Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) and Tedros Tedros (Abel Tesfaye) ride into the trash classic canon with HBO’s The Idol
Blame it on the cum shot. That’s all it took for me to fall permanently and irrevocably in love with HBO’s widely loathed, universally mocked, critically maligned, and now-officially canceled and “canceled” show The Idol, created by Euphoria‘s Sam Levinson, Abel Tesfaye aka The Weeknd, and Reza Fahim, all of whom have been unfairly raked over the coals for this crime against televised good taste.
Granted it wasn’t just the cum shot itself—a leaked selfie of single-named chain-smoking pop starlet Jocelyn (played by Lily-Rose Depp whose moony unfocused cat eyes portray little girl lost and fame-hungry sex kitten in equal measure) “frosted like a Pop Tart,” as eloquently put by Live Nation’s Andrew Finkelstein, a snarky, fast-talking, high-strung, occasional Yiddish-spouting executive douchebag flawlessly nailed by gonzo horror director Eli Roth. The Idol won my unending adoration after dedicating a full twenty-five minutes of the premiere episode to the PR disaster of the splooge photograph as Finkelstein and a collection of Jocelyn’s other various caretakers on the payroll—managers, best friends/assistants, former teenybopper costars turned creative directors, record company execs, and various other Hollywood hangers-on—huddle to figure out what to do. This includes debates about whether the image constitutes bukkake (or “Bugooki” as Hank Azaria’s bafflingly accented co-manager Chaim says), attempts to find explanations (“He was probably fine as shit, had a big ass dick, and she felt good!” quips fellow co-manager Destiny, played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who manages to transcend the hackneyed trope of the no-nonsense Black woman that she was clearly slotted in with a lot of heart and tough love), desperate spin (“If you link to the photo, you’re part of the problem,” lectures Dan Levy’s publicist Benjamin), and furious Twitter temperature-taking (“Twitter is calling her the human cum sock!”). Despite this cacophony of hilarious takes on the jizz-stained photo, perhaps the best came from silver-haired ruthlessly sociopathic record executive Nikki Katz (Jane Adams), who speaks for all of us when she announces, “Who among us has not had cum on our face?” A valid question.
The cum shot straight to my heart
What is Jocelyn up to while her staff whips themselves up into a seminal fluid frenzy? A photoshoot, of course! She’s boldly baring her breasts, nips and all, from her red satin robe to the absolute horror of the on-set intimacy coordinator who spouts platitudes about the “human rights structure of it all.” As if that wasn’t tossed out way back in the Hollywood Babylon days! Doesn’t he know what show he’s in?! He learns soon enough, as The Idol announces its mission and utmost commitment to sleaze by locking this wet blanket in a closet for the next several hours as Jocelyn returns to her half-nudie pics. Jocelyn is not that innocent! A Britney Spears declaration that is further confirmed after she’s confronted with her offending selfie by her staff. Staring at the picture, which also marks the first time we, the audience, catch a glimpse of her semen-slicked proud expression with her tongue hanging out like Cardi B or 2013’s Miley Cyrus, she says, “I feel like it could have been worse.”
She’s right. And it gets worse after Jocelyn links up with Tedros Tedros (Abel Tesfaye), a Jim Jones aviators-wearing, rattail-sporting, former pimp in his new career as a wannabe cult leader/wannabe manager/all-around-wannabe. Tedros lures Jocelyn into his clutches at his opulent golden dictator chic-decorated club by doing his best DJ at Jonestown impression (“All those troubles outside, they do not exist in this building right now. This is a church for all you sinners. So shots for everybody in here!”). Tedros is not a solo act, however. He comes with a talented band of wayward Merry Pranksters, who lie somewhere between the Manson Family (particularly wide-eyed, blown-pupiled, pure-heart Chloe (Suzanna Son) who you can just imagine giving a rousing rendition of “I’ll Never Say Never to Always”) and a talent showcase at your local bar. This “Family”—and they do refer to themselves often as a family, red flag number one, Joss!—treats Jocelyn like The Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson and moves into her house. There, they send her (and some of her friend-employees) into a psychosexual spiral of sexyless sex and better music. The latter comes mostly thanks to preeminent stoner legend and iconic producer Mike Dean, playing himself, whose synth-slacker presence, emerging on-screen smoking a blunt and taking a hit of a giant bong, may just be what raises The Idol to high art. It’s not just Tedros and his “Family” who are a little off, though. Not all is right with Jocelyn either as we see in the first photoshoot scene in which she poses with a hospital band still secured on her wrist. “Mental illness is sexy,” explains Nikki, shooing off any criticism of this post-psych ward romanticization.
