the second season<\/a>, to a new stage in our protagonists\u2019 lives. Rue and the gang are now adults in their early twenties, and, as she deadpans at the top of the first episode, \u201cA lot of people ask what I\u2019ve been up to since high school. Honestly? Nothing good.\u201d Indeed. So-called real life has now begun, the characters have hardened with it, and the series, too, feels as if it\u2019s clicked into its final, hardened form: a thrilling, disturbing horror show, delivered with a sneer and a smile, and portraying a world where money is the only thing worth caring about.<\/p>\nRue has been unable to repay the extraordinarily large sum of money that she owes the suburban drug boss Laurie (Martha Kelly), and so she begins working for her as a mule, travelling down to Mexico, where she swallows gumball-size balloons of fentanyl, helped down the gullet with a hefty squeeze of K-Y Jelly, and shat out into a sieve once back in Cali. Cassie and Nate, meanwhile, are engaged to be married, living in what Rue describes as a \u201cright-wing suburban bubble.\u201d Like Rue, Nate is in debt, owing money to shady figures who have sunk funds into the construction business he took over from his pervy father, Cal. (Eric Dane, who, in another tragic loss, recently died of A.L.S.) Now, he\u2019s focussed on the development of Sun Settlers, \u201cthe premier end-of-life transition facility in California.\u201d (It\u2019s a clutch financial opportunity, Nate explains to a prospective investor, because \u201ca boomer dies every fifteen seconds.\u201d) Cassie is trying to become social-media famous, suggestively flashing her all-American assets online in a variety of fetishy costumes (a puppy dog, a pacifier-sucking baby). Her aim is to make enough money to afford the fifty-thousand-dollar wedding floral arrangements that Nate is reluctant to cough up the dough for. (When pressed to sign off on Cassie\u2019s racy new career, Nate reluctantly agrees, making her promise that she won\u2019t show \u201cthose\u201d\u2014her boobs\u2014and her \u201cpretty face at the same time,\u201d a vow she almost immediately breaks.)<\/p>\n
Jules, meanwhile, has become a sugar baby, dropping out of art school to live a life of brittle luxury in a downtown L.A. penthouse, paid for by a wealthy plastic surgeon, who is enamored of her \u201cporeless\u201d skin\u2014the result, he presumes, of her transitioning before puberty\u2014and who tells her that her breasts are \u201cnear-perfect.\u201d (When she questions the hedge, he clarifies that \u201canything can be improved.\u201d) And Maddy is an assistant at a talent-management company who sees opportunities in the growing market of OnlyFans starlets. \u201cWe can imply nudity,\u201d she reassures one model who\u2019s reluctant to go full porn. \u201cSideboob, underboob, camel toe, a little ass cheek, feet.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. We\u2019ll build it up, a toe at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everyone, in other words, can be sold\u2014or can sell oneself\u2014for parts. The body is not a source of strength or pleasure or play but a site from which to grab as much power as one can and hold on to it for dear life. (To use the characters\u2019 beauty looks as an indicator again, the overdefined porn-star lips and power-bitch winged eyeliner the characters wear in the most recent episodes are hardly about self-expression, but about something else entirely: As Doniella Davy told Harper\u2019s Bazaar earlier this month, \u201cThe motives for the character\u2019s use of makeup in season three are to largely make money.\u201d)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In between the high drama and extreme situations that these often-numbed-out kids found their way into\u2014rough sex, vicious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[99037,146,4302,85,46,8842,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-398558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-dramas","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-hbo","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-television-shows","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}