“I just feel like I’m in one of those old movies, It’s a Wonderful Life,” Rue’s sponsor Ali (Colman Domingo) says during Euphoria‘s Christmas special. He adds, “It is a wonderful life.” The standalone episode, titled “Part 1: Rue,” or, “Trouble Don’t Always Last Always,” shares several life-affirming qualities with the classic Jimmy Stewart movie, as well as the heartbreak required get there.
Euphoria‘s latest installment centers on a conversation in a diner between Rue (Emmy winner Zendaya) and Ali on Christmas Eve. While the pair eats pancakes in the nearly empty restaurant, they talk about everything from the Black Lives Matter movement to addiction to Rue’s confession that she doesn’t “plan on being here that long” when it comes to living her life. It’s a powerful, extended scene that follows a dream sequence between Rue and Jules (Hunter Schafer) in which Rue imagines she and Jules are in a relationship and living together. But even in her fantasies, Rue is again using drugs. In real life, she continues to struggle to get clean.
HBO
Enter Ali, who speaks about his own experiences as an addict and the impact of believing in a higher power. Rue resists subscribing to any one religion and tells Ali that another relapse was always inevitable for her. “To tell you the truth, drugs are probably the only reason I haven’t killed myself,” she reveals. The entire episode feels like a therapy session, as Ali sheds light on the disease that is addiction and the ways in which “sobriety is your greatest weapon.”
At one point, Ali asks Rue how she would like to be remembered by her mother and sister. She heartbreakingly responds, “As someone who tried really hard to be someone I couldn’t,” indicating this is only the beginning of her journey to getting clean again. By the time the duo takes a rain-soaked car ride as “Ave Maria” plays, the audience feels as if we, too, have been through an emotional reckoning.
HBO
Viewers will have to wait a little longer for the gift of Euphoria season 2. Until then, read some of the most emotional reactions to the latest episode.
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