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Euphoria<\/h2>\n Stand Still and See<\/p>\n
\n Season 3<\/span>\n Editor\u2019s Rating*<\/span>*<\/span>*<\/span><\/span>\n <\/p>\n\n<\/nav>\n<\/div>\n<\/section><\/div>\n\n Rue\u2019s story is a reminder that this show still has a beating heart when it\u2019s not obsessing over OnlyFans.Photo: Eddy Chen\/HBO<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\nNeed more? Sign up for Euphoria Club<\/strong>, a newsletter overanalyzing season three of Sam Levinson\u2019s HBO fever dream, for subscribers only.<\/p>\nAt its best, Euphoria <\/em>is a character study about the kinds of experience that might lead an otherwise well-intentioned person down the wrong path. It\u2019s an argument for nurture over nature, a suggestion that a messed-up environment \u2014 whether a broken home or an unjust system \u2014 has the power to corrupt even the most innocent spirit. In season three, this argument has largely taken a cynical, nihilistic turn. Like the teenagers it once set out to depict, it was as if Euphoria <\/em>decided that nothing mattered: The world is bad, people are evil, and joy and fulfillment are just naive illusions. This thematic turn stood in contrast to some of the stronger moments of the past seasons, when real affection and tenderness \u2014 between Rue and Jules, for example \u2014 cut through the hard shell of the show\u2019s bravado.<\/p>\nThis week, we finally get a moment like that, when Rue is in church (who would\u2019ve thought?). She looks with real affection upon the image of God, a single tear streaming down her cheek. It\u2019s not a perfect moment, but it\u2019s a relief to be reminded that Euphoria <\/em>is warm-blooded: It has a beating heart. So, how do we get to Rue having a sort of literal come-to-Jesus moment?<\/p>\n\u201cStand Still and See\u201d opens in vintage Euphoria<\/em> fashion with a backstory for Alamo. We are taken through his childhood\u2019s pivotal disillusionment, which hardened him for life. When he was a kid, his mother brought home a man named Preston, whom she hoped could provide them with nice clothes, warm food, and a measure of security. Preston seemed scary to Alamo because of burn scars on his face, the result of an accident at the chemical factory where he worked, but he soon revealed himself to be kind and sensitive. When Preston\u2019s settlement money finally comes in, the family unit is born: they get new clothes, jewelry, and a swanky new apartment with beautiful furniture. Preston promises to enroll Alamo in a \u201cwhite school\u201d where he can learn French. On Labor Day, they go to the beach, where Preston asks for Alamo\u2019s blessing to marry his mother. When they get home, though, their apartment has been robbed clean. There\u2019s nothing left. Alamo\u2019s mom immediately picks up and leaves with Alamo, telling her son that Preston is \u201cbad luck.\u201d<\/p>\nEarlier, we heard Alamo\u2019s mom \u2014 who is only credited as \u201cMama Brown\u201d \u2014 tell someone on the phone where she was stashing her Cartier gold. When she takes Alamo to a new apartment with a new man who calls her \u201cbaby,\u201d we learn that she was in on the robbery. Alamo\u2019s mother teases her partner about his hired \u201cjokers\u201d not having been careful enough with her stuff. When Alamo looks at her askance, she tells him, coldly: \u201cYou\u2019re not the one who had to kiss his ugly face.\u201d Alamo feels tricked. \u201cNever again would a bitch outsmart him,\u201d he vows.<\/p>\n
This backstory adds welcome depth to Alamo, even if what it suggests \u2014 underneath it all, he\u2019s a broken boy \u2014 is not very surprising. It explains why he has trust issues and a\u2026 problematic <\/em>relationship with women. He decides not to kill Rue with that polo mallet when she promises to call Faye and get his money back. Still buried up to her neck, Rue talks to Faye over speaker phone to ask for a photo of Wayne\u2019s safe key, next to a quarter for scale. The idea is to take the photo to a 3-D printer that can make a duplicate. It\u2019s a pretty inventive plan, and also scarily simple. Is it that easy to be a criminal these days? After sampling the drugs stolen from the Slipper \u2014 which had been replaced with laxatives by the DEA when they busted Rue \u2014 Faye answers the phone from the toilet. She\u2019s hesitant to assist in robbing Wayne because she has genuinely fallen in love with him. She is so smitten, in fact, that she has let him give her a swastika tramp-stamp, even if she can\u2019t tell Rue with any confidence if she is a Nazi.