stuff is often the strongest of everything that's happening in a given episode. I do think we got a significant upgrade this week in the Cassie dynamics, just moving her out of the Nate orbit into the Maddie orbit. Cindy, sweetie, I'm sorry. You were so funny in this episode. Super funny. You were really good in this episode. And it's just as simple as like put her in a place where like she gets to bounce off some more interesting side characters with a change of scenery with like actual life happening around her and not Nate Jacobs getting his toe cut off. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. I mean, but even the Nate stuff with the toe at the beginning of the episode worked. I had the same thought. I was like, oh, you took Cassie out of the Nate plot line and all of a sudden I'm way more engaged with her. We were watching it all together here in the studio and very normal workplace environment. Really normal episode of television for us to all watch it work. And I definitely, I think I laughed the most at Cassie stuff. Like it was really good. Her response to the Co-Kit alone. Yeah. Wonderful. Really good. It's just me, Cassie. And that's my handle. Really great stuff. Bellybuttoncoakageemail.com. Should we have gone with that email? Do you think? It was right there for us the whole time. We just didn't know. We didn't know how good we could have it. Okay. But if folks do want to email us. They should email us for starters all the time for STHTV at Spotify.com. For Euphoria specifically, Maddie's number one boy at gmail.com. We did ask, you were a guest on House of R, my other podcast last week. What day is it? And... Thank you for having me. We asked listeners if they wanted us to check in on the Apple show, Widow's Bay. And we heard from a lot of people. Yeah, they sure do. They want us to cover Widow's Bay. So what is roughly our plan for the rest of this month? Do you want to say it on into a microphone right now? I don't. Okay. I think it's still being hashed out slightly. We're going to do some Widow's Bay. We are. We're going to do Euphoria. And we have some other ideas as well. Does that work for you? That works for me. And I'm just going to, I'm going to commit us even harder than that perhaps, Joe, and say, if you want to hear a lot of Widow's Bay, listen to the episodes as they come out and invest in the coverage, you know, like help us get this off the ground floor. Oh yeah, exactly. If those episodes do well, we will do more. Yes. We would, look, I would love the excuse to podcast about this show. It is super funny. It's very fun. So far. It's really good. Yeah. So if you haven't watched Widow's Bay, Apple did not pay us to do this ad, but no fray ads, except for Widow's Bay, which is a really good show. I also, I liked this episode of Euphoria. Am I confused by this show? Yes. But I actually had a really good time watching this episode for some reason, except for the parts where I had a really bad time. So, you know, that's really where we are right now. Yeah. It does feel ever more like a show that just like cannot get out of its own way. Even when something's like really, really working, it's like, what if we threw this other thing into the mix just because we can, even if it disrupts the things that are like really fun and engaging and dramatic to watch? I think I agree with the Reddit shipper. I think the Nate storyline and, and especially in this episode, the Jules storyline. Yeah. Do you want to start there? I, like Jules is getting raked over the coals on the internet, as she should, because this is just a baffling thing. You want to, I always want to root for Jules. Yeah. And this, I don't know if what, what the show is trying to depict is some sort of like young adult entitlement of some kind of like, you don't understand the realities of a workplace, you know, like, but for Jules to be commissioned to do, I actually thought the painting was very cool, just like wildly inappropriate for the job that she was hired to do. Serratbo with Dix. Yeah. I'm, I'm interested. I thought it looked great. And, but obviously not a good fit for a nighttime soap opera that pulls in 7 million viewers, by the way, 7 million, million viewers, not too shabby in this day and age. Not at all. The Pitt season two finale, 9.5 million viewers. So we're like approaching Pitt season finale territory with L.A. Knights. Very excited. Very nice thoughts coming up, but Jules, she just does not come off well in this episode. And I don't know if it's to demonstrate that sort of like naive youthful entitlement or if it's to depress her so much about her art career that she's driven even more into this like sugar babydom is my only future sort of thing. I think for me, it's like, if it was just a young person, specifically a young artist who has been like patronized by her sugar daddy into like doing art on her own terms in whatever way she wants for however long. You mean that in like the patronage? Yes, like literally patronage. Being put in this corporate environment of like art for art for hire, art for money and chafing against those strictures. I'm cool with that. I had a bigger problem with like, do you remember when this show was able to draw this like very intricate, detailed personality forward portrait of a trans person that wasn't all about being trans all the time? And it's like the fact that Jules like active rebellion or transgression in this episode is like the one thing that the show has been really good about not making it all about with her every scene she's in. It's just like super disappointing for a character that I really love. Yeah. Like not just one in the character, just one in the writing. I know, I agree. I think this is a really tough Jules episode and I had some, you know, I really liked a lot of the visuals of the Jules stuff in episode three. We'll have to stay tuned to that, but I, this was a really tough Jules episode. I want to circle back to the larger theme of the season, which is the stated theme of like a religious experience, a religious journey. We didn't get to check in. Well, we did actually do a Bible check in inside of this episode, but they played Ave Maria in the strip club. Yeah. As one does. How did that work for you? We got an email from a listener, Rebecca, a while ago after episode one. Rebecca wrote, I was struck by the garden of Eden imagery during the final scene with Rue and Alamo, his