Just a Two Act Play at a Diner

It has been a while since we last checked in on Euphoria. In part that’s because the series had been off the air for a few years while season three was in development, but also simply because for all the genres we cover on this site, Euphoria was always a weird fit. It’s not that it’s a bad show – it’s one of HBO’s most popular series for a reason – but a series about high schoolers dealing with drugs and sex and life doesn’t quite mesh with genre sci-fi, horror, and action. But I like to have diverse viewing habits and occasionally I sit down for something that isn’t aliens or slasher killers, and a show like Euphoria fits the bit as well as any other.

We covered the first season a little while ago and my initial impulse was to head into the second season now that we’re working on getting ready for the third season (which is airing now and I’ll get to soon enough). But in between the first and second seasons, while the show was taking a while to develop (I think we can see a trend here), the production team put out two specials. These caught up with a couple of the characters and provided further story development while the series was off the air. These specials aired during the 2021 holiday season, just to keep audiences interested, as the second season didn’t come around for another year on top.

And, well, this first episode (or special, or whatever you want to call it) is definitely weird. It’s a solid hour of storytelling, especially in the context of the series, fleshing out Rue (Zendaya) and letting us see aspects of her character – her pain, her dependence, her addiction – that the wider series might have struggled to elaborate. What’s weird about it, though, is that it’s functionally a two act play. There’s a short introductory scene, a dream sequence, a short intermission moment, and a brief epilogue, but for the most part “Trouble Don’t Last Always” sits us in a diner with Rue and her sponsor, Ali (Colman Domingo), for them to have a long conversation. And that’s it. Just two people in a diner, talking. And it’s one of the best episodes of the run.

This special picks up right after Rue has relapsed, still high and reeling after Jules (Hunter Schafer) left her at the train station. They were going to run away together, but Rue couldn’t leave everything behind. Alone, she hit her stash of pills she’d been sitting on, ruining her sobriety, and it left her longing for what could have been with the girl she loved. She meets up with Ali at a diner for a prearranged meeting, and she tries to say that she has figured things out, that she’s found balance, that she’s better off… but he immediately pegs that she’s high, and that she’s lying to herself as well as everyone else.

The first issue for Rue is that she tried to do two things: one, have a relationship, and two, get clean. When you’re that early into recovery you don’t have the energy or capacity to do both. When Jules left, it gave Rue the excuse to give up on herself, revealing the truth: she doesn’t really want to get better, and recovery may not ever be her goal. Hell, she isn’t even sure if she wants to stick around this life or not. Through it all Ali talks with her, guides her, and tries to give her the information and advice she needs. And the two talk and connect, and spend some time over crappy diner food while Christmas Eve rolls on by.

For a show as provocative and boundary pushing as Euphoria, this first special is pretty mellow, especially by the show’s standards. Aside from the opening sequence (which does feature some nudity, which seems to be creator Sam Levinson’s main reason for making all of his shows: ogling young women), the rest of the episode is pretty sedate, content wise. For a show as flashy and daring as this, having an entire episode (more or less) bottled up in a diner as two people talk over plates of eggs feels strange. Daring, but in a completely different way.

I’d expect an episode like this from a different kind of show. A show like Community would do something like this (and did, more than once) just for the sake of a laugh, but clearly Euphoria went into this episode with a different goal. The point was to drill deep on Rue and get to a core of her character that the series, up until now, hadn’t been able to clearly illustrate. Her addiction was something she struggled with, acting as her main character arc through the whole first season, from dependence to sobriety and then relapse, and the show treated her like a bad guy for not being able to stay clean.

What Ali voices, and this episode underlines, is that her sobriety is part of a larger story for Rue, and it’s not that she’s bad or evil but that she is different. There’s something in her genetics, something in her brain, that works differently from other people and makes her an addict. It doesn’t let her off the hook because, if she worked at it she could get clean, but being addicted to drugs isn’t as simple as her flipping a switch and just saying no. She has to find reason to want to be clean and, without Jules, she’s struggling to find that.

While giving us more time with Rue the episode also lets us learn more about Ali and get to know him as a character. Sure, he was a presence through the first season, but he didn’t really stand out as someone to pay attention to. He was her sponsor, her knowledgeable sage, the guy with the answer that she didn’t want to listen to. Here, though, when it’s just the two of them without the show able to cut away, it does feel like he manages to get through to her some, in part because he’s been there and he knows what she’s going through.

Is it an addict himself, and he’s done some terrible things in his life because of drugs. He’s lost his family, and his two daughters barely talk to him at all anymore. And while he’s been working on being clear for twenty years, he’s only been clean and sober for seven, all because he got over confident and relapsed. That’s good character shading for him, showing sides to him so he doesn’t come across as better than Rue. He’s just further along the path and he figured out what he wants. The point is for Rue to decide whether she wants that as well.

This whole episode is a master class in focused storytelling, aided by two incredible performers who fully inhabit their characters. By stripping away so much of what makes Euphoria stand out, the nudity, the music, the constant shifts in plotlines, we’re able to focus in on Rue and really get into her head. It makes for a more intimate, and more raw, exploration than the series normally can handle. And because of that, despite this being a special that sits outside the main series (HBO doesn’t even list it with the main episodes of the run), it’s probably the most compelling episode of the series so far.

It’s special not just because of how it was released but because of the way it was made and the story it’s trying to tell. That makes it unique for the series and it shows that there’s more depth to the storytelling of the series than some might expect. The show isn’t always able to pull this off, but it does here, and it’s fantastic.