Try too hard to sensationalize, and you’ll end up putting your audience to sleep.
“The Idol,” HBO’s new drama from “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson, wants to shock, titillate and provoke you. It uses nudity, profanity, drugs, semen, sadism, masochism, mental illness and excessive cigarette smoking in its barefaced effort to seem cool and subversive.
Based on Sunday’s premiere, it’s exceptionally clear that “Idol” (Sundays, 9 EDT/PDT, ★ out of four) is not cool, nor is it subversive. It is a hopeless try-hard, and worse, it’s painfully dull. Starring Lily-Rose Depp and pop star The Weeknd (billed under his real name, Abel Tesfaye), “Idol” doesn’t work on any level.
The series, the subject of major controversy due to alleged toxicity, upheaval and other problems on set, has no identity. It’s not a satire of the music industry, nor a seedy sexual fantasy. It feels more like a bad music video writ large, all skin and poor lighting choices and expensive locations. But no one wants to sit through a six-hour music video.
The “Idol” in question is Jocelyn (Depp), a young pop star on the verge of a comeback after some unclear mental breakdown (plot details seem unimportant to the writers). Amid slumping ticket sales and just before releasing an important new single, an obscene photo of Jocelyn is posted online. Reeling from that trauma, Jocelyn finds her way to Tedros (Tesfaye), a DJ and club owner who quickly worms his way into her affections. Tedros seems like just another Hollywood hack, but the egregiously unsubtle musical cues in his every appearance clue the audience into his nefarious intentions.
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The first episode takes place mostly over the course of a photo shoot, with Jocelyn wearing a silk robe and very little else while her handlers skitter around and talk about how “mental illness is sexy.” By the end of the hour, Tedros is practicing some light autoerotic asphyxiation on Jocelyn. It’s supposed to stun me with its daring provocation. I yawned.
The series fundamentally lacks substance. Jocelyn is a cipher, completely without personality or interest. All we know about her is that she likes sex and wishes she was a better dancer. Everyone else we meet has all the characterization of a cardboard cutout. There’s Jocelyn’s needy assistant (Rachel Sennott), her “Goodfellas” wannabe manager (Hank Azaria) and other smarmy and other members of her entourage (Jane Adams and Dan Levy). Singer Troye Sivan pops in as some kind of art director or something, but he’s really just there for some one-liners and to try to add hipness to an unhip story.
You’d think, with all the sex and skin and kink, that there might actually be some sizzle to those scenes, but they are just awkward and uncomfortable. Chemistry is lacking, as are heat and emotion. Depp and Tesfaye are like automatons malfunctioning and choking each other accidentally, not sexy young people in the throes of passion. For all the times Depp’s body is on display, Tesfaye remains clothed and in control. Jocelyn is portrayed as enjoying violent sex acts and is desperate to show more skin in every photoshoot and dance rehearsal. It is gratuitous at the least, and at worst, glorifies the sexualization and exploitation of young women.
Co-created by Levinson, Tesfaye and newcomer Reza Fahim, “Idol” most resembles Levinson’s much-maligned “Assassination Nation,” a film that used sex and violence (and sexual violence) in an attempt to cover up its terrible writing. It didn’t work there, and it doesn’t work here.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the series is so boring, at least after one episode. The imagery deployed in the first few minutes of the premiere episode should have been the first giveaway: Porn is a pretty rote and lackluster storytelling medium.
And you don’t need to pay for HBO to see it.
