Euphoria’s wild high school play episode immediately deepens the show
After weeks of being heralded as Boring Girl representation, Euphoria finally gave Maude Apatow’s Lexi her moment in the spotlight. It was, quite literally, by her own design: Throughout season 2, she’s been writing a play based on her life, and in episode 7 it became a full-fledged, very well-funded production. And while Lexi was most concerned with how her sister would receive it, the splash radius was actually much wider, considering most main characters were the inspiration for her very lightly fictionalized performance.
With “The Theater and It’s Double,” Euphoria joins the grand tradition of staging a play within another medium in order to understand what the characters have been through. It’s a convention that traces its roots back pretty far — Hamlet, notably, used the trope to make villains confront their deeds — but it’s made for some pretty fantastic moments of TV as well (see: The Simpsons’ recreation of Hamlet). Euphoria wrings the convention for all it’s got.
After all, the show is just as prone to emulate high art as it is to translate itself into incomprehensible choices, like Kat neglecting her boyfriend until he breaks up with her. There’s a case to be made for high school being the scene of so many fitful, nonlinear transformations. But more than any Twitter thread or artist’s statement, a staged reenactment of events (on stage or otherwise) manages to capture both the narrative wrinkle all while ironing out some of the awkwardness around it. See: Avatar: The Last Airbender’s “The Ember Island Players,” a virtual clipshow of the entire series reinterpreted by the autocratic Fire Nation, finally elucidating for the audience what we were supposed to think happened to Jet at the end of season 2. “You
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