I stopped caring about the main characters a few episodes back. They're children and they're cosplaying adults in LA and it was just their luck that they ran into bad adults along the way. Levinson had a season with HBO's production value and an award-nominated cast that were contractually obligated to be there. He made himself a Western.
The main characters went from school cliques to falling under the umbrella of a big bad. Let's look at them.
Naz
The Armenian gangster owned Nate at the beginning of the season and in trying to get his money back, he inadvertently ended up owning Cassie.
I've learned about the alleged Armenian underworld from two places: Power on Starz and Ray Donovan on Showtime. Both shows had tough guys that navigated the grey areas of legality, but in both shows neither group wanted to spend much time in the room if Armenian gangsters were involved. Ray had to call in a favor to get out of trouble with them, and Ghost lost a number of his team members when they crossed paths. How Nate on Euphoria casually found himself in their orbit still baffles me.
There are no signs that he's truly scared until he starts to lose toes and fingers. Him and Cassie not handling it in any sensible way solidified that “good” people should never have to cross paths with people in the grey area. Young viewers are commenting on social media that it's karma, completely missing the point that being a douchebag couple in high school does not equate to being trafficked and slaughtered by the mob.
The penultimate episode proved to me that Naz was built up to later show truly how scary Alamo is. The scary mob guy that had terrorized the only suburban couple from the cast was taken down in seconds by a real bad guy. The one that's the center of the story before you know it.
Alamo
Alamo played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is the main character of this season. Meeting him in a room with a shag rug he might have been dismissed as a bad guy that Rue is crossing paths with, but he soon became the nucleus of the show.
The minute they took the time to give him a backstory it was a rap. He wasn't a bad guy that originated in this world. It was a normal upbringing where he witnessed a loss of trust and he somehow internalized this pain to become an LA kingpin. This is not one of the kids where what he saw in his developmental years is why he's like that today. We saw a five minute snippet of his childhood and understand there is forty years in the middle that shaped him into the scary guy we meet.
The tally so far:
Rue - Maddie let it slip that Rue has spoken to the DEA. How will she get out of this? We leave her at the end of the penultimate episode learning that on top of the drugs and clubs, Alamo is most likely harvesting organs as well.
The scorecard was already horrible. Drugs, prostitution, it's all bad, but the thought that he also sells kidneys on the black market makes it even worse, right? The vices can easily be blamed on an unhappy childhood and systemic problems, but internal organs are sacred. As a viewer, you can disassociate easily from heavy drug use and exotic dancing, but anyone can have a kidney stolen, and it makes you feel vulnerable. It wasn't until that moment that Alamo scared me. Two questions crossed my mind - at what age are kidneys no longer desired and are the kidneys of drug-addled dancers even viable?
Maddie - she's in business with Alamo. OnlyFans nets over $11B a year? Who's paying for this? I saw her as the young apprentice that introduced him to a goldmine. She put herself on the line for Cassie and Nate and it amounted to her being heavily in his debt.
He easily took out Naz and gained both Cassie and Maddie in the process.
Laurie - she has a lot on Alamo, but it will be a showdown in the finale and I don't believe Laurie or her crew will make it. Again, she's another big bad that's been around and she will also be taken down by Alamo.
There's been a lot of religious overtones in this season about forged paths and forgiveness. Having Agbaje as the bad guy isn't an accident. Even as Adabisi in Oz he had a humanity to him with his character. Rue thought he was a savior at the beginning of the season and he's just learned that she's betrayed him to the feds.
Colman Domingo coming in hot in the penultimate episode isn't an accident either. He has been the guide for Rue and I see a scene between these two characters that just might seal the fate of the rest of the cast whether it be good or bad.
Domingo is the repentant ex-addict that has tried to help Rue get clean. What happens if the repentant guide meets the unrepentant father figure in the finale? Things will be solved, but those two cannot meet and both walk away. That's another thing that has hit me about this show, none of the girls grew up with father's.
Levinson is writing his gritty Western, but the tropes I'm noticing about the world's are stark.
The suburbs is where you can live a normal life and everywhere outside of that are the lawless badlands. The evidence is Lexi. She's with the girls in LA, but none of this has touched her life. She has hard boundaries and anything that resembles grey area she immediately dismisses and blocks. She's also the most boring person on the show.
It paints a picture that if you want that technicolor realism, you have to step into the badlands. Does Lexi exist to write a Western about all of her friends that she lost to the badlands?
I hold too much faith in characters. If there is even an inkling of a redemption arc than I think the possibility exists that something might come of it. The DEA wants Alamo, so to me that means he's more valuable to them exactly where he is than behind bars. He's not going to jail. Which begs the question, if the DEA wants him, who the heck is he also working with that we have never met? All of this started because Rue's girlfriend got mad at her and flushed 10k worth of drugs down the drain. That is a crazy ride.
Levinson has built a lot of black male characters into his work as the voices of reason and stability. They may not always originate in a place of peace, but he showcases them in a way that if the chips are down, they're there. I can't believe that he's created a character like Alamo over the past season to be a regular villain. I don't know what will happen in the finale, but it will be a reckoning.