For this week’s recap, here’s what we thought about “America My Dream,” which broadcast on Sunday, April 19. Watch out for spoilers ahead.
Rue gets a new job—and more problems
Rue spent a lot of the Season 3 premiere, “Àndale,” musing about religion and spirituality. But her soul-searching was short lived, seemingly coming to an end the moment that her new employer shot an apple off her head in the final moments of that episode. In “America My Dream,” the true darkness of Rue’s predicament starts to sink in as it becomes clear that she’s just moving from one form of labor exploitation to another.
Rue is still deeply in debt to Laurie. In comes Alamo Brown, a magnate of the sex trade who likes to shoot stuff with gold-plated guns—as he did in the last episode, and does again, with a shotgun this time, towards the beginning of this episode. Impressed by Rue, he decides to liberate her in exchange for her agreeing to do his dirty work. At his Western ranch, in addition to cleaning out animal pens and toilets, Rue destroys the evidence of the fentanyl overdose in “Àndale” that led to the death of a stripper.
In her characteristically deadpan narration, Zendaya’s Rue muses on the moral turpitude of partaking in a criminal cover-up. Her musings are only brief, and at first all seems to be forgotten as she takes a job as a kind of administrative assistant at the Silver Slipper, a dodgy roadside strip club that Alamo owns. But it turns out that the dead stripper, Trish, has people who care about her, and a fellow performer—the beautiful Angel—refuses to buy into the phony lies she’s being fed to cover up Trish’s death. She confronts Rue, finds out what happened, and the episode then takes a dark and unexpected twist that I’ll talk about farther below.
Maddy and Cassie reunite
In an unexpectedly sophisticated way, “America My Dream” offers a fly-on-the-wall look at how the entertainment and sex industries are structurally built to exploit ambitious but often vulnerable women. “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson, who wrote and directed the episode, sets up Maddy as a linchpin in this system. She’s being exploited herself by her boss, a powerful Hollywood talent agent who hires her on the spot after Maddy gives her an impromptu sales pitch at a restaurant. “I’m not a victim, I won’t be a PR nightmare, and I believe in capitalism,” she declares. Although nobody we know has gotten hired that way in real life, that line nicely encapsulates the bleak cynicism at the heart of this episode, in which the American dream looks more like a nightmare.
Naturally, being the shrewd and self-interested operator that she is, Maddy goes ahead and joins the fray. Eager to take on some clients of her own, she approaches a beautiful, bikini-clad woman at a beach and gradually (through a series of somewhat confusing flashbacks) turns her into a social media star. One of her recommendations is that the young woman turn up the heat in her posts, and in a brilliant scene, Maddy pulls back the curtain on the entire social-media machine by giving the aspiring influencer a lecture on how to “imply nudity” without making actual pornographic content.
All of this of course leads to the inevitable reunion of Maddy and Cassie, the onetime high-school besties who had a falling out in previous seasons when Cassie fell in love with Maddy’s ex. Cassie has been making erotic content for Instagram lately, and reaches out to Maddy after getting permission from Nate to launch an OnlyFans. The two meet up at a lavish poolside lounge somewhere in Los Angeles, and Levinson plays up the momentous occasion with a campy-cinematic soundtrack of orchestral strings and piano.
They order Aperol spritzes, briefly talk about their history with Nate, and then Cassie talks Maddy into taking her on as a client. Cassie started out this social-media project in an effort to cover the expenses of a flower arrangement for her wedding, and there are deeper motivations at play as she seeks some financial and creative independence of her own. But she’s clearly setting herself up as another tragic mark: “I could be anything,” she tells Maddy by way of explaining her talents. Zendaya drives the point home, laying it on a bit too thick in her voiceover narration: “Cassie was exactly the kind of girl you’d dream of signing. Beautiful, but directionless.”
Cal is back and Nate is exhausting
Ever since the finale of Season 2, the question of what happened to Cal has been on some “Euphoria” fans’ minds. Smooth and confident at first, Cal has a major downfall as he gets arrested for the secret videos he took of the people he was hooking up with, turned into the cops by his own son Nate.
The actor who played Cal—Eric Dane—died in February after a battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Dane fought through the disease’s debilitating neurodegenerative symptoms to film his parts in Season 3, and he makes an appearance in “America My Dream.” But it’s only a bit part, with Dane playing Cal as a downtrodden loser who makes perceptive observations about Nate’s increasingly shaky financial situation in between arguing about his sexuality, getting drunk, and attending meetings of the Sex and Love Addicts support group.
As the inheritor of his dad’s real estate business, Nate is trying to build a state-of-the-art palliative care facility along the California coast. But he’s struggling to make the deal go through and owes a loanshark $550K, with interest accruing each week. He hosts a party for a bunch of friends and/or potential investors (the lines between the two seem blurry), and between sipping fancy cocktails, they make wisecracks about dying relatives.
Eventually, some of the partygoers catch wind of Cassie’s latest OnlyFans posts. The pics include one of Cassie dressed as a baby, as part of her strategy to target specific niche fetish audiences, and a humiliated Nate convinces her to abandon the whole thing.
Nate’s storyline so far has been the dullest of the bunch: Mostly he just seems exhausted in this episode. But you can’t say the same for Nate and Cassie’s housekeeper, Juana, who is low-key becoming one of the season’s best supporting characters. Cassie has recruited Juana as her photographer and content collaborator, and during the party Juana needles Nate in a hilariously annoying way about all the leftover food that they’re throwing out.
Jules comes back, but Angel is the star
“America My Dream” marks the return of Jules, Rue’s onetime love interest and best friend, who has now apparently made a nice life for herself as a “sugar baby” with a rich boyfriend. Rue and Jules catch up in Jules’ high-rise penthouse, providing an opportunity for the show’s costume and set design to shine. The place is minimally furnished in the coolest way possible, with little more than a chic leather armchair, painting easel, and midcentury-modern lamp. Some music plays in the background, on what we can only guess would be a vintage record player.
Before we see Jules, though, Levinson takes us through the downward spiral of Angel, the aforementioned stripper at the Silver Slipper. At first, Angel is the perfect image of confidence and sex appeal, popping bubblegum before going onstage to perform while dressed in her ornate top and thong. But she grows increasingly agitated because of Trish’s disappearance, and then hits rock bottom after Rue breaks the news about Trish dying of a fentanyl overdose. When news about her breakdown makes it to Alamo, he assigns Rue to bring Angel to a rehab facility.
Rue is optimistic at first, impressed with Alamo’s willingness to fund the recovery of one of his employees. “You know, life is precious,” Rue says at one point, working to convince Angel that she needs help. “I don’t know about that,” Angel replies. But of course this is just another deal with the devil, and that becomes clear once they reach the actual rehab clinic.
A successful guy like Alamo could certainly afford one of those high-end facilities where celebrities go, but Rue and Angel arrive at a dingy-looking building on a quiet street. An unsmiling desk worker sits on her phone, fixated on a game, pausing only to tell Rue that the staff has been expecting them. Angel is terrified, but Rue encourages her to go in, and she watches as Angel walks down a darkened hallway to her so-called treatment.
There’s no paperwork for Rue to fill out, nothing to sign. Back on the street, an ambulance pulls up right behind Rue as she pulls away to drive back to the Silver Slipper. It’s a haunting scene, marking the logical conclusion of all the exploitation that we’ve seen in the episode thus far: One gets the distinct impression that Angel won’t be walking out of that rehab clinic again.
