Euphoria: Thoughts with Words
I started watching HBO’s “Euphoria” a couple of weeks ago after one of my coworker’s recommended I check it out. It’s a show that’s always been on my radar. The first season came out to such critical acclaim, and the buzz was high on the Instagram and Twitterverses of this world (wide web). So I figured I’d dive in. The show’s first season (and just finished its second season) is only eight episodes. I just finished episode three last night and I wanted to give my thoughts so far.
The Pilot for “Euphoria” was a wild ride for me. With all the hype, all the talk and screenshots I saw online, it was clear I didn’t really know what the show was. It’s more than just a girl who does a lot of drugs. It is the teen experience for the modern age. These kids were all born after 9/11. They all have had social media and smartphones. They’ve streamed every show and movie they’ve ever watched. This show is very much for the person that is not me. I am 35 years old. It was almost 20 years ago that I was this age, and when I was this age, 9/11 was just a couple years old, I had a LG flip-phone and Netflix was still sending me movies in the mail. All that being said, there is a lot of love about this show. The performances are nuanced and varied. Zendaya is a powerhouse of an actor. She has such a natural delivery. Her range in just the first three episodes is vast, going from playful to terrified to tender to petrified. The show itself has an incredible style and aesthetic. There aren’t many shows I’ve seen that flow with such chaos, the way this show flows. It’s like that movie “Beginners,’’ but on speed (had to). The music and the mood is spot on. Then we get the cast. There’s the overly controlling jock, the new girl, the Mac Miller-esque drug dealer, the fat girl, the friend of the fat girl who has just broken up with the overly controlling jock. I have pros and cons with all the characters in this show and how they are portrayed. Don’t get me wrong, all the performances are fantastic, there are just little things I’ve noticed about the characters that I want to address.
Let’s start with the overly controlling jock, Nate (Jacob Eldori). Nate is the tall, handsome white star quarterback that was dating the friend of the fat girl, Maddy(Alexa Demie). We get the backstory on Nate (and the other major players) through a voice over by Rue (Zendaya). We find out that he basically pushed himself to greatness to get his father’s approval (relatable), which gave him his blessed body and his pick of the babes at school (Maddy is one of them). At a party, Maddy (who is still very much into Nate) decides to pour salt in the wound of their relationship, and fucks a dude in the pool in front of every one. Before this, Rue passes the new girl Jules (Hunter Schafer) as she rides her bike. Jules has just moved into town with her father from the city (I can’t remember which one). When we meet her, she is on a dating app trying to get a hookup. She finds one, gets all dolled up and meets the hook up at a motel. The hook up is a very fit older man that has a huge hard dick in a scene before he actually fucks Jules (who I think is 17 in the show. That’s not a judgment, but more the highlighting of a plot point that I’m sure will be paid off). I want to go down a tangent here. There are a lot of dicks in this show. A LOT. Way more cocks than I’ve seen in any other show. Some are high school dicks, most are dick pic dicks and then there are the dicks you see when you are browsing Porn Hub. As someone who wants more dicks in movies and television, I appreciate all the cocks. Back to Jules. After the sex, Jules picks up her phone and finds the man with the large penis is married with children. Fast forward back to the party where Maddy is fucking the dude in the pool and Nate is watching, getting pissed, his ego bruising. He goes back into the house and finds Jules in the kitchen. He confronts her to the point where he is flat out threatening her in front of everyone. Jules chooses fight over flight and grabs a kitchen knife, cutting herself and leaving the party. Rue chases after her, and the two start a friendship (and maybe more). There’s a nice reveal at the end of the episode (if you are reading this, you’ve probably already seen it) that hooked me for the next episode.
One other character I want to briefly touch on is Kat (Barbie Ferreira), the fat girl. Now, before you get really mad at me for calling her fat, I am using the word fat as a description and not pejoratively. There are fat people and there are thin people. Kat’s body seems to be more average (according to Google, the average dress size for women is a size 14) than what people would call “fat,” whether you’re hurting or flirting. At the party, Kat is in a room with three dudes, two of which are brothers, and are specifically the brother of Chris (Algee Smith), the host of the house party who is trying to get with Cassie (Sydney Sweeney). The other boy in the room is a shirtless dude who is trying to hook up and basically convinces her to fuck. Kat tells her friend later that she just lost her virginity. Kat is probably the character I can most relate to, in that I was the insecure virgin fat kid that wanted to be desired, but never really was. There’s more to the Kat story that I will talk about tomorrow, but I really like that character.
I will write about episode two tomorrow morning. I know that I’m way late to the party, but I have many thoughts about the show. I haven’t even really talked about Zendaya but I will probably Wednesday.
