Summary
“Made You Look” wasn’t as tense or hard-hitting as the previous episode, but it’s still an interesting exploration of modern youth and the personas we employ in real life and online.
This Euphoria Episode 3 recap for the episode titled “Made You Look” contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
It was always going to be hard to top the tension of Euphoria‘s second episode, and “Made You Look” cleverly didn’t try to. Instead, it took a different approach. It kept its conflicts small and contained, honing in on where various characters and their relationships find themselves after last week’s revelations and occurrences. I can’t say it was quite as effective — and one extended scene, in particular, seemed to be trying much too hard to both shock and amuse — but there’s still no indication that HBO’s stylish teen drama is going to become less watchable any time soon.
Impressed with the positive attention that comes from being an accidental porn star, Kat undergoes a radical transformation in Euphoria Episode 3, in both appearance and attitude. She glams herself up, and gradually escalates her PornHub presence, first twerking in a doorway and then becoming a cam girl. (We’ve seen how that can turn out.) She’s quickly able to find a willing mark; some beardy fat guy with a “medically small” penis who enjoys being insulted and humiliated and is happy to pay for the privilege. It’s an easy gig for her, and Kat sees the opportunity instantly, especially since it quickly becomes apparent that in the world of online sexual deviance, her anxieties about her weight are as tame as it gets.
The sequence in which the man pulls around his absurdly tiny junk is where “Made You Look” feels as though it’s trying a little bit too hard to live up to its title; it goes on far too long and doesn’t particularly offer much in the way that some of this show’s other “shocking” scenes have. I could have done with less of it — probably not something the guy masturbating has ever said, but I digress.
Euphoria Episode 3 is evidently concerned with digital matters; with how we present our truer selves online, where we can be anonymous, or at least shielded by distance. Conversations over the internet or via text take place all the time throughout “Made You Look”, with the annoyingly misspelled missives popping up on the screen. Jules continues to talk to and eventually fall for “ShyGuy”, who we know to be Nate, while her real-life relationship with Rue continues to be neglected as a result. And in that neglect, Rue finds a reason to violate her attempts at staying sober. In the absence of a long-term solution, she seeks out the nearest quick fix.
The most heartbreaking scene in “Made You Look” was Rue visiting Fezco’s house for more drugs, only to be turned away. Her desperate, frantic braying on his door while ranting about how he made her what she is and ruined her life was a fine moment of acting from Zendaya and a stinging point about addicts and their relationships both with drugs and themselves. While Fez may be partially responsible, Rue blames him because it’s easier than blaming herself. Was he not a drug dealer, wouldn’t she have just found someone who was?
Either way, it leads to something of a breakthrough for Rue, who, at the end of Euphoria Episode 3, gets in touch with Colman Domingo’s Ali, a fellow support group member who immediately saw through her ruse about being 60 days clean. With plenty of episodes remaining it’s unlikely that’ll go well for long, but it’s a start, at the very least.
And as that new subplot begins, another continues, as Maddie becomes increasingly suspicious of Nate’s cagey behavior and finds multiple suspect pictures on his phone. What, you thought “Made You Look” was going to be light on penises? Well, you thought wrong. But what does this mean for Maddie — or, for that matter, for Nate? Can he be with Jules what he can’t be in his actual life? Are we so attached to our screens and our usernames and our instant-messaging apps that we don’t even know ourselves anymore? Euphoria Episode 3 is more interested in asking these questions than it is in answering them. But most shows don’t even bother to ask them at all.
