1.1: Euphoria

Hi guys and welcome to the first episode Off the List the television and movie podcast catching you up on all the content you want to watch but haven’t found time for. Be left out of the conversation no more! We’ve got you covered. I am your host, Hannah Koch, and thanks for joining me.

While I hope to bring on a guest each week to talk with me about these hot topics, it is best to do a little test run first before subjecting someone to my grand idea, so for this week it’s just me!

Today, episode one, we are going to start it all off with a hit show I finally sat down to watch, Euphoria. I am going to start by giving you the premise, then some quick facts on the series, next I’ll give you the low-down on the major storylines and key players, then I’ll jump in to important discussion topics that have come out of the show. If you like the sound of this plan, keep sticking with me, if you don’t, well go watch the show for yourself I guess… No i’m just kind of kidding, leave me a comment! Constructive feedback is welcome. On that note let’s get to it.

Euphoria takes place in a suburb outside of New York City, very undefined where, most specifically because the characters ride their bikes for an orange grove sometimes, which don’t often grow in the northeast east. Anyway, the show centers on a 17 year-old girl named Rue as she starts the school year after spending most of the summer in rehab after an o.d. As if by fate that same summer a new girl moved to town named Jules, who Rue instantly connects with. The series focuses on their relationship, Rue’s sobriety, as well as the issues faced by their friends and classmates. They cover topics like gender and sexuality, pornography, class and privledge, abusive relationships, and abortion. Pretty much every episode starts with a viewer discretion notice. Which is also my discretion notice that some topics may be potentially triggering for some listeners.

So, some fast facts for ya:

1. Euphoria is based off of a 2012 Isralie series of the same name, but they really do not have too much in common. The pilot episode of the American Euphoria, was released on HBO (shot out to my big bro’s HBO max subscription affording me the opportunity to catch up) on June 16th, 2019.Another bonus fact for ya: The first and last episodes’ titles are the only ones not after rap songs. For example: Episode 2 was titled “Stuntin’ Like my Daddy” which is also the title of a Lil Wayne song.

2. Euphoria has an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes, whether you ah-poth-eo-size the tomatometer I like to keep some kind of consistent scale for you, it’s because I'm a big data person.

3. It is written and directed by Sam Levinson who at the time of Euphoria’s release was best known for writing and directing the 2018 film Assaination Nation. He is already on his way to do great things, writing and producing Malcom & Marie and Executive Producing Pieces of a Woman, both of which are garnering awards buzz this year.

4. Euphoria stars Zendaya as the main character and narrator, Rue, she also scored herself an Emmy win for this performance. It also stars model, Hunter Shafer as Jules, this is her first big acting credit, she was getting ready to go to fashion school when she was booked. Jacob Elordi, who you may know from the Netflix film The Kissing Booth also stars as the antagonist, Nate Jacobs.

5. Lastly, between the end of 2020 and the start of 2021 two “companion” or bridge episodes have been released... since season 2’s production was halted. The first episode focuses more or less exclusively on Rue and the second on Jules.

And that my friends are the five Euphoria facts you should keep in your back pocket.

So with such a large cast of characters which being set in a high school tends to lend us to, there are a lot of individual story lines within the Euphoria show worlds.

Our big players are obviously, Rue and Jules. But there is Cal Jacobs the town rich white man, Nate his son the quarterback of the football team he comes off as a stereotypical toxic jock, there’s his girlfriend Maddy, her friends Kat and Cassie, Cassie’s sister and Rue’s childhood best friend, Lexi, the town drug dealer Fezco, and Rue’s NA sponsor Ah-lee. Of course we have some minor characters like Rue’s mom and sister and some other siblings and parents as well but that would be a whole lot to get into in one podcast episode meant to give you the talking points.

