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Euphoria jules2/1/2024 (A cold open showed Rue and Jules together in a city apartment living out a fantasy of connubial bliss.) Produced under coronavirus protocols, “Jules” is still claustrophobic by Euphoria standards, a constraint Levinson leans into it’s a full seven minutes before his camera cuts away from a tight close-up on Schafer’s bare face, a stark departure from the elaborate eye designs that were Jules’s signature in Season 1. Partly as a result of its scope, “Jules” is less formally ostentatious than “Rue,” which was largely an old-fashioned bottle episode set at a single, sparse location. Subtitled “F*ck Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob”-“Rue” was captioned “Trouble Don’t Last Always”-“Jules” is framed around the title character’s first session with a new therapist ( Looking’s Lauren Weedman), when she discusses the events of last season, her relationships with Rue and her mother, and whether to stop the puberty blockers she takes via implant as part of her medical transition. ![]() Following the season finale’s cliffhanger, when Jules runs away from home and Rue declines the chance to join her, we learn that Jules has returned to Euphoria’s dreary suburb. (Levinson wrote each of Season 1’s eight episodes.) And where its companion was carefully calibrated to feel substantive without advancing the plot, “Jules” does some real scene-setting for a pandemic-postponed Season 2. “Jules” is directed by Euphoria creator Sam Levinson but cowritten and co-executive produced by star Hunter Schafer, another first for the show. There are revelations in the final scenes about Jules’ mother and even an encounter that might make people want to go back and watch Rue's hour again in a new light.The ‘Euphoria’ Special Barely Resembled the Show. Weedman is good but not given the kind of juicy part of her own that Domingo was in the first hour, and that hurts the process a little bit, and yet Levinson and Schafer compensate by opening up the episode more to flashbacks and other characters, including John Ales as Jules’ father and Elordi. She nails all of the emotional backflips that she’s still processing without sinking into melodrama. All of this is prelude to a discussion about how Rue tore down all needs for concerns about identity and judgment, really seeing Jules in a way she hadn’t felt before.Īs she was in the first season, Schafer is emotionally raw in a way that feels completely genuine. reality continues into memories of Tyler, the online paramour who turned out to be Nate ( Jacob Elordi), and how much that passion became real to her, but was never real in a physical sense. ![]() How much of our identity is what we choose to present to other people and how much is internal? The discussion turns to when people instantly judge others based on how they look and how Jules has conformed to a self-formed perception of femininity for so much of her life. “Part 2” starts off with Jules discussing gender as a construction, telling her therapist that she’s considering going off hormone therapy. How are these connections different? How does Jules hold back or give of herself differently? A first meeting with a therapist is often about throwing it all out on the table, and Jules reveals a lot about herself through the stories she chooses to tell about the connections between her & Rue, her & her parents, and her & her online partner. ![]() There are times when this chapter feels like it’s trying to do too much in terms of its narrative construction-the joy of watching Zendaya and Colman Domingo bounce off each other purely in conversation for an hour was one of the strengths of “Part 1”-but the inconsistency captures where Jules is at in her life, her feelings going a hundred miles an hour since the break-up with Rue. ![]() But the interruptions increase: flashbacks to her time with Rue, her continued infatuation with “Tyler” (Nate’s online persona), and even drama with the return of her addict mother into her life, revealing more of what Jules was going through in season one. After a tone-setting intro in which memories of her time with Rue play out in Jules’ tear-filling eye set to Lorde’s “Liability,” the conversation really kicks in. Much like Rue’s chapter, most of this hour unfolds as a two-hander, this one between Jules and a therapist played by Lauren Weedman.
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