At Least Weeknd's Cringy Dirty Talk Gave Us The Most Talked-About Show of the Year
Let's try and be grateful for the spectacle The Weeknd gave us this summer.
Without a doubt, HBO's The Idol is the most controversial series of this summer. Most people who tuned in to watch the pilot episode continued following The Idol just to see if it would get any better by the end — but sadly, despite its surprising final twist, the last episode wasn't able to redeem the show's lazy writing and poor character exposition.
On top of that, viewers were really disturbed by the massive amount of nudity and violent content present on The Idol, and many blamed the series' co-creator and main star Abel 'The Weeknd' Tesfaye for ruining the once-promising project.
Indeed, creators The Weeknd and Sam Levinson have reworked the script that was developed by original showrunner Amy Seimetz, turning The Idol's nostalgic 2000-inspired satire of the music industry into a vulgar show that seems to be glorifying its repulsive and dark characters and their troubled relationships. Besides, The Weeknd's performance as the series' main character, cult leader Tedros, was really bad, and some viewers even suspected that the pop star wasn't acting but portraying himself on the show.
The Weeknd's decision to try his hand at acting is not surprising in fact, considering that he is now one of the most popular people in the world, and his songs are huge hits listened to by millions of fans on a daily basis. But even though many people, including some of his fans, are now hating The Weeknd, perhaps we should think again and actually thank the pop star for the project that made so many headlines this summer.
Yes, The Idol is bad and The Weeknd's acting was underwhelming, but the show is still a great spectacle to watch and (most importantly) to discuss — because the world rarely sees TV series this profane and controversial. While huge projects like the MCU's Secret Invasion are basically invisible because no one is talking about them except some die-hard fans, Sam Levinson and The Weeknd's The Idol is corrupting the minds of millions of people around the globe (and will continue to do so if the show gets renewed by HBO).
While this kind of entertainment may not be for everyone, it's hard to deny that The Weeknd's ridiculous performance as Tedros made all of our lives a little better this summer — if only because we all laughed at the world's biggest pop star going berserk on camera.
In addition, The Weeknd is set to play a lead role in one more project — Trey Edward Shults' feature film, also starring Wednesday's Jenna Ortega. Let's hope the performer improves his acting chops in the new movie, but even if he doesn't, we can at least have something to talk about following the film's release.