snakeskin boots with the cobra, hood ornaments, the apple on her head and with Rue's curly hair. It really flashed me to Renaissance garden of Eden imagery. I wondered about who Alamo represents. Is it Adam, the devil, et cetera, and what that means for his relationship to Rue? In general, I think it'll be fun to tie the visual language of the show to biblical allegory. I really agree. I don't know how consistent the show has decided to be with this, but like we get more snake cam inside of this episode, there's that snake in the strip club. There's a snake in the strip club with gmail.com? Yeah, absolutely. There's a snake in my group. I think that's interesting to contemplate. I'd be interested to hear from our listeners who have identified more, who might be having an art history background or something like that, but how do you think that's working and is it as simple as putting Ave Maria over a strip club sequence? Is that deriving home the big picture religious theme that we were promised this season? Here's my inner conflicts. Sure, Rob. Ave Maria in a strip club, again, with some very interesting reverby kind of effects around some of this stuff sometimes, really does work for me. Like those sorts of juxtapositions. Is that your Catholic boy jumping out? I don't know. Did you feel the same way with the, we forgot to check in on this, is Maddie's number one boy and a former Catholic. How did you feel about the crucifix dangling over the delicate amount of ass crack she was showing at the wedding last episode? So father, son, holy maddie, obviously. Yeah, a religious experience for you. How could it not be? Just make sure. Our queen and all of her splendor, we can do nothing but support her. OK. No, I think that part of it really works. I mean, as far as the metaphor goes, I am trying to make heads and tails of it as you are. It feels maybe muddled or maybe just not entirely clear yet. I mean, this is an episode about, I think, if not revelation, like a realization for Rue in particular, right? The scene in which she is looking at what kitty with the guys in the champagne room on the monitor of the surveillance cam is definitely like a pit of your stomach drop sort of, I think for Rue, it's the understanding like this is not the pole dancing wonderland maybe that I have convinced myself that it was or that I was pretending that it was. And I have instead been participating in this other bigger thing, which is like a kind of a bite of the apple and a waking up into the larger world. There is a way that it was shot where she was like on her knees sort of face up turn to this like light, you know, this almost like supplicant sort of thing. We definitely get Nate on his knees with like supplication and stuff like that inside of this episode. But yeah, I thought that was a really interesting moment. I mean, on the one hand, you're like, what exactly do you think is happening in this club, Rue? But on the other hand, for me, the bigger picture theme of this episode seemed to be literalization of cost and price, right? We get all these numbers are rolled at us at this episode. Like what Lexi, how much did you caught? How much did this mistake cost us? Right? That was tough. Don't be a net nag like on set, right? Nate, how much do you owe? Right. What is the price here? It's a brass tacks episode. Rue, how many years did you just rack up for yourself in federal prison? Like all of these numbers are hanging over these characters inside of this episode. And that is like a reckoning. And it's a way in which this system that's like grinding them all down is causing people to turn on each other inside of a system where if they just helped each other, like the way that magic was a Leah character, narks out Rue. And I'm like, why would you do that when she's asking a fellow dancer if she's okay? You know, I mean, I understand why, but I'm just saying like, workers unite. Like what are we doing? You're looking for more class solidarity. Stick it to Big Eddie or anybody. Well, someone did. Well, yeah. I was curious how you feel about the plots intersecting. This is something we were asking in a previous episode is like, how will all these plots collide? And we get a scene in this episode with Maddie, Cassie, Rue and Lexie all ostensibly in one place. Jules is inside of Lexie's story in this episode. Maddie could become part of Rue's storyline because Rue goes to her for drugs. I don't know if that's the last we'll hear of that. In the preview for next week's episode, which we did watch Sharon Stone does ask Lexie, like that's your sister. So is Cassie going to be in Lexie's storyline? And then really that just is Nate out on a like a sort of Frankenstein-esque ice flow of his own outside the larger intersecting plot of the story. In episode seven, he's going to show up off in the distance on the other side of the ice lake covered in rags, tattered, you know, just he's he's at a whole time this season. Absolutely. Absolutely. The stars, the scars are already on his face. So let me tell you the most baffling thing about that intersection, though, like we talked about the Cassie and Maddie stuff. I think most of that is very successful. Yeah. But that one scene you identified, whether all together by the pool with the leaf blower with Gideon Adalon, I guess also here. Yeah. Uh, did not work for me at all. It didn't? No. The le, okay. The Lexie part didn't work for me. Yeah. The Lexie is just like being a scold for five minutes. The roue part, I was a little distracted once again, trying to figure out if Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney were actually literally in the same place at the same time. Um, the Cassie stuff did work for me the way that she was talking while the leaf blower was blowing and no one could hear. The leaf blower is the one gag there that does work. That part does work. I got to, I got to give it up for the leaf blower. Yeah. Um, you mentioned Gideon Adalon, who plays a character I believe named Gilly, who's, who shows up, we think for the first time in this episode. I don't think we've seen her there before. Gideon Adalon did post on her Instagram a photo from episode one, but I don't know, like of her at the apartment complex. So I don't know if like the camera maybe panned past her in a previous episode. But Gideon Adalon, whose Pamela Adlon's daughter is Nepo Baby number one in the Nepo Baby role call that we're going to do