Cassie Howard Proves the Jimmy Soul Adage, “If You Wanna Be Happy for the Rest of Your Life, Never Make a Pretty Woman Your Wife”

Now that Cassie Howard (Sydney Sweeney) has become “Cassie Jacobs”—as Nate (Jacob Elordi) was sure to emphasize on the limo ride back to their house after their wedding—she’s really shown her true colors as a “totally useless but hot” woman (which is about the same thing as the “useless white woman” that Barbara from Night of the Living Dead embodies…though Cassie veers more toward Betty Draper [January Jones] from Mad Men territory than Barbra [even though that’s an insult to Betty]). While the apex of that “big reveal” was left for the final scenes of Euphoria’s third episode of season three, “The Ballad of Paladin,” the “bread crumbs” of her true nature were trailed throughout the latest installment of what is turning out to be perhaps the messiest season yet (but not in a “good” way, as the first two seasons were).

While the first act of “The Ballad of Paladin” is devoted to Jules’ (Hunter Schafer) new backstory in terms of how she came to be a very well-cared-for sugar baby, by about seventeen minutes in, the episode’s storyline becomes all about Nate and Cassie’s wedding. In fact, even Jules is invited to attend. Albeit by Rue (Zendaya), who counts her as the “plus one” she’s owed—even though Jules hasn’t seen them at all in the five years since they graduated high school. Not that Cassie would pay much attention to Jules’ presence (especially compared to Nate and Cal [Eric Dane, in his final onscreen performance for television]). Because this is her “big day.” The “big day” that Cassie has been yammering on about for months now, right down to her insistence on needing to start an OnlyFans so that she can afford the fifty thousand dollars’ worth of flower arrangements that Nate tries to deny her.

Of course, what he hasn’t mentioned vis-à-vis the reason he can’t “accommodate” her request (prompting her to insist in episode two, “America My Dream,” that, “I didn’t wait my entire life to have ghetto wedding”) is that he’s up to his eyeballs in debt, with no sign of being able to pay it back now that the development project that Jacobs & Co. (the business Cal had to give up in the wake of his sex offender scandal) is counting on for revenue has stalled due to certain unforeseen circumstances. That project being a senior living community cultishly called “Sun Settlers” and those unforeseen circumstances being the discovery of a white fritillary on the very plot of land where Nate is trying to build this “community.” Because of how rare fritillaries are in general but especially white ones, Nate can’t carry out his building plans until They figure out a way to safely move the flower. Which means Nate can’t generate a source of income to pay back the many people who have invested in this evident “dud” of a project.

One of those investors being a loan shark named Nassim a.k.a. Naz (Jack Topalian), who owns a funeral parlor called “Better Angels” (the kind of business that was partly his reasoning behind “getting into bed with” Nate on this “enterprise”). And, although Naz warned Nate in the second episode, “You owe me $550,000. And by next week, that’s gonna be $600,000,” it didn’t quite sink in the way Naz would have hoped. As a result, he shows up to Nate and Cassie’s wedding to openly berate the groom with a question like, “Don’t you think it’s foolish to throw such a lavish party when you owe so many people money?”

Both Lexi (Maude Apatow) and Heather (Jessica Blair Herman), a supposed “near and dear” friend of Cassie’s but really just her frenemy, overhear this sound bite and it sends the latter reporting to her husband, Fred (Justin Sintic), about it. After all, Fred is one of the people who just invested hundreds of thousands into Nate’s sinking ship. And while Heather is panicking, there’s clearly some part of her that’s relishing the fact that Cassie isn’t married to a “real” (a.k.a. rich) man at all. This low-simmering contempt she has for Cassie showing itself in the first episode, “Ándale,” when Cassie tells Heather, the quintessential judge-y, conservative friend (though with hardly the same supportiveness and sense of style as, say, Charlotte York [Kristin Davis]), “Don’t underestimate me.” This after Heather condescendingly wishes her luck with Nate. Not just in general, but in terms of getting her to support her OnlyFans dreams. “Dreams” that might turn out to be an absolute necessity since, as Cassie is informed by Naz, “Some women inherit wealth, but others inherit debt.”

What’s more, seeing as how Cassie has made repeatedly made it clear that her body/overall appearance is the crux of her entire worth, she’s been figuring for a while that she ought to profit from it. Even though Nate tries to put the kibosh on her “selling herself,” he’s going to need all the help he can get now—“dignity” be damned. And while Nate is responsible for incurring all that fresh debt just as Cassie becomes legally bound to him (therefore all of his debt), she doesn’t exactly do much to improve the situation. Continuing with her displays of vanity over having her face “slightly rearranged” when Naz and a henchman appear at the Jacobs’ house to finish what Naz was intimating at the wedding. That includes not only having the henchman beat the shit out of Nate, but allowing Cassie to get caught in the crossfire during the one brief moment she tries to help her husband. This causes her to smack her face against the floor and soon realize, as she starts to wail uncontrollably, “I’m bleeding!” Said while Nate is getting beaten to a pulp far bloodier. While Nate is being ripped to shreds, Cassie bemoans, “This is my wedding night… This is so unfair! It was supposed to be the best day of my life.” All declared through her sobs as Nate’s beating culminates in one of his toes getting cut off.

Alas, even after the pair leaves the house and Cassie could safely give Nate some kind of “assist”—like, say, grabbing a towel or five from the kitchen to stop up the blood—she continues to just sit there in her wedding dress next to her white Jimmy Choos. It’s the visual symbol of the Jimmy Soul adage, “If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life/Never make a pretty woman your wife” (“So from my personal point of view/Get an ugly girl to marry you”).

Particularly when that girl bases her entire worth on her looks, resultantly allowing others to do the same. For instance, Cal, who brings up Cassie’s “hotness” during his wedding toast when he grossly says to Nate, “I always believed in you. You’re a winner. Look at your wife. I mean who in here can say they married better than him?” Even though the truth of the matter is that Nate fucked up by marrying a “looker,” therefore looks-obsessed person. And yes, Nate himself is the worst kind of man. Smarmy, conniving, conning, smooth-talking—a full-blown liar. But Cassie is drawn to him for a reason, which says as much about herself as it does him. That she thinks she “needs” to live the tradwife existence because that’s the extent of her “talent.” Which is to say, her appearance.

Toward the beginning of the “wedding segment” of the episode, perhaps it’s telling that Nate begins to have a panic attack in the bathroom, breathing into a paper bag to cope. That’s when his brother, Aaron (Zak Steiner), tells him, “She’s a good girl. She’s better than most.” Of course, what he really means by that is that she’s an attractive girl. More attractive than most. But “attractive” isn’t a characteristic that signifies being in any way useful (unless one counts the usefulness of ensuring erections).