A long-suffering maid who isn’t paid enough for this shit
That it is. Through five episodes, abridged from the intended six for an unknown reason, The Idol takes us on a thrill ride of deranged behavior, including astoundingly memorably bad dirty talk (“You’re going to make me act a fool…”), red robe strangulation, rattails stuck out at 45-degree angles, tequila-blasting water rifles, hairbrush mommy issues, lame peer pressure drug use (“You ever done cocaine?”), Valentino dressing room wank sessions, goofy woo-woo talk about art and suffering, electrocuting twinks, macho-man shot competitions that come with bile-burps, idiotic power struggles, random slapping, cleaning ladies popping dildos off the walls, many, many shots of asses, tons and tons of Virginia Slims, and lots and lots of cumming while singing. All of which renders The Idol an awe-inspiring cavalcade of trash primed for a niche audience of weirdos that have dedicated their lives to filth and can understand the thrill in an over-the-top (and quite possibly purposeful) stinker.
Clearly, this is not the audience that The Idol reached as most people seem so furious about its parade of perversions that some keep referring to Tedros as if he was Abel himself, swearing The Weeknd’s music off for good. I’ll admit, it took me a few months and an endorsement from comedian Tim Dillon before finally giving The Idol a shot. I, too, was wrongly led astray by the avalanche of bad press. Now, I wasn’t worried that The Idol was torture porn (who among us hasn’t wanted to put a shock collar on Troye Sivan?) or misogynistic or problematic in myriad ways, all of which tend to describe film and TV I love (*cough* Blonde) I was concerned the show may be guilty of an even bigger sin: being boring, as suggested by The Guardian’s Leila Latif. That is certainly not The Idol’s problem.
Understandably, the bad press mountain is a tough one to climb even for seasoned trash connoisseurs like me. The negative spotlight on the show started well before it aired with a Rolling Stone exposé about its disaster production, bloated budget, and nightmare set, which consisted of then-director Amy Seimetz stomping off only to be replaced by controversial co-creator Sam Levinson, who is no stranger to filth-driven outrage with Euphoria, and Tesfaye giving the storyline a dust-up after growing sick of the “female perspective.” That article is filled with anonymous voices waxing poetic about an idyllic prior script none of us will ever see and complaints about how the show transformed into “any rape fantasy that any toxic man would have in the show.” Things didn’t get better once critics watched the actual show as Rolling Stone’s David Fear circled back to proclaim it “skin-crawling” and “more toxic and way worse than you’ve heard.” Honey, settle down. The bad reviews were so hyperbolic that it seemed like critics were having a field day coming up with the most inventive slams possible. The best may be the aforementioned Latif who suggested Tesfaye’s performance “should be tried at The Hague.” A funny quip but humorless nonetheless.
Tedros Tedros and Jocelyn take a drive
With a reeking 19% on Rotten Tomatoes, the stench of failure wafting from The Idol is so strong that the press seems to be in disbelief that ANYONE might dare like it, as proven by the article “Who’s Giving HBO’s ‘The Idol’ All of These Five-Star Ratings?” Me. It’s me. And Grimes, apparently. Because I love The Idol with all of my trash-pumping heart and cannot understand how there are not more like me clamoring to give the show the respect it’s entitled to! Perhaps this lack speaks to critics’ chronic inability to just lighten up. Or it may be evidence of the puritanical bent that has beset our culture, leading to long Twitter threads about sex scenes on film. Or it’s just another case of the exhausting pervasive overtheorization of any piece of media. I don’t know what it is exactly but what I do know is that The Idol is a sordid achievement worthy of being placed in the trash canon next to Paul Verhoeven’s masterpiece Showgirls, a comparison The Idol clearly desires as the show itself includes a clip of another Verhoeven classic Basic Instinct. It’s worth noting that critics said the same things about Showgirls too—that it was misogynistic, had no eroticism, and was *gasp* boring. As Nikki says in the first episode, clearly preempting criticism of the show, “Will you let people enjoy sex, drugs, and hot girls, okay? Stop trying to cock-block America.” I couldn’t have said it better myself!
