Twin Peaks Season 1 ends on a cliffhanger. Actually, it ends on half a dozen or so cliffhangers, in which seemingly everyone in town is shot at, burned up, sent to the hospital, or murdered in it. When our hero, FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, wakes up from his own brush with death at the start of Season 2, Lucy, the Sheriff’s department receptionist, rattles the whole litany of life-changing events in a monotone voice. It’s a voice not so very different from our drug dealing friend from Euphoria Laurie’s, actually.

Which is appropriate, because that’s how that episode feels: one major thing after another for an overstuffed hour. In short order: Rue gets arrested. Rue becomes a snitch. Cassie leaves Nate. Nate’s business collapses. Cassie’s business takes off. Rue nearly gets caught. Rue nearly gets caught again. Rue nearly gets shot. Big Eddy does get shot. Alamo and Laurie are at war. And Jules accidentally costs Lexi’s show $191K by painting 14 penises into some set dressing. 

“How many penii would you like me to get rid of?” she asks Patty, Lexi’s boss.

“Let’s say all of them,” Patty replies.

So Jules, who as a trans woman is probably tired of hearing how inappropriate penises are, splashes the thing with red paint, paints an even bigger penis on top, and calls it a night. I’m not a hundred percent sure what she expected from network show, but this is a woman who lounges around in outfits that cost more than I make in a financial quarter, so she may not be super familiar with the exciting fall lineup or whatever. Jules’s art costs the studio some money, Lexi the respect of her boss, and herself a frustrating day she’ll never get back.

More to the point, it’s funny! A lot of this episode is funny, despite the high stakes. The Nate/Cassie storyline is like some over-the-top 1980s satire of mansion living, with Nate generating mixed metaphors about his reattached toe, Cassie storming out with a mountain of matching luggage, Nate getting down on his knees in front of the zoning board and begging for another chance Macgruber-style, and Cassie telling the big famous influencer she and Maddy want her to impress “Omigod, I love coke!” the way you might say “Omigod, I love You’ve Got Mail!” 

Elordi has long been one of the strongest actors on the show, doing great work in a villain’s role, so it’s always fun to see him emphasize Nate’s sweaty, grasping failson qualities. Sweeney, meanwhile, is really leaning into Cassie’s comedic side; since a not insubstantial part of Sweeney’s own career is influencer-adjacent, she’s basically making fun of herself all season long. Cassie guzzles wine, shoves cocaine into her vagina, struggles to be heard over a leaf blower in a scene that’s like something from a National Lampoon’s Vacation movie, and replies to her disapproving sister Lexi’s comment that she’s worth more than her body by saying “My body’s worth a lot.” (Lexi chews the whole gang out for being degenerates, saying it’s upsetting how far they’ve fallen and sounding like the more boring members of Euphoria’s audience.)

But while Cassie is stupid, she’s no dummy: She might have slept with the guy despite Maddy’s warning that this is the worst thing she could do for her career, but when Maddy and his boys manages to break into his bedroom to stop them, she snaps right back into self-promotion mode for his crew’s cameras. “It’s just me, Cassie, and that’s my handle!” she says, as cheerfully as a 1950s spokesmodel selling oven cleaner.

Rue’s situation is substantially more desperate than Cassie’s. (Though not more desperate than Nate’s; turned down the by the zoning board, he’s now got no hope of paying back the money he owes his gangster associate.) An amusingly deadpan pair of middle-aged cops (Hemky Madera and William “Bill” Bodner) have her dead to rights. They threaten to pin the deaths associated with Laurie’s tainted fentanyl on her — after all, she distributed it — and send her to prison for life unless she becomes a confidential informant.

“Fuck,” she sighs.

“‘Fuck’ is accurate,” one of the cops agrees.

Rue’s problem, though, is that they send her back into Alamo’s organization with a parcel of fake drugs, and the moment they come out of the vault and go into circulation at the club, her ruse will be exposed. Since Laurie knows Alamo’s responsible for the murder of her beloved bird, they won’t be doing business ever again, which means Rue has no valuable information to provide to the DEA via the bug they set up on her smartphone. 

Things get worse for Rue when she notices a new girl, Kitty (Anna Van Patten), having obviously traumatic group sex with customers in one of the private rooms. One stripper has already overdosed, while another went to a “clinic” never to return, a fate Alamo darkly hints awaits Rue if she uses hard drugs, too. How many more can Rue put up with?

Overhwelmed by her conscience, she approaches Kitty in the restroom and asks if she’s being forced to work for Alamo. Kitty denies it — and Magick, one of the other dancers, overhears. She immediately relays her suspicions that Rue is a rat to Big Eddy, though the DEA hear it all over the microphone and warn Rue she’s got to discredit Magick to save her own skin.

But while the three of them argue it out, Laurie’s redneck goons burst in wearing creepy Obama stocking masks and carrying guns. After threatening to kill Rue and Magick, they wound Big Eddy instead, telling him they’ll shoot his dick off unless he opens Alamo’s all-important safe full of drugs and cash, which they then clean out. But Magick and Rue are able to pull up security footage of the getaway truck and recognize the driver: Faye, Rue’s friend with the “gigantic lips.”

Obviously, we’re very far away from high school relationship drama, even the intensely fraught and drugged-up version from Euphoria Seasons 1 and 2. Would the show have taken off like it did without that near-universal backdrop of adolescent angst? Probably not. Does that mean its reincarnation as a black-comedy crime drama about a group of former and current(ish) friends, all of whom are about as dumb as a pillowcase full of doorknobs, doesn’t work? Oh hell no — this is a destination hour of TV for me.

With the new status quo now established for the core characters, creator-writer-director Sam Levinson can make big jumps in the plot like the ones we saw here, while maintaining the show’s usual maximalist blend of arty trash and trashy art. There are bright white shots in this episode that are positively Kubrickian, there’s a rom-com makeover montage, there’s penis graffiti, there’s a high-stakes poker game, there’s a stomach-churning running theme of women being treated as disposable, and there’s a funeral for an assassinated cockatoo, complete with a tiny coffin. Euphoria Season 3 like a safe full of pills: Some are pick-me-ups, some are poison.

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.