I started watching ‘Euphoria’ my junior year of high school, when everything about it felt unreal in the best way. The colors and lighting were aesthetic, the music stayed with you, and even the worst moments had a strange allure to them. It didn’t ignore how ugly addiction was, but it showed how easy it is to get pulled into it. So now, being in my junior year of college, I went into this new season expecting at least some version of that same feeling. Not the same story, but the same vibes–however, the first episode just does not have it.

Instead, it feels stripped down in a way that is almost uncomfortable to sit through. Not because it’s powerfully raw, but because it feels like it’s trying to make everything a little too bleak and it forgot how to be engaging. The show used to balance beauty with Rue’s (and other characters’) destruction; now it just sits in that destruction.

The opening car scene is where you start to feel that shift. It drags on way too long, stretching a moment that could have been funny and even tense into something just exhausting. You stop feeling anything and start thinking about how long it’s been going. Then the fentanyl smuggling scene takes that even further. It was hard to watch, but not in a way that felt meaningful. It feels overly detailed, almost like walking you through it step by step. Instead of trusting the audience, it overdoes it and ends up feeling more uncomfortable than impactful.

The writer’s choices with the characters felt even more off. What they did with Fez’s character did not sit right with me at all. After losing Angus Cloud, it feels like there was a real chance to give his character a storyline that could maybe educate users on drug use in a better way. Instead, putting him in jail feels empty, and wrong considering the circumstances of Cloud’s death. It felt as though the writers went with the easiest option instead of the right one.

Even more confusing is the fact that the only character who felt somewhat reasonable this episode was Nate Jacobs. That shouldn’t happen. He’s been one of the most toxic characters from the beginning, so the fact that he feels like the most grounded one now says a lot about the rest of the show. Cassie’s storyline is another problem. It feels random and extremely pointless, like it just appeared without any real buildup. There’s no emotional weight behind it. No real plot, either. The only character that I felt stayed the same was Maddy. She is confident and actually feels like a real person in the middle of this episode. She’s a baddie, and she’s one of the only characters keeping the episode from feeling completely flat.

Then there is the music. The absence of Labrinth is almost impossible to ignore. His soundtrack used to be such a huge part of what made ‘Euphoria’ feel the way it did. It filled every scene with emotion and most of his music I still listen to today. Without it, everything feels quieter, and empty.

Watching this episode now, compared to when I first started the show in high school, it feels like something is missing. Back then it felt like you were being pulled into the show, and you could actually sit through an entire episode without taking multiple breaks. Now it just feels like you are being held in it against your will.

This premiere feels like a come down that never really recovers. It’s trying so hard to de-romanticize everything that it loses what made the show a hit in the first place. It’s not that it shouldn’t change, but right now, it just does not feel like ‘Euphoria.’