The major storyline, of course, is Rue’s. Her own big focus is her sobriety and addiction. We learn right off the bat that Rue was practically born with anxiety and other disorders being fairly well medicated at a young age. Then her dad got sick with cancer which caused it all to worsen for her which is when she started experimenting with drugs. Drugs are the only thing Rue has found that can quiet all the noise in her head and give her a sense of peace, like a sense of Euphoria one could say. Her addiction and overdose put a lot of strain on her relationship with her mom and younger sister. Her sister, Gia, was actually who found Rue the day she o.d.’d. So throughout the season we watch Rue deal with the consequences of her past actions and really how much her family means to her. We also watch a constant battle where she wants to be clean for them but that reasoning is hard when she does not want to be clean for herself. Rue then attaches her reason for sobriety to Jules who says she does not want to become best friends with someone who is going to die. Most importantly, Rue falls in deep romantic love with Jules, but from what we see she does not have a very explicit struggle with her seuality. But Rue does put a lot of weight and pressure into this relationship with Jules and what it means for her happiness. The best way to cement this for you I think is to run this clip from the Euphoria youtube page which is from a scene where Rue apologizes to Jules after they get into an argument around Jules’ dating life and safety monologue clip

The next storyline I want to talk about it is of course Jules, but I think to start I have to address how hard this section has been for me to write. You may notice a slight change in the soundscape coming out of whatever kind of device you are listening on, I’ll be completely transparent behind this digital layer and tell you it’s because I rewrote, rerecorded, and re-edited my original section on Jules. Jules is a huge character on her own, aside from Rue’s love for her. She has her own background and history… which actually doesn’t get really addressed until the middle of the season in the opening backstory of Episode four. And that is an important specific episode to mention because in my experience watching the show it was not until that episode that I came to fully understand that Jules was transfeminine. And I want to talk about this but I am really worried I am going to be offensive and I don’t want to be. And I am uncomfortable because I am not what my place or my right is to talk on the trans experience, I identify as cis-gendered so I will never fully understand. But I can’t just not talk about it and not only from a plot perspective and achieving my goal of giving you enough information that you could talk about Euphoria on your own, but also for the fact that if we lived in a world where we all just ignored things that made us uncomfortable it would be a really scary place. Discomfort is where you need to go to grow and learn. So I am going to try here and I am going to try my best to be honest as I also try to check my own privilege and be an ally. I may fumble, and of you feel I do please don’t hesitate to let me know.

So we’ll back up a little bit. Yes, it is true I did not realize Jules was transfeminine until partway through episode four when young Jules walks into the boys’ bathroom. I did a quick google search and I learned that 11-year old Jules is played by Clark Furlong an American actor who uses he/him pronouns. So after this moment which became a revelation for me let me tell you when I did a quick rewatch to prepare for this podcast, I noticed a lot of different things in the first three episodes than I did the first time.

For starters, in episode one we see Jules injecting herself with hormones. The first time around, I just thought that she was also some kind of drug addict (I didn’t know everything about the show going in, also, yes, I don’t know a lot about drugs). And we do get shots of Jules half-naked, in just underwear but I wasn’t like zooming in on her crotch. Also, a side note I watched a video on the costumes with the designer and Hunter Schafer, who plays Jules. And she made it sound like sometimes she was tucked and other times she and the costume designer actually found lingerie designed for transfeminine folks. Which I had no idea existed, I actually had no idea it was a product there would be a market for. If I wanted lingerie I would just pop over to Victoria’s Secret, or Aerie, or Target and only worry about what color I like, that ease is a privilege I didn’t even realize not everyone is afforded.

There were other points too where maybe I should have noticed Jules’ was transfeminine. I must have been looking at my phone or something when what is eventually revealed as Nate’s bio on the Grindr-esque app flashed on-screen because maybe that would have tipped me off. Maybe not though because I thought she was just like on straight Tinder, and then when they mention the app being for queer folks I was so confused as to why Jules was on it. My ignorant straight cis mind was literally like “what are the odds she goes on a male dating app and meets straight guys. Like isn’t that problematic, isn’t she invading their space.” So yeah, no I totally felt like an asshole later on.

But I would love to discuss this with showrunners, or really anyone that will seriously talk to me about it, not only from an education and allyship viewpoint, not that people from marginalized groups should have to take on the burden of educating others, I am not suggesting that by any means, but from a cinematic and plot standpoint, as decision-makers crafting a story.

