Sarah Walsh

The Idol desperately wants your moral condemnation. Don't give it what it wants. Saying it's gratuitous and offensive is just confirming to the creators that they've succeeded in their clear efforts to overstimulate and offend. Let's say instead what it actually is: Really, really boring. It's been a little frustrating to watch such a genuinely bad product receive so much equally bad, easily dismissed criticism — as if the problem here was that the creators are men and not that these men in particular are hacks; as if it's creatively bankrupt because it includes a large amount of explicit sex and not because its perspective on sex is so immature. I really have no issue with high levels of sex and violence in media, and I don't care about kink onscreen, and I think it's completely possible for people to write or act out disturbing stuff without being dangerous in real life. So please take it from me: Even with all out of the way, the Idol is still terrible. Abel Tesfaye can't act. It seems possible Lily-Rose Depp can, but you wouldn't know it from watching this. Their romance is supposed to have an element of forbidden fruit, with Depp feeling irresistibly compelled to continue letting this guy into her life despite his clear shadiness, but Tesfaye is incapable of coming off as either credibly charming or threatening. He's not even credibly sexual, which is a weird thing to write about someone who sings about sex in his other career all the time. I don't believe she's attracted to him. I don't believe he has the force of personality to draw anyone into a cult, much less the dozens of people who seem to already be his hangers-on when the story starts. I don't believe he has any quality at all that would compel someone to talk to him for reasons other than politeness. When the entire plot hinges on the allure of this dud of a character, who exercises inexplicable control over the protagonist, a K-Pop idol and any number of people who have no reason to pay him any mind, what else is left to enjoy? Not Levinson's dialogue, which gets worse and more pointedly directed at People Who Have Bothered Him, Sam Levinson, Specifically, every time he puts out a new project. Not the music. Not the sex, which is deeply unsexy even if you're into freaky stuff. Mostly what's worth watching here is the supporting cast, the bit players bringing an enjoyable sharpness to their roles as Jocelyn's attendant vultures. Free them. Put them in better projects. And please stop describing this as uniquely shocking or morally repugnant or whatever. It's not. It's a bad, boring, empty little show with delusions of grandeur.