Euphoria

Sam Levinson's HBO series, adapted loosely from an Israeli show of the same name, follows Rue (Zendaya), a teenager returning from rehab with no intention of staying clean, as she narrates her way through the lives of the kids at East Highland High. The pilot introduces a bench of teenagers whose problems are already fully lit and fogged before you know their last names: Jules (Hunter Schafer), Nate (Jacob Elordi), Maddy (Alexa Demie), Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), Kat (Barbie Ferreira), Lexi (Maude Apatow), Fezco (Angus Cloud). Colman Domingo shows up as Rue's sponsor Ali and immediately becomes the adult in the room. Marcell Rév shoots it like a music video that hates you.

Zendaya is genuinely great. Watch her in the Ali diner scenes, or any monologue where the camera just sits on her face — she's doing the small, unshowy work of playing an addict who's lying to herself in real time. Hunter Schafer is a real find. Sydney Sweeney does more with a shaky bottom lip than most actors do with a page of dialogue. Rév's camera pulls off things network TV literally can't afford to try: a single-take carnival sequence, a rotating room, neon lit like a Renaissance painting. Labrinth's score is a whole character. Occasionally, usually in Ali's scenes, the show puts the phones down and becomes a talky, patient chamber piece about staying alive.

Sam Levinson writes every episode himself, and it shows. Storylines drift. Characters vanish for stretches, then reappear delivering a monologue about themselves. Season two visibly loses interest in half its ensemble, especially Kat, whose arc gets abandoned mid-sentence. The provocation is doing a lot of heavy lifting the writing won't: nudity, drugs, and glitter tears substituting for scene structure. When Levinson tries "real teenager," the dialogue lands like a screenwriter's memory of high school filtered through Instagram. And the release schedule is a joke. Years between seasons for a show that runs on cultural momentum.

If you liked Skins, Kids, or the vibe of a Weeknd video stretched to sixty minutes, you're in. If you follow the fashion accounts, the makeup accounts, the Sydney Sweeney of it all, you already know. You'll bounce if you need a plot engine — this is closer to Larry Clark than to Friday Night Lights, and the "what happens next" isn't really the point most weeks. Also skip if you're squeamish about drug use shown in loving, sensory detail, or if you find precocious teen dialogue insufferable. There's a lot of it.

BACKGROUND TV is the honest ruling because the show's best asset isn't its writing, it's its surface. You can put an episode on, glance up during a Rue monologue or a lit-from-below Cassie meltdown, glance back down, and lose nothing. The plotting is porous by design; the meaning lives in faces and lighting. That's not a failure mode, it's just what this thing actually is once you strip away the discourse. On the Lecture Test: Euphoria doesn't sermonize, but it doesn't quite dramatize either. It gestures at addiction, dysphoria, abuse, and lets style stand in for scene. Zendaya alone earns a look. The rest is beautiful wallpaper.