Watercooler Wednesdays: Euphoria & The Righteous Gemstones
Watercooler Shows, the trending series that everyone talks about the next day at the office, around the water cooler… today there are no longer offices to go to, the movie theaters are functioning at limited capacity, and the content on the streaming platforms is increasing exponentially. Watercooler Wednesdays seeks to be a (critical) guide through the VoD maze: from masterpiece series to guilty pleasures, and from blockbusters that keep you on the edge of your couch to hidden gems; if it leads to binging, then it’s exactly what we’re looking for.
This month’s recommendations have a few things in common. We picked two series now at their second season and, to paraphrase another popular TV show, Seinfeld, season 2 is the one that “makes or breaks” a product designed for the small screen. Whether we are talking about the episodic format, typical for sitcoms and somewhat outdated for any other genre in the current golden age of television; or stories that continue from episode to episode and sometimes from season to season; or anthology series that changes the entire cast every season but keeps the atmosphere and the concept… the industry will push them all (the ones that manage to make an impact, of course) to a season 2. When it should be clear whether it was a one-hit-wonder or something that can be replicated.
The trap that season 2 sets is that it always leads to very high expectations. Euphoria and The Righteous Gemstones didn’t sneak in under my radar in 2019, so I’ve approached them with no anticipation other than what I saw in the trailers. After watching them almost entirely – they’re both on HBO, their last episodes will come out on February 28 – I was left with the feeling that if I had embarked on this binging session with expectations from their previous seasons, if I had known where they were leading to, perhaps I would have appreciated them more. That’s because Euphoria is holding a few aces up its sleeve until it’s too late; by the time it hits you with its big drama you’ve already put a certain label on it that’s hard to peel off. The same thing happens with Gemstones, only in the opposite direction: the moment you realize that what you thought was a satire with a lot of humor is just a lot of humor (sometimes inspired, sometimes not), it’s hard to get rid of the feeling of unfinished work.
EUPHORIA (Sam Levinson, 2022)
The first thing that needs to be said about Euphoria is that it’s not a film with teenagers – the violence, the nudity, the drug use (often all three at once) would make it almost impossible to navigate the current legislation on child protection/working with underage actors. It’s certainly not a film for teenagers – if it had been released in cinemas, half of the audience it claims to portray would not be able to enter the theater. It is, to a certain extent, a film about teenagers, or rather adolescence in the general sense, which explores the darkest nightmares of a parent.
A high school in a fictional small town in California is the pretext for imagining a probable reality, though not very possible in its melodramatic accumulation. Euphoria is basically Beverly Hills on steroids, using the all too familiar tropes and lines of conflict: parents vs. children, boys vs. girls, bullying, illicit drugs, etc.
The main character is Rue (Zendaya), a drug addict and fatherless teen; she returns to high school after being in rehab and somehow manages to fool everyone that she is on the right track. Rue is also the narrator/commentator that introduces the other characters and analyzes their behavior, motivations, delusions and fantasies. Euphoria is, in the best sense, a series of frame stories, vignettes, flashbacks and style exercises, without losing sight of narrative cohesion.
Such a story opens season 2, a tribute at the border between Scorsese and Tarantino, shot on film stock, which shows the formative years of Fezco, a friend of Rue and drug dealer. A student with an aptitude for math, Fezco uses his talents in the most productive way, weighing doses of cocaine under the protective gaze of his maternal grandmother. When one of Grandma’s clients leaves him a baby as a guarantee for a deal that fails to come through, Fezco ends up with a little brother. A few years later, Rue meets the two brothers at a “business” meeting. The mobsters are now tattooed rednecks, not Italians in shiny suits, and the popular stuff is synthetic opioids. Strictly narrative, we have the same facts, the danger is quite real, just like in the flashback. However, the sensation delivered to the viewer is totally different. With a few fine adjustments in color, soundtrack and set design, the atmosphere turns to something rather sinister, that reminds of David Lynch.
Rue’s path makes a loop and returns to the meeting place half a season later, with an invitation to go into business, which will obviously turn against her. So why all this effort? It would be convenient to say that Euphoria is simply an exercise in style (style over substance), a demo reel showing director-screenwriter Sam Levinson’s skills, and it would not be wrong. But when you manage to do that consistently, mix cinematic genres so fluidly without losing sight of the characters, then the style and the effort of embedding references of all kinds become the substance.
