What I’m Watching: Euphoria

Euphoria: Season 1, Episode 5 “’03 Bonnie and Clyde” (B)

This show tends to have some trouble focusing, like all of its distraction-addled characters, and therefore it was refreshing to see the fallout from the carnival be addressed so specifically, even if what happened was deeply unsettling. We’ve seen how teen gossip works among the students themselves, and previously Kat managed to use a poorly-phrased question against the principal when he asked about the video in which she was allegedly featured. Here, students were sharing plenty with the principal that he didn’t even want to know about after Maddy passed out in class and the marks on her neck became very obvious to everyone, including the police. Maddy’s backstory made a lot of sense for what we’ve seen of her, and after she shut down during this episode, all she wanted more than anything was to be with Nate again, which is troubling enough in itself. Learning that she watches pornography so that she can better know how to act around men was probably the most interesting bit of information revealed about her. We also got to see how Cal acts in a crisis, first asking his son if he did it and then if he admitted to it, eager to get to a “no” on both fronts to best preserve his reputation. Rue and Jules did move rather quickly in getting their painful tattoos, and we didn’t get many other updates on that aside from Rue’s recount of her super brief and (not so) horrifying sexual history and Jules not taking her father up on wanting the three of them to have dinner. Both Cassie and Kat don’t seem sure of what to do in the aftermath of what happened at the carnival, and hopefully they’ll just be open and honest with the men in their lives so that things don’t get even more derailed.