The Idol's Biggest Problem is not Sex Scenes or Backstage Drama After All
Everyone is talking about The Idol. But should you even bother spending your time on it?
HBO's The Idol is set to air its third episode on 18 June 2023, and discussions about the series are heating up. As more viewers tune into the story of Lily-Rose Depp's troubled pop star and Abel The Weeknd Tesfaye's villainous nightclub owner, the show's audience score on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes keeps falling, while more and more people are sharing negative reviews online. However, it is our belief that the majority of reviews get The Idol wrong.
Make no mistake, the show is bad, but its biggest problem is not the excessively explicit scenes or the controversial portrayal of exploitation that everyone is talking about. The Idol's biggest issue is that it's plain boring.
The story has nothing new for sophisticated modern audiences. The premise is trite and cliche. The storylines are bland, lacking in creativity, and, ultimately, fail to move the plot along. The dialogue is shockingly dull and brittle. Even the not-so-bad performances (except Tesfaye's) can't save it. It almost seems that Sam Levinson has decided to do exactly what the Writers Guild of America is striking against and have the script written by AI.
And let's not even get started on the character development. It seems that the thought never even crossed anybody's mind on this project. The only reason these two-dimensional cardboard characters exist is to play out the X-rated sex scenes that are supposed to shock the viewers and get them to spread the word by complaining about The Idol in reviews and on social media.
The brutal reality is, though, that both the characters and the sex scenes are utterly pointless and have no real value or meaning either in the context of the show or in the grand scheme of things.
The explicit sex scenes seem to have worked to some extent: people hate The Idol but keep watching it, and it's generated quite a bit of hype in the media. However, the sad truth is that the show is so dull that you shouldn't probably even bother hate-watching it.
If you're still on the fence about whether or not to watch it so you can jump on the hate bandwagon, the best advice we can give is: don't bother. People are bound to lose interest shortly, as soon as the novelty of hating on this sorry excuse of a show wears off.
The Idol will probably be forgotten even before it ends, and you'll have saved a few precious hours of your life by giving it a hard pass. Do something else – whatever you do will probably be more exciting than watching The Idol.