What Makes Euphoria A Must-watch?

Let’s be honest, Euphoria is every parent’s worst nightmare. It’s a show about school kids taking drugs, OD, having sex, getting pregnant, getting assaulted, and getting blackmailed. It’s pretty depressing. 

The show’s biggest star, Zendaya, even warned people that season 3 would not be fun to watch. While it sounds counterintuitive, this depressing realism makes Euphoria one of the best shows on HBO.

For the record, we are big fans of Zendaya and the coming-of-age genre. While Queen Z is great in this, the cast is also incredible. It’s the way the showrunner, Sam Levinson, created such an immersive high school experience that we want to talk about. But first, a quick synopsis.

A Quick Synopsis of Euphoria

Euphoria focuses on Rue, a 17-year-old drug addict who has just been released from rehab. After overdosing, she soon meets newcomer Jules, and they navigate Rue’s quest for sobriety while returning to school. 

Jules, Rue, and the rest of their friends slowly grow up as they experience the highs and lows of love, drugs, and friendship. Before further details of the show, let’s quickly go over… 

High schools in Hollywood

Often, there is a clear disconnect between reality and how school kids are portrayed on TV. This disconnect is because the people creating these shows aren’t kids; they are crusty old producers who need help understanding youth culture. 

Therefore, we get this weird, airbrushed version of high school. The guy gets the girl, and the hero and the school bully become friends. Ultimately, everyone gets into the college they want, the classics. 

In the old times, Skins was the biggest show to deviate from this formula. Everyone loved it because it was something different and something unique. It was something we hadn’t seen before: the grimier side of high school, people partying, people dealing with anxiety; it was different and fun. 

There’s more stuff to push the envelope like that. TV shows like Sex Education, Eighth Grade, and Ladybird are good, but still pretty rare. Euphoria follows the same blueprint and doubles down on the grim reality of being a teenager. While we don’t encourage pingers or injecting heroin, high-school kids do take drugs, they do have sex, and they do spend most of their waking hours trying to work out who they are. 

Euphoria does this so well; it focuses on formulating our personalities in the most important section of our lives. Or what seems most important is the last few years of high school.

Euphoria is extremely popular amongst the Gen Z gang, and this is probably something to do with the fact that there are a bunch of pretty people in it and a bunch of pretty naked people in it. A co-star in the show, Sydney Sweeney, became a star who stripped off for the camera. 

It also resonates with Gen Z as it captures most teenagers’ relatable anxieties. You know, big picture things like, from the peak of your life? Is high school just a blip on the radar? Or will you live up to all that untapped potential? You know, all those big questions you think about as a kid. Life is equal parts exciting and scary because it’s your first time doing everything.

The Pressure on Gen Z

Euphoria seems to nail the perceived pressures teenagers face in the digital age. Characters are caught between becoming their person and doing what they think other people in society expect them to do. This is particularly true for the girls in the show; they are regularly pressured by guys into having sex. 

Let’s be honest; the guys in this show are scumbags. For example, Kat decides to lose her virginity at a party, and within hours, she realizes that she was filmed, and her sex tape has been circulated. Another time, Cassie thinks her boyfriend wants sex, so she tries to instigate it, and he tells her to stop being so desperate.

only to ask her for nudes hours later.

While not every guy is like this, Ethan is an absolute sweetheart. The show captures the way toxic masculinity is celebrated in high school. This is particularly true of Nate and his dad, but we’ll get to that soon.

Before we discuss some of the characters in more detail, we want to highlight some of the other things that make Euphoria pop.

Visual Storytelling by Sam Levinson 

First, we’ve got visual storytelling rather than having characters explain things using boring dialogue. Sam Levinson goes the extra mile with open-top sets, dream sequences, animated cutaways, and characters breaking the fourth wall. These visual flourishes put you in the character’s shoes and, more importantly, keep you engaged. 

For instance, the scene where Rue and Jules are talking about dick pics. This scene could have been turned into an eight-minute back-and-forth, but Rue breaks the fourth wall 30 seconds in, and we get a much more exciting scene. 

It took a bit more effort and a few more shots, but it makes everything so much cooler and easier to digest. Why use a visual medium if you still need to use visuals? 

The Pop Culture References

This creativity feeds into another thing we love, the references. There are a bunch of pop culture references in the show; some are blatantly obvious. For instance, when Rue debugs Jules and Nate’s relationship, referencing Se7en. 

And some are more subtle, like the three-finger kiss from Hunger Games. But our favorite one is when Khal Drogo steps in to slay Ethan. 

Maybe that’s not your thing, but these little easter eggs are another example that the creators care about what they’re putting on the screen, and that matters. 

The Music

Using copyrighted music is always dangerous, as it can age media quickly. However, it can make a show pop slightly extra if used well. The music sets the tone for whatever the scene is trying to communicate.

As most of Euphoria is a narration from Rue’s perspective, the music mirrors her rapidly shifting mental state, and we think it does it pretty damn well. For example, there is a scene where the song in the background suddenly becomes clear as Rue sniffs drugs, drugs = clarity for Rue. 

Lastly, there are also some funny needle drops during scene transitions.

Characterization in Euphoria

For an ensemble cast, the show does a fantastic job of fleshing out each main character and focusing on a new character for each episode, similar to Skins. 

While we don’t want to give away massive spoilers, we must talk about Rue and Nate. Both of these characters are very good people. Rue is continually self-sabotaging, manipulating, and lying to those around her to cover up her addiction. 

On the other hand, Nate is plain dangerous. He’s a true alpha willing to lie, coerce and threaten anybody to stay on top. Nate is not just threatened. He’s willing to hurt anybody to stay on top. 

Some people might say, Hang on, Rue is a much nicer person than Nate, she doesn’t assault anyone, and she’s only doing it because of her drug addiction. To an extent, Nate is addicted to power, controlling everyone in his life, particularly women. And these addictions stemmed from their troubled upbringing, Rue from her father’s death, and Nate from his overbearing dad. 

So, they have a lot more in common than you first think. Even though by extension, it seems like every character in the show is struggling with some addiction, whether it be an addiction to acceptance, love, freedom, being in a relationship, pleasing others, or anything, a lot is going on in this show.

Relating to the high school genre, these flawed characters make the series much more believable and, consequently, more interesting. There’s a lot more about this show because it is so nuanced and interesting, and we may make new posts about Euphoria at some stage. 

But for now, we implore you to go and watch Euphoria; you won’t regret it.