Euphoria— HBO’s High School themed Drama series— opened this week with a montage of Rue and Jules as famously doomed lovers both in cinema and real life: colorful tableaus and vignettes ranging from Titanic  and Brokeback Mountain to Yoko Ono and John Lennon. All of these images, though, are emotional references to those individuals’ stories of love and admiration, rather than about the specificity of the moment. Euphoria specializes in ghosting around specificity: It seeks to make sweeping statements about love and sadness without actually revealing the motivations of its characters.

In said obsession with sweeping emotion, Euphoria can read at times as less of a study of character psychology and more of a study of emotion: a Rothko gradient of splattered blues and reds instead of a portrait. If there even is a face, it is entirely unrecognizable, lacking any unique wounds. In this episode, for example, there’s a minute-long shot of Cassie sitting in a room filled with flowers, teary-eyed, favoring a weeping Virgin Mary. The shot is gorgeous, but I can’t help but wonder what exactly it adds. 

The characters here feel more stale than last season so far. The Maddy-Nate-Cassie dynamic is an interesting premise that gives each episode a tension-riding pulse, but it never feels emotionally fruitful at the end of each episode. Nate, previously the villain of season one, is more mild tempered and now simply skulks around in the background. He does this despite being the center of the most tense dynamic of this season. Maddy barely shows up beyond modeling new outfits and discussing getting back together with Nate. This episode was set at Maddy’s birthday party, but was focused on Cassie instead. Kat, however, is done a disservice and has absolutely nothing to do. She appears for about two minutes an episode to tell someone she hates her boyfriend and herself, then disappears in a moodily-lit fog. She’s been static for four episodes now. For what’s more, McKay has been cut from the season entirely. 

 In fact, multiple characters are denied screentime in favor of Nate’s father, Cal, and his baffling storyline. It feels less like the youthful montage it tries to be and more like wasted screentime on an old drunk’s manic episode. Cal’s arc ends with him abandoning his family in an even more baffling monologue in which he blames his family and his children for his misdemeanors — as if he did not lead his family and raise his kids himself. This feels like an attempt to redeem Cal, but redemption of a parent was never a pressing issue for a show that’s supposed to be focused on teenagers.

Rue and Jules, the perceived emotional heart of the show, are not substantially present in this episode’s heartbeat. They’re confusing as a couple. In the first season, Jules did not seem to care much for Rue in a non-platonic way; Her attraction to Rue seems dependent on attention, but resistant of responsibility. It seems the only purpose of Elliot’s character, new to this season, is to drive them apart, if not to expose the flaws of their relationship. Where has the anxiety that led Rue’s decisions in season one gone? Who is Jules this season outside of her relationships with Rue and Elliott? Nate and Jules’ dynamic has been left behind this season. This is unfortunate as it was one of the most interesting of season one because of its confusion and tension, as well as because of what the existence of the dynamic at all revealed about both characters.

Individual arcs feel muddied. Whatever moments in the first season were meaningful, they’ve been left behind. At the end, we get nothing but hints of character resolution, sweeping images of emotion, and moody, chiaroscuro-drenched frames of characters weeping, dazed and camera-ready, in the light like bereaved moths. 

The best sequence of this episode was the moment with Rue in a church, serenaded by Labrinth. It was gorgeous and poignant, especially after Rue imagines herself swaying in her father’s arms despite her claims to be indifferent to the grief of her father’s recent death. However, there was no traceable arc for Rue within this episode that led the audience to suspect Rue’s mental state. I wish we had glanced at echoes of her mental state, or received a fuller sense of isolation before the reveal.  So far, Euphoria seems to be a little bit too in love with the image of deep emotion than its gory specificities. After what feels like the fiftieth montage of Rue’s eyes glazing over as she rushes into a high, the repetitive nature of her arcs is more pessimistic than feels necessary. It seems like, for Rue, the only option other than recovery is death. But what would death solve? With Euphoria writer Sam Levinson’s direction, the scene, perhaps, would be visually arresting. It would be beautiful, but useless. 

SEMILORE OLA  is a Sophomore in Timothy Dwight College. Contact her at semilore.ola@yale.edu .