In fact, appreciating the blatant references to Verhoeven, along with the influences of the trashier ends of Brian De Palma’s erotic thrillers and Bob Fosse’s harrowingly lurid true-crime film Star 80, may just be the key to adoring The Idol (Interestingly enough, The New York Times published an article wondering if The Idol would resurrect the erotic thriller genre. Apparently not!). Like many of the aforementioned films, Jocelyn is a pretty blonde thrust into a highly competitive and exploitative world of grifters, scam artists, social climbers, money grubbers, and cult-minded freaks, all bent on using whatever and whoever they have to in order to get ahead. Hollywood pop stardom may be a more respectable goal than Showgirls’ Vegas dancers or Star 80’s Playboy pin-ups but not by much. In all of these films, their worlds are defined by decadence at its most extreme, usually to comical ends. In The Idol, the universe of sex, drugs, and pop hits is set mostly in the gauche scenery of Jocelyn’s obscenely enormous Bel Air mansion, which just so happens to actually be Tesfaye’s own home. With way too many white balconies studded with Greco-Roman columns, an outdoor dance floor, and numerous dark rooms with fireplaces, idyllic “cocaine décor” perfect for moody eroticism, the tacky setting of The Idol is somehow just as hysterically overwrought as its storyline, a throwback to the Los Angeles excess in Brian De Palma’s Body Double.
Jocelyn channels Brit-brit
Perhaps it’s this garishness of wealth at its most extreme that makes Jocelyn’s version of pop royalty feel like another type of throwback, harkening to the mid-2000s era when stars were trying to outshine one another in the tabloid press using cooter flashes and tasteless designer-branded clothing alone. Britney undoubtedly is an influence here as seen in Jocelyn’s referential dance moves, as well as Demi Lovato’s previous chats with extraterrestrials (Jocelyn was “babbling, on the top of the roof talking to things from outer space” before being hospitalized for being “tired”). However, Jocelyn also recalls some of the long-forgotten 2000s one-hit wonders such as Willa Ford with “I Wanna Be Bad.” That dud isn’t so far from Jocelyn’s hackneyed song “World Class Sinner/I’m a Freak” with the lines “Baby, you better have a bank account if you want to see what I’m about.”
Ultimately, the person, real or fictional, that Jocelyn reminds me of the most is Showgirls’ icon Nomi played by Elizabeth Berkley, who was apparently supposed to also be in The Idol. A true tragedy we will never witness that. Like Nomi, Jocelyn tends towards the berserk, dancing until her feet are bloody stumps, calling out for her dead mother, and frequently choking herself while masturbating or slamming her thighs so hard on a highball glass it shatters into her crotch. Perhaps the most Nomi of Jocelyn’s scenes is her overly confident post-coital haze debut of a fresh new remix of “World Class Sinner/I’m A Freak” to her entire staff. The song is overlayed with breathy moans, groans, sighs, and whimpers like an even hornier “Love to Love You Baby,” made during the hot and steamy recording sesh with—who else?—Tedros Tedros. Unsurprisingly, the invited record executives and managers are more uncomfortable than impressed and after a stern talking-to from Nikki, Jocelyn works herself into a huff, proclaiming, “Fuck everyone else for being a fucking coward!” Sure, she isn’t quite as filled with rage as Nomi with her sudden hollers of “You don’t know shit!” But their bonkers fame-driven lunacy treads a similar unhinged path.
Tedros as Scarface Miyagi
In terms of unhinged, Jocelyn has nothing on Tedros Tedros who is one of my favorite characters ever seen on screen. I know. I know. Tedros is a toxic abusive sex pest. But, what all the critics seem to be missing is that Tedros isn’t exactly presented as aspirational. This guy is a loser! Sure, Tedros may see himself as a sex-god guru, but he’s really just an insecure poser, a fact that takes Jocelyn a beat to notice. It’s a wonder why since his first sultry come-on wasn’t exactly compelling: “Welcome to my shithole.” Everything about Tedros is highly choreographed and staged, from his vampiric entry past Jocelyn’s high gates wearing a duster like Mac from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia to his Keith Raniere motivational ramblings (“There’s no such thing as the right risk at the right time”) to swaggering around like a storied musical legend with no experience similar to Spring Breakers’ Alien (James Franco). The Idol provides plenty of glaring evidence that Tedros isn’t as confident as his rattail or his hissing shit-talking Valentino store worker intimidation routine (“I’ll fucking drag you down Rodeo by your fucking ass just fucking stomp you. I’ll fucking curb-stomp you”) projects. There are copious moments in which his mask slips, all of them hysterical, such as pronouncing “carte blanche” as “cart-ay blanch-ay” much like Nomi’s mistaken “Ver-sayche” in Showgirls. The most blatant revelation may be a scene in which he scurries to the bathroom while waiting for Jocelyn to finish lounging on a zebra rug to take a quick blast of coke and practice his greeting in the mirror (“Hello, Angel…Hello, Angel…HELLO, ANGEL”). This is a direct nod to the continual mirror-based practicing of fellow pathetic pimp Paul Snider in Bob Fosse’s Star 80. In a command performance by Eric Roberts, Snider is so needy and desperate that it’s hard to watch, made all the more difficult by the knowledge of his final act: killing his Playboy playmate wife, Dorothy Stratten (Mariel Hemingway), before turning the gun on himself. Like Tedros, everyone around Dorothy knows Snider is full of shit, including Hugh Hefner, but tiptoe around the issue until it’s sadly too late. Thankfully, The Idol isn’t quite so gory. Instead of taking Jocelyn down with him, Tedros self-destructs, transforming into “Scarface Miyagi,” as Roth’s Finkelstein observes, his hair frayed in a leopard print headband, wandering around Jocelyn’s mansion like a ghost on a three-day bender.
