The Idol tried so hard
Ben Appel
It’s always sad to watch a TV show that debuted with such promise devolve into an absolute joke. If I’d written this review as the credits rolled on the first episode of Max’s (the HBO streaming platform) The Idol, I’d have fawned over Sam Levinson’s stylish direction, his (and his co-writer’s) clever dialogue, and Lily-Rose Depp’s effortlessly cool performance as the protagonist Jocelyn, a pop star staging a comeback after suffering a mental breakdown in the wake of her mother’s death. I’d have written, “This is the show of the summer,” or something equally trite, adding one more fresh tomato to the show’s review aggregate. Lucky for the readers of this magazine, I was behind on my deadline, which means, after suffering through two subsequent episodes, I am able to tell you the whole truth about The Idol: It’s trash.
Yes, trash TV can sometimes be fun. But what makes this show truly trash is how boring it turns out to be. And boring is exactly the adjective you don’t want a critic to write in a review of a show that tries so hard, too hard, to be provocative and titillating. The second and third episodes, each nearly an hour long, could’ve been a half-hour shorter. Entire minutes pass before anything even remotely memorable happens. What’s worse, during nearly all of the ridiculously staged, interminable sex scenes, I found myself scrolling through Twitter and thinking about what I wanted to order for dinner — sex scenes, mind you, that star one of the most visually appealing actresses I’ve ever seen on the small screen. That’s just unforgivable.
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Whoever funded the show’s production, which, after original director Amy Seimetz’s sudden departure from the project and a subsequent creative overhaul by Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, reportedly cost over $75 million to make, should immediately demand a refund. A fan of cancel culture I am not, but someone needs to be held accountable for this mess.
So, what happened? How did everything go so terribly wrong? The first episode of the series, titled “Pop Tarts & Rat Tales,” opens with Jocelyn (“Joss,” they call her), wearing a slinky silk robe and panties, posing seductively during a photo shoot for her new album cover. Her team scrambles around her, desperate to keep secret from her an unfolding PR nightmare. A selfie of Jocelyn has just leaked to the internet, and it’s a, shall I say, unflattering post-coital selfie resembling a freeze frame from an amateur Pornhub flick. What follows is a slew of manic conversations between Jocelyn’s handlers, conversations that smartly pull back the curtain on “woke” Hollywood, revealing the vapidity behind the virtue signals.
“Tomorrow, I want to wake up to, like, 150 Google Alerts telling me Jocelyn’s some kind of feminist hero,” demands one of Jocelyn’s managers of her publicist, Benjamin. “OK, yeah, me too,” replies Benjamin (Schitt’s Creek’s Daniel Levy). “But I’m going to start with ‘victim’ and move up from there.”
Then there’s the showdown between Jocelyn’s team and the “intimacy coordinator,” who has been hired to police the photo shoot for Harvey-esque improprieties. When Jocelyn spontaneously reveals her bare breasts for the photographer, the intimacy coordinator halts production, reminding the team that exposed areolas are not part of the established “nudity rider.”
“So, I’m not allowed to show my body?” says Jocelyn.
“Not in the general, like, human rights structure of it all,” says the bumbling intimacy coordinator, who looks like an adjunct gender studies professor. He turns to Jocelyn’s disgruntled creative director. “It’s actually very progressive,” he insists. “It’s to make sure she doesn’t feel pressured.”
“I don’t feel pressured,” insists Jocelyn.
Later, at Jocelyn’s bidding, the intimacy coordinator is locked in the bathroom, and the photo shoot continues unabated.
The best part of the debut episode occurs in Jocelyn’s backyard, where she rehearses the dance routine for her next music video. She flubs her first try, leaving us to wonder if Jocelyn (and Depp) really has what it takes to be an idol. But during the second run-through, she comes alive. Channeling Britney Spears circa 2001, Jocelyn flips her hair, shimmies, and moans. She has the same figure as Britney, the same dance moves, the same tan. And just like with Britney, who became so famous, even her haters became desperate to know her, we want to know who Jocelyn is and what her future has in store for her.
Unfortunately for us and for Jocelyn (and for Depp), what’s in store plays out like a sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey. Yes, you read that right. With ubercool R&B singer The Weeknd at the helm, The Idol turns into a sad knockoff of a softcore pornography series that began as Twilight fanfiction. Who really knows what the show could’ve been had Seimetz remained attached to the project. The Weeknd reportedly scrapped the original direction of The Idol because it focused too much on Jocelyn and not enough on his character, the creepy cult leader, Tedros, who manipulates his way into Jocelyn’s life and starts beating her to help her resolve the abuse she suffered at the hands of her now-deceased mother so that she can channel the trauma into her music. (Seriously. That’s the plot.)
The first abuse scene, which occurs near the end of the third episode, is scored with a very silly and very melodramatic song performed by (who else?) The Weeknd. Tedros beats Jocelyn with the same hairbrush that her mother used to beat her with. The stupid song drones on and on, as shot after shot shows Jocelyn in tears, screaming, followed by Jocelyn and Tedros in the bathtub, then Jocelyn and Tedros, wearing matching white bath towels, kissing on her balcony. “Thank you for taking care of me,” she says to Tedros, right before the credits roll. I don’t think I’ve ever rolled my eyes harder.
I was pleased to see Depp is a genuinely talented actor, just like her father. She is way too good for this drivel. Everyone is too good for this. As I watched the story unfold, I couldn’t help but wonder if, as Jocelyn and her crew fall under Tedros’s spell, Levinson and the rest of the production team acquiesced to The Weeknd’s creative wishes, since to object could mean getting on the bad side of one of the world’s most influential pop stars. His acting chops aren’t bad. I’ll give him that. But, if this show really is the product of his vision, I feel very strongly that he should never be allowed creative input on a television series again. For everyone’s sake, The Weeknd needs to stick to his day job. If I choose to keep tuning in to The Idol, which I doubt I will, it will only be to watch Depp command the screen in the way she, somehow, despite such a ridiculous vehicle, manages to. I do hope I get to see her, at the very least, perform one more Britney-like hair toss.
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Ben Appel is a writer living in New York City. His memoir, Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic, is forthcoming. Find him on Twitter @benappel and at benappelwrites.com.