The Idol hairbrush scene is part compelling, part embarrassing

The Idol continues its five-episode run on HBO, and I find myself unable to look away. I haven’t seen many shows like this. On the one hand, it’s full of campy, cringey scenes where director Sam Levinson overplays his hand and the actors — one of them in particular — fail to sell the drama. On the other, there are genuinely interesting moments where I feel for the characters and appreciate the performances.

The most recent episode, “Daybreak,” is a good example. Towards the start of the episode, there’s a scene where pop star Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) and club owner/cult leader Tedros Tedros (Abel “the Weeknd” Tesfaye) go shopping at a high-end boutique in LA. Tedros takes a clerk to task for allegedly looking at Jocelyn inappropirately. I get the idea that we’re supposed to find Tedros intimidating here, but the Weeknd is just not up to it. He might as well be a chihuahua nipping at the clerk’s heels.

So that scene is unintentionally hilarious. But there are other scenes that more or less work, like the scene later on where Jocelyn comes clean about her abusive mother, who would beat her with a hairbrush in order to motivate her to sing, dance, write, perform, etc.

And that brings us to the hairbrush scene.

The Idol brush scene goes too far

I think the show has set up what could be a compelling conflict here. Jocelyn’s mother abused her for much of her life. Now her mother is dead and Jocelyn finds herself adrift. As horrific as the abuse was, it was part of her routine and she feels out of sorts now that it’s over. Her friends knew about the abuse but didn’t stop it in part because Jocelyn was being productive and making money, which meant they got money too. Tedros takes advantage of the situation, reasoning that the abuse was important to Jocelyn’s creative process. He tells her to get the hairbrush.

Now, this is already skating extremely close to the edge of distasteful and exploitative, but as a fictional, very messed up situation, this could work. I think where the series messes up is in actually showing Tedros beating Jocelyn with the brush, even if the footage is slowed down and washed out so we don’t see everything clearly. If the episode had cut right from Jocelyn getting the brush to the morning after, we would have a disturbing, powerful scene on our hands. But showing the beating itself — and depicting it in such a stylized, filmic way — lays bare how melodramatic and over-the-top it all is. The episode slides back into unintentional hilarity.

And that’s probably where The Idol is going to stay. We’re three of five episodes in and it can’t escape. There’s a good show in here somewhere, but we’re not seeing it.

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