“Art should be dangerous,” a personality says within the season two finale of HBO’s Euphoria, a present whose storytelling channels the spirit of a drunkard driving over the pace restrict, within the lifeless of the night time, after having sawn the seatbelt proper off his automotive. Alternately criticised for glorifying unhealthy behaviour and favouring ‘vibes’ over priceless perception—though it’s praised simply as usually for being an genuine illustration of the teenager expertise—Euphoria has at all times taken satisfaction in being provocative.
Watching the primary season, I used to be usually reminded of its fellow teen drama Skins—consider it because the millennial model of what Euphoria is to the Gen Z—not due to the shared debaucherous DNA; and never due to the perspective-changing construction or the quiet delicate nook that each exhibits have for musical numbers; not even as a result of Euphoria, like Skins, is principally a sizzle reel for future stars. I used to be reminded of Skins as a result of beneath its gaudy exterior, it was simply as compassionate about its characters as Euphoria is concerning the rambunctious girls and boys who snort their method by its a number of storylines.
After an over two-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic — creator Sam Levinson directed two standalone specials centred across the characters Rue and Jules within the meantime, in addition to the function movie Malcolm & Marie — Euphoria returned final month with a brand new eight-episode season. The present has doubled down on the sensory overload strategy that Levinson has been perfecting since his underrated movie Assassination Nation. In different phrases, should you discover that Euphoria is to not your style, it’s best to know that it’s in all probability too late to make that argument out loud.
Levinson has directed every episode of season two, not like the final time, when he shared duties with Augustine Frizzell, Jennifer Morrison and Pippa Bianco. In that regard, these eight new episodes are a more true illustration of his manic imaginative and prescient, for higher or for worse. The runaway success of the primary season has additionally afforded the manufacturing sure luxuries, the obvious of which is the approval to shoot on 35mm movie. This provides season two a wholly new texture—not simply superficially, but additionally thematically.
This permits for Levinson and his cinematographer Marcell Rév to lose a few of that digital sheen from season one, and to intensify the inherent dreamlike tone of the sequence. If the primary season of Euphoria was like the beginning of an all-night bender, season two appears like waking up in a ditch someplace.
It’s a drop-dead beautiful present that includes drop-dead beautiful individuals—a stark distinction to the self-destructive behaviour on show. Rue’s relapse is probably the A-plot, whereas the Nate-Maddy-Cassie love triangle turns into considerably tiresome after some time. Cassie’s sister Lexi, in the meantime, discards her supporting character power and channels her newly assigned lead character standing in a season-long arc about her placing collectively a play on her life. This concludes with a two-episode fever dream of a finale, during which Levinson unleashes a few of his most flamboyant filmmaking with out ever dropping sight of what the present has at all times been about—friendship, remorse, and second probabilities.
Euphoria, as Levinson in all probability is aware of higher than anybody else, is at all times extra attention-grabbing after it sheds its attention-hungry outward look and embraces the core of what it truly is—an inward-gazing character research about damaged individuals.
But far too usually, the present lets the exteriority overpower every part else. It’s a purely surface-level commentary, however after having scored the 35mm movie, Levinson seems to have promptly dialled up the grainy visible aesthetic that solely celluloid can produce. Euphoria is a present that revels within the maximalism—the colors are oversaturated, the digicam is perpetually coked-out and characters tend of casually saying issues like, “It’s just heroin.”
But they’re additionally able to nice perception—or, not less than, Levinson is. “Reducing someone’s life to a moment, an ugly moment, and punishing them for it, that’s what cops do,” says Rue… ruefully, in episode six. She’s in the midst of a painful withdrawal, after the occasions of a stand-out episode 5 that may seemingly win Zendaya her second Emmy. We’ve simply caught her at a nasty time; she’s in all probability at her worst. And all she needs is to not be judged for who she is correct now.
But whereas Rue runs round in circles—acceptable for an addict, I suppose—the present tempers this repetitiveness with a young new storyline that treads the tonal tightrope that has come to outline this present. Lexi and Fezco are nothing like one another—they share character traits, not pursuits, as he astutely factors out in a single scene—however theirs is the purest relationship on the present. It represents not simply the cautious optimism that sometimes pokes its head out from behind the chaos, but additionally provides Levinson an excuse to interrupt out his trademark there-can-be-no-happy-endings mentality.
Like most youngsters, these characters are satisfied that what they’re feeling is everlasting. It isn’t. It’ll go away, but it surely’ll seemingly get replaced by one thing equally brutal. As an elder millennial who can empathise with the youthful technology, Levinson has taken on the accountability of serving to them swallow this bitter tablet. God is aware of he’s aided them in abusing medicine earlier than. He makes harmful artwork.
Euphoria Season Two
Creator – Sam Levinson
Cast – Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Maude Apatow, Angus Cloud
Rating – 4/5
