Review: Euphoria, "America My Dream" | Season 3, Episode 2

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Euphoria's reinvention from a high school melodrama into a neo-Western pastiche has both its pros and cons. The pros are that its characters no longer have to be tied down to their former selves now that they're grown adults and have a unique opportunity to either evolve past their previous bad habits and unhealthy relationships or risk creating newer ones that are even worse. Setting their journeys against a literal Wild West backdrop also adds a layer to how daunting it can be to start anew without the help of a social and familial support system. The cons, however, are that such an ambitious tonal/aesthetic shift changes the narrative expectations for the show and can leave a lot of room for things to go in wayward and unsatisfying directions. Although we're only two episodes into this season, it seems like the cons might end up outweighing the pros, especially given Sam Levinson's track record of making work that rides a very thin line between engagingly trashy and chaotic and exhaustingly self-indulgent and messy.

This week's episode, "America My Dream," both intrigues and disappoints in how it continues to set up each character's financial dilemmas and emotional crises as they doggedly pursue professional stability. Such unevenness arrives right off the bat in the opening sequence, which haphazardly catches us up to speed on Maddy. We learn that she worked her way into becoming a talent manager after approaching her boss, praising her Wall Street profile, emphasizing her love for capitalism and lack of entitlement, and answering a phone call for her to really seal the deal. But her professional ascent is also retrofitted to occur during the pandemic and the George Floyd protests, which needlessly muddles the show's timeline—there are conflicting reports about when season 2 was exactly set, but if it was before the pandemic, how would Maddy have gotten work if she was still in high school?—and strains itself in trying to connect the plot to larger issues affecting contemporary American culture.

Levinson did a decent job drawing those connections back in season 1 by lensing every character's traumas and anxieties through the various social pressures plaguing Gen-Z. And it's absolutely true the pandemic was largely responsible for negatively affecting Gen-Z's professional prospects (as well as Euphoria's delayed filming), but its referencing here made Maddy's storyline feel busier than necessary, even if it technically functioned to add more conflict for Maddy by forcing her to find another avenue to make money outside of her regular job.