Muristek
In its second season, the hit HBO drama on drugged-out and love-crazed teens has finally tipped into too much style over substance
Euphoria, the slick, explicit, high-budget teen drama halfway through its second season on HBO, has from the start been a soap layered in heady seriousness. The show, adapted by Sam Levinson from an Israeli series of the same name and co-produced by Drake, took on a near encyclopedia of Today’s Teen Issues – sex shaming, drug addiction, body insecurity, web personas, revenge porn, pregnancy and abortion, emotional abuse, toxic masculinity, self-harm and depression, and more – with a bracing, revelatory frankness and thick lacquer of gloss (and full-frontal nudity).
By its first season finale in 2019, in which main character Rue (Zendaya, who won an Emmy for the role) nearly dies in a graphic drug overdose, Euphoria had drawn a legion of fans (the finale drew 1.2 million night-of viewers and became HBO’s most second-most tweeted-about series ever, behind Game of Thrones) and managed to balance shock with sensitivity. It established beloved characters – in particular the fragile, alchemical bond between Rue and Jules (Hunter Schafer), a trans character – as well as a distinctive visual palette: saturated color, shimmery beats, high-voltage fantasy, meta narration, a zeitgeist-aiming show with a small hint of irony and a large dollop of excess.
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