Here, instead, cutaways to flashbacks diminish what’s happening in the room, simultaneously over-explaining and attempting to position that over-explaining as something more artful. The Rue special, “Trouble Don’t Last Always,” was rooted in a single conversation and was all the more effective for that. (Therapy scenes are not easy, and Jules’s diffidence, defiance, and exploration of possibility flicker across Schafer in intriguing counterpoint.)īut the direction by Levinson has the tendency to let the script, by Levinson and Schafer together, down. This raises in frank terms questions that a potential second season might answer well, and Schafer is across-the-board terrific. There, Jules brings up, and occasionally backs away from, big and important concepts on her mind, including flirting with the idea of taking herself off hormone replacement therapy as a way of, potentially, stepping away from a version of herself that she now sees as constructed for male pleasure. Much time, for instance, is spent in a therapy session between Jules and a character played by Lauren Weedman. That this ends up the takeaway seems impossible at other points in the episode. It’s padding for an episode with not quite enough on its mind to justify bringing the band back together. But it’s an easy shorthand for a big emotional catharsis - pairing a facile recap of past events with both melodramatic style and a song from the album “Melodrama” - that feels somewhere short of what Levinson, as a director, has shown himself capable of achieving. Sad things are sad, and this is sad, too. We see a close-up of Schafer’s eye as Jules looks through old images of her relationship with Rue they’re reflected in her iris, toggling rapidly by, as Lorde’s wrenching, emotionally-broad anthem “Liability” plays almost in full. A sequence early in the episode is telling. This episode spends a great deal of time re-tilling familiar ground, running through old story with a degree of style and flair that feels applied to hide that there’s not much new here. This difference is part of why the first “Euphoria” special was a qualified success and the new one, entitled “Fuck Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob,” unfortunately is not. The new one shifts focus to Jules (Schafer) in a therapy session reflecting on the events of the recent past. The first of these dealt with Rue (Zendaya), an addict in tentative recovery, meeting with her sponsor following her relapse and discussing what lies ahead for her. This weekend sees the launch of the second of two off-season specials on HBO after a preview on HBO Max.
Euphoria jules episode tv#
The TV landscape has been a little dimmer without them since “Euphoria’s” first season ended in August 2019.Įvidently, show creator Sam Levinson missed these actors and their characters too. And in Zendaya and Hunter Schafer, it put forward two massively charismatic and gifted performers - the first a familiar face allowed to graduate to a new level of acting achievement, the second a brand-new star. The show told stories about the TikTok generation with all the emotional excess that comes with actually being a teen. The HBO series, crackling with oddity and possibility, generated noise and light in a manner that felt new, and overdue. In its first season, “ Euphoria” was a lightning bolt.
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