![]() Ali is both a veteran sponsor and a veteran addict - at one point, he will confess to having returned to using after 12 years of sobriety, which all but destroyed any relationship he has with his daughters - and is neither swindled nor fazed by the various con games Rue tries running. It’s a useful prologue for the episode-length discussion that follows. Even in her wildest, happiest dream, Rue is still an addict. Given where Season One left off, it seems clear almost instantly that this is a fantasy of some kind, and it’s telling that after Jules leaves, Rue takes out her drug stash and prepares to get high. “Trouble Don’t Last Always” opens with Rue and Jules happily sharing an apartment, fooling around in the morning before Jules has to go to school. And it results in a spectacular hour that captures nearly all of the series’ strengths, without any of its weaknesses. The precarious (and expensive) nature of Covid-era production forced Levinson to take a low-fi approach that otherwise would not have been likely for a proper Season Two premiere. Necessity is the mother of invention - or, in this case, of restraint. (*) The episode was filmed at Frank’s Restaurant in Burbank, a familiar location from movies and television, including Gone Girl, Mad Men, and, perhaps most apt to note in light of the stack of flapjacks Ali spends much of this episode eating, the “Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes” episode of Comedy Central’s briliant-but-canceled Review. ![]() (A title and premiere date for the second special have yet to be announced.) The first of these two specials, titled “Trouble Don’t Last Always,” was filmed in September under strict pandemic guidelines, which means nearly all of it involves Rue and her Narcotics Anonymous sponsor Ali (recurring guest star Colman Domingo) having a quiet conversation over diner pancakes(*). Euphoria as it existed in that first season was full of bodies in close proximity, doing things together that simply aren’t safe in this impossible moment. The show has been gone so long in part because of Covid, but Levinson was able to produce a pair of special episodes meant to bridge the gap between seasons until fuller production resumes. Still, the show’s rare quiet moments were so powerful, they couldn’t help prompt the question of how good the series as a whole could be if it ever switched to decaf for a while. (HBO Max, like most streamers, has a “skip intro” option a “skip Nate” option would improve Euphoria by about 40 percent.) The performances - by not only Zendaya, but Hunter Schafer, Sydney Sweeney, Barbie Ferreira, and many more - were so strong, and the cinematography so stunning (even if it occasionally called too much attention to itself), that much more of Euphoria worked than didn’t. Other parts felt unintentionally comical, particularly football star Nate (Jacob Elordi) being presented as a supervillain, able to intimidate everyone into bending to his indomitable sociopathic will, no matter the personal cost to themselves. ![]() Some of this was fantastic, particularly anything involving Rue herself, with Zendaya eventually winning a well-deserved Emmy for grounding every one of Levinson’s flights of fancy with absolute, unflinching conviction. It wasn’t just that Rue and her classmates were engaging in reckless behavior with abandon, but that creator, writer, and chief director Sam Levinson tried to make every scene, and eventually every shot, pop off the screen. Having invested so much of her sobriety in this new relationship, Rue fell off the wagon, hard, and right into… a musical number?Įuphoria Season One feels like a million years ago (the finale aired in August of 2019), but Rue’s song-and-dance fantasy wasn’t out of character for a series that was so aggressively, proudly up in its audience’s grill in every moment of every scene. When last we left Rue Bennett, the heroin-addicted heroine of the high school drama Euphoria, she was grieving the abrupt departure of her girlfriend Jules. This post contains spoilers for the Euphoria special, which is now available on HBO Max and will be premiering Saturday night on HBO. ![]()
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