Something happens while you’re watching each new episode of The Idol. You’re trucking along, lightly amused by Hank Azaria’s or Jane Adams’s heightened performances as music execs, curious about Lily-Rose Depp’s beguiling and emotionally fragile pop star Jocelyn, and innocently wondering why anyone would book a grueling dance rehearsal immediately after a sexy photo shoot. But you can’t let yourself get comfortable—you can’t let that mild feeling of entertainment linger. Because it’s at that exact moment when the amusement is suddenly replaced by a lack of self-awareness so egregious that it’s a wonder The Idol ever made it to air on HBO. The tonal shift inevitably comes about 20 minutes into every episode, at the precise moment when Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye enters stage left, inexplicably dressed like Neo, exuding all the raw magnetism of a wood-paneled refrigerator as Svengali-like club owner Tedros Tedros—the man so terrible they made his name unbearable—and wearing what can only be described as a damning wig.
It’s a nice little loophole to tell The New York Times ahead of your series premiere that it “is not going to be for everybody,” but every time the Tedros plot takes center stage, I’m forced to wonder: Is The Idol for anyone? I mean, I guess I know who it’s for: Sam Levinson, who has already made a career of insisting that there’s nothing sexier than a young woman nearly orgasming at the mere concept of being put in danger by a controlling, manipulative weirdo. (God, that Cassie-Nate Euphoria scene even features a cold-drink-to-the-crotch moment, another “definitely” sexy, sexy device redeployed on The Idol.) And the Weeknd, who earnestly pointed out in that same New York Times interview that at the Cannes screening of The Idol’s first two episodes, Levinson, Depp, and he were often the only ones laughing at certain scenes because “people have no idea” what makes the Tedros plot funny and we (allegedly) still won’t know until we’ve (allegedly) seen the whole show …
That’s bad, the Weeknd! If we need to see the whole of something to understand any aspect of it, then, my guy … make a movie (and not a TV show you’re calling a five-hour movie because you wish it were a movie but no one makes movies anymore).
At any given time, The Idol is presenting two different, almost completely incohesive stories: The first one is about a pop star whose career and emotions are still reeling from the complicated death of her mother, the alleged nervous breakdown that followed that loss, and the industry vultures circling her for a comeback while lightly demanding that she recoup on their investment in her or else. Pretty interesting, right? Well, don’t get too invested. Because every time you start to enjoy that story line, it gets completely derailed by the second one, heralded by Tedros’s arriving and sucking the cigarette-smoke-filled oxygen right out of the room with such novel cult-leader concepts as, “You’ve gotta stop caring about what other people think about you.” These are the genius-level ideas with which Tedros is able to manipulate the more talented people around him. And you know what, in theory, a cult story line should be pretty interesting too: the sway of an enigmatic leader, the comfort and threat of strangers who become family, the push and pull between faith and instinct ...
But did I mention that Tedros’s cult is a sexy cult? In the same interview where the Weeknd boasted about how no one knew to laugh at his hilarious character, The Idol’s stars insisted that the “provocative” nature of the series’ plot will inevitably make it controversial. But I don’t think it’s controversial of me to say: This must be the least provocative show on HBO … ever. At least not in the sexy way. I think we’re all just feeling provoked that we have to listen to the Weeknd do AI-generated dirty talk. But I do want to assure the Weeknd that, unlike the Cannes audience, I am laughing while I watch The Idol—because that’s my personal response to trauma. Sometimes I’m laughing with the show, like any time Da’Vine Joy Randolph is onscreen. But mostly I’m laughing because The Idol’s idea of sex appeal seems to be the revelation that a satin robe can—and must—be assless. After all, how else would you see the thong, the sexiest form of women’s underwear, and the ever-present third lead on The Idol? And when that robe is later repurposed by Tedros for not-entirely-consensual erotic asphyxiation, our understanding of why Jocelyn would respond so strongly to such an act is so unearned that we might as well be watching her discover a new taste for sudoku. This is a show that dares to ask: Can’t lady sexuality just go back to being defined by what kind of porn men like? Don’t all women find choking not just universally sexy, but creatively inspiring? Is this shocking to you, Middle America? Have you been SHOCKED by HBO’s no. 1 provocateurs? Can you even handle these butt-less robes?
