Two and a half years ago the first season of Euphoria she had received practically unanimous support, despite all the risks she took: she could be as brazen and vulgar as she was intimate and umbilical; it presented itself as a teen drama, but then plunged into deep darkness.
Through the narrative voice of the protagonist Rue (a magnificent Zendaya), she introduced us to the dystopian world of Generation Z with an emotional participation and visual inventiveness that was really difficult to resist. It was also a portrait of adolescents as raw as it was aspirational: the characters lived terrible moments, but well-kept clothing and makeup also made them extremely charismatic.
After a long break and the two beautiful “extra” episodes released between 2020 and 2021, the second season of Euphoria (on Sky and Now) is both very true to its spirit and not quite successful. There are some poorly understood script choices: co-star Jules, for example, is relegated to the sidelines, while at the villain Nate and his father are given undeserved attention. Other characters on the other hand emerge more, but in general the feeling is that Sam Levinson was unable to balance all the stories he wanted to tell. Furthermore, the first three episodes suffer a lot from prolixity, from a too evident desire to strike the viewer and from a search for often gratuitous provocation. It must be said that the following ones give back a lot of confidence and reach real peaks.
Euphoria has always played with excess, in the new season the volume is even higher: the editing can alternate between three climatic musical sequences, with three different soundtracks by genre and era, a cacophony certainly desired but not always effective. Having lost some of the magical balance of the first season, the series brings together some moments that are really at the limit of the bearable, such as the opening sequences of the first three episodes, with other beautiful and emotionally powerful, which often (but not always) are about Rue and his relapse into addiction.
Euphoria 2