Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Episode 2 of The Idol.The Idol returned this week to amp up the already psychotic Hollywood farce that the premiere presented. With months of speculation and scandal around the mysterious and likely offensive stance the show was going to take on feminism and sexuality in the music industry, Sam Levinson is delivering on his own initial promises. The pilot episode ended with a cringe-worthy moment where Tedros (Abel Tesfaye) suffocates Jocelyn in what seemed to be some sort of psycho-sexual rebirth for the young pop star, and while nothing too untoward happened throughout the second episode (by Levinson’s standards), it concluded with a scene that was more stomach-turning than shocking or sexy.
What Led Up to the Scene in Episode 2?
In the first episode, viewers were introduced to Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), a young pop sensation who appears to be a sloppy mashup of Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, and Britney Spears. We also met her team, a trope-filled harem of jackals including a run-of-the-mill heartless manager (Jane Adams), token meek best friend and personal assistant (Rachel Sennott), and a suspicious Vanity Fair reporter (Hari Nef) who inexplicably spends days following Jocelyn around for an article she’s writing while never really speaking to her.
Jocelyn’s friends and managers are frantic about the state of her career, as she has recently recovered from a mental health crisis following the death of her mother and the cancelation of her tour. Apart from those struggles, conflict is brewing because Jocelyn doesn’t feel like she has enough say in her career — until she meets Tedros. Possibly the slimiest man on earth, Tedros is a mysterious figure who takes the vulnerable singer under his wing with promises to help her find her voice. Quite predictably, Jocelyn decides that a chaotic, psychosexual relationship with this man is the way to do so.
After a traumatic day in which she forces production to do infinite takes of her music video until her feet bleed, Jocelyn decides to invite Tedros and his friends to chill at her mega-mansion. Seeking the creative revelation she had at the end of Episode 1 when he suffocated her (before cutting a hole in her custom-made silk robe), she asks him to take the robe from the closet and do it again. What comes next is one of the most stomach-turning scenes to ever grace the screen as Depp writhes around on the bed while Tesfaye gives a monologue based on what an adolescent might expect dirty talk to sound like. The scene (which felt longer than the episode itself) proves to be more uncomfortable and nauseating than the sexy, shocking scandal that Levinson had imagined.
Why Does That Scene in ‘The Idol’ Matter?
Unsurprisingly, this scene mostly confirmed the suspicions of fans and critics alike that the series was going to be on the wrong side of the conversation around feminine sexuality and power in the entertainment industry. Rumors started swirling after production was derailed by massive reshoots, supposedly at the request of Tesfaye, who apparently felt that the rough cut of the season leaned too much into the” female perspective.” Cue eyeroll.
Levinson and Tesfaye shifted direction to center Tedros more, and once Tesfaye had the stage and Depp’s hair was dyed blonde, they were back on track to making the worst sex scene ever. However, this was just the beginning of a marketing meltdown, as interviews and articles emerged about the sexist nature of the content, as well as the toxic environment on set. Depp even confirmed in an interview that she would avoid Tesfaye when he was in “full Tedros mode,” a chilling thought to say the least. With Tesfaye apparently method acting, life on set could not have been easy for the women of the cast and crew, especially once they started shooting at Tesfaye’s own home. Things only went downhill for the highly anticipated series as early reviews stirred up an uproar over the first two episodes, labeling it as “clickbait” and chastising Levinson’s horrible portrayal of women while patting himself on the back for the groundbreaking content that was supposed to follow.
This gross scene at the end of the second episode was a disappointing omen that the series is indeed setting sail for a season of male navel-gazing and boring sex disguised as subversion. Levinson has a long history of putting the women in his work into humiliating and unnecessarily brutal sexual situations that don’t do much to advance the plot, let alone provide any feminine characters with agency or autonomy. The scene between Jocelyn and Tedros doesn’t serve any real purpose aside from humiliating Jocelyn’s character while reinforcing patriarchal fantasies and perpetuating the male gaze in media.
Tesfaye is trying his best to backpedal and put some spin on the scene by claiming that the effect it had was intentional, stating that “however you’re feeling watching that scene, whether it’s discomfort, or you feel gross, or you feel embarrassed for the characters. It’s all those emotions adding up to: This guy is in way over his head, this situation is one where he is not supposed to be here.” Does Tedros seem like a man who is in over his head? No, we don’t think so either, as Episode 2 revealed that he is actually incredibly calculating, putting his groupies into Jocelyn’s dance team and seemingly having another seduce her best friend so that he can have Jocelyn all to himself. So, this defense of the scene really doesn’t hold water when you look at, well, everything else we’ve seen so far.
The most disappointing part of it all is that the premise of The Idol could have been so promising. The idea of a vulnerable celebrity on the verge of collapse as everyone around her manipulates her to their own ends is nothing new, but it’s still rife with ways to explore women’s struggles through a real feminist lens in a way that actually critiques the industry lobbing softballs at played-out tropes of bitchy industry people. Instead, this version of the series chooses to portray a successful woman being dominated and objectified by a man who does nothing more than give her the attention she craves, under the guise of pushing boundaries or subverting expectations. It would be more outrageous if it weren’t so predictable.
