Anyone who says they enjoyed being a teenager is either a very boring adult or has forgotten what their life was truly like in those years. No matter where you grew up or how “cool” you were, being a teenager usually involves, at best, a lot of insecurity, awkwardness, and feeling misunderstood, and at worst, a lot of pain, isolation, and even violence. Of course, there are plenty of cool things about being that age that (almost) compensate for all the bad stuff, and you definitely remember them fondly as you grow older, but when you are in it, it’s the ugliness what makes you want to crawl into a hole and forget the world for a second. Who would ever miss that?
Now, despite the universality of the awfulness that is being a teenager, few TV shows have ever managed to capture it as it really is. There are some exceptions, like the iconic British Skins, the one-season wonder that was My So-Called Life, and most recently, Skam, the Norwegian web series that became an underground hit solely through word of mouth. But in general, teen shows tend to favor fantasy and glam over the gritty and unromantic reality of everyday teenagers’ lives. And that is where Euphoria comes in.
Euphoria, which premieres on June 16th, is HBO’s first ever “teen” series, and I say “teen” because it’s unlike any other teen show we’ve ever seen. The series follows a group of high school kids living in a typical American suburb, but its protagonist is Rue, a 17-year-old girl (masterfully played by Zendaya) who has just finished a drug rehabilitation program. As the series starts, we learn that she has been living with addiction for a couple of years, and that her condition has ruined not only her physical and mental health, but also her relationship with her family and friends.
As she herself explains, there is nothing fun or cool about being addicted to drugs and it destroying her life, but the feeling she gets from doing them is unlike anything else she’s ever experienced; it is that feeling what she loves (the peace, the quiet, the silence, feeling like the whole world disappears) and that’s why she has no intention to stay clean, even if it kills her. She is addicted to the feeling of escape, of respite from an existence where she feels too much, thinks too much, and hurts too much: “If I could be a different person, I would.”
The premise of the show gets even darker when we think about the fact that Sam Levinson, the show’s creator (known for Assassination Nation) wrote the show based on his own experiences with drug addiction as a teenager. In many ways, Rue is him, and the reason the show feels so real and scary even is because he put all the darkness of his addiction into the story. As he said at the show’s premiere in Los Angeles, he wanted the series to do justice not only to the teenage experience, but also addiction in an honest, real way, so that anyone who watches the series and relates to what the characters are going through can feel seen and less alone. But even more than that, he wishes the show would give people hope that it is possible to find your way out of that darkness and live life again and be okay.
Besides Rue, the show follows the lives of several teenagers who come from very different backgrounds and who struggle with everything from toxic relationships and slut shaming to mental health issues. Each one of these characters is their own universe, but because the series is so carefully and beautifully written, we get to relate and feel for all of them in a way. After watching each episode, you might feel a little overwhelmed or even emotionally drained from having experienced all of those things with the characters, but the series is truly worth watching for that same reason. (Also, the cinematography is pretty stunning.)
In the end, it’s Levinson’s commitment to depicting addiction and the lives of real 21st-century teenagers in a way that does justice to these experiences and speaks to the viewer what makes Euphoria stand out from anything else that’s available for streaming right now. It’s a great first for HBO and, hopefully, the beginning of a new era for shows that explore what it’s really like to be a teenager at this time.
Cover picture @zendayahub
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