The Good Place Review Season 2 Episode 2

Episode 5 puts its star through the wringer via an intense suburban saga that exemplifies "Euphoria's" ability and pitfalls.

[Editor's Note: The following review contains spoilers for "Euphoria" Season ii, Episode v, "Stand Yet Like the Hummingbird."]

Gia Bennett, played past Storm Reid, is the first face shown in "Euphoria's" fifth episode, and even without the contentious conversation overheard seconds earlier, loyal audiences know what her advent means. Gia has a way of popping up whenever her older sister's substance abuse issues escalate. In the series premiere, it'south Gia who finds Rue (Zendaya) laying on her bedchamber floor in a heap of her ain vomit. It's Gia who calls the paramedics and watches the ambulance bulldoze off. It's Gia who's told to cheque her sibling into rehab, and Gia is home when Rue points a shard of broken glass at their mother, Leslie (Nika King), when first confronted with that daunting recommendation.

In Episode 5, Rue is confronted again. Only this fourth dimension, despite her sister's anguish, Rue runs. She's not going back to rehab. She tin can't face the withdrawals. She tin can't face Gia, either — not this time, and the tragedy of Rue's state of affairs is bookended inside two shots of niggling sis's worried gaze. Dejected recognition crosses Gia's confront when she hears her family fighting in those opening moments. Only that shielded, trembling expression expands into a panicked scream 15 minutes later, when Rue bolts from the auto into moving traffic and Gia'south worst fears are about realized once more. Is her sister most to die, right in front end of her? Tin she make it out of another disastrous situation? Will she e'er come back to her? Rue is not coming back. Not until much after that night, subsequently sprinting through the suburbs, leaving a peppery wake. And by so, it may be too late.

"Stand up Even so Like a Hummingbird" is a perfect title for an episode devoted to Rue'due south constant motion, leading nowhere. Writer/director Sam Levinson throws all he has into her attempted flight, establishing a thrilling hunt that culminates with a terrifying escape. Zendaya commits just as thoroughly, even performing a few stunts (or appearing to) that add together to the near-constant tension of her desperate evasions. The visceral journey they create reflects the kind of raw, swirling energy "Euphoria" specializes in, and the added conflict Rue sparks beyond boondocks should bring near a dramatic second half to the season.

Virtually notably, Rue unveils the most critical clandestine of Season two, telling Maddy (Alexa Demie) and the rest of her friends that Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) has been sleeping with Nate (Jacob Elordi). Their reaction is virtually what yous await: Maddy starts threatening her now-former best friend. Cassie tin barely speak, trying in vain to deny the allegation even though the fright on her face is all the confirmation anyone needs. (Sweeney, it must be said, is having a stellar flavour.) The adults try to keep the focus on Rue, who they're trying to convince to go dorsum to rehab, but the bomb she dropped is too big. The focus shifts, and Rue takes advantage of the distraction to elude her mother's aide in one case more. (The staging of that moment, notwithstanding, leaves a lot to be desired; it's hard to believe Leslie would pay whatever attention to those bickering girls, let solitary yell after them long enough to let Rue leave unnoticed.)

Rue isn't done starting fires, though. Next, she visits Fez (Angus Deject) and has to be forcibly removed when she goes looking for pills. So she slides under a closing garage door, similar a chapeau-less Indiana Jones, so she can steal plenty luxury items to pay back her debt to Laurie (Martha Kelly). Of form, she gets busted, and her initial odyssey — driven by dueling desires to ingest drugs and relieve her digestion — takes a darker plough. (Part of me wants to believe the unabridged episode is an ode to Kramer's quest to find an open restroom on "Seinfeld," merely even if non, Zendaya's hunched running mode must exist.)

Tempest Reid in "Euphoria"

Boil Chen / HBO

It'south also when Levinson'south frenetic energy is put to best utilise. Once Rue loses her lunch in front of a suspicious patrol officer, the chase is on — there'south fifty-fifty an overhead zoom on Zendaya booking it downwards an aisle, cop car close behind, reminiscent of police pursuits captured by local news helicopters. From there, Levinson's camera gets creative. He's hiding backside some bushes as Rue cuts through her get-go backyard; he'southward within a home where the only occupant is a true cat crossing a long tabular array while Rue scoots past the pool exterior; and, my personal favorite, he tilts the frame up to discover Rue on top of a garage before tracking her jump downwardly, using the closing door as her makeshift slide. (Levinson fifty-fifty follows the rule of threes when it comes to canines, starting with the tamed baby-sit dog, moving to the junkyard rottweilers, and ending on a pair of yipping little puppers, politely ushering Rue off their lawn.)