And when you take into consideration the fact that this is a crafted narrative where everything is staged, then I think there is a lot of importance to the fact that we as viewers only get Jule’s retelling and insights into her transition and her relationship with femininity when she is away from Rue. In Episode 7 Jules goes to New York to see an old friend and meets a girl named Anna (whom she later hooks up with), and that is who she tells her story to. I’m going to roll some of that clip for you so you can get a better sense of Jule’s voice and hear her story from her own lips.

https://youtu.be/jXI_AfkG0C4

In the Euphoria Unfiltered video for episode 4 Hunter Schafer actually says that when reading the scripts for the first time she liked that labels were ignored, she felt like it gave characters room to breathe. So maybe there was a conscious planned decision around holding off on discussing Jule’s gender identity.

And then I think maybe my ignorance came from the fact that everyone treated Jules like everyone else, except for Nate obviously he exploited it for his own personal gain, but you know everyone else just treated her like a person. Which obviously isn’t a problem, but it is not what I at least am used to seeing on screen, especially in regards to characters with different gender identities. From my viewer experience, they are abused by their peers or they have some huge coming-out scenes, for example, like with Theo on Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. And of course, each experience is unique and very real, but Jule’s gender identity just was not addressed in the common ways I have seen in popular media today.

Jule’s transition was just a part of the storyline, another back story on a character. I feel they made Jule’s story a part of the Euphoria world, just as they did with Kat’s body image and self-esteem issues, or Cassie’s relationship with her dad. And clearly, it really made me think about representation across platforms as well as my own internal biases and expectations. It was a normalization of the queer experience as opposed to an outing or othering. Of course, though, I am not an expert and everyone may have different opinions on this especially based on their own experiences, so again, please let me hear your thoughts! Drop them in the comments sections wherever you get this podcast or dm me on Instagram at off the list underscore podcast.

One last story line I want to give you background on is actually a double. Father son duo Cal and Nate Jacobs.

They both have a lot of similar issues going on for themselves. Each of their own toxic masculinity and expectations for male behavior feeds the others creating a pretty unstable and unhealthy home environment. They are a very wealthy family, stereotypical make up, a mom, a dad, two sons, maybe 3 (there is a family photo in the house with 3 kids) and an older version with only 2 and we only ever see Nate’s one older brother,so some mystery there.

Cal makes his money through real estate development throughout the town they live in. When Nate was a young boy he discovered Cal’s homemade sex tapes with many different men. We actually first meet Cal in episode one when he meets Jules in a motel room to have sex with her after connecting on the app. Later we learn about Nate having his own struggle with sexual orientation, we understand he is very uncomfortable in the locker room with the football team and he thinks about Jules.

Nate and Cal are both very demanding and prone to violence. When Nate thinks a 22 year old named Tyler raped Maddy at a party while he and Maddy were broken up, Nate breaks into Tyler's house and beats him so bad he has to go to the hospital. But later on when Nate gets mad at Maddy during an argument he chokes her so badly he leaves bruises on her neck. This turns into a major ordeal when the school finds the bruises on Maddy’s neck and reports it to the police. An investigation ensues and Nate manipulates Tyler into taking the fall on the guise on assault being a better charge to take than rape. Nate is beyond meticulous and conniving. Jules falls in love on the app with a guy also named Tyler, when she goes to meet him after the carnival, it turns out to be Nate. Nate tells her it was all a lie and he then blackmails her for sending him child pornography since they sexted and Jule’s is underage. Nate did all of this because he found the sex tape of Jules and Cal and was determined to protect his family.

The apple of course did not fall far from the tree as we see that daddy Cal is very similar. When Nate is pulled into custody Cal is determined to do everything to ensure Nate comes out of court labeled as innocent. At the same time though we also see him and Nate go to blows. Cal is so nervous and at odds with his own repressed homosexual urges that he pushes Nate into this box of ideal masculinity pushing him and everyone around him towards excellence in football, cute girls, and dominance. It is going to be interesting to see how these stories continue into season 2, especially since Maddy knows about Nate’s struggle with his sexuality and started to spill the beans to her friends.

I just unpacked a lot! SO I am going to give us all a second to breathe and cut for a short break.

Okay welcome back! Thanks for being here! Now that I laid out the story and content of Euphoria I am going to give you some more insights into discussion topics that have come out of the show.

