Sam, I'm So Sorry I Wasn't Your Mother
Can someone forward this to HBO?
Happy Monday! I hope everyone somehow found a way to watch the SAG Red Carpet, Euphoria season finale, and the first part of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (Team Lisa)!
It’s been quite a week. I’m exhausted. My brain is so tired. I don’t think I can be on twitter.com anymore. I had a migraine for like four days and I was like, omg it’s finally happening to me. COVID finally got me. But it didn’t. I think I’m just severely dehydrated. And then, after doing some light googling I found out that my allergy steroid spray might be the reason I’ve never had COVID??? Wild. I’m not a doctor, but you should definitely ask your ENT about this spray if you have weak sinuses like me. Anyways…let’s talk about my favorite thing in the world, TV.
🚨🚨🚨EUPHORIA (and depending on your YA TV literacy; One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, The OC, Dawson’s Creek, Gilmore Girls, 90210, etc.) SPOILERS AHEAD🚨🚨🚨
Bring Back My Episodes
I love TV. I love reality shows. I love Jeopardy. I love dramas. I love the food network. I love a talk show. I love a travel show. I love mysteries (I miss Mare). I love comedies. I love sitcoms (lmk if you’re also watching Abbot Elementary). I love morning shows. I love them all! But what I love the most is a teen drama.
I’ve seen them all. Really, I just googled it. 90210? Original, check. Reboot, check. Gossip Girl? Dumb question. One Tree Hill? Team Brooke. Dawson’s Creek? I have the DVD box set. It cost me hundreds of dollars when I was in High School. I was literally working at Abercrombie just to afford Dawson’s Creek DVD box sets. The OC? Yes. The Hills? Duh. Laguna Beach? Why do you think I even worked at Abercrombie? Pretty Little Liars? Babe, I’ve even done a rewatch. Teen Wolf? Lol yes. Vampire Diaries? Buffy? Honestly, I see a vampire newsletter in our collective futures. Friday Night Lights, Degrassi, Outerbanks, Everwood, Skins, GLEE, Awkward, Riverdale, Faking It, Smallville…I’VE BEEN THERE. I’ve even seen 13 Reasons Why, not to be dramatic but don’t fuck with me. I know my shit.
And that’s why I think we really need to have this discussion.
To be clear! I’m not going to shit on Euphoria. I love that show. I love my girlies (all of them equally), and all I want is to spend more time with them. I just want more time! More filler episodes! Justice for filler!
SO Sam Levinson, the teen drama team (TDT™) at HBO, Zendaya, hell even Drake, please hear my plea.
🔊BRING BACK 20+ EPISODE SEASONS🔊
Ten episode seasons are fine (not really, but for the sake of my argument let’s go with it) for a show with a central plot like Game of Thrones, but not for shows that are driven less by plot and more by the character’s emotional development*.
Could you imagine if season 1 of One Tree Hill (22 episodes) was boiled down to 10 episodes? I am literally laughing while thinking about what they would cut out. What would they cut out? The River Court? Love triangle #1 (Karen, Dan, Deb)? Lucas submitting Peyton’s artwork to that weird magazine? Peyton’s depressing art in general? Love triangle #2 (Lucas, Nathan, Peyton)? Jake and the baby!? Brooke being naked in the car?!!?!? Love triangle #3 (Lucas, Nathan, Haley - it existed)? The one episode arc where Nathan is addicted to Adderall? Peyton’s dad being lost at sea? Love triangle #4 (Lucas, Peyton, Brooke)? Lucas getting a tattoo? Peyton getting drugged? LUCAS GOING INTO A COMA???
This isn’t even half of the drama that goes down in season 1 because this is all I could remember off the top of my head, and I didn’t even want to touch basketball or the adults.
Season 1 of The OC? Season 1 of Vampire Diaries? We don’t have the time, and I don’t think you have the attention span for me to go there. And also, WHAT WOULD WE BE WILLING TO GIVE UP! Nothing. I would give up nothing.
I love every messy, filler, character-driven moment of these shows. I love that I know the characters better than I know people in real life. I love that I can easily say, “Blair Waldorf would NEVER be caught dead at Carbone post-2020, but Jenny Humphrey would absolutely have been at Julia Fox’s Lucien birthday party.”
And that’s what I so desperately want for Euphoria. I want filler. I want dumb moments that I can see myself in (because as millennials, isn’t that what we really want? To see ourselves in these characters?). I want to know where Kat even came up with the idea to lie about having a brain disorder. I want to see theater rehearsals and more of Bobbi! I want more Jules?? Where is she?? I want to know if any of the Euphoria High faculty even read Lexi’s play. I want to know what happened with Oklahoma! I want to feel like I invested in these 12+ characters for a reason. I want HBO to admit they were wrong and that their stories are fighting the 10-episode medium they’ve created**. I want more, and I don’t want to wait until 2024 for 10 more episodes that will leave me feeling unfulfilled because I’m sure there will be a ton of new characters that will take up space in my brain (Elliot’s singing?? Talk about filler.).
And I get it. It’s probably production. I don’t need anyone to tell me that everything always comes down to money and scheduling. Film is expensive, Zendaya is busy, I get it. But waiting 2+ years to release the next season in these unprecedented times feels kinda…pathetic?
Because let me be very clear about this, Euphoria isn’t some high art metaphor. It’s literally a teen drama. While the acting is lightyears better, it is not the Illuminati work that the TikTokers makes it out to be. It’s a soapy, melodramatic retelling of high school kids, and just because it’s on HBO and we saw boobs shot on film does not break it out of the category of being a teen drama. Every issue Euphoria tackled has been talked to death on the likes of Degrassi. And that’s not a bad thing! We don’t need to reinvent the wheel; we just need more wheels!
After taking a breath and doing some math, I realized that this season of Euphoria is only 8 episodes. And now, in a moment of clarity, I see that not only am I insane but that Euphoria is just an award-baiting mini-series. Cue depressive episode.
RIP to my golden age of television. Hopefully, at the very least, Zendaya, Sydney, and Sam all get their Emmys, and Dominic Fike will get the music career he so desperately wants.
*I honestly could make the same argument about AJLT and how fans would be so much more willing to deal with the shitty character development if we had more episodes, but that has nothing to do with teens so we’ll leave that for another day.
**The Euphoria writers deserve so much credit for making me care about so many characters in such a short amount of time. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will ever happen for the Gossip Girl reboot.
Other Things I Like Right Now:
Pouring a liquid iv into my water bottle and shaking it up like it’s a baba for Violet and Scout (yes, I do have a favorite)
Avril Lavigne has a new album???? It’s good????
Surprise, surprise, it’s another Harry Potter weekend
Taking a bed nap in the middle of the day
Some Things I Hate Right Now:
Pickles that are too close to cucumbers
Thinking about Euphoria season 3 being 2 years away and the concept of time
Obviously, war
AGAIN SORRY I WAS LATE! It will probably happen again, but who knows, maybe it won’t (it probably will). Can’t wait to see what fresh hell this week brings! Bye!
I hope you enjoyed it! Please share with your friends and subscribe to read all about what I hate on Wednesday.
let's talk about the sugar content in a liquid IV. I have a theory that it gave me a ripping headache.