EUPHORIA: TROUBLE DON’T ALWAYS LAST
★★★★ OUT NOW (SKY ATLANTIC/ NOW TV) EPISODES VIEWED 1 OF 2
DIRECTOR Sam Levinson CAST Zendaya, Colman Domingo
On Christmas Eve in a quiet American diner, high-schooler Rue (Zendaya) meets her sponsor Ali (Domingo). Over the course of their meal, the pair dissect Rue’s drug addiction, which she has been battling throughout adolescence.
A FEW ECHOED bars of Labrinth and Zendaya’s ‘All For Us’ open the first of two standalone chapters of Euphoria. It’s the song that accompanied the first season’s sorrowful final sequence, and neatly signals that we’re picking up here, with a debilitated Rue in the throes of a heartbreak-induced relapse.
Euphoria was one of the most impactful and discussed shows of 2019. Created by a then fairly unknown Sam Levinson, the filmmaker applied a hyper-stylised aesthetic to the burgeoning issues that Gen Z teens face today. At its heart was Rue, whose addiction was the by-product of longstanding mental-health issues and losing her father at 13. Though the ensemble cast sparked with promise, Zendaya’s devotion to Rue’s self-destruction was the show’s takeaway, while her narration provided a truthful, bracing insight into addiction and the Gen Z psyche.
Levinson utilises this performance for his first of two seasonal specials. ‘Trouble Don’t Always Last’ centralises Rue’s addiction and sheds the show’s multi-narrative structure in favour of a twohander between Zendaya — whose performance as Rue made her the youngest Emmy-winner on record — and Colman Domingo as Ali. The latter was a small but enduring presence in the first season, but now Domingo shares the spotlight, rolling out mesmeric, if sometimes far-reaching, monologues on racism, religion and his own addiction, while wearing the weight of Rue’s words on his face when she’s speaking.
Where the show had outlined the genesis of Rue’s addiction, ‘Trouble Don’t Always Last’ intricately interrogates her motivations as a user. Her relapse was kickstarted when her first love Jules went to New York, while Rue made the choice to stay behind. Yet in the fantasy— in which she dotes on Jules in a sun-bleached city apartment — that preludes Rue’s reality, she’s also secretly using. Jules isn’t her saviour, nor does Rue want to be saved, for reasons that are coaxed out across a sprawling hour.
It’s a refreshing change of pace from Levinson, albeit one forced by Covid-19 filming restrictions. By dismantling his fiercely kinetic show, he makes room for a deep, empathetic dive into addiction that feels bold and new. Yet he doesn’t abandon the show’s visual foundations altogether; that same consummate approach to production still lingers, only presented here in a more subdued form. Cinematographer Marcell Rév returns to imbue this episode’s more static composition with a familiar neon tinge, and Labrinth lends a mix of melancholy synth and twinkling melodies to his score.
In this distilled space, Zendaya only further proves that she’s one of the most auspicious stars working today. With just a patch of face visible under her maroon hoodie, she deftly navigates through the shame and solitude of someone who — as Ali summarises — has been fighting a losing battle her entire life.