‘Euphoria’: Glittery, Real, And Representative
“Maybe people are nostalgic about high school ‘cause it’s, like, the last time in their life that they get to dream.” Euphoria awakened the audience and new viewers to real world problems like addiction, toxicity, and abuse, in high school. With the release of season two, fans are excited to see what happens next with Rue’s crazy, messy, beautiful, and downright terrifying world.
January 18, 2022
Warning: This article contains major spoilers and mature themes for seasons one and two of Euphoria.
HBO’s Euphoria redefined edgy teen drama’s with its takes on drug addiction, mental health, and identity for Gen-Z. It’s a must-watch due to its appropriately and compellingly conveyed portraits of this generation.
SEASON ONE RECAP:
A quick refresher of Rue’s messy, beautiful, downright terrifying world. Being the leading lady, I think Zendaya gave one of her best performances on TV portraying the character Rue.
The typically smart and funny Rue struggles with dangerous drug addiction, partially fueled by her father’s death. The season starts with Rue coming home from rehab with the intention of not staying sober. Throughout season one she manages to remain sober.
She falls in love with the new girl, Jules. Played by Hunter Schafer, Jules’ arrival in town was rough. Being a trans woman, she had experienced many difficulties specifically with her mother, by their sending her to a psychiatric institution. We later learn her parents divorced and she now lives with her supportive and amazing father. She slept with Cal, Nate’s dad, and was later catfished by Nate. After meeting Jules, Rue decides to try staying sober hoping that her feelings for Jules were enough to remain sober. However, the relationship starts to deteriorate as Jules starts to explore a life outside of her tiny California town.
This leads up to a heartbreaking breakup-goodbye to Rue at a train station, as she leaves. And Rue’s sobriety crashes and relapses. Her relapse greatly portrays teen drug abuse and in essence to the show itself a euphoric moment within the last few scenes of the episode’s finale.
Fez (Fezco) is a college dropout who supports his young adopted brother, Ashtray. He’s a friend and a dealer to Rue and acts as a protective brother when Nate threatens Jules. He stopped selling to Rue by the end of the season due to his concern about her need to get high and wanting to keep her safe and alive. His and Rue’s relationship is very much of an older brother to a younger sister. Despite his bad influence with drugs, he embodies true friendship characteristics through protecting Rue and making sure she is cautious and always looked after.
Sydney Sweeney emulates the sassy, stylish Cassie. Cassie was in a trainwreck relationship with her college boyfriend, McKay. Played by Algee Smith, McKay was popular in high school but was having a rough time trying to fit into his college frat. After Cassie saw him get violently hazed, he took it out on her. Soon after, Cassie found out she was pregnant. Her supportive mother and sister, Lexi took her to have an abortion.
In season one, Jacob Elordi turned high school star quarterback, Nate Jacobs, into one of the most terrifying villains with his performance being super realistic. Teen abuse, especially in relationships, is very prominent today. Euphoria rightly encapsulates an abusive relationship that is portrayed as authentic. Nate revealed himself to be an abusive partner to Maddy (now his ex-girlfriend), as well as a victim of abuse via his father, Cal. Euphoria accurately and successfully depicts these serious topics that affect many people.
Nate knew of his father, Cal, and his sexual desires. Cal secretly met with people from Grindr and kept recordings of their sessions. One of those was with Jules, who had lied about her age. Nate went on to Grindr himself to catfish Jules as Tyler for what he had found out through his father’s tapes. Jules falls head over heels for Tyler, but when revealed that it was Nate she changes and becomes a bit more concealed and goes a little off the edge specifically with drinking at parties.
When Nate choked Maddy for her actions at the carnival, the marks on her neck got him into serious trouble. To clear his name, Nate blackmailed the real Tyler into confessing and claiming responsibility for choking Maddy. To corroborate the fake story, Nate blackmailed Jules into coming forward as a witness. He does this to gain back his reputation along with Maddy, to later have Maddy break up with him. Their relationship is very unhealthy and very realistic to many high school and other relationships in real life.
In the finale, Maddy had taken the DVD of Cal and Jules from Nate and made a copy of the tape. I think that Maddy will use the tape for blackmail especially after the event that happened in season two episode one.
Season 2 Episode 1:
“Trying to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door”
The first episode of season two dives deep into the character and origin of Fezco, his grandma, father, and little adopted brother Ashtray. It is highly assumed that Fez’s father abused him to the point where his grandmother found him at a strip club and shot him in both of his legs, later walking out and saying to young Fez waiting in her car, “you’re gonna come live with grandma now.”
Fez, being the shows and specifically Rue’s drug dealer gained and earned all of his skills through watching and working with, “the motherf*cking G”, his grandma. After his grandma got sick, he took over the business of being a drug dealer. He eventually dropped out of college to fully take care of Ashtray and “the business.”
It then cuts to a scene of Fez, Ashtray, and Rue in Fez’s car. Rue is taking a multitude of drugs while being quite comedic and annoying rapping Tupac’s song, Hit ‘Em Up. They then hit a plugs house where they make a deal with one of the only female drug dealers Rue or Fez could recall ever working with or meeting. It’s very rare yet interesting that the show used a female drug dealer to make the show more representative and now more relatable to different drug dealers today.
The rest of the episode focuses on a huge New Year’s Eve party where Rue starts taking a myriad of drugs, including heroin while trying to first off avoid Jules since it would be the first time they had seen each other since the train station. Rue then stumbles into a laundry room where the audience along with Rue meets Elliot. Elliot, played by musician Dominic Fike, saves Rue by boosting her pulse by giving her Adderall. I am very excited to see this new friendship play out and grow, maybe in a way that Rue becomes sober again or learns how to slow down from the drugs.
We now move to Cassie and Nate who had run into each other at a gas station. Nate offers her a ride to the party and shows the complete idiocy of teen drinking and driving. They arrive at the party to be found together in a bathroom. A few moments later Maddy is pounding on the door and with only a few moments to spare Cassie hides in the bathtub and Nate leaves only for Cassie to be trapped in the bathroom with first just Maddy then with Maddy and Travis, a random guy from the party.
Cassie leaves the bathroom only to be sat down in another room with her now ex-boyfriend, McKay, asking why their relationship didn’t work. Cassie ends the conversation with “I shouldn’t be anybody’s girlfriend.” With her later rephrasing “I don’t know if I’m a good person.” It is a truly heartbreaking scene to watch a person lose their self-confidence and their true sense of self. High school relationships tend to be short, dramatic, painful, and stupid. They always end with a person hurt either because they don’t know who they are yet and are still finding themselves or, they create drama and unnecessary situations and cause both people to hurt in the end.
The episode ends with Fez going up to Nate to give a somewhat nice New Year’s resolution toast and ending with Fez smashing a Tito’s Vodka bottle over Nate’s head and beating Nate to a pulp, leading to an unconscious Nate.
Nate will probably want revenge on Fez for his actions however Fez has bigger problems to worry about with other drug dealers. Fez might end up dead because of his actions but I am more worried about what will happen with Ashtray and their grandma. The last shot of the episode is of Rue and Jules making up and about to kiss before the fight broke loose and Rue ending the episode by saying, “damn.”
