You must be aware by now about the show featuring Lily Rose Depp and Able Tesfaye(The Weeknd) titled The Idol, which has been nothing but a spectacle of controversy so far. Many people are now hate-watching the show to nitpick its absurdness; however, in this The Idol Review, we’ll try our best to be candid with our experience…….try.
Following The Rolling Stones’ expose article, the anticipation for the show significantly declined due to the drastic and absurd alterations in its tone when Sam Levinson assumed control of the project. The Weeknd’s assertion that the show excessively prioritized the female protagonist’s perspective triggered substantial changes in its direction, displeasing many viewers. Nevertheless, now that the show has been released, we aim to share our thoughts on it and observe how the narrative unfolds.
The Premier: Oh Boy What a Snoozefest!
The show quickly tries to jump into the story and tries its level best to set its ‘sadistic’ tone, but fails to do so. We are introduced to a Brittney Spears type Singer by the name of Jocelyn, played by Lily Rose Depp, how’s life isn’t exactly in solace. She has a Vanity Fair shoot, rehearsal for a new music video and one of her intimate photos leaked online throwing her down in a mental spiral.
To escape all this drama, she goes out to a nightclub with one of her dancer friends where she meets this odd-man by the name of Tedros, played by The Weeknd, who will now leech her off for sexual gains as suggested by the trailers.
Episode 2: Man, This is Awkward!
This episode was painful to watch. Now, the show officially jumps into the dark elements which are more cringe and disturbing than entertaining.
At one point, Jocelyn is having a discussion with her friend about Tedros where she says that she actually kind of dig the rape-y vibes she gets from Tedros(The Weeknd). To be honest, it was a painful experience to finish the whole episode. We have no idea who wrote the script or whether Sam Levinson thought this is some kind of compelling dialogue.
In another scene, we see The Weeknd’s character try to seduce a girl with his hilariously creepy demeanor and spicy talk. We all enjoy a little bit of sauciness in our movies and shows and sensual scenes do make an impact on the overall story-telling if its written well; however, this is was some WattPad level writing that felt so cringeworthy that at this point our team was done with this episode, but for the sake of you guys we continued to finish the thing, so be grateful.
The episode ends with a ballad featuring Jocelyn, Leia, Izaak, Tedros and newcomer Chloe (Suzanna Son) around the piano with the lyrics going something like, “That’s my family/We don’t like each other very much/I’m okay with that/But it breaks my mother’s heart.”
The song insinuates that Jocelyn has finally found her family, in actuality a cult, that will slowly decay her mentally and spiritually. This was the only intelligible scene we found in the whole episode.
In Conclusion
We are going to keep it a stack with you guys – we are done with this. The only good part about this whole experience was when our team finished watching this dumpster fire and we all went out and ate samosas.
We love The Weeknd as much as the other person; however, this show needs to find some depth or a track that it can go on when it comes to storytelling. For now, it just seems like a twisted-porn fantasy with no substantial development in characters, cliff-hanger or anticipation about what’s going to happen next.