for you for you this season. Okay. So Mon Appetow has been here. So nothing new. Naturally. Um, Homer Gear, Richard Gearson is playing Dylan Reed. The star of LA Nights, who we met in a previous episode. Jeff Wahlberg shows up in this episode as Brandon, the like social media influencer who's hosting the party. Yeah, dirtbag Jeff Wahlberg is Marc and Donnie's nephew of, of the, of the Boston Wahlbergs of Wahlbergers, of Wahlberg fame. Right. Um, and then Anna Van Patten, who plays Kitty, the titular Kitty, uh, is grace fan Patten star of tell me lies, et cetera, et cetera. That's her sister. Yeah. Um, so that's my Nepo Baby role call. I feel like you missed one. You know, we went down before the show, Joe, on a pretty deep rabbit hole on some guy named Smiles. I don't want to talk about Smiles. You want to talk about Smiles? You want to talk about Smiles? You're the one who found out all the, all the info. There's a guy in the party scene who for a second, all three people who were in this room watching the show thought was Dominic Fye could play to Ellie in the previous season because of the blonde hair. There's strictly a bleaching problem. And the face tattoo. Uh, he's involved in this sort of dorsion antigens that happen. Uh, he's, he's a rapper named Smiles with a Z. And we found out that he is sort of like a scion of. In fairness, I think a broader musician and singers, maybe sometimes rapper. Uh, sure. Jack Bruno, aka Smiles, um, scion of the, of the bedhead hair product family, the Tony and Guy fortune, the Tony and Guy fortune. And he's, and his hair looks like that. That's my question. So, okay. That, that's going to cut deep on the naming front. Uh, and shout out the euphoria subreddit where I spent the last hour just like really enjoying the comments rolling in. Someone pointed out that, uh, a lot of the people associated with the strip club have the same names as X-Men, Bishop, Magic with the K, Angel and Kitty. Holy shit. This is how so far. Welcome. Welcome. Um, you asked last week, uh, after the wedding episode, you asked our listeners to weigh in about whether or not get low was like merely a millennial wedding anthem, if Gen Z was enjoying it. Yep. Resounding, uh, response. We heard from a lot of DJs. They love get low at a wedding. A lot of wedding guests. A lot of people who have been wed. All of whom are like very excited about get low, right? At least so. It's true. Um, I also, we also got a couple of emails in response to my assertion that I thought that Maude Apatow's character Lexi would have cleaned up in college. Uh, we got an email from a listener who prefers to remain anonymous. Can't imagine why. I was in Maude's class at Northwestern. This is all positive. So I wouldn't read this if it was like someone just being like, what a bitch. Talking shit about Maude Apatow. Uh, I was in Maude's class at Northwestern. We ran the same social circles until she dropped out to film euphoria. Can confirm that she was the object of a lot of male attention, even within a small school that had many children of celebrities, Julia Lelew-Dryfus, Steve Krel, et cetera, et cetera. She was always kind and down to earth to surprisingly normal given her upbringing. So Maude Apatow. Professionally charismatic person. Cleaned up at college. Turns out Lexi, I think you could have done quite well if you wanted to. No pressure. It's about what she wants. Lexi didn't seem interested. No pressure. You want to talk about Nate? I mean, literally if we have to. Okay. What do you want to say? I just don't understand. Like I was kind of looking forward to the idea of Nate versus, you know, the, the board that could finally give him the clearance necessary to, to commence construction. You love zoning laws. I mean, I genuinely kind of do. No, but Nate versus the zoning board. Okay. There's something like we've been building up to this. There's been a lot of conversation over the last couple of weeks and it's just this. It's just like felt super flat for me in terms of the anticipation and some of this is just the larger frustration with Nate's general plot line. I mean, the one part of this that sticks out is just this, like his insistence that like he needs this to go right to basically like do something good. I can't be bad. I can't be bad. I can't be bad. It's a really interesting line, I thought. Very interesting. I mean, certainly maybe we'll get him closer to the Nate we know over the back part of the season. Does that mean I can't be a failure or does that mean I can't be like more like, you know, because as he works on his, I mean, he's no Don Draper, but as he works on his pitch for like what this, you know, old folks home will be and the hospice care and what he's doing is like, we are doing good for the world. Do you think he believes that or that's just a story he needs to sell to possibly not get more toes clipped off of his feet? I think he believes it just enough to like sleep well at night. But like in his heart of hearts, does he think profiting off of old people and their families is like doing intrinsic good for the universe? No, I don't really think so. And he doesn't give a shit about these flowers. Like it's not a it's not an accident. Fuck those flowers. Look, I mean, this guy gets up in front of the board, the zoning board of all people, a sacred space. OK. And it's like, of course, you wouldn't sign off on this. He's full of shit to say nothing about whatever environmental studies need to be done. Like I just I don't believe that Nate actually cares about this beyond having money period and having enough money to not die. I agree. But I just thought that I can't be bad line was so interesting. It is the most interesting he's been all season. Correct. But that's a low bar. Did you see a lot? The a really popular theory, which I think is incorrect, but hey, listen, no bad ideas in a brainstorm, a really popular theory off of Episode Three was that when Nate disappeared the night before the wedding, yeah, that he was actually with Maddie. I think there's no evidence that that is the case. Right. I feel like we would have gotten more from I mean, I understand that she was like upset at the wedding, but like I I don't think that's something they're going to reveal later unless you think this like, you know, date taunt between Cassie and Maddie in pursuit of money could be blown up. I mean, it feels like it's going to be blown up by Cassie