I was too young for Six Feet Under.
When the pilot aired, I was eight years old. Too young to even know that it existed. I was 14 when the boxset came out to commemorate its end; old enough to be aware of it, still too young to have an interest in watching it. I was 19 when I binged it, old enough to enjoy it, just old enough to respect it, still too young to properly understand it.
All I knew at that point, is that Six Feet Under, one of the first pillars of prestige television (or as it was called in this era: “cable”) and the blueprint for the “edgy adult drama” that was ballsy enough to tackle any subject, had become the “my parents talk about it all the time” show. Its characters seemed to come from our world with all of their warts: on pills, gay, confused, maturing, stalled, undersexed, oversexed. It was a drama that had the nerve to be funny, a comedy that had the brilliance to be profound. It was developed with the intention of being loved by half of its audience, and hated by its other half. In the five years it was on television, Six Feet Under would greatly re-shift how people and scenarios and relationships would be depicted on the small screen.
About one generation or two Presidents later, another show has taken over the cultural lexicon in a startling similar fashion. Sam Levinson’s Euphoria, in its second season has become the biggest show on television. No not Yellowjackets, the Kevin Costner-network drama that has been dominating the Nielsen ratings and its objective statistics, but the Nielsen is much older than your remote control. When you look at things like media response, the youth vote (who download almost everything), and social media, there is no doubt in mind that the biggest and best show right now is Euphoria.
Its second season premiere viewership doubled its first season’s and every subsequent episode has practically broken its own record. Any average episode of Euphoria brings in millions more than Succession. It’s like the Steph Curry of TV. Judged purely on the discourse and the social feed which includes a growing list of celebrities, practically everybody is watching it now, even the unexpected hetero-normative hype beasts who came for the Fez and stayed for the Fexi.
Through the eyes of Rue Bennet, a high school student battling addiction in an unnamed high school, the show handles drugs, relationships, sex, sex crimes, gang activity, familial trauma, trans people, abandonment, big pharma, and abortion all told with high drama amongst a highly stimulating presentation full of colour, music, and flashy cinematography. The show is an explosion of emotion, music, stimulation, cinema reference, and real world issues unparalleled by anything else.
Its nudity often depicting underaged peoples, moments of graphic violence, and copious drug use is practically HBO 101 at this point, but Euphoria in its terrific second season has accomplished something that every great teen drama has, and every other teen drama has failed. The show has created faithful and honest composites of how young people are in this world and artfully documented how this generation thinks and acts, what they cry over and why their life feels so hard.
I was too young for Six Feet Under, but I was alive when it aired. A lot of people older than my millennial ass, will naturally find Euphoria fascinating because it explores aspects of the current guard of youth that we do not understand. If Gen Z has been labeled as unambitious, materialistic, on drugs and with tattoos on their faces, Euphoria gives a very clear, understandable, and empathetic explanation as to why people now act and behave the way they do. Maddy Perez being pulled out of pageantry as a child which catalyzed her lack of ambition is not a chastising of the character, or any person under 18 without career goals, this is just why she is that way.
While Six Feet Under was intended for an audience who was disillusioned by Clinton, fascinated by the afterlife, and buzzed off a half bottle of Chardonnay, Euphoria asks questions about our current world for a new audience. An audience who must have five things happening on one screen, in a coloured filter with an aggressive rap song blaring in the foreground. An audience who most of, have not done heroin, yet convulse when they’re phone dies. It’s the main reason cited by people who don’t watch the show as to why they don’t watch the show: it’s just too much. However, if Euphoria is trying to portray the era in which we live in, they don’t have a choice; this is simply how marketing and commercial art looks now and how audiences become engaged.
Euphoria’s second season, while arguably not as powerful as its first, is in every way bigger.
Its music budget has increased, almost as if its supervisors shuffled through the entire Spotify library. Its needle drops feel more significant; Jonathan Richman’s “...Lesbian Bar” which Rue, Jules, and Elliot dance to now holds six times as many streams as “I Love Hot Nights.” It’s cinematographers shot the entire season on film, which proved to be challenging if not visually rewarding. Massive set pieces dominated – the season opened with a Scorsesean tribute to the drug game, a chilling raid, and a massive house party shot over a week of all nighters that appeared to have over 1000 people. It ended with a high school stage play whose scale would rival the early productions of Showboat. There were also a ton of Easter Eggs, meta-pieces, cinema references, meta-needle drops and a fair share of deserved controversies aimed at the show’s main brain Sam Levinson.
With the Euphoria creative team pumping out the next stage of story for a hopeful 2024 release, the people at SMACK thought we’d collect some things we caught while diving headfirst into Opiate Mountain.
the fact that these tragic films deal with a character’s death pic.twitter.com/6c4Y34Pxg8
— ً🦦 (@cinecults) January 31, 2022
Leonardo DiCaprio on HBO's #Euphoria: "That show is amazing" pic.twitter.com/QQIw4wyYxb
— Variety (@Variety) July 24, 2019
My manager doesn’t let me watch the entire season, so I’m watching in real time along with y’all lol
— Angus Cloud (@anguscloud) January 24, 2022
Rue a mess lol
— Angus Cloud (@anguscloud) January 24, 2022
This episode is for the theater kids #Rent
— Angus Cloud (@anguscloud) January 24, 2022
Watch on TikTok
Watch on TikTok
I was too young for Six Feet Under.
