The early going of season two of EUPHORIA has so many fantasy sequences. Each character seems to get at least one: so in 203 we've got Lexie coping with her place in her family and life by imagining herself as in a TV show that she's creating; or we've got Rue in 203 back in the classroom teaching us about how to prepare for the moment when your friends and family discover you are still using; or we've got Kat imagining that instead of Ethan coming back from the bathroom in 202, Khal Drogo kills him offscreen and then savages her.
Part of the secret sauce of a great EUPHORIA fantasy sequence is having it flow right in and out of reality, with no break. Ethan leaves for the bathroom, and we stay with Kat, all of which tells us we're still in reality. But then there's smoke and blood and then Drogo.
Lexie's fantasy sequence likewise comes on the heels of a slo mo nightmare moment in which she is sitting at the head of the table watching as her parents and Cassie all yell at each other. The look on her face is heartbreakingly sad. And Rue narrates, "She often imagined that her parents weren't really her parents, that her sister wasn't really her sister, that her house wasn't really her house. That it was just the movie. One that she was writing."
Until that last line, nothing in this moment suggests we're going to cutaway to some kind of fantasy, or even that such a turn is possible. She leaves the table and it still seems very sad, but then suddenly it turns out she's outside the set and she's talking to her an assistant and others and then watches her "parents" doing the scene at video village. And interestingly, that sequence maintains the emotion of what had come before, it's just now it's the stress of making a show, rather than of living in a nightmare.
But then we cut to this behind the scenes interview where Lexie talks about her show. And it's just hilarious, with her deciding what her sister should wear (and just being devastating in the process), or Rue being called out for being high on the set.
I think my favorite so far this season, though, is Kat being confronted by super models in 202. She's on her computer watching make up tutorials and feeling ugly and weak, and suddenly there's a super model there telling her how much she envies Kat, how brave and confident Kat is. So again, we're starting in reality and then without warning it's a fantasy.
But what really sets this fantasy apart is that it also plays out in such an unexpected way. Kat insists that she is not who the model thinks she is, that she hates herself. But the result is only that more models show up and pile on more empty affirmations. And Kat keeps calling bullshit on them, until her room is filled with super models screaming at her to love herself and her running out of the room screaming back.
It's all pretty much the opposite of every other take on this kind of moment that we've seen on television. Which makes it both delightful for the audience and also a great way of capturing Kat's very specific point of view on things.
You don't want to be programmatic about fantasy sequences. But if you're looking for ideas on how to weave them in, definitely check out EUPHORIA.
