The second season of "Excitement" is coming.
As soon as it was launched, it triggered the "excitement" of the whole network.
Douban is as high as 9.3 points.
The first episode score broke through the highest in the history of the series.
It was viewed more than 2.4 million times.
According to HBO, the first episode of the second season was at least nine times as wide as the first episode of the first season, and even more than four times higher than the sensational season one finale.
Of course, before that, we still have to explain how popular the first season of "Excitement" was.
How hot is it? At that time, foreign media were asking: "In the post-"Game of Thrones" era, is "Hyper excitement" the hottest drama of HBO?" ”
When Xiao Lizi walked the red carpet of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", he actually mutated the tap water and confidently said: ""Hyper excitement" is particularly good-looking!" ”
Of course, the most heartfelt is dolan classmate, who posted a super long, super-hearted film review essay on INS.
Why does everyone love "Excitement"?
I believe that many people may be like us, when they first heard about this drama, they were shocked by its large scale.
The heroine Rue, played by Zandaya, has a severe drug addiction and was once on the verge of death from an overdose.
After retrieving a life, she was sent to a drug rehabilitation center, and when she came out, she joined a drug rehabilitation mutual aid club.
But she still can't completely quit, and she keeps relapsing and sinking.
Female number two Jules is a transgender person.
On the surface, she has the angelic appearance of a girlish heart, and is a cute long-legged otaku who is addicted to Japanese manga.
But in fact, she has been using same-sex dating software since the first episode to date different old men.
Just to find identity as a woman.
The other girl, Kat, is a fat girl who seems to have low self-esteem.
In the beginning, she was the ugly duckling in school.
But she didn't sit still: she casually found someone at the party, and then the other party spread the video everywhere, and she simply rebelled against guests and became the "sex queen" on the anonymous website.
Kat put on a short low-cut skirt, put on heavy makeup, and said to every man who tried to talk to him: Don't pretend to be distracted, just do it, don't waste the old woman's time.
There are also two beautiful girls in the girlfriend group who are "high school flowers". Going back a decade, they may be the heroines of youth campus comedies like "Mean Girls."
But in "Excitement", they also have their own dark side.
Cassie was pretty, gentle, and had big deer-like eyes.
But every one of her boyfriends will post intimate videos of her online after breaking up with her.
She became the talk of all boys, the "slut" on the high school campus.
Her good friend Maddy is pretty, confident, strong, and has a hot Latino pedigree.
Her boyfriend is also a handsome, tall, well-off school grass at school.
They were in a stable relationship and were together very early.
This should always be a fairy couple, right?
Not really. Boyfriend Nate's father is the richest man in the local area and a suspected pedophile gay.
This gives Nate a strict psychological shadow from an early age: he has a potentially violent tendency to punch and kick his girlfriend.
And to please her boyfriend, Maddy will frequently watch adult videos and learn the "tricks" of those actresses.
Yes, before that, to a greater or lesser extent, you've also seen that kind of "fallen youth" style of school drama.
But no other film is as large-scale, so crazy, so extremely excavating the dark side of human nature like "Excitement".
This darkness is also an atmosphere.
This drama has a fairly strong aesthetic and a high level of production.
The soundtrack of "Excitement" is quite famous, and even on NetEase Cloud Music, the number of related playlists played is as high as 2.2 million.
What if you wanted to know what songs Gen Z teenagers were listening to?
Please open the OST of Excitement.
Photography also has a kind of ultimate beauty.
Many people call it "stream-of-consciousness" photography: but you can't even say that it's just creating an intoxicating, decadent, lustful sense of imagery.
A more accurate description is that the director is trying to use photography and soundtrack to make an untouchable emotion real and concrete.
What kind of eyes and senses do these manic, depressed, traumatized, drug-addicted teenagers use to touch the world?
After watching "Excitement", you may be able to know a little bit.
On this level, it can be said that the video style of "Hyper-Excitement" is both crazy, unrestrained, and calm.
Sometimes we are the people in the play, substitute for their emotions, perceive their world;
And sometimes we're just cold spectators, examining their downfalls and depravity.
So why are so many people looking forward to the second season of "Excitement"?
