The date is January 30, 2022. Not so long ago in some ways, and a lifetime ago in others. For one thing, two particular famous people were still alive: Sinéad O’Connor and Angus Cloud. And, for a brief pop cultural instant in time, the two would be linked in an episode of Euphoria. O’Connor’s appearance, of course, is on the soundtrack. But more than that, she’s made a central part of the scene halfway through the episode, entitled “You Who Cannot See, Think Of Those Who Can,” when Cal (Eric Dane) specifically puts “Drink Before the War” on the jukebox. The jukebox at the same unnamed bar with nothing but a sign that reads, “Beer Pool Dancing” in red neon above it. Where he was taken to by his best friend, Derek…back when the inseparable duo was still in high school in the late 80s. Or rather, on the precipice of embarking on their college experience after graduating.
It is perhaps because both know that this is the end of an era, of the days spent seeing one another all the time and stealing glances of their Greek god-esque wrestling bodies that they decide to let their masks drop. Even if only for one night. Because it’s the morning after they share a kiss to the tune of INXS’ “Never Tear Us Apart” that Cal’s girlfriend, Marsha, shares the news that she’s pregnant. And, evidently, it’s just assumed they’ll keep it. Feeling the walls close in around him after that call, Cal knows the life he had caught a glimpse of last night is over before it could even begin.
We never find out what happened to Derek after that, suffice it to say that the two naturally drifted apart. Yet Cal hasn’t forgotten him. Indeed, it seems more than likely that he’s thought about Derek in some way or another almost every day of his miserable life without him. This is where the plot regarding Cal’s son, Nate (Jacob Elordi), and his secret affair with Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) comes back into focus. In this scenario, Cassie mimics the tortured, repressed feelings that Cal has. Except, in her case, it’s not because of risking societal ostracism, so much as a beatdown from Maddy (Alexa Demie), her best friend who happens to be the recent ex of Nate. And someone who would not suffer fools when it comes to being cuckqueaned this way.
The inner torment of both Cal and Cassie ends up colliding when Cal goes back to that same spot where he danced with Derek over twenty years later. And, the moment he enters, Cal is transported anew to that magical evening. Even if the song he chooses to soundtrack his night is not INXS, but Sinéad. Marveling at the presence of her first album, The Lion and the Cobra, being a sonic option, it is “Drink Before the War” that calls out to him. Begs to be selected. And it’s only too appropriate. For, as Cal was transformed into a villain after that night he lost his chance at honest love forever, he became an oppressor despite being someone who belongs to an oppressed community (see also: Lizzo). And this is what his own son has become as well. Now focusing his oppressing tendencies on Cassie as he toys with her emotions, at first telling her he loves her and then going back to Maddy to try to start things up again between them. Whether or not Nate’s own toxic relationships with women might be a result of him also being a repressed gay like his father (as Lexi [Maude Apatow] alludes to in her infamous play, Our Life), is anyone’s guess. But the, um, bottom line is, he’s picked the worst time to send Cassie into a tailspin by showing up to Maddy’s birthday party.
Plagued with jealousy and rage, but unable to express it because she knows she’s in the wrong for betraying Maddy, Cassie instead takes to the drink for comfort. This, too, being part of why “Drink Before the War” is such a brilliant song choice to crosscut between the scene of her sloppily dancing and singing to it (even if we’re a bit skeptical that her character would know the song) while Cal has his own mini breakdown at the bar. For Cassie is about to go to war…for Nate. And it’s not just the internal war with herself she’ll have to endure, but the inevitable one with Maddy. Meanwhile, Cal, too, prepares to face his demons in war back at that bar. Where the only thing that’s changed is the clientele. Still gay, but slightly less seedy.
When one of the men approaches Cal to dance with him, he doesn’t rebuff the offer, taking him in his arms and eventually imagining it’s Derek who he’s dancing with again, telling the hallucination, “I thought I’d lost you.” But, of course, Derek is still “lost” to Cal…as much as his youth is.
To that end, in the episode prior to this one, Rue (Zendaya) phrases such a tragedy succinctly when she says, “When you’re younger, everything just feels so permanent. But as you get older, everyone drifts away.” Seeing the dichotomy between how Cal and Cassie both react to the “tearing me apart” love situations in their life, that makes Rue’s statement stand out all the more. For, yes, Cassie is so melodramatically upset precisely because she thinks all these unpleasant feelings with regard to losing both Nate and Maddy are going to be forever. While Cal is, in contrast, so drunkenly (yet detachedly) upset because he sees how far it’s all drifted from him. Everything he might have been. Everyone he might have stayed in touch with.
As for Fez (Cloud), he doesn’t materialize until around forty-three minutes into the episode, with Faye (Chloe Cherry) at his side as usual while the two watch Suspiria. And yeah, Ashtray (Javon Walton) is there too. Their viewing is interrupted by a sharp knock at the door, which Fez goes to answer with his usual blasé manner to find Custer (Tyler Chase). He’s there to warn Fez of “Mouse’s baby mama” asking questions about his death. One inflicted by Ashtray via a hammer. Ashtray will also end up killing Custer, but that’s a later story. In this sense, too, O’Connor’s “Drink Before the War” applies as a fitting presagement for what’s to come for Fez and Ashtray by the season finale. Though no one knew at the time that Cloud was going to write his own finale far too soon, and long before Fez’s. Whose own death will likely be written into the next season (however, if Cloud had lived, we could have bought into Fez’s survival of a mere gunshot-to-the-stomach wound). Which of course means we’ll never know what might have been between him and Lexi.
Lexi, who is not like her sister or any of the other characters on Euphoria. Fez saw the difference in her and nurtured it. Because, for as “dumb” as Fez might come across to someone not looking deeper, he had an eye for oppressors. Especially considering his profession. The kind of eye that could lead to a Sinéadian accusation like, “And your parents paid you through/You got a nice big car, nothing bothers you/Somebody cut out your eyes, you refuse to see/Ah, somebody cut out your heart, you refuse to feel/And you live in a shell/You create your own hell.” A hell, in the end, that Cloud, nor O’Connor, was willing to live in.