The noticeable dissonance between The Idol’s central story lines seems to lend credence to Rolling Stone’s April exposé, which quoted multiple on-set sources saying that the original series was pitched to them as a dark satire about fame in the 21st century before it was upended and turned into something more focused on a sexy, sexy cult after 80 percent of the project had already been shot. Director Amy Seimetz mysteriously left the project—possibly because the Weeknd decided he was unhappy with the “female perspective” the series had taken on, as reported by Deadline—and Levinson took over as director, fully rewriting and reshooting the project, presumably with more focus on the (insufferable) Tedros character. The frequent feeling that the starlet story line and the cult story line are at odds, plus the actual feeling of dementor fog that settles over my living room whenever the Weeknd appears on screen, would suggest at least some of that is accurate.
But as the Weeknd told The New York Times about running headfirst into difficult story lines: “Someone’s gotta do it. Now one’s really doing it right now.” Which, yeah, totally. No one is making satires about cults. There definitely isn’t an entire, flourishing subgenre of documentary about how cults are bad. And maybe that total lack of awareness is why The Idol hasn’t turned out to be “the show of the summer,” as Levinson thought it would be after it was exposed for scrapping a female director and flushing somewhere between $54 million and $75 million down the toilet (weird take!). Unfortunately, I don’t even think The Idol is the hate watch of the summer. But it is uniquely bad, and there’s something to be said for being a kind of bad I’ve never even seen in a lifetime of TV watching. And I know a lot of people stopped watching after the pilot, and those were definitely the right instincts—that was Darwin at work! But since I’m still punishing myself with non-erotic television asphyxiation, here are some questions I’ve had along the way while watching the first three episodes of The Idol …
Why are we calling this a rat tail?
One of Tedros’s main characteristics is that he has a rat tail. It’s referred to by multiple characters as a reason not to trust him, and it’s been referred to by the Weeknd as a reason that this guy is supposed to seem pathetic. And that’s all well and good—but I have to get something off my chest.
That is not a rat tail! That is nothing more than an itty-bitty braid on a normal-sized man. I went to public Texas elementary school with enough actual rat tails to know that a rat tail, by nature, must either grow independently from the base of the head or taper from a short head of hair into the longer, titular tail shape along the neck. But it’s certainly not just long hair fashioned into a sparse (admittedly tail-like) braid.
There is, of course, a larger question to be asked later about why the Weeknd has a tiny, wispy braid that sprouts from a very obvious wig. But beyond that, the rat tail and its frequent mentions are the first evidence of the series’ favorite storytelling device: tell, don’t show. You can tell me that’s a rat tail all you want, but that’s not what I’m seeing, because that’s not what it is. Further, the faux rat tail isn’t even the most offensive part of this guy’s hair, which I would personally identify as a strange sort of spherical combination of wispiness and puffiness that leads back toward the braid. It’s giving founding father; it’s giving British barrister; it’s giving “Mom, hey Mooooooom, watch me do Martha Washington in the pool!” What it’s not giving is rat tail.
What does it mean to own a nightclub in L.A.?
We’re first introduced to Tedros at his pretty average nightclub, where Jocelyn’s friend Dyanne has taken her for a night out on the town (as we later find out, she was instructed to do so by Tedros). And Tedros is kind of like the Kirk from Gilmore Girls of this club—he’s doing everything. He’s coordinating bottle service, he’s making weird announcements from the DJ booth, he’s drugging people, he’s forcing meet-cutes, he’s fingering pop stars in stairwells. But that’s not actually the confusing part—the confusing part is why everyone keeps talking about being a club owner like it’s akin to being a global pop star. When Tedros starts making his way toward Jocelyn, she asks Dyanne who he is, to which Dyanne says, “That’s Tedros. He owns the place.” First of all, that’s not how humans who aren’t in the musical Newsies talk. (Another non-human piece of dialogue I love, in reference to Jocelyn’s leaked photo: “This just posted on the internet.” To which Jocelyn responds, “So this is everywhere then?” I mean, yeah, girl. It POSTED … on the INTERNET!)
Second of all, why does hearing that this man in a wig walking toward her owns one random club convince Jocelyn—a gorgeous international pop star!—that they are equals who should hang out? Does owning a club make you famous? Is this irresistible to young starlets? Has Leonardo DiCaprio actually just been a club owner all this time?
Has anyone involved in this show ever met a person in real life?