When the pilot aired, I was eight years old. Too young to even know that it existed. I was 14 when the boxset came out to commemorate its end; old enough to be aware of it, still too young to have an interest in watching it. I was 19 when I binged it, old enough to enjoy it, just old enough to respect it, still too young to properly understand it.
All I knew at that point, is that Six Feet Under, one of the first pillars of prestige television (or as it was called in this era: “cable”) and the blueprint for the “edgy adult drama” that was ballsy enough to tackle any subject, had become the “my parents talk about it all the time” show. Its characters seemed to come from our world with all of their warts: on pills, gay, confused, maturing, stalled, undersexed, oversexed. It was a drama that had the nerve to be funny, a comedy that had the brilliance to be profound. It was developed with the intention of being loved by half of its audience, and hated by its other half. In the five years it was on television, Six Feet Under would greatly re-shift how people and scenarios and relationships would be depicted on the small screen.
About one generation or two Presidents later, another show has taken over the cultural lexicon in a startling similar fashion. Sam Levinson’s Euphoria, in its second season has become the biggest show on television. No not Yellowjackets, the Kevin Costner-network drama that has been dominating the Nielsen ratings and its objective statistics, but the Nielsen is much older than your remote control. When you look at things like media response, the youth vote (who download almost everything), and social media, there is no doubt in mind that the biggest and best show right now is Euphoria.
Its second season premiere viewership doubled its first season’s and every subsequent episode has practically broken its own record. Any average episode of Euphoria brings in millions more than Succession. It’s like the Steph Curry of TV. Judged purely on the discourse and the social feed which includes a growing list of celebrities, practically everybody is watching it now, even the unexpected hetero-normative hype beasts who came for the Fez and stayed for the Fexi.
Through the eyes of Rue Bennet, a high school student battling addiction in an unnamed high school, the show handles drugs, relationships, sex, sex crimes, gang activity, familial trauma, trans people, abandonment, big pharma, and abortion all told with high drama amongst a highly stimulating presentation full of colour, music, and flashy cinematography. The show is an explosion of emotion, music, stimulation, cinema reference, and real world issues unparalleled by anything else.
Its nudity often depicting underaged peoples, moments of graphic violence, and copious drug use is practically HBO 101 at this point, but Euphoria in its terrific second season has accomplished something that every great teen drama has, and every other teen drama has failed. The show has created faithful and honest composites of how young people are in this world and artfully documented how this generation thinks and acts, what they cry over and why their life feels so hard.
I was too young for Six Feet Under, but I was alive when it aired. A lot of people older than my millennial ass, will naturally find Euphoria fascinating because it explores aspects of the current guard of youth that we do not understand. If Gen Z has been labeled as unambitious, materialistic, on drugs and with tattoos on their faces, Euphoria gives a very clear, understandable, and empathetic explanation as to why people now act and behave the way they do. Maddy Perez being pulled out of pageantry as a child which catalyzed her lack of ambition is not a chastising of the character, or any person under 18 without career goals, this is just why she is that way.
While Six Feet Under was intended for an audience who was disillusioned by Clinton, fascinated by the afterlife, and buzzed off a half bottle of Chardonnay, Euphoria asks questions about our current world for a new audience. An audience who must have five things happening on one screen, in a coloured filter with an aggressive rap song blaring in the foreground. An audience who most of, have not done heroin, yet convulse when they’re phone dies. It’s the main reason cited by people who don’t watch the show as to why they don’t watch the show: it’s just too much. However, if Euphoria is trying to portray the era in which we live in, they don’t have a choice; this is simply how marketing and commercial art looks now and how audiences become engaged.
Euphoria’s second season, while arguably not as powerful as its first, is in every way bigger.
Its music budget has increased, almost as if its supervisors shuffled through the entire Spotify library. Its needle drops feel more significant; Jonathan Richman’s “...Lesbian Bar” which Rue, Jules, and Elliot dance to now holds six times as many streams as “I Love Hot Nights.” It’s cinematographers shot the entire season on film, which proved to be challenging if not visually rewarding. Massive set pieces dominated – the season opened with a Scorsesean tribute to the drug game, a chilling raid, and a massive house party shot over a week of all nighters that appeared to have over 1000 people. It ended with a high school stage play whose scale would rival the early productions of Showboat. There were also a ton of Easter Eggs, meta-pieces, cinema references, meta-needle drops and a fair share of deserved controversies aimed at the show’s main brain Sam Levinson.
With the Euphoria creative team pumping out the next stage of story for a hopeful 2024 release, the people at SMACK thought we’d collect some things we caught while diving headfirst into Opiate Mountain.
the fact that these tragic films deal with a character’s death pic.twitter.com/6c4Y34Pxg8
— ً🦦 (@cinecults) January 31, 2022
Leonardo DiCaprio on HBO's #Euphoria: "That show is amazing" pic.twitter.com/QQIw4wyYxb
— Variety (@Variety) July 24, 2019
My manager doesn’t let me watch the entire season, so I’m watching in real time along with y’all lol
— Angus Cloud (@anguscloud) January 24, 2022
Rue a mess lol
— Angus Cloud (@anguscloud) January 24, 2022
This episode is for the theater kids #Rent
— Angus Cloud (@anguscloud) January 24, 2022
Watch on TikTok
Watch on TikTok
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