The Idol premiere: HBO's hollow spectacle of sex and pop music

How do you begin to talk about a show that preemptively thinks it knows what you’ll say about it and frames its every story and character beat around a self-aware vibe that, presumably, leaves you open to being heckled for “not getting it”?

That’s mostly a rhetorical question since I don’t really want to give The Idol such credit. But self-awareness does seem to be the guiding framework for HBO’s latest buzzy show from Euphoria creator Sam Levinson. At every turn, this show, about a young pop starlet navigating the world as an oversexed star who’s about to relaunch her career following what no one on her team wants to call a mental breakdown, stages conversations meant to foreclose any kind of criticism. This pilot episode—all about how a viral image of Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) with cum all over her face may affect the rollout of her upcoming single and tour—constantly winks and nudges at us that it knows just how thorny and vexing talk about shame and agency operate in this kind of world. And yet, it all adds up to a rather hollow spectacle not nearly as smart or as edgy or as insightful as the show knows itself to be.

“What is the image saying?”

The line is spoken near the start of the episode while Joss, in just a robe she keeps opening up to showcase her breasts, is posing for what will become her album cover. And indeed, it’s an image of Joss that opens the series. A close-up, in fact, where actress (Depp) and pop singer (Joss) alike are called to perform “sexiness” for an unseen audience. As Levinson, who wrote and directed the episode, opens up the frame and we see the many bored crew members all around her, the question is uttered by those in Joss’ team who are being called to voice exactly what those of us watching would wonder.

Is the image saying that here is a pop star taking ownership of her body, her desires, her wants? Is that why she wants to do away with the intimacy coordinator, who really is just getting in the way of her showing us her body?

Or is the image saying that here is a manicured, manufactured dream scenario where a young woman’s bodily autonomy is necessarily co-opted by those around her with more power who have in turn made her feel like she has agency—even if it is only wielded to promote a sexualized vision of herself?

Or is the image saying, alongside lines like “mental illness is sexy” and references to Sharon Tate, that Joss really is a victim here of a system that’s merely being depicted and not—and how dare you suggest even such a thing—being reified by the very dialogue and imagery here being (re)presented.

Of course, when the episode shifts from the perfectly produced image of Joss as a sexy pop star (decided on by photographers, managers, label executives, PR teams, etc.) to an actual image of Joss as a sex-having young woman (that cum-filled selfie), The Idol shows its hand and isn’t able to make a clear distinction between one and the other. Joss’ team immediately works to spin that incident as revenge porn (used here as a buzzword; few actually engage with that might mean) and hope to leverage the exposure to turn the singer, who’s still reeling from losing her mom to cancer, into a feminist icon. (“I’ll start with victim and go from there,” says Joss’ publicist, played by Dan Levy.) It’s ultimately all about optics. About what the image might say. And what talk of the image might also reveal.

It’s all very meta and all very exhausting. Especially once Hari Nef as a Vanity Fair profile writer shows up and forces every other member of Joss’ team to expound on the ways The Idol wants to have its cake and eat it, too. By the time Joss rehearses the dance for her single “World Class Singer” and we’re assaulted with sl0-mo close ups of Depp slapping her ass while lyrics like “I’m just a freak yea, so show me why you came?” score the scene, it’s clear the show is endlessly going to do that thing where it over-determines every scene and choice.

“I love how referential it is.” That’s Nef’s Talia, calling out how the choreography is basically a Britney Spears callback—an obvious instance of the series wanting to get ahead of a comparison we’d all be making anyways. Later still, Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” playing at a club and Sharon Stone in Fatal Attraction playing on a TV will further add to the many blond bombshells The Idol wants to rope into its audiovisual constellation.

And so, rather than merely give us, say, the story of a Britney-esque pop star who’s struggling with mental illness and who’s working her way through how to own her music and body within a sexist industry that would allow (or encourage) her own exploitation (but it’s not exploitation if it’s her choice, right?), The Idol wants to have endless seminar discussions about what such a show can be.

We even get a TED Talk on how pop music is actually not superficial (I mean, have you heard of Prince?) courtesy of the other main character in the show: Tedros (played by The Weeknd, no, I’m sorry, Abel Tesfaye). For just as Joss decides the best way to deal with her infamous viral fame is to head to a fancy nightclub, she meets a man with a rattail who mesmerizes her with…well, it’s unclear. Lines like “Are you dangerous?” I guess work as pick-up lines sometimes. Eager to find someone who’ll be honest with her (even her best friend-turned-assistant has become a bit of a Yes (wo)man!), Joss gravitates toward Tedros—even inviting him to her house where she’ll play him her new single in utter embarrassment.

His one note? She doesn’t sound like she can fuck. And it’s clear that’s what he’s there to show her, which is why he indulges in some erotic asphyxiation play (which we already knew she loved by a very porn-ready scene earlier in the episode). “Now you can sing,” he coos as she orgiastically shivers underneath him while breathing in air from the gap he’s just torn in the makeshift mask he’s trapped her in (with her robe, no less).

It’s all a lot and yet not enough. Skin-deep when it thinks it’s being profound. Almost like The Idol wants to be a hot-take discourse machine first and a television show second. But I guess we’re now in this journey together for the next few weeks. Let’s see how many more times Levinson & Co. can flaunt just how provocative they’re being.

Stray observations

• Do we think the intimacy “America’s cockblock” coordinator was eventually let out of that bathroom?
• She may be saddled with playing the straight man to everyone else’s bonkers characters but my god Rachel Sennott is a star. (Everyone’s seen Shiva Baby, correct?)
• Casting is across the board fantastic. (Roth is pitch perfect as an exasperated Live Nation exec; Jane Adams makes all her cringe lines feel authentic; Troye Sivan and Jennie Kim feel like apt figures to flesh out the show’s interest in pop-music imagery; Da’Vine Joy Randolph deserves the world—though I hope that, between this and Lost City of D she’s not being reduced to bit parts and gets her chance to shine again in a lead role.) The less we talk about Hank Azaria’s weird accent, the better, though.
• Is “World Class Sinner” a bop?
• Do we think Levinson chuckles to himself when he writes a line like “How are 14 year olds gonna buy tickets to this when she’s fucking frosted like a pop tart?”
• Never fucking anyone with a rat tail feels like a good enough rule to live by, no?