Warning: SPOILERS for Euphoria season 2, episode 3.
Euphoria season 2, episode 3 begins with a lengthy flashback to Cal Jacobs' senior year in high school, presumably in an effort to get audiences to sympathize with him, but this begs the question - why? Cal, played by Grey's Anatomy's Eric Dane, was introduced early on in Euphoria season 1 as a mysterious figure who sleeps with Hunter Schafer's character Jules. The power imbalance in the relationship is immediately clear and the fact that this older man is sleeping with a high school-age girl makes the entire scene excruciatingly uncomfortable. Cal is meant to be a bad guy and one of Euphoria's biggest twists is that he is the father of Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi), a fellow classmate of Jules and the rest of Euphoria's characters at East Highland High.
Flashforward to Euphoria season 2 and Cal has become one of the most prominent characters of the HBO show right now, but not necessarily as the villain many presumed he would be. Euphoria season 2, episode 3 shows Cal in high school falling in love with his best friend Derek. The flashback paints Cal and Derek as victims of circumstance and the social mores of the time. They can't be together openly, so they pine for each other in secret. This culminates in a drunken scene at a local bar where Cal and Derek kiss while dancing. In the morning, though, Cal is awakened by a phone call from Marsha (the future mother of Nate), telling him she is pregnant. Smash cut to the present and Euphoria seems to assume that the character of Cal has been figured out.
Euphoria seems to be implying that, because Cal was forced to suppress who he was throughout his life, his anger and his sexual behavior of sleeping with local teenagers, somehow makes sense. This also translates to his son Nate, one of the least likable characters on Euphoria. Cal's forceful oppression of his identity has manifested in anger issues that have then reared their ugly head in Nate, who treats his classmates and girlfriend Maddy as objects to be controlled. All of this is meant to explain away the very bad things that both Nate and Cal have done. While we've seen more of the awful ways that Nate treats the people in his life, it is heavily implied that Nate's only repeating behavior he's learned from his father, including how to treat women and just how to be an all-around good person.
Making villains three-dimensional is an important part of storytelling, but Euphoria season 2 gets it wrong when it comes to Cal in a few ways. The show has yet to address the fact that Cal is a wealthy, influential white man, but portraying complex racial dynamics has never been one of Euphoria's strong suits. The episode touches on toxic masculinity and the ways it is passed down through generations in a brief interaction with Cal and his father in the opening flashback, but it's still not enough to warrant sympathy for him. At the end of the day, Cal is committing statutory rape when sleeping with Jules and, it's implied, a number of other underage people.
Writing Cal's illicit acts off as some symptom of his rectifying with his sexuality becomes dangerous territory. Accusations of pedophilia, rape, and other sexual crimes have been leveled at the LBGTQ+ community in homophobic efforts to quell equal rights efforts. While Euphoria doesn't paint a direct line from Cal's past to his present, it does bring into question why exactly this story is being told the way it is. Euphoria episode 3 seems to ask audiences to sympathize with Cal, but it would be even braver not to ask that of viewers. Cal can just be a bad guy - there doesn't have to be reasons behind his actions, especially when those reasons dangerously imply stereotypes that have proven to be harmful in real-life situations. Where Cal goes from here remains clear, but a redemption arc for Cal in Euphoria season 2 doesn't seem out of the question, but if it chooses to go that route, the show is heading towards a storyline that creator Sam Levinson may not be able to write his way out of.