being dumb in the very next episode per the trailer. But, you know, I can't wait. I also can't wait of all the things happening on this show. I need a scene in which Suze finds out about Cassie's. I assume fledgling only fans career. Like I need that scene. I don't even care what she says. I don't care what her reaction is. I just want to know what Suze thinks about it. In season two, she says she needs an exorcism. That girl needs a fucking exorcism. I deny. I deny it. She's sitting there with a wine opener. Honestly, one of my favorite moments. Um, on the jewels front, I know we already talked about this this story light, but we just wanted to check in on the Love Island situation. Jules is watching America, Love Island. That's a cry for help. Not UK. Come on. It's the hat specifically on this episode that really screamed US Love Island. But in season one, episode four, Rue, of course, watched 22 hours of Love Island in the episode where she couldn't get out of bed to pee. And there's this like really disturbing shot of her organ like swelling and stuff like that. Love Island seems to be shorthand for not everything's going great with these characters. This is supposed to tell us that Jules is just not like before getting hired by Lexi, not in a good headspace. What do you think? I mean, here's the thing at this moment in time, just given everything that's gone on over the last five, 10, 50, a thousand years, I don't know, the state of things currently around the globe, it's like our baseline level is I need some pacification. Like I need some Love Island just to get through the day. So if we're not living and working through a constant state of active depression, like what are we doing? It's a great point. I know that you're a fellow fan of Taskmaster, the UK show. Did you see the cast for Celebrity Traders UK this next season? No, who's on it? OK, sorry, quick sidebar. Hold on, I gotta pull this up. As a fellow fan of like UK comedians, here's what I'm going to say. James A. Castor, James A. Castor is there. Done. Joe Lysett's there. Rob Beckett is there. OK. OK. The boys are in town. They really are. But Michael Sheen is going to be on it. Richard E. Grant is going to be on it. James Blunt, the singer is going to be on it. Bella Ramsey is going to be on it. My holla from industry is going to be on it. Like this is going to be the Merritt, like Miranda Hart's going to be like, it's just like one of the Romesh is going to be on it. Like this is just like one of the most insane lineups I've ever seen. So can I bring you over to the dark side? You're not really a reality TV. Not typically. Can I bring you over to the dark side for Celebrity UK Traders? This with this line up. I've got to be there. Yeah. Frankly, just giving that lineup. I'm hearing a lot of prestige in that line. I know. I know. That's what I'm saying. I'm just Richard E. Grant. Michael Sheen. We'll see what we can negotiate over here. But I will definitely be watching. That's for sure. OK. So let me ask you this, Joe. Well, that's my answer to pacification. I don't watch Love Island, but I will watch the Traders. I do watch Survivor. You know, like there I have my versions of this. But is that an everyday pacification or like the particularly hard day, particularly tough week? I need something to just like zone out, turn my brain off, whatever it is you need in that moment. When you turn to bake off, what is your version of this? No, mine, unfortunately, is YouTube bushcrafting videos. It's a solitary man or woman, sometimes with their dog out in the wilderness, just like chopping wood. What's bushcrafting? Oh, I'm so glad you asked. It's literally just like. Is it Australian specifically? No, no, no. It can be anywhere in the world. OK. But it's just going out into nature. And usually like building a shelter of some kind that then you sleep in overnight and basically just leave crafting in the in the wilderness in from and of the bush. OK, why would you call it bushcrafting? It's not Australian. I didn't name it, you know, I'm just consuming the content. Would you consume 22 hours of bushcrafting? I probably have. Would we be worried? It's been a lot. Yeah. On the Lexi apartment complex front, I want to applaud Sam Levinson for like the Melrose placification of this apartment complex. So the fact that Cassie is now living there, Rue stays with Lexi sometimes. Like they all have reason to be in and out of that apartment complex. And I think that that is great setup for television. It's quite an elegant solution to the like, how do we not all congregate in the girls bathroom at the high school? You know, you found you found a place and and within that, I even think like some of these moments visually, as is often the case with euphoria, are awesome. Like Lexi staring out her window or typing by the window as like the camera flashes come from Cassie's apartment, which is another call back to season one when those girls shared a room and Cassie was taking news for McKay, like sort of against her will, like under the sheets and you could you just had the like the flash of her taking the nudes and Lexi always the watcher, always the observer, always the writer sort of taking notice. I thought like I actually thought there were a lot of incredible visuals inside of this episode. The way that the Rue interrogation scene is seen is filmed with like not just the way that the pale blue of her suit sort of just like blends into the wall. So she just like seems like so faded against the wall in that interrogation scene, but also the shot from behind her head where you've got like one interrogator on one side and the other on the other. There's a similarly framed moment at the funeral for Paladin, which you were here. That was my biggest laugh. The episode was the tiny coffin for Paladin, but you see the the cross on Paladin's grave and then you've got the like Nazi Chucklefucks and Faye like framed two on two on like perfectly framed around that as they crash their very elegant scheme to rob the strip club. What could possibly go wrong at the end of the episode? One more I want to shout out to on the visual front and it's like it's ski fiend like makes my skin crawl, but the early visual Alamo and exactly like the spreading leg silhouette is hot. Yeah, completely. That was really, yeah, like that's that's like back to some like really euphoria, arty visual stuff that I really liked about the