Dysphoria

This week I had the misfortune of watching the first two episodes of Euphoria. I could hardly follow the show. With its large assortment of poorly introduced characters, a lot of unnecessary sex scenes, and completely over-exaggerated drug use, Euphoria proves that the HBO name doesn’t automatically make a show as good as The Sopranos or Game Of Thrones.

The main character Rue, played by Zendaya, is a drug addict. Her dealer is a 10-year-old boy who’s pushing thousands of dollars in contraband. There’s no way in hell a 10 year old could ever do that. It really makes me wonder if the producers intended the show to be realistic, or if it’s just a badly-done satire. By making a little kid a drug dealer, they’re just trying to add a shock factor to the show, but something that outrageous simply takes away from any realistic immersion you could get from watching.

Euphoria is 13 Reasons Why, but on crack. HBO really tried to make the show as graphic as possible, in every single way. They show probably upwards of two dozen penises in one shot, which is completely unnecessary and not something I want to see at 10 in the morning on a Monday. All of the teenagers look like they’re in their mid 20’s, and it really takes away from the show. If you’re going to make a drama entirely about teens, how about you actually cast some? Watching any of those characters sit in a high-school classroom makes me cringe, because it’s so painfully obvious that they’re way older.

If you want to depict how teens exploit drugs, sex, or alcohol, isn’t there is a better way than having a girl take a hormone shot and get raped, or having some random drug dealer feed a girl Fentanyl from a knife? I think there is.  All of these completely outrageous situations happen in the same small town at the same time, which seems absolutely ridiculous to me. None of those things ever happen in my school, which is three times the size of the one in Euphoria.

Euphoria has gotten a lot of hate for its extreme drugs and sex, but that’s not the reason this show is bad at all. If a show’s creators want extreme themes, then they have to make them interesting or meaningful. Euphoria just throws drugs and sex at you unnecessarily for no reason, and with a bunch of “teenagers”.

Every part of Euphoria made me angry. It was just so inaccurate and it made all teenagers look so stupid. Every single one of the kids in this show has completely clouded and stupid judgement. They’re constantly beating one another up, bullying one another, and having sex with complete strangers. Once again, this is all completely over-exaggerated, and you hardly even know what’s going on anyway because the show is all out of order and has a bunch of completely pointless flashback scenes.

I could go on forever about how much Euphoria made me want to pull my eyes out of my head. With rushed introductions and confusing character relationships, nearly every part of the story feels either useless or plain boring. I was really disappointed when I watched this show, because it’s definitely a good idea. They just executed it very poorly, in a way that doesn’t whatsoever reflect the lives of real teens.