Do you know where your children are?" or more accurately, "It's 10 p.m. But it doesn't commit to this controversial stance, offering confused undertones reminiscent of parental PSAs ("It's 10 p.m. The show positions this storyline in a way that almost suggests an underage girl showing her body to strange men on the Internet is empowering. So often times the show's racier and more dramatic narratives feel purposeless in Euphoria, as if they were inserted merely for shock factor.įor example, things get even murkier when Kat-a Tumblr fanfiction writer who struggles with body image issues-starts a secret life as a cam girl, financially dominating middle-aged men over video chat.
Yes,today's teens do use drugs and have sex, but that's not necessarily what defines their generation. But she also moves in and out of dimly lit parties as if they're happening on every block of her small town, and she easily accesses every drug from Fentanyl to Ketamine.
To be fair, the show does touch briefly on these truths, memorably portraying Rue watching 22 hours of reality TV on her laptop while in the midst of a depressive episode. Unfortunately, these high points are often overshadowed by the chaotic melodrama of the rest of the series. Rue's plotline and the creative, stylized filming techniques capturing it could make for an excellent show by themselves. For example, we follow Rue through the portal of her mind into an old timey slideshow presentation on dick pics later, we see her in a film noir of her own devising as she works to unpack a town mystery.
The show excels most when it gives Rue the reigns and breaks the fourth wall, allowing viewers into Rue's often wryly funny, though chaotic, inner world.
She deftly switches between mania and depression, adding layers of truth to the tired trope of the moody teenager. Rue's childhood history of mental illness and learning disabilities have left her marooned in her teens without a firm sense of identity, resulting in an ongoing battle with drug addiction. For all the ways the show can be heavy-handed in dealing with these subjects, Zendaya's performance as Rue, the show's primary protagonist, is brilliant and subtle. The 2000s had Skins, Jamie Brittain's entertainingly disaffected British import about pill-popping, bed-hopping high schoolers." Now, Gen Zers have HBO's Euphoria-in its best moments.įormer Disney Channel mainstay Zendaya fittingly stars in the neon-lit teenage drama about high-schoolers facing a world ruled by unprecedented amounts of technology, learning disabilities, psychiatric disorders, synthetic drugs, and identity politics. The '90s had Kids, Harmony Korine's bleakly disaffected portrayal of teenage skater kids sharing drugs and HIV. But every now and then, perhaps once in a generation, a depiction of teens comes along in the form of a gripping, hyper-realistic, and poetic meditation on what it means to be coming-of-age in the modern world.Īs The Atlantic puts it, "The 1980s had Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero, a coolly disaffected portrait of life in Los Angeles that featured heroin, rape, snuff films, and a 12-year-old sex slave. Networks like the CW have found success from this formula, pumping out substanceless but highly watchable shows like Riverdale, Gossip Girl, and 90210 to the delight of binge-watchers everywhere. There's nothing new about lurid portrayals of teenagers.Ĭonsumers of western TV and cinema love to gawk at the depravity of youth as portrayed by 25-year-olds with startling facial symmetry.