‘The Idol’ Series Premiere Recap: Does it Live Up (or Down) to the Hype?

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Is this show about a pop star's liberation or her subjugation? After Sunday night's premiere, it's still hard to tell.

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By Esther Zuckerman

In the background of an early scene in the new HBO series "The Idol" you can hear Fiona Apple's 1990s hit "Criminal." The pop star heroine of the series, Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), is posing for her album cover. Her breasts are bare, and she stares seductively into the camera. An intimacy coordinator bursts in and tells the photographer to stop shooting. Areolas are not allowed per the nudity rider — a detail that neither Jocelyn nor her team seem to care about.

As Apple's track plays, two of the members of Jocelyn's entourage describe her alternately as Brigitte Bardot and Sharon Tate — the latter reference, to the actress and Manson murder victim, is meant to make you shudder. Other celebrities are mentioned throughout the premiere. Jocelyn is compared to her obvious analog, Britney Spears, while later her new lover-slash-mentor-slash-cult leader Tedros (Abel Tesfaye) uses Prince and Donna Summer as examples of musicians who perform with the feeling Jocelyn is lacking.

Still, the use of "Criminal" stood out to me among the onslaught of cultural references Sam Levinson throws at the audience. (Levinson, who created the series with Tesfaye and Reza Fahim, wrote and directed Sunday's premiere.) The track in which Apple, then just a teenager, sings "I’ve been a bad bad girl" was accompanied by a video released in 1997 directed by Mark Romanek that, because of its sexual imagery, stirred the kind of controversy it seems "The Idol" is desperate to create. But Apple was never shy of speaking her mind, and just a few months after the video debuted, she denounced the industry at the MTV Video Music Awards with an unprintable word and a Maya Angelou quote.

The use of Apple's music in "The Idol" is both a wink to scandals of pop past and feels like a bit of a cheat, primarily because it's hard not to think deeply about Apple and her work, which has challenged the notions of pop stardom and musicality. Despite the knee-jerk reaction to it, "Criminal" is far more complicated than that coquettish "bad girl" lyric. It's about personal morality and shame and how that all gets wrapped up in sexuality. The dumb version is Jocelyn's single "World Class Sinner," in which she sings about being a freak who wants someone with a big bank account.

"The Idol" is ostensibly about Jocelyn's desire to push past the "superficial" nature of the world she occupies — a world that Apple called out all those years ago. This quest leads Jocelyn to Tesfaye's Tedros, who tells her that "pop music is like the ultimate Trojan Horse." But despite the involvement of an actual musical superstar in Tesfaye — better known as the Weeknd — "The Idol" doesn't get all that deep about pop. It's far more interested in shock value. It's sort of the anti-Fiona Apple.

During Jocelyn's photo shoot, Nikki (Jane Adams), a record exec, chides her creative director Xander (Troye Sivan), "Will you let people enjoy sex, drugs and hot girls?" That line feels like a challenge for the audience given that all three of those things are very present here.

We meet Jocelyn as she's readying promotional material for what we learn is a comeback album. Her mother has recently died of cancer and she may or may not have had a "psychotic break." The opening 25 minutes mainly focus on the various members of her entourage panicking and reacting as they learn a selfie of her with semen on her face has leaked. As they are in crisis mode, Jocelyn is posing and rehearsing her thrust-heavy dance moves. She appears, at times, exhausted — in one shot she wipes away tears from underneath her sunglasses — but she also plays the part of a temptress well.

Does she love this business or hate it? Is she a provocateur or a puppet? It's hard to tell, and I’m not sure the show has made up its mind about her besides her aesthetic, which involves skimpy clothing, thin cigarettes and sunglasses. She brushes off the intimacy coordinator because she wants to show her breasts. Her reaction to the leaked photo is, "I mean I feel like it could be a lot worse." But she's also disaffected and maybe just bored.

This is how she ends up drawn to Tedros, a club owner with a rattail, who seduces her on the dance floor while Madonna's "Like a Prayer" plays. It's difficult to understand why she is so immediately attracted to this guy. When she says she's going to invite him over, her assistant and best friend, Leia (Rachel Sennott), tells her, "He's so rapey." Jocelyn responds that she kind of likes that about him.

If Tedros maybe had good insights about pop music, the allure might be more explainable, but he seems to spout the kind of surface-level opinions that Jocelyn should reject. And soon after he enters her home studio to listen to "World Class Sinner" actual discussions are barely foreplay before the main event, in which he takes her robe and wraps it around her head. She is nearly suffocating when he takes out a knife, commands her to open her mouth, and cuts a hole. "Now you can sing," he says.

The episode opens with a long take on Depp's face as Jocelyn performs for a lens, acting out commands to be innocent, mischievous, and vulnerable. It ends with her head entirely covered. Is this about a pop star's liberation or her subjugation? And what would Fiona say?

Tesfaye and Levinson told Manohla Dargis of The New York Times in an interview that audiences have no idea where the show goes, with Tesfaye arguing that Tedros is "pathetic." I guess we’ll see if there's some kind of table turning moment, but right now the series seems pretty enamored with him.

Leia asking the bartender at Tedros's club for water and complaining "it's been like seven minutes," is the most relatable thing to happen on this show so far.

Hank Azaria loves doing accents, and his latest as Jocelyn's manager, Chaim, is a new level of over-the-top.

This show presents a real test of what you can get away with putting in The New York Times. As I took notes, I was making a mental list of which lines of dialogue I couldn't quote.

There are so many cast members I’m eager to see do more than what they were given in this premiere, among them the always great Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

"World Class Sinner" is sort of a bop.

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