HBO's Euphoria season 1 premiere recap: Pilot dives into the darker parts of high school

Zendaya shines in an otherwise boring and dull series premiere of Euphoria.

Euphoria is the latest addition to HBO’s Original programming and it stars Zendaya as the lead character, Rue Bennett, alongside The Kissing Booth alum Jacob Elordi and Hunter Schafer.

The series follows Zendaya’s character who is fresh out of rehab and starting her final year of high school soon. Even after the rehab, she is still an addict and she intends to stay that way.

Euphoria did look promising at the start with Zendaya’s monologue about how being born was the first time she lost and how being born right after 9/11 affected her. It was a very well acted moment and a must-watch for the series. And that is so far my favorite part about the entire show, Zendaya is brilliant in every single scene, her presence is always charismatic. But that is pretty much it.

More from Show Snob

The show does not offer anything new other than a whole lot of drugs and sex in its series premiere.

We find out about Rue’s anxiety in the start and how she has always had trouble because of it, there has always been fog in her mind.

She has been a little slow compared to the other kids and sometimes when she tries to put extra focus on anything, she gets panic attacks.

Rue as teen found out that using drugs makes her feel numb and she gets lost in it in a way that can drag her out of the fog, even if it’s for a moment, she likes the feeling and does not want to let go of it.

And that is why even after the rehab, she still won’t quit drugs.

She almost gets caught by her mom who is asking her for a drug test, so she runs to her friend Lexi, for a clean urine sample to pass the test, there we not only meet Lexi but also Cassie, her sister.

Because of Lexi’s fresh urine sample, Rue passes the drug test and gets permission to stay at a friends house for the night.

We also see Rue talk about Jules (Hunter Schafer) right from the start, we see the first time when Rue saw Jules riding on her bike. Jules is new to the town, she lives with her father who got custody of her after the divorce.
She is also attending summer school and is now friends with this girl Kat who invites her to Mckay’s party but she turns down the offer to meet up with DominantDaddy from a dating app for adults and has sex with him. That guy later turns on to be Nate’s (Jacob Elordi) dad.

McKay really likes Cassie but Nate and other guys got into his head about how she likes it rough and at the party, he tries to have rough sex with Cassie by choking her, Cassie stops him and makes him understand that this is not the way it should be.

Maddy is Kat’s friend who was dating Nate and is now making out with some random guy to get back at Nate, Nate is doing the vice versa. Kat is trying this whole bad girl persona for her last year of high school and she ends up losing her virginity at the party.

When Nate sees Maddy having sex in the pool, he storms to the kitchen all angry and starts yelling at Jules who just got here from the motel room. Nate was trying to confront her about who she knew at the party and he ends up threatening her. Jules took a knife and cut herself which gets everybody freaked out. Nate gets scared and Jules storms off, and just before leaving the place she meets Rue. Rue goes along with her to her home where she bandages her up. And we find out that Jules is transgender in the final moments.

Next. Chernobyl: Breaking down fact vs. fiction in the HBO series. dark

Euphoria is rather graphic but that is fine, one of its main problems is actually the utterly slow pacing of it. The entire 50-minute premiere was hard to get through. And after seeing the premiere, I don’t really think that what the show is trying to say so far is unique at all or is something that we have not already seen. It’s only the premiere and this will undoubtedly change but the characters lack a lot of depth so far. This might be a skip-it-case. We’ll see how it goes next week and whether the show actually improves or not.

What did you think of the Euphoria premiere? Be sure to tell us in the comment section below!

Home/HBO