HBO’s Euphoria follows a teenage girl named Rue who is fresh out of rehab but doesn’t intend to stay clean. In Euphoria Season 1 Episode 1, she detailed the circumstances of her addiction and current situation. Five days after leaving rehab, she met new girl Jules at a party.
Anxiety
Born right after 9/11, Rue’s life started in an anxious environment. As a young girl, her parents took her to see a therapist, who diagnosed her with all kinds of disorders. The medication she took to treat her diagnoses slowed her down throughout her childhood. The extra focus she had on her breathing triggered panic attacks in class.
As a teen, Rue partied and did drugs to drag herself out of the fog from her medication. After her sister, Gia, found her unconscious and covered in vomit, she went to rehab. Soon after returning, Rue continued using. Her mother demanded a drug test, and Rue ran to her childhood friend, Lexi, for clean urine. Having passed the drug test, her mother gave permission for her to spend the night at a friend’s house.
DominantDaddy
Rue saw Jules riding her bike down the street. Jules was new to the suburbs after her parents divorced. At summer school, she’d made friends with Kat, who invited her to McKay’s party.
Jules rode by Nate’s truck while he and McKay were discussing the party. Nate catcalled to her, and she flipped him off, causing her and her bike to fall to the ground. When she got home, she went on a dating app and agreed to meet DominantDaddy. She cancelled her plans to meet up with Kat at the party. At the motel where DominantDaddy waited, Jules lied about her age and had rough sex with him.
McKay’s Party
McKay really liked Cassie, Lexi’s sister. Nate got into McKay’s head about Cassie right before the party. When they hooked up, McKay tried out some rough porn moves on her. When Cassie told him to stop, he did.
Nate and Maddy had just broken up. They spent the night trying to make each other jealous. Maddy found a guy to have sex with in the pool. After Nate found them, he stormed into the kitchen. Jules had just arrived from her motel room encounter. Nate singled her out and confronted her about who it was she knew at the party. To get him to back off, Jules took a knife and cut herself.
Rue followed Jules out of the house. Jules was headed home, and Rue asked to come with her. At Jules’s house, they bandaged her up and went to bed. At the end of the episode, we saw that Nate was DominantDaddy’s son, McKay and Cassie had fallen asleep together, and Kat, who had lost her virginity underwhelmingly at the party, scrolled through her phone.
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