<\/p>\nThings have gotten so serious between Faye and Wayne that they decide to settle down and get pregnant. Or, as Wayne puts it, he doesn\u2019t want Faye to mule anymore because \u201cthe only thing you should be carrying in that belly is some fair-skinned babies.\u201d Faye only agrees to help Rue once she invokes Fez: He would\u2019ve helped. In fact, he did <\/em>help Faye when she needed it. Wayne walks into the room just as Faye is hanging up with Rue, though she fibs that she was talking with her friend in prison, presumably Fez. After depositing his gun on top of a copy of Helter Skelter <\/em>(okay, we get it), Wayne scolds her for doing drugs while they\u2019re trying to get pregnant, and rides her about taking prenatal vitamins. It seems out of character for Wayne to want Faye to do something as conventionally sane as taking prenatal vitamins \u2014 this strikes me as an anti-vax crowd \u2014 but anyway, it\u2019s a good time to start planning, since they\u2019re about to come into a bunch of money. It\u2019s all coming up for them, and the only person who doesn\u2019t see it is \u201cthat silverback gorilla, Alamo Brown.\u201d<\/p>\nIt\u2019s unclear how exactly Laurie and her crew plan to pull a fast one on Alamo, but the purpose of the meeting they set is to propose a business deal. They even offer to come to his house, which means they\u2019re confident enough to enter his turf. Rue activates her bug in preparation for the meeting, and what she captures, according to two thrilled Feds, is \u201cjackpot.\u201d Alamo has a business called Gold Rush Medical Services, which takes girls across the border to get cosmetic procedures done. They sail easily through customs with their ambulances and medical passes, and since the border is due to close (\u201cdon\u2019t you read the news?\u201d Laurie asks Alamo, when he doesn\u2019t know what she\u2019s talking about), Laurie suggests that Alamo bring back a shipment of 80 kilograms (that\u2019s a little over 176 pounds) of fentanyl in one such unsuspicious vehicle. If Alamo agrees, she\u2019ll give him the contents of his safe back. If he doesn\u2019t, she\u2019ll turn over these same contents to the FBI.<\/p>\n
Alamo has no choice but to say yes. Laurie wants Rue to drive across, but Alamo rejects the idea, saying that he has people he \u201ctrusts more.\u201d Alamo and Laurie spit-shake on it, and Alamo scares Laurie by tugging her close and promising to come down on her \u201clike Hiroshima, Nagasaki\u201d if she so much as tries <\/em>to fuck with him. The person the deal benefits most is Rue. The Feds tell her that if it all goes according to plan, Alamo and Laurie will spend the rest of their lives in jail, and the U.S. Attorney will look at Rue\u2019s case \u201cfavorably,\u201d since she kept her promises and collaborated. When they tell her, \u201cYou did good, kid,\u201d she quips: \u201cNever thought I\u2019d hear that.\u201d<\/p>\nFor once, Rue seems to be catching a bit of a break. The only thing she needs to approach the vicinity of happiness is someone by her side, a person to respond to. All season long, Euphoria <\/em>has been teasing Rue\u2019s relationship with God; in giving herself over to a higher power, she might, paradoxically, find the strength to take her life in her hands. But old habits die hard, and for now, she looks for salvation in Jules. At Jules\u2019s penthouse, Rue tries to make a commitment: She wants to be together, get married, and have a family. But Jules has long been over Rue\u2019s unreliability, so she dismisses Rue\u2019s idea as \u201ca fantasy\u201d that is threatening to ruin what she has going for her now: the apartment, the relationship with Ellis, the space and time to paint. When Rue points out that Jules\u2019s whole life has been constrained to the admittedly expansive square footage of her penthouse, where she waits all day to be fucked by a guy who has a family he\u2019ll never leave, Jules slaps Rue across the face. I have to admit, I gasped. Rue crashes on the ground, the huge canvas on top of her. With no trace of remorse in her voice, Jules says that Ellis will be back soon, so \u201cI suggest you get the fuck out of my painting.\u201d It\u2019s a slightly heavy-handed conclusion to a truly surprising moment \u2014 Rue has cut through the fiction of Jules\u2019s life \u2014 but overall, it\u2019s effective. Jules has learned cruelty.<\/p>\nThis is how we finally find Rue in church, considering God. She waits there while the duplicate of Wayne\u2019s key gets 3-D printed. She looks at the card the Miller family gave her, back in El Paso. She gets a call from \u201cMom\u201d and is surprised to learn it\u2019s actually <\/em>her mom, not the Feds, on the other end of the line. Rue tells her about coming around on her faith: If there is a God, there is redemption, and if there is redemption, there is salvation, which Rue is in desperate need of. \u201cI just want to start over,\u201d she cries, \u201cI just want to be forgiven.