When there is no room for flashbacks, the micro-story is framed by a drug-induced delirium in which traumatic memories mingle with revelation in some sort of musical. For other characters, the fantasy plays out while daydreaming: one of Rue’s friends, the only one in a non-toxic relationship, imagines how her dull friend is eviscerated by Khal Drogo. For the playboy athlete who ends up at the hospital in a coma, the fantasy plays out behind closed eyes: one of domestic happiness, but with his girlfriend’s best friend. Another teenager devises a hamletian play that reveals all the secrets and betrayals around her. Finally, there are even moments when Euphoria stops framing the stories, and the narrator-character speaks directly to the viewer, offering tips on how to mimic sobriety while commenting on the political situation in the US (in season 1 the fourth wall is broken to discuss a neglected niche in photography: the dick pic).
Euphoria hits the mark precisely because it seems to do all that gratuitously; it doesn’t strive to pay homage and is not trapped in a single genre/way of making cinema. And when it embarks on a venture, there is no room for pastiche, nostalgia or condescension for an outdated cultural trend. The problem with Euphoria – at least for someone who hasn’t seen the first season – is that in all this bustle you don’t get to grow fond of the characters. When Rue finally hits rock bottom and the cinematic artifice and comic solutions come to a stop, it’s too late to bring out the real drama.
Euphoria is available on Hbo Go.
The Righteous Gemstones (Danny McBride, 2022)
„Church is free… unless you want to sit in the good seats.”
The Righteous Gemstones revolves around a thriving televangelist family led by Pastor Eli Gemstone, played by John Goodman. Goodman is one of the main reasons I became interested in this series. It’s also why every time I want to say Gemstones it comes out as Flintstones, where Goodman also plays the lead role. There is, however, a deeper resemblance: humor derives almost exclusively from imagining a world almost identical to the one we live in but seen through a particular filter. In the Gemstones, this filter is religion, a special form of Christianity that could only exist in America, which combines prosperity (with a hint of pyramid scheme), dogmatism and performance art.
Like Euphoria – from which is not that different, surprisingly – The Righteous Gemstones also opens with a flashback. Young Eli tries to escape poverty and the grasp of an authoritarian, religious parent by participating in wrestling shows. But the real money comes from illegal activities; the future pastor becomes an expert on intimidation and broken fingers under the guidance of a local Memphis mobster.
Decades later, Eli has built an empire from scratch using his performer skills perfected in the ring: religious-themed amusement parks, a mega church-stadium, and a streaming platform with millions of subscribers, all from anonymous donations from parishioners. Which are tax-exempt money – sent by God, as he would say, or money laundering, according to the investigative journalist (and an atheist on top) who is after him. Moreover, an old friend from Memphis is in town, eager to reminisce about the good old days.
The Gemstones must hold together, only that Eli’s offspring are all immature dunderheads. When not insulting and sabotaging each other, Eli’s children engage in all sorts of corporate power games and religious affairs. From Zions Landing, an exclusive resort for Christian families in Florida, to God Squad, an elite unit of bodybuilders who practice abstinence and feed only on smoothies, all attempts at financial independence by the prodigal sons are doomed to failure.
Following the classic structure of vaudeville duos, Eli is the serious guy who reflects all the buffoonery around him. John Goodman’s performance is also the reason why I thought – adding the fact that I was also quite unfamiliar with the first season – that I had before me a satire and not a full-on comedy (as would be expected from any production written and directed by Danny McBride). Hence a slight disappointment and confusion when McBride’s irreverent style – with an impressive array from cleverly crafted pop culture references to deliberately stupid vomit-based jokes – began to pick up speed, thus killing any chance of settling the plot in a manner other than resorting to the most ridiculous deus ex machina.
And yet the satire is present, by simply depicting the phenomenon and closing the characters in a circle of comic idiocy drowned in money and opulence. It would have been somewhat impossible to go further than that. First, because in this case life really beats film. Second, there was a need for a certain degree of sympathy for the Gemstone clan. With all their sins, they had to remain the positive characters in their own story; a story that keeps its distance from any serious questioning of the extreme forms of prosperity theology. If The Righteous Gemstones had gotten closer to the venality of the real characters in the televangelist show-biz, then there would have been no prospects for a season 3. Hollywood, wrestling and streaming on religious themes: the show must go on.
The Righteous Gemstones is available on Hbo Go.
Film critic and journalist, UNATC graduate. Andrei Sendrea wrote for LiterNet, Gândul, FILM and Film Menu, and worked as an editor on the "Ca-n Filme" TV Show. In his free time, he works on his collection of movie stills, which he organizes into idiosyncratic categories. At Films in Frame, he writes the Watercooler Wednesdays column - the monthly top of TV shows/series.