show. So I agree. And I think particularly for that one thematically given where we go by the end of the episode in terms of kitty feeling the transactional nature of this. So acutely, it's like, you know, again, like this is sort of the original sin bringing her into this world and very worried for that character, but also she's already living in the shit of it in a lot of ways. Watching like having angels name be scraped like having Rue. Yes, let's not use passive voice. Rue had to scrape angels name off of the locker and then slap the tape on there and just write kitty and like here comes another girl for the meat grinder to watch her and then like to have her like she's from Kansas, right? Kitty from Kansas. She likes to dance and just like her very like small little girl voice, her like, do you have any more catamine to sort of like numb this whole situation for me? Like similar to the one episode angel arc, like I thought this was, you know, obviously deeply disturbing watching those like absolute Chad brads, like, you know, gang rape her essentially, like that was horrifying. And this, but this was like, I thought a really well seated, like the way we check in with her throughout the episode. I thought that was really well done. I want to give the show a lot of credit because I feel like whenever you have a break, a long break between seasons or a revival of a show of any kind, there's always this tension, right? Of like, you want to honor your original characters. You want to bring them along and you're going to bring them up, but you have to introduce something new. And I think this show, both with Angel, with Kitty, as you said, also with Rosalie's character with magic, like these are interesting new people to add to this world and they're not given like a ton of screen time, but it's like very impactful, very well framed. You get these complete arcs within a single episode. Like I think that part of the storytelling is actually very well done. Something that we were really hoping to figure out before we recorded was what song magic was whistling medicinally at Rue when she exited the bathroom. And we believe it is La Rumba del Perdón, which is a Rosalia song. So Rosalia was whistling her own song as she exited the bathroom. Incredible. And she as a performer, I have to say, seems like she's having a great time. Excellent whistling. Excellent, excellent medicine whistling from Rosalia. And to check back on some prestige lore, perhaps, Joe, in the Rue versus magic fight that's happening now, is this a niche versus a rat? Is this a rat versus a snake? What is happening here? Well, thank you. That's a poker face callback. Thank you so much. Well, we got a hood rat entered. Well, that's for sure. The lexicon here. But at minimum, magic is ratting out Rue. Yeah. Who is a snitch? Who is a snitch? But is a snitch a snake? Is a snake a mole? Is a snitch a mole? I don't know. Were you thinking about the departed, the depatted? Of course. When Alamo claimed you could smell a rat. Always. Well, I was also thinking in this episode, this did feel like in a lot of ways. And I think with Rue looking at the monitors with her scraping angels name off the locker, we have shifted from the first half of Goodfellas to the second half of Goodfellas. I literally wrote when she said, and that's how I became a snitch. I wrote Goodfellas in parentheses. Let's just call it out. Yeah, let's just call it what it is. Absolutely. And then I think this confirmed like angels, tragic disappearance, I think confirms that probably she was like they removed her organs. I think that's what people think happens when, you know, those girls go in there that like they're still making Alamo some money. Or was trafficked or something. She was disappeared. Yeah. But I think based on context clues, I would say organ like cause. I think I'm gonna say based on my own first hand experience. Joe, what have you been doing? No, but like they're already kind of being sex trafficked in the club. Are they not? I think there's always levels. There is. You know, you're right. Let's talk about the poker scene. So we've got Bishop and Rue and March on Lynch, AKG. Yeah. And Alamo. March on Lynch is so funny on this show. He's always a delight, but particularly on this show. Playing poker. I thought that was a really fun scene. I loved it. Adding the poker, the tension of the poker hand, especially I would say Bishop feeling so certain that he had the winning hand. He's like, are we gonna want to show us that turn? How about the river? Yeah. Like let's give a call. I check like all this stuff. He's like, let's keep this game going. Let's not forget we're playing a poker hand because I've got a really good hand. Yes. Rue had a better hand. It's very 3PO and Han like 3,720 to one. Never tell me the odds. Nice. You know, that is kind of what's happening here. And like on the very eve of May 4th, we tried to honor ourselves and our histories. But I think like, yeah, I love for any game within a game in a scene like this is really wonderful. I think the heightening tension and the idea that the old like the side road that deflates all that tension is that it hasn't even occurred to Alamo that Rue would be a snitch. It's just occurred to him that she's an addict and that maybe she slipped on the job in this other way that could potentially be destructive to him. I love that deflation. I love, you know, the kind of gradual reveal of perspective play on like who has what hand there and like who is actually winning and who is actually in control. Yeah. I just think it's super well done. I thought it was really well done. There are a lot of theories flying around about there being another informant inside the organization. Do you have any theories on that front? Well, it's not Paladin. R&P. A lot of people think it might be Bishop that Bishop might be an informant or an undercover DEA agent. Yeah. He strikes me as very pragmatic. Yeah. So I could see it in some track for that. I would be most excited if it were Bishop because it would mean more screen time for Bishop and we both agree is who's a real stand out. One of the standouts for sure. But I think we're going to get more screen time regardless, whether he is another informant or someone chasing down the informants. Right. All right. Let's go back to Cassie and Maddie. Yeah. I really like the juxtaposition of Maddie crafting Cassie's look at the same time