That Tedros is constantly announced as the owner of the club is actually the least weird thing about his first meeting with Jocelyn, though. The most unbelievable aspect, I’d say, is that while he’s making his inspirational speech from the DJ booth—“We’re here to drink! We’re here to dance! We’re here to fall in love! We’re here to fuck!”—he spots Jocelyn in the crowd, tells the DJ to shut off the music, and then points out her presence to the entire club. Now, I’ve never been an international pop star, but surely this would not be received as appropriate behavior. Nor would it for said man to then practically squeal, “Oh my god, you’re so beautiful, I gotta have a dance with you, can I dance with you?” But Jocelyn does dance with him! She’s fascinated by him! Because he’s … an asshole, I think? Because he gives her—an international pop star—two vague compliments? This is what someone who has never organically met a woman in their life thinks a meet-cute looks like. There is simply no other way to explain why this man has Jocelyn in a stairwell in a matter of minutes. Which leads us to …
Tedros Tedros … please explain?
We learn in Episode 2 that Tedros’s full name is Tedros Tedros, which actually is hilarious, if not laugh-out-loud-at-Cannes funny. But much like having the same first and last name, there is nothing about Tedros Tedros’s characterization that can be functionally explained. Jocelyn is under his spell in a matter of days, which is not unheard of, but would seemingly require Tedros Tedros to be at least one of three things: undeniably hot, charming, or powerful. Tedros Tedros is none of those things. Between the wig, the windbreakers, and the cocaine loogies he’s always hawking up, it’s clearly intentional that Tedros Tedros is far less handsome than the Weeknd actually is in real life. But why? Is it to prove that his allure goes far beyond looks? No! His allure doesn’t include looks, or anything else. There is nothing that explains Jocelyn’s immediate attraction to this man who is saying endlessly embarrassing shit like, “How could anyone not fall in love with you,” after 45 seconds of casual grinding; who inexplicably arrives at her house like Dracula; who is always kind of lightly speaking in a transatlantic accent, as if he’s two beers deep in a conversation with a British person and just wants to see if they’ll notice.
In HBO’s behind-the-scenes segment after Episode 3, Levinson says something astute about characters like Tedros: “Imagine you have all the dreams of what you want to do in life, all the aspirations … but imagine you have none of the talent. That’s who this character is.” Which, yeah, great idea—very classic scammer behavior to surround yourself with more talented underlings so that it appears you actually have the ability to start a microscopic blood testing company (or what have you). Unfortunately, that’s not an idea that Levinson, in his writing—or the Weeknd, in his performance—is successfully conveying. Tedros is just … Tedros … Tedros.
What does it mean to be a profile writer for Vanity Fair?
If you think club owners are portrayed with the utmost reverence in The Idol, then just wait until you get ahold of this Vanity Fair writer played by Hari Nef. Not only is she given unlimited access to Jocelyn at her home on the first day of her first grueling photo shoot/music video rehearsal following a nervous breakdown … but when the time comes to betray Jocelyn and hand her single and video over to her alleged best friend, Vanity Fair is just invited right into that absurd scenario.
But surely the most absurd characterization of the relationship between media and celebrity is that everyone just cowers in this writer’s somehow inevitable presence during Jocelyn’s on-set emotional breakdown, instead of a team of publicists being like, “Hey, you have to sit in this closet for a while as we whisper about stuff on the other side of the door, I hope you enjoy the granola bar I know you packed in your purse for just such an occasion.” All in all, though, good for Vanity Fair—the preferred publication of The Idol!
How does a singer smoke this many cigarettes?
The only part of the music industry story line that tonally shares a sliver of Venn diagram space with Tedros’s story line is the part where Jocelyn is, at all times, just doing an hour-long advertisement for Virginia Slims. Jocelyn smokes a skinny cigarette before dance rehearsal; Jocelyn smokes two skinny cigarettes after dance rehearsal; Jocelyn smokes and smokes and smokes until she cannot smoke anymore—which means she never stops smoking, because Jocelyn can always smoke. Her ashtrays look like a game of pick-up sticks, her lungs like a bingo hall. Where these skinny cigs appear from, we do not know, but it’s never suggested even once by her overbearing team—who are nonstop worrying about her ability to tour—that she consider switching to a humble vape. And unfortunately, I do not care, because I’m a millennial, which means I secretly still think smoking looks cool. I love that Jocelyn sports skinny cigarettes like Wolverine claws, and I’ve never seen something more disgusting or impressive than her sucking down a cig in the sauna.
Does anyone on this show ever have sex to completion?
