One imagines the writing room. We have put vulnerable pop star Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) in sleazy sex scenes; some almost-interesting, some mundane. We’ve made her feet bleed during the shoot for a music video, we’ve put her in skimpy outfits. We have shown drugs, nudity, scenes from Tedros’ (Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye) sex cult. What now? How do we keep people watching our critically-slammed show? How about… torture? And so, the inevitable happens, as it did in The Idol’s latest episode, “Stars Belong to the World”, that a shock collar is forced on Xander (erstwhile promising musician Troye Sivan) and the power is switched on. Literal shock value. Perhaps it will keep the medievalists happy.
In the season’s penultimate episode, Tedros’ grip on singer Jocelyn has tightened. He’s controlling her musical output, with the help of real-life producer Mike Dean (who provides some refreshingly bemused side eyes) and has turned her house into a shabby, coke-ridden cult den which has a whiff of Eastern European hostel. Jocelyn’s OG team are in disarray. Assistant Leia (Rachel Sennott) is doing her best to ask some pertinent questions and taking mid-recording session bathroom breaks. But only Destiny (show stand-out Da’Vine Joy Randolph) has any grip on the situation, finding out about Tedros’ (honestly quite boring) backstory.
So it falls to her long-term associate Xander to take this episode’s worst storyline. We learn that Xander, who has been hanging out with Jocelyn for years now, can sing too. Tedros listens to him in the shower (cute, if it’s your partner, less so if it’s cult leader) and sneaks up on him in the bedroom (ditto). Tedros, sensing that Jocelyn is still a little too independently minded, decides to subject Xander to an interrogation in front of the whole, miserable house. With Xander in a shock collar, and Tedros and Jocelyn in control, underlying tensions come to the surface: Jocelyn accuses Xander of freeloading, he accuses her of controlling and using anyone and everyone around her.
Watching the torture of elfin Xander, I thought to myself (not for the first time during the run of The Idol): Why? And, a follow-up, how much longer of this episode is there left? No doubt Tesfaye and co-creators Sam Levinson and Reza Fahim would call people who object to such scenes dull. But it’s not that it’s unpleasant or unnecessary (though many could argue with good reason that it is both), it’s just so extremely boring.
This is The Idol in a nutshell: an increasingly desperate stab at shock value, and neglect of the show’s best elements. There should be more record-label backstabbing (this episode relegated to a scene of Blackpink’s Jennie being offered Jocelyn’s song in a board room), hazardous magazine profiles (Hari Nef’s Vanity Fair journalist Talia only appeared by profile photo this week), and back garden dance rehearsals (still one of the show’s best set-pieces). That is also where Tesfaye’s influence is best exerted: surely his years in the pop music industry, and relationships with contemporaries such as Selena Gomez, has given him unimaginable experiences and insight. The show is at least aware of its cast’s strength, giving ample time to Sennott and Randolph.
Four episodes in, The Idol has run through a series of vibes: sexy, not sexy, glamorous, not glamorous, funny, not funny. Now with just a finale to go – though you’d need at least another three episodes to try to tell this story completely – the feeling it gives off is insecurity. The show’s creators do not seem to have much faith in what makes it great, and instead resort, time and time again, to Twitter bait. No shock, just sighs.
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
