The Idol | Official Teaser | HBO

[jwinfield]

I don't understand the critics. Yes this show is cringey and problematic but so is Euphoria. I would say it was even more problematic because majority of the characters were minors who needed a good ol fashioned ass whooping from their parents.

Euphoria has great acting though.

That can make it easier to overlook a shaky plot and writing.

 

[Rhapscallion Démone]

Its a little more than that.

The real problem the critics have........is a black man fukking a skinny white bytch silly and manipulating her on the show. Sub-concsously this fukks with white america.

That's the undertones I'm starting to get too

 

[Legal]

You can see where this was a mess, from a production standpoint, multiple rewrites, bringing in new directors, new showrunners, changing themes and casting, the writing is messy and plot lines are opened and forgotten,

but also Sam Levinson has long had this criticism, Euphoria was a lot smoother, but has some of the same issues, is this a serious look at teenage issues? Drug use, sex, trans/ID issues, rape? Or is it just exploitive of those things to tell the same old cliche stories about good looking people/teenagers?

is The Idol a serious look at female objectivity, popstar fame, exploitation of women by women in the industry, fame, complicated dynamics of sex/control?

or is it just Weekdn and his friends living out a meta fantasy about what they do every weekend they are in the city?

The Idol takes itself a LOT less seriously than Euphoria does.

The bolded is absolutely true, but it's really not that much of a fear for ANY show to take itself drastically less serious than Euphoria does.

 

[RennisDeynolds]

#JBO

 

[RennisDeynolds]

#CumSock

 

[Rhapscallion Démone]

Jocelyn was watching "basic instinct" in the first episode. I'm starting to think she's actually manipulating some things. Like Catherine Tramell

 

[Klawstrider]

 

[re'up]

One Of The Girls
Double Fantasy
Lesser Man
Take Me Back
The Score/Mike Dean
Jealous Guy
World Class Freak

all fire, this is pretty much a new Weeknd album

"pay you, pay you in cash"

been playing nothing but these for a week or so, these two newer ones are weaker

 

[Th3G3ntleman]

Euphoria has great acting though.

That can make it easier to overlook a shaky plot and writing.

 

[JLova]

Some of those scenes got me

 

[jwinfield]

So Euphoria has no good acting performances?

 

[jwinfield]

 

[re'up]

‘The Idol’ Is Ending Sunday. Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing. (Published 2023)

Three Times critics agree: The HBO pop fable is bad television. Ahead of Sunday night’s season finale, they break down its baffling missteps and occasional bright spots.

www.nytimes.com

Like what all three said, despite that I like the show more than they do, this is a good read. Wesley Morris is one the best cultural critics of anything, and has some great points here


Not even the Weeknd really seems to have an answer for what celebrity is, what makes someone a star. (So many times in this show we hear someone say that so-and-so is a star, but it’s definitely not Jocelyn.) The one character who approximates the requirements is Tedros — in the world of the show, the outsize magnetism belongs to him. Of course, that fame is artificial; his worshipers are more afraid than admiring. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover his heroes are Ike Turner and Ron O’Neal’s Youngblood Priest in “Super Fly.” At some point, Tedros looks at up, searchingly, at an almost life-size photo of Prince, a star who is known to have had his own moments of Tedrosity.

The show is strange about Black men and sex. And no one in the show talks about it. A funny intergenerational fender-bender happens when Azaria’s Chaim implores Leia to describe Tedros and she keeps identifying him as a person of color, and Chaim keeps asking whether she’s trying to say he’s Black. The whole show is like that about Tedros and Moses Sumney’s Izaak, its two Black male characters: tentative. It doesn’t know what more to do with a scenario that’s freighted with this country’s long history of racialized sex than to be a troll about it.

kinda pleased with myself that I mentioned all of those things in the second paragraph

 

[NaijaProdigy Redux]

I watched this last episode on a flight and was paranoid the entire time people thought I was a sick fukk watching porn while eating dinner and drinking wine

 

[ML29]

Its a little more than that.

The real problem the critics have........is a black man fukking a skinny white bytch silly and manipulating her on the show. Sub-concsously this fukks with white america.

Yep! Most won’t say it out loud but that’s definitely the real reason the pearl clutching and backlash against this show has been so damning.