The Idol is too square to be scandalous

Few shows this year have been as deftly hyped as The idolHBO’s sleek new drama from Euphoria creator Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye. In recent months, the series has been discussed and promoted in the most sensational terms. Billed by HBO as a “twisted, turbulent love story”, trailers fell with tone-defining lines like “When was the last really fucking, filthy, bad pop girl?” The show premiered at the Cannes Film Festival – a statement in itself – and festival report cast the show as a work of shock jock lasciviousness. The idolit seemed, was a scandal in the form of a prestige drama.

Reality is much duller than that.

“Pop Tarts & Rat Tales,” The idol‘s premiere, is split into two parts: The first half reads like a one-act play about Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), a mononymous pop star on the day of a full-blown PR crisis. This is the best The idol has to offer. During the show’s first 30 minutes, viewers learn that Jocelyn is trying to make a comeback after a nervous breakdown led her to cancel a tour.

Over the course of an afternoon, Jocelyn does a risqué photo shoot, rehearses the choreography for her new single’s music video, and takes part in an interview with Vanity Fair. Meanwhile, in the background, the gears of modern celebrities turn around her. An intimacy coordinator has a farcical argument with a manager over the nudity in the shoot. PR flack discusses how to flip Jocelyn’s image after her breakdown – “mental illness is sexy,” someone believes. And finally, a full-blown publicity crisis ensues when a private, explicit photo of Jocelyn surfaces online and her team tries to figure out the best way to deal with it before breaking the news to her.

The first half of “Pop Tarts & Rat Tales” has the beginnings of a compelling drama, maybe even a dark comedy similar to Veep with more nudity: a cynical farce that puts everyone in an artist’s orbit – from managers to intimacy coordinators to best friends – as amoral vampires who have somehow made themselves necessary to the human they turn into commodities for profit. (The episode’s darkest funny scene involves Jocelyn’s team trying to determine what angle the leaked photo was taken from.)

Unfortunately, Tedros (Abel Tesfaye) arrives to take Jocelyn and the audience away from that show. If the first half of The idolThe premiere is dark Hollywood satire, the second half is the sleazy love story the marketing promised, only delivered without much conviction. Tedros meets Jocelyn at a club he owns, ominously lit all the way as he whispers to her that she should have a lot more fun as a big pop star.

Photo: Eddy Chen/HBO

To Jocelyn, Tedros is a knife that cuts through nonsense, an impulsive and diabolical seducer who is not interested in telling her what she wants to hear. To the public, he is an obvious manipulator with plans to integrate himself into Jocelyn’s life and art. Most of the time though, he’s just boring, something that The idol underlined in a scene where Jocelyn watches Basic instinct with her best friend Leia (Rachel Sennott) — a movie full of danger and chemistry The idol doesn’t seem to find it in his two leads. Depp has the tougher of two leads, which the script says is supposed to be aloof and somewhat unknowable, but struggles in scenes with Tesfaye, who has no problem playing sinister and enigmatic, but can’t find a way to play other aspects of his role. to play. character. If one way to understand sexuality on screen is as a conversation between two characters physically negotiating how much they want to reveal to each other, Tesfaye comes across as lecturing and Depp as a bored student.

Like The Weeknd’s modern work, which is defined by carefully constructed characters and elaborate concerts calibrated in a tightly controlled experience, The idol is too thoughtful to really provoke, titillate, or start a conversation. It surrounds its characters in mess, but doesn’t show them to be messy; his transgressions amount to cheap jabs against progressives and the main character has a kink. There could be another good TV show here. But right now it just feels like bait.