Euphoria: An Informal Review

No one understands Euphoria like I do.

Obviously, I'm exaggerating haha. It was one of the most popular prestige television shows of the late 2010s / early 2020s. I actually didn't watch it until just last year, when a friend and I were drunk after going to Texas Roadhouse (they have really powerful margaritas) and she asked if I wanted to watch the show since we'd been talking about it. I tried watching it a couple years ago, but I couldn't get through the first episode because of the extended 9/11-based prologue (felt tacky) and the sexual assault scenes (more self-explanatory). Watching it with my friend, though, I could sit next to her and grip the couch and sit through it. That night I got totally hooked, and I finished the show later that month.

Euphoria is a high-school drama written (hm) and directed (hmm) by Sam Levinson, who lifted the  premise from an Israeli show (hmmm) of the same name but reworked to reflect his own personal experiences of adolescence (hmmmm). The show follows Rue, played by Zendaya, a drug-addicted girl returning to school after going to rehab for overdosing. Rue's world is turned upside down by manic pixie dream girl Jules, played by Hunter Schafer, a young trans girl who lies about her age to fuck strange men on Grindr and validate her gender. The first season sees the girls become best friends and even romantic partners, seeing each other as an escape from their particular maladies that constantly follow them—however, the second season sees their relationship intruded upon by a spicy bisexual guy who takes hard drugs with Rue and also fucks Jules (though if you ask me, it feels like they had a weird throuple thing going on, and Rue felt betrayed by the guy admitting to Jules that he's enabling her continued drug use). 

The main plot intersects with the lives of a handful of other high school students, especially the friend group of Rue's ex-best-friend and her sister who get particularly caught up in fucking this closeted gay football player obsessed with Jules (and whose dad actually did fuck her from Grindr and recorded himself doing so because he's ALSO a closeted weird ass). At this point you probably have a good idea of what the show is like, and you might be asking a question many people ask: "These are meant to be high schoolers? These are teenagers?! That's a bit much! Why isn't it just about college students?" Here's what people don't understand: yes, it doesn't necessarily reflect high school for most normal people; yes, there are some freaks who watch this show; yes, it probably reflects poorly on Sam Levinson.

At the same time, the show (in my view) isn't trying to accomplish a literal depiction of high school life, nor is it trying to backport college experiences to high school to make those experiences more tantalizing for a audience minority of creeps. Most of the other people I know who enjoy the show are other young women, all of various backgrounds, but many being like Latina sorority girl types (is this too specific?). Maybe they're attracted to the show because of the dramatic situations, like a higher brow Riverdale, but it's more complex than that for them, myself, and probably others.

Euphoria is about the relationships we have with each other and our families as young people, especially as young women, and sex is the most symbolically laden form a relationship can take. It's a direct encounter with the Other in which one may perceive parts of themself that they often don't want to acknowledge. Rue and Jules see in each other an escape, and they also each want to be the escape for the other, but the other keeps falling victim to her addiction in a way that reminds one of herself. In a Lacanian sense, it's about two hysterics bumping butts (as my partner would say) and failing to be what the other wants because they don't know how to be that and it makes them feel bad about themselves.

The climax of the second season is a school play written and directed by Rue's ex-best-friend, wherein she expresses how hard it is for her to be family and friends with the sex freaks and drug addicts at her school (sad violin in the background). It's such a delightfully metatextual pair of episodes as all the characters in the show watch themselves from the perspective of this audience surrogate who thinks herself above all the bullshit they've been through. She reenacts all the embarrassing sexual encounters that her sister and her friends have had, she orchestrates a musical number about the closeted football player to Bonnie Tyler's Holding Out for a Hero, and she dramatizes Rue's history with drug addiction after her father's death and how their friendship deteriorated as a result. The whole production is virtually voyeuristic, and besides being funny it casts doubt on the audience's perceptions of the characters and their stories. Kind of like... who are you to judge? Get a load of these sluts and fags and druggies. Are you entertained?

It's precisely in this dimension that Euphoria shines. I know someone like each and every single one of the characters. Some of them are like me, some are like my friends, and some are like our parents. The show exaggerates their problems and uses sex to dramatize their relationships, but it's this symbolic approach that makes the show feel more real because it touches on aspects of our individual lives that aren't often talked about—especially in media about high school or college. On a superficial level, Euphoria takes place in high school because otherwise the characters wouldn't have a reason to live with their parents. The reason why that's important is because if the parents are absent, then the show can't depict their relationships with their children, especially how their children hide their real selves and how those parents are more like their children than they let on (and than they're comfortable with). All those complex relationships, those cycles of abuse, are what Euphoria is all about. It's why we relate to it despite—or because—its apparent unreality.

I think Euphoria literally helped me feel like a real person in that way. It let me externalize aspects of my personhood and my relationships with others to empathize with myself and treat myself better. Euphoria was probably responsible for my new year's resolution to present myself as real as possible and to act on my own behalf regardless of others' opinions, and that has entirely changed my life for the better. I get that's a little cheesy, but I'm totally serious. That being said, Euphoria probably won't change your life. I'm just mentally ill and haven't seen anything so relatable to myself before.

Also: watching Zendaya give Hunter Schafer a handy fundamentally changed me as a woman.

One More Thing...

Sam Levinson is a piece of shit and not to be on some parasocial cope shit but I’m 80% certain that the actresses and actors were responsible for Euphoria being as as it is—not just because their performances carry Levinson’s writing, but because they genuinely contributed to the characterization and development of their particular roles and relationships with the other characters. Like, Harry/Louis RPF? Madoka Magika? That’s cringe shit from when the actresses were teenagers in the early-to-mid 2010s. No way that was Levinson. I think the best point of comparison is his 2023 show The Idol, which is terrible—likely because the main pair (player by Lily Rose-Depp and Abel Tesfaye a.k.a. The Weeknd) either did not contribute to the production or Levinson trusted them to contribute too much. Nothing I have seen demonstrates that Levinson is a talented writer in his own right, and he is also just a piece of shit.

RIP Euphoria. Sam Levinson doesn't deserve season 3.