Thoughts on Season 2

As i finished watching the final episode i can say that i felt somewhat cheated, the season was amazing in many ways, episode 5 and 7 were definitley the highlights of the season, the performances from all the actors was phenomenal, and they did topped the previous season.

i loved that Fez and Lexi were given more attention and the building and the reward of Lexis play was really beautiful, i loved the way it was filmed

that being said i felt everything in the season got smaller, the characters got a lot smaller and the conflicted boiled down to 2 things, Rues Relapse and Cassies conflicted feelings

compare it to the first season where even though Rue is the main protagonist and the shows major conflict was her drug use the writers made all their efforts to make sure that every character got appropriate amount of screentime, everyone was getting the right amount of respectful attention while in season 2 the main characters became Rue, Cassie, Nate and maybe Maddy the rest felt like side characters, all of the unresolved character plots from season 1 were either forgotten or resolved in very unsatisfying way, Mckays personal struggles and his toxic relationship with his father? oh lets have him break off with cassie and never see him again. Kats camgirl plot and how her superficiality affects her relationship? oh lets have her act like a bitch to Ethan and break them up. Nate and Jules entire plot? Oh lets make Cassie and Nate a thing and introduce Elliot to be the conflict for Rue and Jules

Oh Elliot...where do i start with this character, i am sure i am not the only one to say it but i just hated this character, no hate to the actor because the guy was doing his job but boy was this character a waste at best and absolute filler at worst. now he could have been an interesting character for Rue to bond over, share a common struggle of being teenage addicts but he didn't add shit to the story, no really he just sits there to exist, he doesn't even look like he does drugs at all besides smoke a lot of weed and i wouldn't say he was somebody that enabled Rues drug use because she already relapsed at the end of season 1 so she would have still used drugs without Elliots edition to the story.

and do not get me started with his forced love triangle or whatever the fuck he has with Rue and Jules, its so unnecessary and makes Jules look very stupid as a character, i don't know what he is going to do in season 3 but he left such a bad taste in my mouth that i'll likely skip all of his scenes

Lastly the pacing

I know that euphoria really embraces it's arthouse approach to filmmaking and i respect their bold choices, that being said i felt a lot of it's experimental moments hurt the shows pacing and overall quality a lot, many times it caught me off guard and confused me on what timeline we are on right now, a great example is in the last episode where i thought the scenes with lexi and rue happened after the play was over, but when it was revealed that it was actually part of the lexi play i was like "oh...i thought it was over?"

Overall id probably give this season 7/10 i fear the 3rd season might be worse but we'll see