Shading humor into "Run, Rue, Run" — permit alone the unrelentingly bleak "Euphoria" itself — pays dividends, particularly when the fleeing primal figure reaches her concluding destination: Laurie'southward apartment. There, we learn just how morally bankrupt the monotone, pajama-clad drug pusher really is: "Y'all want to know a funny thing most me?" she asks Rue. "I've never gotten aroused in my entire life." And she doesn't become angry — not even when Rue comes up brusk on repayment — only its her at-home, methodical demeanor that'due south even more alarming. Why? Because it's clear Laurie has been hither before. Confronted with a user trying to make a plea bargain, Laurie feigns kindness and understanding while preparing the trap that could continue Rue tied to her forever.

She tells Rue she doesn't have whatever pills, only intravenous drugs, which she knows the immature woman avoids. Nonetheless when Rue is coaxed to a relaxing bath, Laurie opens up a suitcase filled with pill bottles, simply removes a syringe and canteen of morphine instead. Rue hasn't fifty-fifty asked for them yet, simply Laurie knows it'due south coming. She'south done this before. She knows how to brand her money dorsum, and Rue wakes upwards to the living nightmare implied by Laurie'south bone-chilling "advice." "It's one of the good parts of beingness a woman," she says. "Fifty-fifty if you don't accept money, you still have something people desire."

Rue avoids selling herself for drug coin via i concluding pilus-raising escape, though there's no telling when Laurie or her cronies volition come up calling. (Rue isn't exactly hard to find.) The episode ends with the sound of a door opening and closing, Leslie's silhouette perking up from her frozen place at the dinner tabular array. The cut to blackness emphasizes how chop-chop things tin get from bad to worse when you're desperate and terrified, but Rue's return besides harkens back to the episode'southward first human action. For those invested in Rue and Jules' (Hunter Schafer) romance (and come on, who isn't?), seeing their vehement interruption-upwardly could've been the worst burned-span all 60 minutes. Passively tricked into exposing her dark side, Rue doesn't back off. She pushes frontwards. What matters to her in that moment isn't what the woman she loves thinks of her; beloved is but a distant retentivity compared to the betrayal she feels and the coercion she has to become away.

"You're a fucking vampire," Rue tells a bawling Jules. "Going around sucking the fucking spirit out of everyone." These hurtful words and many more spill easily out of Rue's mouth considering they're fueled by pure rage. In that location's little truth to them, which is part of what makes the lengthy tirade more than tiring than piercing. Levinson only lets Zendaya go, which isn't a bad idea with an actor this gripping, and her rambling attacks paint a believable picture of a substance disorder, simply there'southward plenty of episode left to appreciate all the aspects conveyed in the 15-minute scene. She's angry, she's hurt, she'south lashing out — we know, we know, we know. Zendaya is attuned to every trigger, shifting upwards and up and up with each new claiming, only it's even more impressive that she'south able to highlight Rue's core truth by dialing downwardly. "You don't love me!" she shouts at Jules, before faltering her way through, "You fucking left me when I fucking needed you." The truth is harder to admit than the lies, even when the latter is being shouted at full book.

Episode 5 is all power — so much so, that it'southward frustrating to reach the finish and realize we've been through this earlier. "Euphoria" told a similar story in one-tenth the fourth dimension during Season 1, carrying all the fear, resentment, and heartbreak within the Bennett family via brief, telling flashbacks. Season two's 2nd intervention simply makes it more explicit, the destruction more than widespread, and the event more discouraging. It'due south hard to fault the series for its honesty. Many people with substance disorders relapse. Few interventions go smoothly. Simply like Gia, exhaustion becomes the predominant takeaway. While the episode would've been more aesthetic, more moving, and more pointed had information technology ended with Gia waiting up for Rue, rather than their mother — a immature girl still clinging to that 5 pct of hope for her sister, withal waiting to exist told if their hereafter is doomed or redeemable — it's hard to blame her for going to bed.

"Euphoria" Flavor 2 premieres new episodes Sundays at 9 p.1000. ET on HBO. The finale is scheduled for February 27.

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Source: https://www.indiewire.com/2022/02/euphoria-season-2-episode-5-zendaya-runs-spoilers-1234696359/#!