The Idol is messy and cringey and exploitative and I can’t quite look away

We’re two weeks into The Idol, HBO’s new drama about the seedy underbelly of the pop music industry. Hailing from Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, the show was controversial long before it premiered, mainly thanks to a Rolling Stone report that detailed chaos behind the scenes and called the finished result “torture porn.”

Now that the show is out…yeah, I can see what they mean. The Idol does indeed spend a lot of time leering at troubled pop star Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) as she harms herself, wallows in self pity, and makes terrible decisions. None of this is problematic on its face — I could get into a story about a public figure spiraling out of control as she struggles with personal problems and the weight of fame — but Levinson’s direction adds an extra layer of ickiness that doesn’t need to be there.

In this show, it’s not enough for Jocelyn to reckon with personal and professional conflict; she has to do it while sprawled out topless in bed, stretching as she wakes up so the camera can capture her breasts and legs from every angle. The most recent episode, “Double Fantasy,” has a bedroom scene where club owner Tedros Tedros (Abel “the Weeknd” Tesfaye) tells her to turn around, spread herself, show off, and she complies. There’s nothing wrong with showing sex onscreen, but this scene tries so hard to convince us it’s sexy that it crosses a line right into unintentional hilarity. And we don’t even see any actual sex! It feels like the story part of a porno movie — complete with bad dialogue and wooden acting — trying to pass itself off as a high-caliber HBO drama.

The Weeknd is the biggest and worst thing about The Idol

When the show isn’t trying to convince us how edgy and dangerous it is, it can be compelling. The cast is pretty deep and filled with solid actors. Lily-Rose Depp is extremely committed to her role, and I do feel for Jocelyn as she sinks deeper into malaise and looks for something — or someone — to numb the pain. I really like Hank Azaria as Jocelyn’s co-manager Chaim, who has become a surrogate father to her. Da’Vine Joy Randolph brings a stern warmth to Jocelyn’s other co-manager Destiny, Rachel Sennott is funny and vulnerable as her assistant Leia, and Jane Adams is memorably callous as record executive Nikki Katz.

This is a good cast of interesting characters, and when they’re just allowed to talk to each other about their problems, the show is very watchable. I liked the long sequences involving filming Jocelyn’s music video, one at her house and another on set. These sequences, which involve multiple characters bouncing off each other, are given time to build to a boil. There is a good show somewhere in here, but it never lasts for long.

One of the things those sequences have in common is that they don’t involve Tedros Tedros, who is a big part of the problem. The whole idea of a sex guru cult leader seducing a major pop star and controlling her life feels too goofy to take seriously, and maybe it’s supposed to. But the show definitely gets worse when Tedros is onscreen. Partly that’s due to the Weeknd, who is simply not acting on the level of the other cast members. Like, maybe there’s an actor who could have made that bedroom scene with Jocelyn feel sexy, but it’s not Abel Tesfaye. He may have charisma on stage, but he’s not bringing enough to the screen.

Tin foil hat time: What if The Idol is terrible on purpose?

So The Idol is a mess. Another possibility suggests itself: maybe it’s supposed to be? I note that one of the future guest stars is Elizabeth Berkley, who famously played the lead character in Showgirls, another showbiz satire that indulged in sleaze and excess to the point where viewers just had to laugh. And they’ve been laughing for decades; Showgirls came out in 1995 and has been a staple on the midnight movie circuit ever since.

Maybe we’re looking at The Idol wrong. Maybe it’s not an incisive exposé of the pop music industry. Maybe Sam Levinson is trying to make the next camp classic. As with all things camp, it’s impossible to tell exactly where the sincerity stops and the irony begins, but Berkley’s inclusion indicates that Levinson at least knows that his show is kind of silly.

But including Berkley could also be a kind of insurance against criticism. The people behind camp classics like Mommie Dearest and The Room have claimed that the movies were meant to be comedies the whole time…after they came out and people laughed at them. By referencing another camp classic, Levinson could be leaving himself an out; if people think The Idol is ludicrous, he can just say, “Well, yeah, it’s supposed to be stupid. That’s the point. Don’t you get it?”

And yet, despite all this mess…I kinda wanna keep watching. I wanna see how twisty the meta narrative around this show gets. At five episodes long, at least it’s not a big commitment.

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