EUPHORIA Special Episode Part 1: «Trouble Don’t Last Always.»

By now everybody knows the «new» HBO show Euphoria, if you don’t know it then get out of your rock, watch it and come back to read this note. The first season ended with a huge, what if? and while they have kept us waiting for the second season to come out they have now released 2 Christmas specials in which we get to see more of Rue and Jules. Today we’ll break down Euphoria Special Episode Part 1: Trouble Don’t Last Always.

The show is known for their different and bold decisions with not only the plotline but the direction and editing choices. While this episode still has that same melodramatic feeling to it, it’s also completely different and clever in the way they dealt with recording during the pandemic coming up with one of my favorite tv shows episodes.

When we last saw Rue, the love of her life Jules seemed to have abandoned her, and she was being swallowed up by a mass of bodies in the street after relapsing back into her drug addiction. It was powerful and symbolic. Rue called up her sponsor Ali, and the two sit down here for a Christmas Eve diner check-in. The two characters simply sit at this diner table and talk to each other. We learn so much about Rue and the way her mind deals with addiction and her motives for not leaving with Jules and her relapse. While there isn’t much plot and we basically go back and forwards between her and Ali the episode has so much depth. There are no glitter make-up embellishments, hardly a break in focus on two characters and one overriding subject, stripping away the external distractions and getting right to the very core of what Euphoria has always been about. It’s heavy going, and the plot covers religion, the death of Rue’s father, life’s luck of the draw and capitalism’s cynical embrace of social causes, but it always comes back to the root tale of addiction.

Ali guides his and Rue’s conversation through some of the most relevant topics, including the commodification of Black Lives Matter, the trickiness of fraught family dynamics, and the flawed limitations within our generation’s usage of “cancel culture” all of this while still talking about Rue’s addiction, the purposelessness of her life, the unforgivable nature of her actions and her intention to limit her time on Earth. Giving us so many relatable and angsty feelings while staying political and reasonable. The two characters contradict and parallel each other enough to have a perfect balance within the topics.

The premise of this first special episode may be simple, but we get to see strong writing and performances that give the final touch to have effects that are impressively powerful. It captures what being a teenager and addiction is like in such a raw and relatable but still melodramatic way that allows you to identify just enough with the characters for you to feel and care for them even if you have not gone through what they’ve been through. In the ende you are left with a hole in your stomach (I mean this in the best way possible) and a better understanding of Rue’s character.