they don’t bubble up or over until that fourth episode, and even then don’t undercut what’s come before. While there are some familiar teen tropes that other series traffic in - idiotic jocks, vapid cheerleaders, toxic (and annoying) relationships, etc. I’ve seen the four episodes HBO sent out for review, and it’s not just a joking aside to say adults (who will likely make up the bulk of the viewing audience) and particularly parents are the ones who might need a trigger warning as opposed to teenagers, who might view it more like a documentary. If the storylines do start to unravel a little bit moving forward, my guess is that that won’t ultimately detract from the aspects that feel absolutely, graphically, unflinchingly real and earned. It isn’t until the fourth episode that Euphoria even hints at a minor stumble into a more predictable representation of teen behavior, but what comes before suggests that’s an aberration. Together they try to makes sense of being broken, as do, in various ways, a multitude of other characters. Rue finds a friend in Jules (Schafer), a trans girl who is new to the school and whose past (forced psychiatric stays, a mother breaking down over Jules’ search for identity) morphs into a present filled with harrowing, brutal sexual encounters. Levinson has said he used his own drug addiction to infuse that storyline and Zendaya is masterful at getting at the raw, honest emotions of someone who freely admits that being high (on basically anything) frees her from what gnaws inside her (she first steals the pills of her dying father like others here, she only finds relief from life by numbing it, and other characters have parental deaths or just damaged parents to deal with). The series mostly revolves around Rue (Zendaya), a 17-year-old drug addict who overdosed the summer before we meet her, still looking to score fresh out of rehab.

(For everybody else, Euphoria feels like a next-gen version of Larry Clark and Harmony Korine’s Kids, from 1995, but with even more inherent, life-altering risks given that today technology is often used to capture your hedonism and then have it transacted throughout your social group and often beyond). The difference with Euphoria is that there’s nothing remotely funny about it, as Levinson steers unflinchingly into what many adults and particularly parents will be triggered (and maybe outraged) by while most teens will probably agree it’s one of the few accurate visual interpretations of their life. The result? An early career-defining performance from Zendaya, who is an absolute revelation here a similarly fantastic breakout performance from trans actress and model Hunter Schafer in her first major role and strong work from Levinson, who created, wrote and directed (five of the eight episodes), getting the vehicle that emphatically announces his arrival.īased on an Israeli series of the same title, Euphoria sees Levinson bring to life the extremely rough and harrowing world of teenagers trying to navigate drugs, sex, social media nightmares, broken homes, emotional distress and other life-comes-at-you-fast adolescent issues that so many shows about teenagers can’t seem to grasp or get right (though the Netflix dramedy Sex Education comes closest). And it has the kind of trans plotline other series have struggled to present both accurately and respectfully. It has a long list of mostly unknown teen actors tasked with performing some harrowing modern-day coming-of-age stories steeped in bleakness. It was produced by Drake, among others from the music business, and written by Sam Levinson ( Assassination Nation, The Wizard of Lies) - the son of director Barry Levinson - who is still looking to cement his name. It stars a former Disney Channel actress and pop singer, Zendaya ( The Greatest Showman). But maybe the most shocking of them all is that the show is infinitely more impressive than a glance at its headliners might suggest. There are a number of surprising and shocking elements in HBO’s new series Euphoria, which deals with teenage sexuality, drug use, peer pressure and more.

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