So for starters, if you have heard anything about Euphoria you maybe have heard about all the fashion. It was super hyped up, Shop Your Tv has a Euphoria page, Cosmo’s done articles of where to get the pieces. My take is that I am here feeling like a total boomer because I generally think to myself, “What the fuk are they wearing?” Besides the occasional plaid skirt worn by Kat or Jules, there are only two outfits I like, Rue has that all black carnival outfit with brown coat and Maddie’s matching set with the flowers that she wears on her bowling date with Nate. So like maybe I’m just not as fashion-forward as I think I am.

Clothes aside, each character is unique and I appreciated how almost all of them got time to tell their story. Rue, our guide through Euphoria is an interesting character no doubt. I mentioned previously, she grew up diagnosed with a lot of disorders (OCD, anxiety,the whole alphabet soup a lot of kids are faced with nowadays) and she was prescribed a lot of pills. She likes to scare the boys interested in Gia by talking about her tough friends from rehab she is going to send after them, but Rue isn’t as hardened as she sometimes pretends and I think that’s important.

Really it’s one of the reasons why Rue’s breaks, as I call them, are my favorite feature of the show. There are these times when she breaks the fourth wall and takes us off into some scene, for example at one point she plays detective with Lexi as she tries to understand why there is some connection between Jules and Nate that she does not know about. And they walk through the scenes in suspenders with handcuffs and badges, she smokes cigarettes and drinks coffee w=from a classic white mug. I also found a clip of that on YouTube so you can kind of get an ideal…

It is not only fun to watch Rue put together the clues (this one was a little sad because she was having a manic episode), but they also remind us that these characters are children. I think for grasping how raw and explicit Euphoria really is, the viewer needs these cuts to remind them that most of these characters are underage. As a viewer it can be hard to wrap your head around that they are high schoolers when they are making sex tapes and getting abortions, so these cuts to Rue playing some ~twisted~ pretend help to remind us that these characters are kids dealing with adult things that have unfortunately begun seeping into childhood.

Take the sex tapes for example. Kat’s first time got recorded and spread all over the internet even after she had it reported and the initial post been taken down from the site.This is a very real experience, it was only this past December that PornHub finally removed and banned unverified content and that was because The New York Times’ Nicolas Kristof did a full report outing all the exploitation on there. I must add that you should please go read his piece, I’m linking it in the description for you. (here)

Then onto Cassie’s abortion, which is another real thing that is also more common than people know. Even Texas saw abortions increase in 2018 and 2019. Luckily there has been a bit of an uptick on abortion stories in the media over the past few years. Instantly what comes to mind for me is The Netflix series BoJack Horseman and then the recent films Unpregnant, and Never Rarely Sometimes Always (both of which you can also watch on HBO Max).

This is also a conversation beyond pro-life or pro-choice. What we can acknowledge is the power in educating young people on the consequences of unprotected sex. Not that I am not sex positive, you do you, find what feels good, love yourself, something I think Euphoria kind of sticks to as well, they never glorify sex, they show kids exploring and finding out what works for themselves and their partners. I just also believe informed consent means having adequate sex education and it sucks that popular entertainment is what has to cover that for many kids.

On the topic of sex education. I will acknowledge that I was shocked by the amount of male full frontal in this show. I would love to pick Sam Levinson’s brain here because there are so many pensises and like zero vaginas. And I think it’s super cool. Even Game of Thrones did not show that many penises. But I also want to know why? I would think for the locker room scene it is to make the audience uncomfortable to emphasize Nate’s own crisis with his sexuality? But like then we have the full dick pic breakdown by Rue and the porn Kat watches plus the guys she cams for we see it all too. Was this a jab at exploiting the male body like how the female body has been since literally the start of time? Does he think that’s all teenagers think about? A part of the push to normalize sex organs? Or is the display of tits and dicks a requirement to be a hit HBO show? Is it like a part of some magic formula? They just gotta sprinkle it in. If you could pass these questions along to Sam and report back to me please do. The people deserve to know.

I think the last character that needs our attention, and the world’s, is Lexi. And this is a discussion not a storyline because Lexi does not get much development. Home girl is the lowkey shining star of the friend group and I think the most under-developed character. And this does not relate back to my boomer fashion sense.