as Jules is making her painting. So it's like these two artists, you know, shaping something. We get to those with Cassie too, because then later in the episode, we get Cassie and Kitty sort of juxtaposed in a similar editing way. Right. Absolutely. And I think very interestingly, as Maddie tells Cassie, basically like, do not sleep with this influencer guy Brandon, because as soon as you do, you're basically like surrendering your power. Yeah. And then we see Kitty like do a version of that exact thing in the now transactional part of her job. It's like, again, there's so many things as far as the construction itself that I really, really like. Yeah. And then I just like left wondering and grasping at so many other things, but I like want to take a like a sanitizing shower. I need like the Gadica like scrape all my skin flakes off shower. Like I want no trace of the person I was while I was watching this episode. Again, we watched it or. Yeah. Cassie. And what I like about this episode is I was so certain that Cassie was going to fuck that up. Like she, you know, just like going to a second location with him. Like I was like, she's going to fuck this up. She's pretended she's done coke before and then she clearly hasn't. And she's just like, woo. And like all of that. But then she crushes it. She knocks the other girl out of rotation. And then when the camera shows up, she drops that, that she, she did it. This Pomeranian's got a bite. Yeah. Not just the Yips, but is, is there a worse place on earth that you think then this particular influencer party in which like everyone is attendant and attendance is jockeying for the attention of this guy with his like fucking gimbal walking around the party, looking for two girls making out. Oh, you don't have a gimbal at your parties. I'm sorry. At your parties. No. Okay. Gimbal for you. The famed Mahoney influencer parties. No, absolutely not. Yeah. The way he was like on high and they were sort of shot from below, sort of besiegingly looking up really good. Do you think we can, you know, like we can't let Brandon win. He has 20 million followers. I think we should implore the people to go to Instagram right now, follow prestige TV pod on Instagram. We got, we got to get above Brandon. This guy sucks. Yeah. This guy sucks. Right. Do you want him to outrank us? Right. That would be, that'd be cruel and ridiculous. At prestige TV pod. You should. To go back to the beginning when Cassie is leaving Nate with her matching luggage, thrown off the, yeah, thrown off the balcony over the railing. Over the railing. The, the roller bag on the shag carpet, great physical comedy. But, but Maddie rolling up to this like swooning Hanzimmers, this like romantic. Yeah. This is like the love of your life. Here's your knight in shining armor here to rescue you, Cassie. And then the like extremely sad cut to the little blonde girl and the little brunette girl across the street who were not there in the wide shot. And so I was like, I mean, obviously they're meant to represent like a young Cassie and a young Maddie, but like, are we meant to think they weren't even actually there? And it was just like literally their childhood selves across the street. I don't know, but they're not there in the wide shot, which I thought was interesting. Well, it's a metaphor, Joe. Like a toe or the scar. Again, toes, scar, toes, scars, children. It could be any of the above. Maddie knocking again on the door like she did famously in season two. Did you, did you enjoy it? I enjoy all the callbacks. I enjoyed Maddie and driving gloves scarf scarf on her head. Of course, like she knows how to make an impression in every possible way. Something that I raised you before we started recording is that something that Cassie's like hyper blonde tan, let's like enhance all of the enhancements, the head to toe leopard, the pink of her apartment really invoked this figure from this famous Los Angeles figure from the 80s, which is Angeline spelled A-N-G-L-Y-N-E. If you're not, if folks listening to this or watching this are not aware, she was this person who in the 80s, like sort of before Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian sort of became famous for being famous. She came to town. She, I believe she put herself up on all of these billboards around town and this used to drive around town in a pink Corvette. And just those things made her famous. Should I do that as a recent LA transplant myself? I thought you already did that. I had not. Was I supposed to do that? I didn't know that was supposed to be before you move. I thought you get here first, scout out the locations, put up the billboards. No, no, no, you got a billboard first. Well, I fucked that up. You really did. Here's a quote from a THR article about Angeline. quote, Angeline had single-handedly created and then inhabited a modern myth of LA. The platinum blonde bombshell in the bright pink Corvette forever circumnavigating the city, seeking to enchant by dint of her sheer superficial glamour. It had the aesthetic power and emotional resonance of a genuine performance art. Marina Abramovich by way of John Waters, particularly as she kept on rambling around the city over the decades while she aged. So like this, all of this visual language for Cassie as she leaves the suburbs, comes to LA, drives past the Cinerama Dome. Is anyone going to tell her that they're not showing movies at the Cinerama Dome anymore? I don't know. I don't want to be the one to break it to her. But like this sort of like girl comes to the big bad city, Alla Kitty. Everything is probably going to go terribly for her would be my guess. Is anything going to go well for anyone this season? Well, I mean, that's kind of what the show is, unfortunately. But I do think there are installations, right? And within the structure of this season, there's kind of a tiered approach to versions of the same like selling yourself idea, right? Like there's the people who are at the Silver Slipper, who are in more desperate circumstances, kind of on the edge of being angeled out into nothingness and never heard from again. A couple of steps up, there's this like influencer culture of people like Cassie, who are so desperate. Or Caitlin, Maddie's former client. Exactly. Desperate to grab and hold attention and are doing like whatever they have to do to do that. And then above that, there's like the LA Nites and the kind of like