\u201d Rue promises to visit soon, tells her mother she loves her, and that she\u2019s sorry. The scene cuts to Leslie (Nika King), saying she loves Rue, too, before hanging up. While the emotional weight of the scene is aptly conveyed by Zendaya, and helped along by the setting \u2014 anything you say in church becomes loaded with gravitas \u2014 I thought it was strange to only give us one side of that conversation, if we had Nika King all along. Last we\u2019d seen her on screen, Rue was telling Jules how much she wanted to feel needed by another person, and to have her epiphanous moment during a phone call indicates the power of relationships, of exchange. In that context, it seems counterproductive to isolate Rue in conversation. It would\u2019ve been one thing if she were having the kind of experience, in church<\/em>, that is expectedly one-sided: Like confessing, or even praying. But to have her speak one-sidedly on the telephone only to flash us her mother at the end seems bizarre.<\/p>\nThat is, until we see what happens next. At the club, Alamo tells Rue that she is in charge of getting into Wayne\u2019s safe with the duplicate key. At this point, I thought the duplicate key plan was dead or at least dormant, since Alamo and Laurie have an agreement that he\u2019ll get his stuff back if he can get the fentanyl across the border. I guess Alamo is getting ahead of it, in his determination not to let any bitch outsmart him. When G drops a dead rat in front of Rue, I thought they finally found out she<\/em> was a rat, but she\u2019s only supposed to feed the club snake. Bishop tells her a story about the snake: It belonged to one of the girls, who loved it dearly. When the snake stopped eating one day, the girl took it to the vet, who told her the python was perfectly healthy; it was only saving room to eat the girl whole. Alamo loves the story because it\u2019s a reminder that \u201cyou never know a motherfucker\u2019s true intentions.\u201d Bishop asks Rue if she\u2019s going to get into the safe, since it would be \u201creal awkward if I lied to your mother.\u201d Supposedly, then, Alamo\u2019s crew does <\/em>know something is up with Rue and is scheming to keep her in check. Still, the best Rue can do \u2014 frustratingly, the only<\/em> thing she has been able to do this season \u2014 is forge ahead with Alamo\u2019s plan and try not to tip them off. On the drive to Laurie\u2019s, her Bible audiobook glitches. As she fiddles with it, she drifts into the incoming lane and nearly crashes head-on into a truck. When she swerves to the side of the road, her car is smoking, and a tree is on fire. She looks at it as if it\u2019s a miracle \u2014 a sign from God that things are about to start over, or that she\u2019ll rise from the ashes, or something\u2026<\/p>\nYou thought you were going to get through this whole recap without once reading the word OnlyFans? It\u2019s still Euphoria <\/em>season three, even if this episode ventured beyond Cassie\u2019s camera roll. When we pick up on The Girls this week, Maddy is working with Alamo\u2019s girls. She does a photoshoot at the Slipper with Kitty, Magick, and Cassie. Fearless despite Rue\u2019s warning that Alamo is not exactly the most trustworthy business partner, Maddy asks him if Kitty and Magick can take a couple of days off so she can take them out on the town, introduce them to people, and build up their profile. Alamo does not like the idea, even if Bishop reassures him that Maddy is probably genuine in her intentions, unlike Alamo\u2019s other business partners.<\/p>\nMeanwhile, Cassie is up for her big moment as \u201cJob Applicant\u201d on L.A. Nights. <\/em>When Dylan Reid\u2019s character mentions a honeymoon being over, her memory gets triggered to Naz telling her that \u201cthe honeymoon is over\u201d and cutting off Nate\u2019s pinky toe. Cassie enters a trance-like state and begins to describe her nightmarish marriage and her bloody wedding night. Cassie is going off script, but her emotional delivery is giving Patty \u201cthe feels.\u201d Dylan, apparently an intuitive actor, goes with it, adjusting Cassie\u2019s tale to fit the scene (\u201cNo woman deserves to get hit,\u201d he ad-libs). Patty and the unnamed L.A. Nights <\/em>director \u2013\u2013 can we get her a name? She\u2019s been in several episodes! \u2013\u2013 like the improv enough to let it roll. They keep using the word \u201ccompelling.