I had never watched a minute of the HBO teen drama. euphoriaWe’ve already seen Sidney Sweeney’s character Kathy Howard’s bare breasts. In a GIF I shared online, she’s in the bathroom at a high school party, making out with Cassie’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Nate, played by Jacob Elordi. There are plenty of such GIFs on the internet, and plenty of excited users dedicated to capturing every scene of a topless Cassie for posterity, but in this particular context, the poster was deploying it to advance the argument that Sweeney is clearly contrary to the beliefs of the MAGA fanbase and far from a heartland sweetheart on the verge of a permanent awakening. Rather, they suggested, she was just an actress playing a role that required her to show her breasts early and often, playing the character of a dirty con artist.
That may have been the impression Cassie left on many viewers by the end euphoriais in its second season, but she wasn’t always like this. When I finally watched the show ahead of the release of the long-awaited third season in April of this year, I felt a little put-upon her behalf. It may be hard to remember given the years that have passed between seasons, but back then, Cassie had a pathos that justified all the humiliating storylines thrown at her, and even her many nude scenes. no longer. Now, in season 3, Cassie has lost everything that made her even remotely interesting. The now ubiquitous GIF of Cassie dressed as a sexy little puppy doesn’t overshadow more interesting or subversive ideas about her character, as Cassie’s defenders still hope (at least not in the three episodes critics were able to screen). After all these years, Sweeney haters are finally considering her role. euphoria It has proven to be a futile humiliation ritual. euphoria‘s most pathetic character has become the worst possible version of herself.
euphoria‘s first two seasons were about high school students perishing on the rocks of life, with little guidance from their parents. It made sense for creator Sam Levinson to introduce a character like Cassie, a young girl cursed by her handsome but absentee father who has been told since she was an adolescent that she has the best face and body in school. (Parents of girls often wonder if it’s a bad thing to tell their daughters they’re beautiful. Kathy proves that perhaps caution can be beneficial.) In Season 1, we sympathize with Kathy as she tries to continue her relationship with her boyfriend McKay (Algee Smith), who is off to college and distracted by his new life. He does not try to claim her in public and always talks about football. She responds by feeling ecstasy at a carnival, flirting with another man, and experiencing an orgasm in public while riding a carousel (oh no! euphoria), all this only causes further problems. At the end of the season, after she aborts her pregnancy, the sadness about her breakup with McKay is felt overwhelmingly.
Season 2 begins with that infamous bathroom moment, as awkward single Cassie becomes obsessed with cheating on her best friend Maddie (Alexa Demme) with her longtime boyfriend Nate. A sadistic jock with high standards, he doesn’t seem like the type to fool a fool like Cassie, but he understands the benefits of being with a woman who will do anything to keep him. The “pretty girl with daddy issues” isn’t exactly a groundbreaking archetype, but something about Cassie made it hard to look away, especially in season two. She is liquid even without a bottle, constantly crying, drinking too much, and vomiting in the bathtub. A memorable montage depicts Cassie setting her alarm for 4 a.m., shaving her legs, wearing a beauty mask, using rollers on different parts of her body, and applying makeup as she gets ready for school during recess with Nate. “Even if Nate pretends not to notice her, that’s her way of telling him that she’s his,” Rue, played by Zendaya, says in a voiceover. At this time in her life, Cassie’s instability gives Sweeney more range as an actress. Cassie’s mother, Suze (Alanna Ubach), a wine mom in a bad way, can’t get over her affair with Nate and confronts her about her “principle” of not having sex with your best friend’s boyfriend. Sweeney’s ugly cry: “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Mom!” They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, God! ” (“I just want to see millionaire’s matchmaker Rest in peace,” his mother replied. )
But in Season 3, following the show’s five-year time jump, Cassie’s former spectacle of untidiness has dissolved into a dry, boring caricature of money-hungry self-obsession. She and Nate are still together, living in an unrenovated palace in their hometown home, while the rest of the characters are scattered around the city, doing 20-something things. Kathy was prostrate for love. Now her motivation is money. She wants a more luxurious wedding than Nate can provide, specifically one with $50,000 worth of flowers. “I didn’t wait my whole life to have a ghetto wedding,” she says, which is a crueler expression than Cassie would have used in seasons one or two.
Kathy turned to the idea of making money with OnlyFans after she cheated by posting racy content of herself on TikTok. Perhaps she does it because, as Lou says in voiceover, she’s “desperate for attention and willing to humiliate herself.” Perhaps the pictures of the puppies playing, and the other pictures and videos that housekeeper Juana (Minerva Garcia) helps her take, including a very bad one of Cassie in a happy baby pose, holding her legs and sucking on a pacifier, may be explained by the fact that Cassie is a former high school belle whose distracted husband won’t give her what she wants. But these new humiliations feel distant and evoke no sympathy at all from viewers already repulsed by Sweeney’s public persona and still reeling from the slap in the face of “ghetto.”
But Cassie’s most embarrassing moment in the newly aired second episode of Season 3 is when she and her ex-best friend Maddie, who now manages actors, influencers and other talent, are having drinks by the pool after years of not hearing from each other. This interaction shows that Cassie isn’t funny in the least. Stupid, understanding, ambitious but incompetent. Cassie humiliates herself, but she has no idea. “I feel like if more people knew about me, I’d be a big deal,” she tells Maddy, who not-so-gently tells her the news. “The market is saturated with lots of girls like you.” Maddie tells Cassie that she doesn’t know the right person and has no taste. In Maddy’s professional opinion, her content looks hopeless. It’s “not just, but trying too hard.” There is”
“What?” asked Cassie, to which Maddie replied, “You yourself.”
“Who am I?” asks Kathy.
“That’s a really good question,” Maddie replies.
Once upon a time, in a faraway world euphoriaIn the first two seasons of “Cassie” was someone’s daughter and someone’s friend. If you squint, you can see that she actually believes she loves Nate, even if it’s a dangerous delusion. The vulnerable nature that Sweeney brought to the role gave the impression that this girl was very needy. For a star who was sometimes accused of doing too much for attention, and who was then right on the precipice of fame, the older Cassie’s words made perfect sense. Now, Sidney Sweeney is a household name and political lightning rod, but the character she became famous for has become so inhumanly awful that she can’t relate to anyone else at all. “Honestly, I don’t know if Levinson is obsessed with Cassie or hates her. Probably both,” a fan wrote on Reddit about the new season. Before Season 3, I would have chosen the first option. Now I’m not of course.
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