ZIMMY LIFESTYLE A Blog by Tiffany Lea Zimmermann

Hey guys! How is it going? For today’s post, I wanted to share a review of HBO’s latest tv show executively produced by Drake, which is ‘Euphoria’ starring Zendaya as the lead! ‘Euphoria’ is a teen drama show that was directed and written by Sam Levinson (who also directed Assassination Nation), about high schoolers exploring drugs and relationships, their self’s, etc. It is basically about the challenge humans go through in their High School experience. I first learned about the show while in Los Angeles a couple of months ago as the streets were full of advertisements saying ‘Euphoria’ in huge letters. I had also heard about in on social media since everyone was watching it and obviously, Zendaya was talking about it. I automatically looked more into it out of curiosity, and as it looked so artistic and cool, so I decided to watch! I tuned in every Sunday for each episode, which I never do haha. Now let’s get into the review, shall we?

P.S. As always, this post is spoiler-free!

The first thing I would like to review about the show are the visuals. Everything is genuinely beautifully directed, and the scenes are always pretty to look at and aesthetically pleasing. They use a lot of fluorescent and colored lights in the show which I had not seen often on TV and never on the same scale as ‘Euphoria’ haha. But everything visually, in general, was jaw-dropping. It was also one of the main reasons why I was drawn to coming back each week to watch it, it’s always so creative!

To make the show even prettier, they got revolutionary makeup artists and created truly iconic looks. These amazing makeup looks were often seen on Maddy played by Alexa Demie, and Jules played by Hunter Schafer! I also don’t think I’ve noticed that much glitter in my life, haha, but I loved it. The costume department was also great, and I loved each unique style of every character, which truly represents what high schools are like. I’ll finish off my review with the music part, most of the soundtrack of the show was insane. I especially liked ‘All of Us’ by Labyrinth & Zendaya, ‘Hold Up’ by Beyoncé, ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ by Bobby Womack. There were also sadder songs introduced for the tragic scenes that were beautifully highlighting a scene in the finale. Some of these sad songs included ‘My Body is a Cage’ by the Arcade Fire, and I also love ‘Work’ by Charlotte Day Wilson!

I also would like to add that I found that everyone was perfectly cast (in particular Jules in my opinion, she was made to play the part)! But everyone did an incredible job. I was especially surprised by Jacob Elordi (from ‘The Kissing Booth,’ who now plays Nate in the show) who are taking on a whole new genre! It’s also, in my opinion, Zendaya’s best performance yet! That is probably because it’s her project that she invested a lot into.

My only criticism would be that it was a pretty dramatic interpretation of the youth today (not 100% realistic but has to be this way for entertainment purposes). I think some of the things portrayed could happen during High School but also are sometimes rare or over-exaggerated. I also thought there were some very graphic scenes and I would not recommend the series if you’re someone that gets easily triggered by such views relating to depression and youth troubles.

I truly enjoyed that each episode was devoted to a character as it makes us understand everyone’s perspective and background. I personally would love to see Fez (Angus Cloud)’s and Gia (Storm Reid) ’s episode next as well as Lexi (Maude Apatow)’s! However, I also thought the middle of the season episodes 5-6 were slow.

It was also refreshing to see a transgender character whose timeline/plot has nothing to do with that in the series. But in general they went over a lot of essential topics; abuse, addiction, self-discovery, family breaking up, etc. And I think that is really important for some people to watch during high school to understand that other people are going through the same battles. Although, they haven’t really fully covered all of the possible issues one can have. It was also a little bit too over-sexualized at some parts! But, I still can’t wait for season 2! I will be tuning in again every Sunday.

So, overall, I would give this series a 7/10. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the topic to look into it, but it’s definitely not for everyone!