There’s only one show that has boasting rights for being raw and relevant, for being produced by Drake and for holding a dazzling 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s Euphoria.
Euphoria is a teen drama series that focuses on well known and hardly discussed problems of high-schoolers: love, money, sex, drugs—you name it, and Euphoria’s got it covered.
What’s Euphoria About?
Created by Sam Levinson and starring Zendaya, Storm Reid, Maude Apartow, Algee Smith and Eric Dane, the show dropped its pilot episode today, June 16. Said episode was received with wide eyes and gaping jaws.
Euphoria contains a prodigious amount of nudity (the full frontal kind), uncensored rape and graphic drug abuse. This, combined with a revelation that his character would be a homosexual, became too overbearing for Brian “Astro” Bradley who quit the show.
The raw and risqué tone of the show is an homage to Levinson’s past: he is a former addict who wants to depict the struggle against one’s demons without a façade. It is also a tribute to youngsters whose issues are not adequately represented in entertainment media. In this regard, Bryn Elise Sandberg of The Hollywood Reporter writes:
“Amid the #MeToo movement and a re-evaluation of sexual mores and politics in the digital age, HBO is attempting to create buzz among a newer generation when so much of the 500-plus-show universe is lost on young people.”
Cause for Concern?
The content of the show might elicit concern from parents of Gen Z children for roughly the same reason Thirteen Reasons Why did: for glamorizing unhealthy attitudes and lifestyles. On the defensive side, the creator-director and producers do not wish to use explicitness to draw attention to the show or to endorse unhealthy behaviors, its sole purpose being to replicate real life as accurately as possible.