Euphoria

HBO

Euphoria continues to be absolutely insane this season, with plots pulled out of entirely different genres and stapled together in a way that makes no sense. Compels me though.

Last night, we reached a new low in the characterization of one returning cast member who appears to have been dragged back to the series unwillingly. After originally accusing Jacob Elordi of phoning in his Nate Jacobs earlier this season, this week in episode 4, he gave a good performance. But it’s clear now he is simply not being written as Nate Jacobs at all.

The original Nate was calculating, charismatic, explosively dangerous and almost ontologically evil. He had very, very brief moments of redemption, but what he did not have was a personality that resembles William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard, bumbling through a bunch of lies about a crime and looking incredibly pathetic while doing so.

This culminated in a city council meeting where Nate literally drops to his knees to beg an uncaring group of administrators to approve his project, this coming a week after he was beaten to a pulp and had his toe cut off by mobsters he owes a million dollars.

Who is this character?

This season has changed a lot about its characters, and many just feel…off, even if their performances are good. But Nate, even though I will say Elordi finally seemed to give it his all this week, has been body-snatched to a degree that’s outright distracting.

There’s a lot of evidence that Elordi both wanted and is enjoying this new version of Nate. He’s previously called this arc the “end of hubris and arrogance,” finding it “liberating” for the character. And some of this was just sort of last-minute scrambling, he told EW:

"I was coming off off a plane somewhere, and later I had a small amount of time … to fit in a lot of work," Elordi recalls. "And so I hit a point where I could only go day by day. I could only do what was handed to me that day, and then try to invent something based on what I know of the character, based on what I see on the set live in front of me."

"Because I had no choice, I got to be free in the acting process, 'cause it was kind of just throwing s‑‑‑ at the wall and seeing what would stick," he said. “Less thinking about what feels real and more about, 'How does this work in the frame?' Or 'Is this funny or not funny?' I had a more relaxed way of approaching playing a character, you know?”

I mean, you can tell. If Elordi was given as much freedom over his character as he indicates, that’s a combination of both Levinson’s mistake and Elordi’s misreading of his own character. This transformation makes little sense unless we are building to a big Nate “snap” moment, pushed back into his old self, and taking the fight to his oppressors. Instead, he’s making metaphors about his severed toe and quite literally bowing to his local city council. What have we done here?

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