\u201d They speak with Cassie during lunch. When they ask her what she does for a living, and Cassie replies \u201cpost content,\u201d Lexi complements: \u201cOn OnlyFans.\u201d When Cassie says she doesn\u2019t do full nudity, Lexi corrects: \u201cWhat about your special requests?\u201d When Patty says, \u201cSo, you\u2019re a sex worker,\u201d it\u2019s Cassie\u2019s turn to correct: \u201cI\u2019m a performer who uses my body to tell stories.\u201d She thinks her work is empowering, like a new form of feminism, even though last week she was on podcasts talking about men\u2019s primal need to provide. Even then, the L.A. Nights <\/em>director thinks her vibe is very Jane Fonda in Klute.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nPatty is under the impression that Lexi brought Cassie to the show in an attempt to rescue her from a bad path, which is partly why she offers Cassie a more permanent role if <\/em>she\u2019s willing to leave OnlyFans behind. Cassie only hesitates for half a second before accepting \u2014 she has never not taken an instruction for what to do with her life. Walking out of the lot, she screams with excitement. We\u2019ve seen this same expression of enthusiasm before, by the pool in her first meeting with Maddy \u2014 then, as now, what thrills her is the prospect of being famous. My opinion that Cassie has been whittled down to a flimsy sketch of a kink from a thorny character is well-documented, but I will give it to Levinson that Cassie\u2019s downfall has always meant Lexi\u2019s rise. Patty asks her to write Job Applicant\u2019s \u201crisque\u201d storyline, since she has an insider\u2019s perspective on Cassie\u2019s story. It\u2019s not like it comes to her without maneuvering: In the writers\u2019 room, she tells Patty that when she recommended Cassie to casting, she knew they\u2019d love her. That\u2019s my girl Lexi, making lemonade out of lemons.<\/p>\nCassie\u2019s life is changing all the time, while her husband, Nate Jacobs, is stuck in a finger-amputating Groundhog Day. When she gets home, it takes a few tries for Cassie to bring herself to delete her OnlyFans, though she is finally able to. In between tries, she calls Nate for advice, but he won\u2019t pick up the phone. While Gillie suggests to Lexi that she simply kill Job Applicant on the show, ominously explaining that \u201cif someone doesn\u2019t die periodically, people get bored\u201d (this is, perhaps, how we know someone will die by the end of the season), Cassie gets a package. It\u2019s a note that says, \u201canswer your phone,\u201d along with Nate\u2019s ring finger, wedding band still on. In that moment, Nate is meeting his inescapable fate, which is to get plummeted to near death by Naz\u2019s guy. This time, they\u2019re at the doomed Sun Settlers development, and Naz\u2019s crook catches Nate in the middle of stomping on the white fritillaries that ruined his life.<\/p>\n
\u2022 It\u2019s perhaps telling that tonight\u2019s episode title, \u201cStand Still and See,\u201d echoes the title of last season\u2019s \u201cStand Still Like a Hummingbird,\u201d similarly one of that season\u2019s strongest points.<\/p>\n
\u2022 What\u2019s going on with Nate\u2019s character \u2014 being slowly driven out to the margins of the storytelling \u2014 is not unlike what happened to Kat last season. Does that mean it\u2019s fair to read into it that Jacob Elordi is getting slowly but surely phased out of the show?<\/p>\n
Join <\/em>New York Magazine staffers in the comments section to discuss the same burning questions we\u2019re trying to answer in <\/em>Euphoria Club, our subscriber-exclusive newsletter.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n
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Sign up for Euphoria Club<\/em><\/h3>\nA newsletter overanalyzing season three of Sam Levinson\u2019s HBO fever dream, for subscribers only.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Euphoria Stand Still and See Season 3 Episode 6 Editor\u2019s Rating 3 stars *** Rue\u2019s story is a reminder that this show still has a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/pyxis.nymag.com\/v1\/imgs\/0fe\/370\/405ba78891e9dc740847dbb1867f47685f-euphoria-ep6.rsquare.w400.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1367,1368,1369,1365,1366,1363,1364,1370],"class_list":["post-9044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rj","tag-euphoria","tag-hbo","tag-newsletter-pick","tag-overnights","tag-recaps","tag-tv","tag-tv-recaps","tag-vulture-tv-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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