Of course, because, the end of the first season is rooted! root! not! fill in! pit!
Although there seems to be some consummation, to be honest, it is more sadistic.
The biggest sadism, of course, is the difference between the two heroines at the station.
Jules leaves the town alone, but Rue is unable to completely abandon her family.
The two girls are clearly soul mates, but they are destined to part ways: behind this lies some more grim, fatalistic metaphor.
Cassie underwent abortion in the company of her family.
It may be a rebirth for her; but it may also cause her to fall deeper into the abyss.
Maddy and boyfriend Nate are reunited: But can this torn, deformed relationship really continue to last?
The only person who seems to get what she wants is Kat, the fat girl.
She finally plucked up the courage to confess to the innocent little boy Ethan, who gladly accepted her - this is almost the most "normal" and healthiest relationship in the whole season.
But her status as the "queen of sex" is still a time bomb in the relationship.
In other words, the end of the first season of "Excitement" seems to be only a short-lived midpoint for each of the main characters.
They have grown, they have made choices, they have changed.
But it's not over yet, and their future is still hanging in the air.
That's why we're desperate to see the second season, to continue to see their fate.
The good news is that as soon as the second season comes up, the director knows exactly what the audience wants to see.
The series takes the same group portrait form as the first season, and the beginning of the episode is still a personal narrative perspective of the main characters.
And this guy is—
We liked it very much! Fez！
Anyone who has watched the first season should be impressed by the young drug dealer Fez.
At first glance, he has a flat head and a fierce look in his eyes, which is daunting.
But as soon as Fez opens his mouth, a slightly unclear accent, a slow and vague tone, and you will make you feel that this guy seems to be a little cute and cute.
And it was: many people in the town looked down on Fez because he hadn't read a book, dropped out of school early, and made a living selling drugs.
However, Fez is actually one of the few good men in the show.
In "Excitement", almost every teenager has experienced some kind of pain in the original family.
The same goes for Fez: he was abused by his father, and the family was a drug dealer.
But Fez still had a more fulfilling childhood than any other character: his grandmother was heroic and a remarkable woman. She treated her little grandson as an equal and raised him with all her heart.
As an adult, Fez is indeed a kinder family man: he sells drugs to support his young brother and bedridden grandmother. He has also always regarded Rue as his little sister.
His younger brother is smart and precocious, which shows that Fez is a good brother, and when he takes good care of his grandmother on the sickbed, you will think that he is even very gentle.
But this is perhaps one of the most ironic aspects of Hypersensitivity:
One of the most gentle male characters in the show turns out to be a drug dealer who dropped out of school.
In this season, Fez finally has his own emotional drama.
This involves Lexi, another fringe character from the previous season.
Lexi is Cassie's younger sister and Rue's former best friend.
If Cassie can be likened to the lively and debauched Lydia in Pride and Prejudice, then Lexi is undoubtedly playing the "old maid" Mary who loves to read.
She was a good student with good character and good character, but compared to her radiant sister, she always seemed to lack a little masculinity – so she always had some inferiority.
She and Rue have known each other since kindergarten, but as they get older, they drift apart and Rue finds her true soul mate, Jules. Once again, Lexi became the one who had been left behind.
In the first season, Lexi played everyone's "good sister".
She threads threads needles in every broken and chaotic emotional relationship, playing the roles of the Red Lady and the Good Guy, but never has her own storyline.
Just as Fez also plays the role of "Big Brother", he is Rue's potential protector, but always hidden behind the story.
In this season, miraculously, these two good people meet.
When they fell on the couch and chatted...
One of the purest emotional scenes in the history of the show appeared.
No kissing, no sex, not even holding hands! not! Yes!!
It was just two people sitting on the couch, one patiently listening to the other.
Finally Fez said to Lexi, "You're the coolest guy here, can I ask for your phone number?" ”
wow. oh.
The seemingly well-behaved but rebellious little sister of erudite learning, and the big brother of a drug dealer who dropped out of school and was simple-minded but fierce.
Family, whose DNA moved.
It's me.
However, I'm sorry to tell you that the above content is the only sugar point in the first episode of the second season of "Excitement".
