Euphoria: Drugs, Issues and Teenagers.
If this show represents even the fraction of the truth about what is going on among our latest generations, then we might have something scarier and more alarming than global warming to worry about.
Euphoria, a show about dysfunctioning teenagers with multiple issues at once might be a bomb that hits too close to home.
I’ve always avoided teenage drama as they always felt cringe to me. So repetitive and uninteresting. But this changed with Skin. The first teen drama ever I could sit and watch without feeling uninterested. The disturbing but casual lifestyle of suburb teens and their drama was woefully portrayed in that show, leaving me alone thinking about my own choices as a teen for months.
But when I saw the trailer of this one, my immediate thought was it would be another similar one filled with drugs, fantasies, perversive portrayals of sexual relations, and violence. This was, just not only in that way I imagined it. And that’s why it hits too close to home.
At the very beginning, we are introduced to Rue/Zendaya, a wordy woke self-enlightened teenager with mental issues as she slowly narrates the events happening on the screen, like backstories causalities and what not. And slowly you start to explore the horrifying nature of reality woven beautifully while telling the random yet connected stories of recklessness. Like nudes, explicit substances careless polygamy and at the end only misery.
Rue, an almost loner, diagnosed with multiple mental issues is a drug addict. Nothing in her life is stable and to cheat drug tests, she sets up elaborate schemes of swapping urine with her friends and uses very unique high IQ methods in such discourses. But. She feels exactly the opposite about life.
As she was in the rehab for the past three months after she almost fatally OD’d, she comes back and again relapses. Because of her becoming careless about life itself after all the unfortunate events she and her family had to go through.
But all starts to slowly change as a new girl, Jules transfers to Rue's school. Rue starts to care for her and later falls for her. But Jules is a transgender who likes older people who seem homophobic from the outside, but tend to use gay tinder for a one-night stands.
Only after a couple of weeks, Jules is in town, she manages to get on a date with a man having all the aforementioned details. And she manages to fend off her first bully of this town, Nate Jacobs, who coincidentally is the son of that guy she just dated.
Nate was exposed to his father's perverted fetishes from a very early age as his father keeps CDs of all the encounters he has and Nate finding them. This turned him into power-hungry, overly possessive narcissistic homophobic megalomaniac while he too is coming to terms with his sexuality making his life overly complicated.
He tends to forcefully make his affections towards men look like nothing and justifies it by over caring for her girlfriend Maddy. And similar to this, there are seven stories entangled in a spider's web-like mesh, and a single event in one's life leaves an aftershock in the others.
For me, this show is quite the thing of entertainment along with the parts filled with touches of dark humor, a portrayal of the sadistic and cruel nature of the perverts over the internet, and Nate Jacobs.
Trailer:
This guy is the textbook definition of an idiot with daddy issues. When he found out that his father is leading a dual life, he took it harder than it was. It shook him to the core to such an extent that in an attempt to not become like his father, he exactly became like him. With all the good looks and being able to get anything, anytime he wanted, he could never fill the void of his trauma and the void that he himself stretched it to tenfold.
Euphoria sometimes could feel actually euphoric, with all the strobe effects latest pop songs as BGM and macro shots of glitter. It might have been an effort from the producer's side to draw teen viewers all those trippy visuals. But it's not even the tiniest bit suitable for kids under 18. Filled with uncensored footage of penises, explicit substance abuse and delusions of grandeur showcased as drama might attract a teen to this show for all the wrong reasons. So it's best to watch it and let others watch at their own discretion.
ScreenCaps:
All the photos are either credited or property of HBO and Sky Atlantic.