'Euphoria' again pushes boundaries with its latest dreary injection of teen angst
After a two-and-a-half-year hiatus between seasons, "Euphoria" returns in the middle of a two-part special, offering up the latest permutation of youthful rage.
Despite Zendaya's attention-grabbing, award-winning appearance, the HBO series remains so incredibly bleak and nihilistic that it's highly defined how far series creator Sam Levinson sets standards when it comes to nudity, sex, and drug use. Will increase (Answer: Very far indeed.)
"Euphoria" works overtime to differentiate itself from the airbrushed soaps of "Gossip Girl" or other TV contributions to the genre, with the most crude films examining these areas, or "Genera + Ion" and "13 Reasons Why". ," itself a source of controversy.
Yet any television show ultimately boils down to characters, where the series tends to be short, even with flights of imagination – giving some episodes an almost dreamlike quality – and provided by Zendaya's Rue. Overwhelming description of one whose struggle with addiction is to persevere.
Levinson has structured the season as a series of stories involving individual characters, gradually bringing those strands together over the course of seven episodes previewed. Yet there is a repetitive quality to the issues at work, central among them are Roo's relationship with Jules (Hunter Schaefer) and the triangle involving Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), Maddie (Alexa Demi) and Nate (Jacob Elordi), of whom Each has been hurt and damaged. own way.
Nor does the new season completely eschew the earlier tendency to reduce parents to either demons or ineffectual serpents who recall voices unseen in old Charlie Brown cartoons, in an attempt to dispel some of their history. Despite.
Criticizing "Euphoria" as someone who milked previous generations of teen dramas risks a certain "Get Off My Lawn" quality, and the show has had its share of critical fans and enthusiastic fans, who love Zendaya as their own. Earns an Emmy for the first season and its intensity. Display.
That said, as written, the characters dare the audience to care too deeply about them, and the show's efforts just feel icky at times, including later encounters in which a The gun is branded as a type of foreplay.
Admittedly, such a show is not intended to be everyone's cup of tea in the streaming age and is not required, with the advantage that "Euphoria" appeals to viewers who regularly watch HBO or HBO games. Can't see more on Max. (It features a different spin on dysfunctional families with another series, "The Righteous Gemstones," which isn't a particularly compatible pairing.)
The teens in "Euphoria" (played by twentysomethings, as is common) haven't captured the market on self-absorption and apparently haven't invented it. In the final analysis, though, this latest batch of episodes comes across with the kind of serious, obnoxious efficiency that could leave everyone feeling as numb as Rue's voice.