Of course, much has been made about the copious, often indulgently slo-mo, un-erotic sex scenes. And whew, they are terrible—delightfully, deliciously terrible! What’s wrong with that?! Are we so uptight that we can’t enjoy a horrid sex scene anymore?! Think back to that iconic pool sex scene in Showgirls with Nomi splashing around aggressively like a dying fish in the arms of poor Kyle MacLachlan’s Zack Carey. Was it violently unsexy? Sure! But it was also uproariously funny? Naturally! Same goes for Tedros and Jocelyn’s many—and I mean, many—dalliances, including one particularly notable encounter in which Jocelyn writhes around wearing a blindfold while Tedros fucks her with his alluring words. Words like “Imagine my tongue in your pussy…my fat tongue,” “I want to grab you by the ass while I suffocate you with my cock,” and the absolute best of the worst, “Fucking stretch that tiny little pussy.” UGH! Yuck! Even though the Internet spoiled the last one for those of us who didn’t watch the show when it aired, I howled with laughter and rewatched this trainwreck of a scene over and over again. Beyond being mind-blowingly amusing, this absurd approach to sex seems intentional. In an interview with GQ, Tesfaye is surprisingly clear-eyed about how godawful the sex is. As the article reveals, “When I ask Abel Tesfaye if the sex scene in the latest episode of The Idol was supposed to feel “sexy,” to say that his resounding “no” was emphatic would be an understatement.” Later in the article, he points to Verhoeven’s mix of sexy and downright embarrassing: “Yes, there’s moments of ‘sexy’ in his films but there are other moments that are very cheesy and hilarious.” If that’s what The Idol was going for, then they nailed it!
And I know this will shock some, but parts of The Idol are genuinely good even beyond the show’s charming so-bad-it’s-good qualities. With the added benefit of Tesfaye’s pop prowess, the Vangelis-like score, along with bursts of The Weeknd’s own songs recorded specifically for the show, balances out Jocelyn’s soulless bubblegum pap gone naughty. The creators also likely blew their whole budget on acquiring the rights to major hits like Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You, Baby,” and Hot Chocolate’s “Number 1.” Beyond just a soundtrack full of bops, some of the writing is legitimately funny. In particular, Andrew Finkelstein gets in more than a few good jabs. One of my favorites comes in the final episode, “Jocelyn Forever,” in which Jocelyn puts on a variety show in her living room featuring Tedros’s cult members, from the aforementioned Chloe to Isaak (Moses Sumney), an Adonis-like Black man who, with his bleached hair and gold booty shorts, is as if Rocky Horror began covering D’Angelo. Warily watching this unsolicited performance, with the singers in varying levels of undress, Finkelstein quips, “Are we at fucking Hunter Biden’s house? What the hell is this?!” He speaks for all of us. A short time later, he also makes a timely Kanye reference: “Kanye was filling arenas until he decided to start following Adolf Hitler!” It’s not just Finkelstein. Producer Mike Dean also adds some comic relief, appearing to have just wandered into this shit show to shake his head and make color commentary like “He’s fucking dry humping this bitch.” Indeed.
In the end, almost every character on The Idol is revealed as a power-hungry husk of a human who is so utterly ridiculous that it’s a joy to witness, from Vanity Fair’s Talia Hirsch (Hari Nef) meeting Chaim in a parking garage like Deep Throat to Nikki and Finkelstein giggling about how they ruined Tedros’s life to the lovely couple, Tedros and Jocelyn, themselves. The one exception may be Jocelyn’s long-suffering best friend/assistant Leia (Rachel Sennott) who has the presence of mind to get the hell out and resign (via letter so still kind of a douche move). However, we don’t get to see what happens to Leia. And who CARES! What more could anyone want from a trash masterpiece than a ludicrously overblown final scene filmed in the gigantic SoFi stadium already set with The Weeknd’s Ground Zero-like backdrop for his After Hours Til Dawn tour? I couldn’t hope for anything more, which is why when HBO announced this week that they officially canceled The Idol for good, I couldn’t mourn. Instead, I agreed with that decision.
I mean, why mess with perfection?!