Euphoria Recap: The Friend of My Friend Is My Enemy — Plus, Eric Dane on Cal’s Poignant, Penis-y Proclamation

Welp, that didn’t take long.

Euphoria‘s Jules and Elliot hook up in this week’s episode, and you would’ve had to have been as strung-out as Rue is not to have seen it coming ever since that flirty interrogation scene in Episode 3. But this week’s hour is so intense that Rue’s girlfriend and her new friend getting together seems a little tame in comparison to Cassie’s binge drinking at Maddy’s birthday party or to the way Cal literally lets it all hang out at the end of the ep.

About that last thing: We talked to Eric Dane about Cal’s blow-it-all-to-bits monologue, in which the character bares his soul — and his junk — to his horrified family. Cal proudly confesses that he likes having sex with men. He calls Nate his biggest regret. And then he rips a family portrait off the wall and walks out… maybe for good? Read on for Dane’s thoughts, then keep going for a quick recap of the episode.

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TVLINE | I thought Episode 3 was when we were going to get our insight into Cal’s psyche, but then we get to the end of this one, and good God almighty.
Yeah. It required two episodes. Cal’s psyche is broad and expansive.

TVLINE | So you get the script, and you read that final scene in the house. What are your thoughts?
I thought, “This is fantastic.” I thought, “This is so great.” It was so well written. And then I thought, “S—t, I better start working on this now, because this is a mouthful.” And then when we shot it, God, it was so much fun. Everybody was so engaged, so plugged in, so connected, which really helped me hit all these notes int his really fantastic monologue which lets Cal liberate himself within the dynamics of his family.

TVLINE | This is a man who has gone to extreme measures to keep his secrets hidden.
Oh yeah.

TVLINE | And then all of a sudden, he’s the one that blows it up.
I don’t think you can live that double life very long. Cal existed with that ironclad façade for the better part of his adult life, which is spectacular if you think about it, that he carried that burden for so long with the exception of the trysts he has at the motels with the younger girls and boys. I thought it was just so much fun to do that scene and I hope that that translates in the viewers’ accepting it.

TVLINE | I was noticing how much you’re laughing in the scene. Is it because he’s relieved? Slightly unhinged? A mixture?
It’s both. He’s totally unhinged and the absurdity of the moment is where he finds the humor. And what he’s about to do. He’s cracked a little bit.

TVLINE | Marsha doesn’t seem very surprised by a lot of what he says. What’s your take on that?
I feel so bad for Marsha. I feel like the kids can handle this. I feel like Marsha really got blindsided and clobbered by this whole thing.

TVLINE | By his saying it? Or by what was happening in their marriage? Because she must have known something was going on, yeah?
I don’t think she knew. I think Cal had played these cards so perfectly for years, and I think there was probably a little bit of an oblivious sort of lens that Marsha was looking through. You never want to believe any of that stuff, so you compartmentalize and put it away.

TVLINE | I’ve seen you refer to being the new Cal or Cal 2.0 as we move through the season — which made sense last week, but now this is a Cal who’s been razed to the ground. What can you tease about what’s next for him?
Cal is going to have the opportunity to be a good parent to Nate, going to be a good father. There’s a moment in that monologue where he tells Nate that he’s his biggest regret. And I just don’t think that Nate’s existence is what he regrets. I think how he parented that child is what he’s saying. “I regret how I fathered you.”

TVLINE | Of course I have to ask you about Cal’s junk hanging out of your pants the entire time.
Mmm-hmm.

TVLINE | That changes the tone of the scene, yes?
A little bit. [Laughs]

TVLINE | Did it give you any pause at all?
No, I thought it was fun. Let’s call it what it is: Cal saying all these things with his penis hanging out [Laughs], it just shows how f—king gone he is.

TVLINE | The peeing on the floor is such a drunk high school boy thing to do, do you know what I mean?
[Laughs] Right, but he intentionally did that. The high school version, you walk in and you think you’re in the bathroom and you do it!

TVLINE | In the past, you’ve talked about the prosthetic you used in the series premiere. I assume that in this episode, it was a prosthetic again?
Oh yeah. It’s a prosthetic again. It has to be. I don’t know if I would last 15, 16 takes if it were real.

TVLINE | I’ve had this question since the start of the show, please help me clear it up: There are three Jacobs children in the portrait he takes with him, yes?
I know. I know.

TVLINE | And we don’t know what’s become of the other child.
I don’t know, either. [Laughs] There is a third Jacobs child in the photo, though. You are correct.

TVLINE | Do we find out where he goes after he leaves the house?
No. We find out later in the season where he goes.

Elsewhere in the episode:

* Cassie, Lexy and their mom throw Maddy a birthday party at the house. But Cassie has lost all perspective in the wake of Nate seeming to be inching back into a relationship with his ex. So Cas drinks way too much at the bash, especially after Nate shows up and gifts Maddy a Tiffany necklace. When the group is in the hot tub and Maddy is talking about how Nate once told her he wanted her to have his children, Cassie starts vomiting copiously all over her friends. It’s gross. She sobs to Maddy that she’s sorry. Maddy, thinking that Cassie is only talking about the puke, says “It’s fine” between dry heaves of her own.

* Rue tells us that she’s very much in love with Jules, whom she envisions as (among other cultural touchstones) Botticelli’s Venus, John Lennon, Frida Kahlo, Snow White, Rose from Titanic and Demi Moore in Ghost. But when Jules assiduously performs oral sex on her, Rue is so high, she can’t feel anything. So she fakes an orgasm, and then denies it when Jules calls her out on it. The whole thing bothers Jules so much that she mentions it to Elliot, which leads to his giving her a lesson on the finer points of oral sex (but chastely, or as chastely as this type of lesson can get — he demonstrates on her hand), and then THAT leads to their kissing on his bed.

* But then Rue shows up, and the trio eventually decides to steal some spiked seltzer from a convenience store. It gets ugly — the proprietor smashes a window in Elliot’s car — but the teens get away with it. On the drive back, though, Rue gets angry at Jules’ wondering whether or not she should be drinking, and she demands that Elliot drop her off at home. So he does. In Rue’s room, she takes four pills and has a vision of herself hugging her dad, who holds her as she sobs and tells him she misses him so much. Meanwhile, Jules takes a shower at Elliot’s and climbs into bed with him, but before much can happen, he confesses that Rue hasn’t been clean for a while and apologizes for keeping it from her.

Now it’s your turn. What did you think about this week’s episode? Sound off in the comments below!