Looks like the holiday was not happy for anyone in the country Euphoria-country.
The HBO series’ second pre-season 2 episode, a companion to a Christmas episode released in December, aired Sunday. The first special came to us on Rue’s Christmas Eve, which she spent in a dining room with her 12-step program sponsor, revealing how close to the bottom of the drug-addicted teenager. (Read a summary here.) Sunday’s hour focused on Hunter Schafer’s Jules, who sat down with a therapist after returning in the Season 1 finale.
Like Rue’s ep, Jules’ special was beautifully written and performed, and therefore very difficult to watch. (Schafer co-wrote the episode with Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, and she also co-produced the special.) After admitting that her hop-on-a-train plan is ‘dumb and ill-considered’, Jules blurts out that she wants to stop taking her hormones. When the Therapist (played by Lauren Weedman, Look) asks her to expand, Jules says that she has built her whole womanhood, ‘my body, my personality and my soul, around what I think men desire … I feel like a fraud.’
As therapy conversations very rarely follow a linear path, Jules’ discussion covers a lot of topics. She begins by saying that she has always been afraid of puberty, but now she is a little preoccupied with how it will make her bigger and wider; after all, the ocean is ‘wide and deep and thick’ and ‘I want to be as beautiful as the ocean.’ Then a discussion of how girls tend to enlarge each other is laid out on how Rue was the girl who did not. Jules compares the way Rue views her to the way mothers view their children: with unconditional love.
Later, the parallels between Rue and Jules ‘mother become stronger – mainly because Jules’ mother has her own addiction issues, and the feelings they evoke in the teenager are similar to those evoked by Rue. When she talks about her BFF, Jules remarks: “I feel that her sobriety depends entirely on how available I am to her” and that the weight of whether her actions (or inactivity) will cause a relapse is unbearable. In flashbacks, we also learn that Jules’ mother is doing well and has maintained her sobriety for a number of months, but has relapsed and ended up in hospital on Halloween. Jules found out before she went to the party.
When the discussion turns to intimacy, Jules reveals that she is still in love with Tyler (aka ‘ShyGuy118′, or Nate), although – or perhaps because of – the fact that he does not exist and everything that happened between them does not was not true. We are summed up in a fantasy of Jules in the New York apartment. We saw her share with Rue in the version of Rue of the fantasy, but in Jules’ version, ‘Tyler’ is there, and they have very slender sex all over the apartment (and at one point out the window).
But Rue is also somehow there in Jules’ fantasy, which turns into a nightmare when Tyler (played by someone who has not been Jacob Elordi for most of the meantime) turns into Nate and demands that she does not look at him while they do the deed. And later things get even worse when we see the continuation of the fantasy that started in the special of Rue: Jules comes home from class and quickly realizes that Rue does not respond in the bathroom that is locked from the inside. Jules knocks on the door, screams and cries, in vain. Eventually we see a quick but moving image of Rue dead next to a puddle of her vomit, exactly as Gia found her when she OD before season 1.
Back in the real world, Jules offers her therapist a happy vacation and goes home. She’s been grounded since her unauthorized trip to the city, and her dad is really crazy. But he makes Rue come up to see her when she rides her bike, and this is the first time the girls have seen each other since the train station. It seems like it’s Christmas Eve; it’s raining, and Rue says she’s on her way to meet Ali. Both Jules and Rue are on the verge of tears when they talk about how they missed each other, and then Jules apologizes for taking off in such a dramatic way. Rue shouts out a stiff, tormented “Merry Christmas, Jules,” and then runs out as fast as her soaked little sneakers allow.
Jules is lying back on her bed crying, and this is where we leave her.
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