I’m just gonna come right out and say this: Most of the sex in the first three episodes of The Idol is masturbatory in nature. Which is not to say that sex must be penetrative, or even partnered, to be valid—it just kind of seems like a waste of a perfectly good sex cult to mostly be pleasuring yourself (often under the terribly unimaginative instruction of Tedros Tedros). I think it was Chekhov who once said, “If your TV series premieres its first act with a photo of the star covered in sexual fluids, then by the third episode someone should have believably climaxed.” But no! I would wager that, despite a near constant soundtrack of moans, we’ve never seen anyone on this sexy, sexy show have an orgasm. The closest we get is Tedros and Jocelyn having rough sex in a dressing room (because she called him gay earlier, duh), which she ultimately ends prematurely because he keeps saying he’s going to ejaculate inside her. And after she leaves the room, Tedros—you guessed it—loudly masturbates. It! Is! Awful! Which, I have to ask …
Has anyone involved in writing this show ever had sex before?
This is the one—this is the question that keeps me up at night, that keeps me laughing every episode, that keeps a steady stream of tweets clowning for 48 hours after each new hour of The Idol drops.
Yeah, sure, Tedros is supposed to be a creep, but he’s also hypnotized all of these people by telling them things like, “You gotta sing like you know how to fuck,” so you would assume that at least he—the leader of a sex cult—would be a storied and accomplished fucker. But the result of Jocelyn’s singing under Tedros’s fucking tutelage is quite literally just a lot of performative moaning—not exactly a well-known signature of good sex!
In that way, most of the sex on The Idol just feels like bad porn that can’t even be as explicit as porn because it’s TV—and it isn’t good TV because it doesn’t make any narrative sense. Jocelyn is going to hand her whole career over to a man who just keeps tying her up in her own robe? It’s already missing the butt—there are other moves available!
And then comes the sex scene in Episode 2—the one you’ve heard about. The one where Tedros rocks this woman’s world so thoroughly by talking about his fat tongue that she lets his sex cult set up shop in her house (which is, ironically, the Weeknd’s real house). Surely it’s when Tedros, crouching behind a chair, begins quoting DMX—“You gon’ make me act a fool baby”—that you really understand his allure. Or maybe it’s the most anatomically mysterious of all his dirty talk—“Yeah, make that throat wet for me, baby”—that gets you and Jocelyn going. But if I may, I would just like to encourage this: If anyone ever says that to you, immediately stop what you’re doing and make them pass a simple anatomy test before proceeding with the sex. Or in this specific case, a simple, “Yeah, make that braid tiny for me, baby” retort to Tedros Tedros should do.
Is Tedros Tedros supposed to be a loser?
This is the biggest lingering question from the first three episodes of The Idol. And it doesn’t matter how many interviews the Weeknd does with however many different variants of GQ after getting made fun of on the internet—it’s up to the show to signal to us that everything this guy does is an intentional joke, which so far it is not doing. Sure, I’m laughing at Tedros’s dirty talk and pathetic attempts to threaten luxury retail workers …
… but in those moments, I think he’s supposed to actually seem threatening. Because he must be threatening; otherwise, what are the stakes of this television show? There are parts of Tedros Tedros we’re supposed to buy … that just aren’t selling. Whereas the moments that are supposed to establish him as a tryhard loser—like his practicing “Hello, angel” in the mirror before seeing Jocelyn—just fall flat.
I will give The Idol this: If they modeled Tedros after NXIVM sex cult leader Keith Raniere, then they did nail the “insufferable goofy ass dork” of it all. Unfortunately, with Keith Raniere, the proof is in the pudding (the pudding being his actual sex cult, as it were) that there was something alluring about this guy, whether it was just his knowing how to identify vulnerable targets or his irresistible volleyball skills. But when you’re putting that inexplicable magnetism to screen, you actually do have to figure out a way to show it. And characteristics that are, possibly, hard to explain on paper typically have to make their way into a performance, which they are … not doing here. So yeah, Tedros Tedros is a loser of juggernaut proportions—it’s out of control for all of us now.
Is this show worth hate-watching?
No. This isn’t The Newsroom, where Aaron Sorkin made precisely the insufferable show he intended to and we reaped the benefits of getting to wallow around in that insufferable-ness for a few seasons. Levinson and the Weeknd (and yeah, OK, Lily Rose Depp, but she gets a pass because she really is very good in the parts of the better show that exist alongside the mess) really think they’ve done something here. But if there’s an end point—a message, a meaning, a punch line—to their alleged satire, we haven’t gotten to it yet. They can tell us that all of this laughable dialogue is laughable on purpose, but unfortunately, HBO just finished airing a wildly successful dark comedy about people who have no self-awareness, outsize confidence, and a complete misunderstanding of how intimidating they are—and The Idol ain’t that.
So if you’re not watching, let me assure you: Out-of-context Twitter clips really are enough. Because watching them in context doesn’t actually give any more context. I guess, in that way, the show really is special.