the actual Hollywood apparatus. And you're starting to see like, for some people, those lines are porous enough because they get famous enough to kind of like jump into the next tier of selling yourself effectively. But if you're already at the bottom or you're close enough to it, like you can get kicked out the side door really, really fast. Yeah, I'll be interested to see which direction this all goes. Cassie landing on LA Nites before the season is over. Do you think that's possible? Seems likely. And then we were discussing this idea before we started recording. Could the finale or maybe the penultimate just be an episode of LA Nites written by Lexie herself? What do you think? I want that to be the case. Is this fucking night time soap about us? It's about us. Starring Cassie. You didn't like the play stuff from season two. That's why I want another crack at it. Okay, I really liked it. So I would love to see this. But here's the difference. Like I am somewhat repelled by theater kid energy. Present company excluded. Sure. Tough. Tough for me. But TV person energy. Yeah. Clearly it has a kind of appeal and hold for me. So yeah, the idea of doing the TV pastiche, I think, would be much more interesting. Let me just say, there are, as you say, levels to these things. There are. There are porous gradations of theater kid energy. And I just want to say for myself, I'm not the kind of theater kid who would like break out into rent at a party or something like that. There are levels to these things. And that's just not me. I think if the if the two part is this play about us had been more people spontaneously breaking out into rent, it might have been an improvement. Like it was somehow more theater kid than that. Right. You were like, gimme Glee or gimme death. So the only time I've ever thought it. Heist, heist, heist. We get a heist, but not like this, man. I didn't want to be the Nazis, not the Nazis. I thought it was going to be cool girl crime. You should have specified that monkey's car really killing you in this moment. This is what I wanted. We got the safe in Big Eddie's office. Got broken into. There's still another safe out there ready to be broken into. Fay and her Nazi boyfriend and his chuckle fuck brother cousins. I don't know. They all seem inbred and related. In Obama masks, come and rob the strip club. Dare to hope. Faze telltale lips, you know, get them caught in not 4K, I would say, but on the surveillance camera. You don't need 4K. When you have the most recognizable lips in greater Los Angeles. I thought that was a great reveal. It was like, I was like, what are we going to like, what are we going to see on this grainy footage? Then it's just like the lips. They're they're unavoidable. How do you feel about Ru? I mean, like Bishop could have identified her to. He met her as well. But like, how do you feel by rude about Ru? Just like giving it up. I mean, she was held at gunpoint. Like there was a gun to her head. I think all bets are off at this point. Giving up Fay, though. I mean, she was the driver. She was an accomplice in this whole thing. I know they have a history. I know they've been friends for a long time. I certainly don't want anything to happen to Fay. But I think things have changed. Tough, tough, very tough. I want to shout out to Big Eddie, who may not. I mean, he's not dead, dead by the end of this episode, but. Bishop is not very concerned about keeping him alive. Seemed very close. Yeah. I felt like we heard air come out. Like I was like, let's take him to the pit. They got to fix this. But Kadeem Hardison, who's playing Big Eddie. As I mentioned in a previous episode, famous for playing the character Dwayne Wayne on on Different World, famously had on that show a pair of glasses where the shades part sort of like flipped up. That was like his signature move. So they had him do it in this episode before they got shot him. So do you remember what was the line or the moment when I remember he flipped them, but I can't remember what it was in response to. I don't know. But I was just like, there he is. Dwayne Wayne himself. Here he is. This whole setup, though, this is kind of what I was so energized by and then somewhat frustrated by was the setup of Rue and Magic and Big Eddie in the room with the ringing phone from mom. I was loving everything that was happening. And so then when we get to like, oh, what if we stack a clusterfuck on top of this shit show by having to rob rehab at the same time? I kind of just wanted to spend another couple minutes to like, you don't have to play that scene out to its ultimate conclusion and like out anybody, but let us sit in the tension for a little longer. Did you think he was going to put it on speaker? I really did. Yeah, me too. I think I think the great tension creating devices that they've instilled at this point, the fact that anytime mom calls, like if you throw it on speaker, it could be a huge problem. Right. Also anytime anyone takes, does a line of coke. There's like the implication in the moment of like, oh, is this also going to have fentanyl in it? Is this also, is this person going to OD? Is this, you know, this other woman that Cassie is competing with, just going to drop dead right there on the bed? Or is Cassie going to drop dead because, you know, like it happened to anybody at any time, like there is a ticking time bomb with all of the drugs in this show. Right. And Brandon like, calling it out and saying, like, do you know where this coke came from? I don't want to die. And so then I was like worried about the one that's seen and even Caitlyn, the other influencer when she was just like coughing and then vomited, but I was like, is she about to like, Straight up. Is that what the gimbal is going to catch? My murder. I did want to go back to the beginning of this episode because it really rests on Zendaya holding down the whole thing, which, you know, because the first, I didn't, I didn't put a timer on it, but like many minutes at the beginning of the episode is just ruined that interrogation scene. And she is like funny when she does her lorry impersonation, all that sort of stuff like that. And then, and then there's a part where she knows she's caught. Yeah. And she looks so young all of a sudden. And just, I think, as we mentioned before, I think Zendaya is extraordinary on this show, but I think the range of Rue, the like charming Rue. And then