That is, in addition to these two "good American guys"...
The other main characters all look like they are repeating the mistakes of the previous season.
Rue, who had been detoxifying for a long time, relapsed again.
The reason was simple: Jules abandoned her that night.
Cassie, who vowed never to fall in love again after the abortion, turned around and fell into a more dangerous relationship between men and women.
She and Nate got into a fight in a public toilet.
One of the most embarrassing episodes: Nate's legitimate girlfriend, her best friend Maddy, suddenly appears, and Cassie has to hide in a dirty bathtub.
In that scene she curled up, panicked, frightened, helpless, with tension comparable to Hitchcock's suspense.
In a way, this is indeed a kind of judgment for her.
After the end of the first season, "False Light", the second season began, and these confused teenagers once again fell into deep darkness.
It's like a metaphor: you want to quit drugs, you want to overcome your shortcomings, you want to become a better person, but the shadows are always there.
You never know when the next self-indulgence will be.
Maybe it's now.
But the amazing thing is that this season's painting style is more "bright".
This season was all shot on 35mm film.
So you will feel that the picture has a sense of overexposure grain, and the overall atmosphere has become brighter, softer and retro, showing a full gold.
The director gave a very romantic explanation for this:
The first season is a party night at 2 a.m.
So everything was restless and frantic, and he chose to shoot digitally to best fit that trendy, futuristic sense of the times.
The second season is at five o'clock in the morning, and after the party, everyone goes home.
What would that feel like?
After the revelry, there may be some tiredness, some sentimentality, and some reluctance.
Like a memory, it is a warm, vague and sour emotion.
But most importantly, at five o'clock in the morning, people parted ways but were about to see the sunrise.
In this way, perhaps behind the form symbolizes a promise from the director: in this season, we will indeed see more care, greater healing, and more complete transformation.
The "party" of youth will eventually end.
And this group of confused teenagers has finally reached the moment of adulthood.
In fact, when watching the first season, you will have a very strong feeling: this drama is not just hyping up the large scale.
On the contrary, what "Hyper excitement" is really concerned about is the pain of this era, and what the creator is trying to touch is the most painful issue in this era:
Women's self-awareness awakening – whether you're a glamorous school flower, a fat girl, a nerd, or a transgender person, every girl has tried to find her self-identity as a woman by pleasing men and objectifying herself.
But in the end they all found it futile to do so.
The only way to find self-recognition is to love yourself.
The pain of the original family, almost every protagonist, is looking for some kind of compensation for the original family.
The reason why Cassie has become a loveless girl, who has been humiliated countless times in intimate relationships, and who has become a "bitch" who is full of human husbands, is only because she longs to be loved and affirmed. She can only use this clumsy, helpless way to make up for her lack of fatherly love.
McKay is a good boy, but he doesn't have the courage to admit his love for Cassie because he has a father who is too strong. Under his father's teaching, he must be a flawless, successful person, then of course he cannot have a girlfriend full of flaws.
There is also a father who is too strong, and Nate has become another deformed character.
As the biggest villain of this drama, it is estimated that everyone hates Nate with itchy teeth.
But there is no denying that he is indeed a pathetic man:
Under the seemingly perfect appearance of the "white elite", his interior is full of holes and full of fear: he is afraid that his father's ugly secrets will be discovered, and he is afraid that he will repeat his father's mistakes...
He was just afraid to face his true self.
Female consciousness, native family, social media, virtual communities...
On this level, "Excitement" portrays a youthful, even contemporary ukiyo-e.
Almost every character struggles with their own predicament, stuck in the mud and unable to get out. But these dilemmas are not disease-free groans, but can make people feel the pain of the times.
That's why, it seems like "Boom" doesn't seem to have a strong story, and each episode is just a never-ending party, bungee jump and promiscuity.
But every character portrayed in the play appears real, plump, and three-dimensional.
Each character has a shadow of a certain youth. Every character is shouting and screaming about some kind of unspeakable pain of youth.
This play is written about the youth of this generation.
It may seem grotesque, crazy, and depraved, but at the end of the day, it's honest.