Review: Euphoria, "The Ballad of Paladin" | Season 3, Episode 3

Money seems to be the driving motif for this season of Euphoria. As Rue explains in her narration at the beginning of this week's episode, "The Ballad of Paladin," there have been periods throughout the history of America where anyone could strike it rich, but it's all about timing. Now that they're all grown and far from the hell of high school, the characters on Euphoria are each chasing upward mobility for a chance at happiness and redemption, whether it's Cassie and Nate's dream of suburbia, Rue and Jules' desire for independence, or Maddy's simple love of luxury.

But as the series has taken blunt pains to show, there are major and often debilitating repercussions to seeking out volatile avenues of wealth. And as a Twitter user observed, most of the characters know next to nothing about how to handle their money, likely due to not having gone to class, so there's still plenty of room for each character to suffer the consequences of their actions in their respective pursuits for financial security. Although "The Ballad of Paladin" attempts to build out those conflicts by staging them around Cassie and Nate's wedding, Sam Levinson continues to struggle to create dramatic intrigue out of his overstuffed, hyper-stylized narrative, laying a ton of cards out on the table but none of them quite coalescing into a full house.