like, so watching her both in that moment and then later when she's watching what's happening to Kitty, like, contrasting that with the Cavalier gun dealer sort of shtick that she was doing in the previous episode is just sort of like the fuck around and the find out. And here we are, episode four of an eight episode season. We're in the find out. So how far does this find out? Take us. Where do we go from here? I especially love, you know, later in the episode, you almost get the inverse of the interrogation Rue transformation, where when she's first being pressed about the phone and kind of like where she's been and what she's been up to and like magic is putting her on the spot as far as like trying to actually show some concern for Kitty and wonder why is it that she's here. She's like so caught off guard and so nervous and so anxious and kind of like fumbling and mumbling her way through. As soon as she gets the call from the DEA that's like magic is onto you. It is you or her. You have to sell her out right now. Everything's going to go south. She turns into a totally different person. Hoodrat. That's when the hoodrats come out. And it's like, I love that Zendaya can just flip that in either those moments in any possible direction because it just unlocks so much of the story as far as like where you can take things emotionally. Anything we didn't hit that you want to make sure we hit. I do have a couple of things, Joe. As a green apple advocate yourself, how did you feel about Big Eddie joining your ranks? I was really happy to have him. Just wanted to make sure. You saw that I had a green apple early. You literally did as we were watching. I felt great about it. Welcome. Do you think that's the last apple we're going to get in our, I'm sure, twist and extended biblical metaphor? Like it's a second green apple moment of the season. Is it? What was the first one? The apple on Rue's head. I know because I took a photo of it and I sent it to Mallory Rubin and I said, welcome to Teen Greens and DEA. So yeah. Just knew people by the day. And Joe, one other thing that I needed to clarify with you because this was news to me, I was not aware until recently that Faye, the character's last name is Valentine, a la Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop. Did you know this and does this mean literally anything to you? I mean, I know I have watched all of Cowboy Bebop. So like I am aware, both the live action and the animated John Cho, I support you in all your endeavors. Maybe not that endeavor, not his fault. Even that endeavor. What does that mean to you? It's complicated. Okay. I don't know how to feel about it because it's both an incredible honor. And I love, I love this Faye. I don't see any similarity between these characters whatsoever. I don't know how it happened, but it's also like it would be like if you named a character Indiana Jones, like I, I don't know how you back that up. I don't know how you're supposed to be the second Indiana Jones. So I may want to mention, I believe for the rest of the season, we are going to be filming these episodes about Euphoria on Sunday nights. We're going to be here watching this, this totally normal show to watch it work with your colleagues and then hopping on to, to shoot these totally not unhinged overcaffeinated episodes of a podcast. You, if in between the time that the episode drops East coast time, 6 p.m. Pacific, and when we record, let's say eight 39 Pacific, something like that, you can email us. Yeah, we would encourage it. We will read them. We just got an email in. Do you want to hear it? I would love to. It's from our listener, Mitch. And he wrote to Joe and Maddie's number one boy. I reached a point in Euphoria where the plot is the only thing keeping me going in that plot is Maddie's screen time. And once she enters our TV, I glean with joy, Rob and the rest of us witnessing her greatness. If Rob has a million fans, then I am one of them. If Rob has 10 fans, then I am one of them. If Rob has only one fan, it's me. If Rob has no fans, then that means I am no longer on the earth. If the world is against Rob, then I am against the world. XOXO, Maddie's number one boys, number one fan, Mitch. Holy shit. Yeah. So Mitch loves you and he just wanted to let you know. And I just want to let you know live, live on camera. I genuinely don't know what to do with this information, but I'm on it. I'm honored. I'm flattered. I'm trying to absorb it. I mean, look, again, all due credit to Maddie. We all are following her plot lines in this way. She managed to make. There is a significant portion of this episode where the primary driver of plot is like, we have to create content. And I'm like, this is cinema. Yeah. So I don't know how she does it. I don't know how Sam Levinson does it with all due credit. One thing I will say is that in that party sequence, which had many moments, but I would say like Maddie having lost track of Cassie, like hunting in the crowd, that's when I really could have used some labyrinth music. I will say, like I really was missing it, especially, I think. And like, and Cassie up on the table, sort of like beseeching Lee, sort of like reaching up that could have used some labyrinth sort of grandiosity to it. So many moments could. I think that's that's one of the ones where it's like textually just makes so much sense. Zimmer's barely simmering in this episode. It's definitely not Zimmer. It's definitely like a third string. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's an underling Zimmer. Yeah. I'm a junior, not great. I'm very concerned. Who should we thank? Who helped us in this episode here late at night? We should thank Kai Grady. Absolutely. I don't know how we dragged him into this. I don't know. We should we should thank Devranal though. Also, I don't know how we dragged Dev into this. Absolutely. Jack Wilson. Yes, of course. Who is here? Chris Wallers. Chris Wallers. Yeah. Just like the whole second world crew here on a Sunday night to help us out. Joe, thank you. Thank you, Romani. Kathy and you consumed to get through the day. That looks a lot. I don't know. Thank you to... We can just be done with the podcast. The DEA? OK. Thank you to the DEA. That's it for now. We'll be back with Widow's Bay with some other special projects that we have set for this month and for every Sunday night. Ill-advisedly. Instant reactions to you. We'll see you soon. Bye.