The Idol's Biggest Problem? Its Audience is Just Too Young to Get It
It looks like Levinson overestimated his fan base.
Ever since its first episode premiered in early June, HBO's The Idol has become the most talked-about show of the season, with lots of viewers accusing creators Sam Levinson and The Weeknd of turning the promising project into a total cringe-fest. Besides all the explicit content and nudity the series depicts, people have been outraged with the production itself, accusing Levinson and his team of predatory behavior, even though the cast working on the project vehemently denied those rumors.
However, now that there's only one episode of the show left to air, some fans are starting to defend The Idol and its creators, arguing that the series' only problem is that a large portion of its audience is just too young to really appreciate Levinson's project.
'There is simply too many teenagers with no media literacy [whatsoever] being the loudest and prominent voices of the hate train with this show. There are so many fair critiques that can be made about this show and yet so much of it is simply complaining about how Sam Levinson is a possible predator,' a fan lashed out on Reddit.
Without a doubt, The Idol does have a fair number of weaknesses and deserves to be criticized because it obviously struggles to tell the story it was meant to tell. However, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest The Idol was a toxic workplace, with stars like Da'Vine Joy Randolph literally claiming otherwise.
'[People complain that] there's too much nudity (the show is 18+ with erotica as one of its themes) and that [The Weekend's character] is a weird creep who's disgusting and hard to watch (literally the point of his character),' the same Reddior continued, effectively bashing the other two criticisms for the show.
All in all, it looks like people's hatred for The Idol is based purely on the emotions that the series evokes in them, and they fail to recognize that it was the creators' intention to make them feel that way. Perhaps some of the haters will change their mind after seeing the fifth and last episode of The Idol on July 2, 2023.
Source: Reddit.