Lexi is dorky, yes, (she dresses up as Bob Ross for Halloween while Jules is some pretty Angel and Kat’s a sexy nun) and she’s like the quiet younger sister. Really I would say her role is to be a foil for both Rue and Cassie. She and Rue were best friends, they went to preschool together, yet Lexi has kept herself for all we see, straight and narrow. For Cassie, Lexi is her little sister, she is nowhere near as physically developed or sexually experienced as Cassie, which is very much highlighted in Cassie’s story throughout episode 7, you can also see it through the difference in Halloween costumes, again Lexi was Bob Ross and Cassie was the prostitute from the movie True Romance.

Lexi is the opposite of both Cassie and Rue, yet she cares for them so deeply. Rue literally gets irate with Lexi in the school bathroom after Rue has a breakdown during class and Lexi goes to check on her and later Rue ditches her at the carnival yet Lexi is still her friend. She accepts Rue for who she is and understands her... faults and all.

Back to Cassie who gets all the attention and yet Lexi still goes with her to the clinic for the abortion. Lexi mentions multiple boys offering to take her to the winter dance, but she sits at the table with Cassie through the whole thing.

We see every other character interact with love interests, why not Lexi? For her love, acceptance, and kick ass Bob Ross costume, I think Lexi needs to be better celebrated and acknowledged in season 2. She is the unsung hero of the friend group. That is my hot take.

Okay the last thing I want to lightly touch on before wrapping up is the special episode released December 3rd 2020 and January 24th 2021. What I think needs to be said about both of these episodes is truly just acknowledgement for Sam Levinson’s craft. Episode One Rue, focuses on Rue’s relapse and now restarted recovery and what that means. By the time it was over and I was like “Oh wow, I just watched one long conversation.” Sam’s ability to keep it real and interesting, and create this experience of sitting there in a diner with Rue and Ali attentive to them, is amazing. I also love Colman Domingo’s voice, that is who plays Rue’s NA sponsor, Ali, and am finding him to thrive in these long monologue, genuine conversation scenarios, because he also crushes his role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

For Jule’s episode we get a little more character interaction and some breaks from the main setting, her new therapists office, the main takeaway was how insightful and interesting it was to see the events that took place in the past season from Jules’s perspective, in the last episode of season 1 Jules runs away leaving Rue on the train platform as she backs out and decides not to run too. We understand that Jules really does love Rue, she just had more than Rue going on in her life and the pressure of being the keeper of Rue’s sobriety was a lot for her to deal with, especially with her own mother’s addiction affecting her life. We also get some more insight into Jule’s transition and plan going forward. She is thinking about stopping her blocker and allowing her body to go through some puberty changes. It seems to be a direct result of that conversation I rolled for you earlier. Jule’s episode also ends with Rue showing up at her house to wish her a happy holiday, a sign that they may not be back on the same turns, but they both still care for each other. Definitely a lot to come in season 2!

Okay, I am going to cut to one last short break before wrapping up for today with our final segment, COming Off the List. Be right back!

And we’re back, thank you so much for sticking with me through this! Before we end today we are going to go into my final segment Coming Off the List to take a peek at what is potentially coming off My (and hopefully some day my guest’s) “To Watch List.” My own is so long and spread across so many notepads and streaming services and notes on my phone that it really should be called “Where Title’s go to die” but everyday is a chance to watch something new to me. So this week I will definitely be watching some more Pen15 on Hulu, I love how they deal with such important topics like racism and self-esteem in a comedic yet insightful way. I also plan to watch A-O-C’s Netflix doc Knock Down The House within the next week. While I may not be as progressive as she is I still think she’s an absolute queen, and I love what she stands for in regards to regular people not raised groomed for politics representing the rest of us. I will step off my soapbox now.

Well that is all for me today! Episode one in the books! Hopefully I can edit and production magic this soon! Thank you for joining me, if you had a good time please let me know, like, subscribe, all that jazz, and reach out to me! I need guests! I love recommendations! What do you want to watch!? My phone lines are open on anchor!

Can’t wait to chat soon! Goodbye for now.