Unlike the legacy reporters of Time and Variety, I had to wait with the rest of the world for The Idol to drop on Max. Given the initial coverage, it is disappointing but unsurprising that Max’s first show to follow the finale of Succession is a skin-heavy, unimaginative take on the music industry. I would call this show gratuitous (along with every media outlet), but that might imply it is boundary-pushing or possessing a point of view. It is neither.
Above all else, The Idol is an exercise in provocation, a neg-fest daring to be hated. The show doesn’t just prod for a reaction, it lunges for it. In spite, or more likely because of the spate of bad press, The Idol will surely perform well and retain subscriptions amidst the messy WarnerMedia and Discovery merger. What Sam Levinson lacks in artistry, he certainly makes up for by being the loudest carnival barker in town, helming shows that talk dirty but can’t fuck.
In its first five minutes, The Idol seemingly tells us what it is about: “Mental illness is sexy,” as the Jane Adams character trills while watching Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) pose for a photoshoot. Sex sells, but it pairs better with a hospital bracelet. Everybody loves crazies when they’re hot and deluded—if they hate themselves, you might actually be able to fuck them! Without visible cracks in the facade, there would be nothing to hang onto, no rot to villainize then laud on the comeback tour. Her brokenness must be visible, fresh, and it must suitably cow her.
This bit of cultural commentary feels more in line with Amy Seimetz’s The Girlfriend Experience than any of Levinson’s previous work (Euphoria recast underage camming as empowering and not dangerous and/or psychologically scarring), and perhaps the only idea in the show that rings true. But moving on, we’ve got nipples to photograph and real-life musicians’ vanities to stoke.
We meet Jocelyn just out of a mental facility, fresh from her mother’s death and planning her comeback with an upcoming single. Various entertainment people descend on Jocelyn’s home as she goes through the motions of photoshoots, rehearsals, parties (in essence, a day in the life of a Pop Star) when an explicit photo of Jocelyn leaks on Twitter. Her team, freaking out, hides Jocelyn’s phone to get her through the day.
Amid the chaos, a reporter from Vanity Fair, played with appealing, if deeply unrealistic, coolness by Hari Nef (who starred in Levinson’s debut film Assassination Nation), has come to profile Jocelyn. Talia (Nef) appears in a designer black minidress and a Vermillion blunt bob (a la Haley Williams) with nothing but the Voice Memo app and a dream.
You’d think Levinson’s penchant for journalist takedowns would have run its course since his “white lady from the LA Times” screech in Malcolm & Marie, but alas, The Idol doubles down. Talia might be serving cunt, but journalistic due diligence, she is not (where is her backup recording device??!). It is abundantly clear that Sam Levinson has never spent any meaningful amount of time with a writer. If he had, he might have actually learned how to write.
Abel Tesfaye (The Weeknd) gives a wooden, insipid Don Juan imitation. He whines about Prince and Donna Summers and hocks a coke-loogie in the bathroom, rehearsing intonations of “hello, angel,” as if he’s at a seance for Farrah Faucet. The creepiness isn’t the problem; it's Tesfaye’s limp, instant forgettability. I don’t buy him as a successful nightclub owner, let alone a charismatic cult leader. A Tuesday-night DJ at Poppy, maybe.
Depp, for her part, generally transcends the material. Passably playing a pop star often compared—in dialogue and conceit—to Britney is no small feat. Depp evokes all the charisma and self-awareness Tesfaye sorely lacks, and beneath a flat, vocal-fried affect, Depp manages to imbue genuine pathos into Jocelyn. In one scene, she watches her backup dancer (Blackpink’s Jennie Ruby Jane) expertly perform her part. From behind a pair of opaque Chanel sunnies, Jocelyn wipes away a tear.
“The first shot of the show tells you everything you need to know about Jocelyn. How gifted she is as a performer. She can laugh on cue, cry on cue. You see how good she is at manipulating us emotionally,” Levinson says in the behind-the-scenes bonus for the episode. An editor says, “It’s a little bit of a warning as to what she’s capable of.” What, precisely, is Jocelyn capable of?
Staff, friends, and investors loom over her as she stumbles through the dance routine. It is her house everyone glides through and her body which she insists on being photographed nude and cashes the checks of everyone around her. She readily displays her body, but how much autonomy she actually has over it is alarmingly unclear. Sam Levinson has misunderstood his protagonist and, to a greater extent, his own show.
In the final scene of the pilot, Tendros (Tesfaye) places Jocelyn’s red nightgown over her head, suffocating her (it’s OK, asphyxiation is her kink!), until he cuts open a slit for her mouth. Accidentally, it is reminiscent of the cover of Ke$ha’s latest album Gag Order, an innovative piece of media with far more to say about exploitation. On purpose, it seems to reference René Magritte’s The Lovers II and perhaps Little Red Riding Hood.
The Lovers is a painting about death, intimacy, and love but Levinson and Tesfaye don’t seem to love or understand what they are referencing or even what they have created. Emphasis on create—while Amy Seimetz was set to direct the series, she had no hand in writing the episodes or the initial conception of the show. No, that’s Levinson, Tesfaye and someone literally no one has ever never heard of before. However much we would like to believe Seimetz could have saved this show, the bones are bad, and we should be grateful she can wipe her hands of this mess.
Levinson’s refusal to do anything with Jocelyn except objectify her with all the care and nuance of a blowup sex doll is exhausting. The camera leers and jabs at Jocelyn’s body, or rather, the idea of it. Even in private, Jocelyn is posed to the extreme (she is never not made up). When Jocelyn’s assistant (Rachel Sennott) comes into the bedroom to wake her up, Jocelyn is wearing only panties, her hair is perfectly mussed, and the window light artfully outlines the shape of her ass.
My mind immediately went to the opening shot of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, where a woman lays in bed, her butt facing us. We do not see her face. The butt is, obviously, the subject. Where Coppola’s voyeur shot is challenging and uncomfortable, Levinson’s is impersonal and directionless. He seemed to take Coppola’s scene, sap it of artistry or context, and translate it to “butts, great. More butts.”
Perhaps Levinson means to implicate the audience in Jocelyn’s pressure to constantly perform, but if that’s the case, where is the strain from drinking, work, and exhaustion? Oh, that’s boring? Fine, cut to yet another slow-motion montage. Stars might not be just like us, but if that’s the point of the show, then fucking comment on it.
The Idol lamely gestures at erotic and transgressive media in place of creating anything transgressive or erotic. If Levinson had allowed Jocelyn a modicum of humanity, The Idol might have been a show about exploitation rather than a dull simulacrum of one.