Tag Archives: teens

Adolescence (Netflix) – Limited Series Review

Posted on by under art, Bullying, culture, education, TV shows

ADOLESCENCE (Netflix) is one of those shows that makes you question why you should even leave home to go to the movie theater when streaming services are the ones delivering masterpieces.


This limited series, set in the aftermath of a teenager’s murder, portrays with brutal realism the details of the investigation and the devastating impact of the crime on the suspect’s family and the students at the victim’s school.


Like God, great shows lie in the details, and Adolescence highlights aspects that other productions simply overlook. Each of its four episodes unfolds as an extended sequence, focusing on a different dimension of the story. As a teacher, I found the episode set in the school particularly shocking—the rampant bullying, lack of discipline, demotivated teachers (who seem to rely almost entirely on showing videos and films), and the cryptic world of teenage social media interactions. It’s astounding how adults remain oblivious to the intricate system of coded communication embedded in emojis and slang.


“Why do all schools have the same smell?” a frustrated police officer asks at one point. “It’s like a mixture of vomit, cabbage and masturbation. It’s horrible.”

This blunt remark sets the sobering tone of the show.


The acting is superb. Don’t miss it.

Have you watched the show yet? Please leave your comments below.

Jorge Sette

Euphoria (HBO): second season (review)

Posted on by under Addiction, art, culture, language, storytelling, tv series, TV shows, TY shows

Now that Zendaya won a Best Actress Emmy for the role of the drug addict Rue in the successful HBO series Euphoria, I’m rewatching the second season. I want to check out her performance and decide if the show is as good as I thought it was when I first saw it.

The series is definitely not for the faint of heart. The story, set in the fictitious town of East Highland in California, is about a group of High School teenagers, most of them still living with their highly dysfunctional middle-class families.

Drugs, sex, and cell phones abound. These characters are portrayed in all their rawness, brutality, and emptiness by an extraordinary cast of young and mature actors.

The highlight of the second season is a play within the show (“Our Lives”), created and directed by one of the students, Lexi, who seems to act as the moral center of the story. The play – stunning in itself for us, the home audience – helps the characters sitting in the school theater see themselves as they really are, with all their flaws and inconsistencies (rather than the fake personas they try to create and project), therefore stirring strong emotions, and leading to a huge unscripted fight on the stage. “Art should be dangerous”, says an assistant to the devastated director to soothe her. But the show must go on.

Most of the relevant current themes are discussed in Euphoria, to some extent: friendship, loyalty, love, the opioid crisis, fluid sexuality, transsexualism, pedophilia, toxic masculinity, feminism, sexual orientation, the breakdown of the traditional family and its values, the difficulty to communicate real feelings or develop an authentic personality.

There’s a lot of physical and verbal violence too. Keeping in mind that the objective of ambitious shows is not only to entertain but also to discuss controversial issues and provoke change, Euphoria is a great show, if you can manage to watch the frequent uncomfortable scenes.

Have you had a chance to watch the show? Please leave your comments in the section below.

Jorge Sette