Costanza blames society for not accepting him as he is: fat, balding, semi-evil. The audience is left to wonder what else might be different about this character who seems so at odds with the cultural norms of the 80s and 90s.

When you Google “George Costanza gay,” most of the results are Reddit threads filled with speculation and uninteresting debate. Most point to Season 3, episode 1 (The Note) as the first indicator of George’s potential homosexuality. In this episode, George feels his penis move during a massage from a male masseuse. This becomes the catalyst for the episode’s B-plot, a full-blown sexuality crisis which includes figuring out the “test” to identify whether or not he’s gay and becoming flustered around other male characters.

I argue that George’s sexuality arc is actually introduced a full season earlier in Season 2, episode 1 (The Ex-Girlfriend). In this episode, in a throwaway scene, George refuses to sit in a car between Jerry and Elaine: “It doesn’t look good— boy, boy, girl,” he says. Elaine responds, “I think you’re afraid to sit next to a man. You’re a little homophobic, aren’t you?” This scene is the first introduction to George’s (internalized) homophobia. Throughout the rest of the season, there are small references to George’s feelings about sexual orientation, such as the comment about his “staunch heterosexuality” just two episodes later. Episode-by-episode, these may seem like filler dialogue to round out a character with yet another flaw. However, looking at the series as a whole, we see a progression for George, starting with comments about homophobia in Season 2, developing into sexuality crises in Season 3 (as with the masseuse-incident), and finally emerging into larger themes surrounding the character in later seasons. Plotlines that come to mind include George and Jerry being mistaken for a gay couple, George having a “crush” on Tony, Elaine’s “mimbo” (male himbo) boyfriend of the week, and George dating a woman who looks exactly like Jerry.

Not to mention, throughout the series, George has troubled relationships with women; on the other hand, his relationships with men often blur the lines between admiration, envy, and I argue, attraction. Seemingly, the only positive relationship in his life is his relationship with Jerry, a friendship so close that it seems to verge upon the unrequited romantic.

Seinfeld’s George Costanza is an outcast who strives for social acceptance while simultaneously deriding it. In the context of the 80s and 90s, when heterosexuality was very much the “norm,” it is easy for the viewer to identify George (a constant outlier) as not-heterosexual. Though George’s homosexuality is never canonically affirmed, I take the constant questioning of his sexuality throughout the series as an affirmation itself. This may have been as close as we could have gotten in the time when the show was released.

George Costanza is Seinfeld’s magnum opus for inclusivity. An icon that proves that anyone can be fat, bald, and evil, even the gays. Happy Pride.

But I digress. The question is simple. Who are the women of Euphoria, if not characters? They are one-dimensional caricatures onto whom sexual fantasies are projected. Each woman can be easily reduced to a one word descriptor and her whole personality is defined only by her relationship to men or sex. Let’s take our main four women (between episodes 1 & 2 of Season 3). You will likely have different words, but mine are below:

Rue: Lesbian

Cassie: Sexy

Maddy: Capitalism (!)

Jules: Lesbian #2

And one more just for fun:

Strippers, drug mules, and crime lords in Euphoria’s Purgatory for women: Existent

These words are reductive, yes. But does the show really portray that much beyond these words? Let’s take a deeper look.

Rue: Other than vague references to her past relationship with Jules, we get little to no insight into why Rue behaves the way she does. She begs for a job with a strip club owner who is “in the business of pussy” to get away from Laurie, but also seemingly to be around the beautiful girls that work at his establishment. There is no further explanation for why Rue is so interested in this job. She doesn’t seem to have any real attachment to anything or anyone (again, outside of references to Jules) and she has no real emotional tether to the story anymore. Still, she is certainly the most interesting character on the show, even if she has mostly been reduced to creepily staring at strippers.

Cassie: Honestly, you know what I’m going to say about her. Just fill in the words in your head mad-libs style.

Maddy: One of the cringiest moments of Episode 2 comes when Maddy walks into a restaurant and convinces a talent manager to hire her because she read her Wall Street Journal profile. “I believe in capitalism,” Maddy says. And we in the audience are supposed to…? Applaud? Frown? Nod along approvingly? Or are supposed to grimace because that’s certainly what I did. Maddy’s relationship to men and sex is a little different from the other girls’ because she’s on the other side of the transaction. She sells sex for her own personal gain, which may actually be an interesting perspective if we got insight into any other facet of Maddy’s personality. Unfortunately, Euphoria would rather show us scene after scene of hypersexual and ultimately weird fantasies rather than develop this character into someone with whom the audience can connect.

Jules: To be fair, we don’t see much of Jules in the first two episodes. However, what we do see— that she is a sugar baby to a married family man— seems limiting at best and transphobic at worst. Sure, there is a longstanding history of sugar dating in the trans community. Does Euphoria have anything else interesting to say about that phenomenon or about Jules as a character? No. Sorry, let me be a little more forgiving: not yet.

The conversation surrounding violence against women in media is one we’ve had time and time again. A New York Times article written in 1984 mentions the rise of violent acts against women in commercially released movies. There is discourse abound, both online and academic, about gratuitous rape and torture scenes in media. These scenes are easy to spot and have been less popular in recent years.

I argue, however, that such violence in media of the past has been replaced by a more subtle, modern version, exemplified by the way Euphoria treats its women. Euphoria’s brand of violence against women is more surreptitious. It asks the question, is misogyny still misogyny if it is exercised and perpetrated by women?

Is the scene where Rue and Faye swallow vaseline-covered fentanyl balloons fetishistic and gross if they were ordered to do so by a woman drug dealer in the story? Is Cassie’s parading around in hypersexual costumes sexist if she is doing so of her own will and against her husband’s orders (others have compared this to Sweeney’s own reclamation of her sexuality, though that might be a topic for a different time)? Is Maddy’s capitalistic pursuit of OnlyFans personalities misogynistic (rather than, as the show seems to claim, girl-boss behavior)?

The simple answer is yes. Misogyny is misogyny no matter how it is portrayed or often hidden. The real-world examples of the “characters” in Euphoria—OnlyFans models, sex-workers, addicts, even low-paid assistants in Hollywood—are complex, strong personalities shaped by the broken systems in which they live. Euphoria reduces them to fetishization, made even worse through the male gaze.

Overall, Euphoria self-aggrandizing, misogynistic, and insidiously violent.

Worse, it’s BORING. Every scene is fundamentally tedious when you are searching for deeper meaning or better characters. In earlier seasons, watching the show was possible through a lens of campy, glittery excitement. In Season 3, the sexism inherent in every scene is so blatant that each episode, scene, character, storyline, is repulsive. The stories that the show tries to tell deserve better than the tiresome misogyny through which they are scripted.