Euphoria TV Specials [2020]: Two Portraits of Youth, Pain, and Mental Illness
After the first season of Euphoria, which consisted of eight episodes, HBO decided to release two special episodes centered on the two most important figures from that season: Rue and Jules. Partly fueled by the incredible hype surrounding the show after its summer 2019 debut, these specials arrived in the winter of 2020. Both stories explored the turmoil that can define adolescence, that strange and often brutal period of a person's life. Rue is trapped between her desire to keep using substances and her suicidal thoughts, while Jules struggles with the belief that nobody could truly deserve to love her, alongside the complicated relationship she has with her identity as a transgender girl.
Believe me when I say that I am approaching this review as a 32 year old woman, not as another member of the Euphoria fandom, which can be both passionate and heavily biased. Both episodes take place immediately after the events of the season one finale. Rue falls back into her vicious cycle, but because it is Christmas and she is completely alone, she reaches out to Ali. What follows is, in my opinion, a masterclass in screenwriting for a mainstream television series. And that still fascinates me. The same person responsible for the mess that was The Idol somehow created this brilliant series and these two extraordinary episodes, which remain some of the strongest pieces of television I have seen from Euphoria.
The dialogue is profound without ever losing touch with the adolescent context. There is a constant tension between an adult perspective and that anguished, impulsive, tormented worldview that seems so absolute when you are sixteen or seventeen. The tone of this particular chapter, which I will pragmatically call the “Rue episode,” genuinely surprised me. I had already watched Euphoria back when it first came out, but while reading about Zendaya's career, I discovered that this episode, which I had no idea even existed until then, had the highest IMDb rating of the entire series. After watching it again, I understood why. There is something remarkably intimate about watching Rue sit across from Ali and simply talk. Nothing needs to explode. Nothing needs to happen. The conversation itself becomes the story.
And then there is the second special, the “Jules episode.” Here, we essentially witness a clinical therapy session unfolding in real time. Jules openly and honestly confronts everything she has buried deep inside herself. She struggles to understand that the toughness and pursuit of perfection she desperately wants are ultimately impossible standards to live by. We also begin to understand the anger that has been accumulating inside her since her mother abandoned her in a psychiatric institution when she was only nine years old. As a mother myself, that confession hits differently. There is something deeply uncomfortable about seeing a child trying to make sense of an abandonment that she was never emotionally equipped to understand.
The performances in both episodes feel closer to theater than to a mainstream television production. There is no conventional happiness or easy sense of relief carried by Labrinth's extraordinary score. Instead, we get two hours, one hour per episode, devoted almost entirely to witnessing the damage, the pain, and the reasons behind the actions we later discuss, dissect, and gossip about after watching an episode on Max. I have to give enormous credit to Zendaya and Hunter Schafer for delivering performances of this caliber, but especially for transmitting their characters' emotions with such honesty and authenticity. You know you have witnessed something truly remarkable when the emotions on screen somehow begin to feel like your own. That is precisely what Euphoria accomplishes here, and it does so with astonishing precision.