Season 1, Episode 1: ‘Pop Tarts & Rat Tales’

In the background of an early scene within the new HBO sequence “The Idol” you possibly can hear Fiona Apple’s Nineteen Nineties hit “Criminal.” The pop star heroine of the sequence, Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), is posing for her album cowl. Her breasts are naked, and he or she stares seductively into the digicam. An intimacy coordinator bursts in and tells the photographer to cease shooting. Areolas aren’t allowed per the nudity rider — a element that neither Jocelyn nor her group appear to care about.

As Apple’s monitor performs, 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 homicide sufferer, is supposed to make you shudder. Other celebrities are talked about all through the premiere. Jocelyn is in comparison with her apparent analog, Britney Spears, whereas later her new lover-slash-mentor-slash-cult chief Tedros (Abel Tesfaye) makes use of Prince and Donna Summer as examples of musicians who carry out with the sensation Jocelyn is missing.

Still, using “Criminal” stood out to me among the many onslaught of cultural references Sam Levinson throws on the viewers. (Levinson, who created the sequence with Tesfaye and Reza Fahim, wrote and directed Sunday’s premiere.) The monitor by which Apple, then simply an adolescent, sings “I’ve been a nasty unhealthy lady” was accompanied by a video launched in 1997 directed by Mark Romanek that, due to its sexual imagery, stirred the kind of controversy it appears “The Idol” is determined to create. But Apple was by no means shy of talking her thoughts, and only a few months after the video debuted, she denounced the industry on the MTV Video Music Awards with an unprintable word and a Maya Angelou quote.

The use of Apple’s music in “The Idol” is each a wink to scandals of pop previous and seems like a little bit of a cheat, primarily as a result of it’s arduous to not suppose deeply about Apple and her work, which has challenged the notions of pop stardom and musicality. Despite the knee-jerk response to it, “Criminal” is much extra difficult than that coquettish “unhealthy lady” lyric. It’s about private morality and disgrace and the way that every one will get wrapped up in sexuality. The dumb model is Jocelyn’s single “World Class Sinner,” by which she sings about being a freak who needs somebody with a giant checking account.

“The Idol” is ostensibly about Jocelyn’s need to push previous the “superficial” nature of the world she occupies — a world that Apple referred to as out all these years in the past. This quest leads Jocelyn to Tesfaye’s Tedros, who tells her that “pop music is like the final word Trojan Horse.” But regardless of the involvement of an precise musical celebrity in Tesfaye — higher referred to as the Weeknd — “The Idol” doesn’t get all that deep about pop. It’s much more fascinated about shock worth. It’s kind of the anti-Fiona Apple.

During Jocelyn’s picture shoot, Nikki (Jane Adams), a file exec, chides her artistic director Xander (Troye Sivan), “Will you let individuals get pleasure from intercourse, medication and scorching ladies?” That line seems like a problem for the viewers given that every one three of these issues are very current right here.

We meet Jocelyn as she’s readying promotional materials for what we study is a comeback album. Her mom has just lately died of most cancers and he or she could or could not have had a “psychotic break.” The opening 25 minutes primarily deal with the assorted members of her entourage panicking and reacting as they study a selfie of her with semen on her face has leaked. As they’re in disaster mode, Jocelyn is posing and rehearsing her thrust-heavy dance strikes. She seems, at times, exhausted — in a single shot she wipes away tears from beneath her sun shades — however she additionally performs the a part of a temptress nicely.

Does she love this enterprise or hate it? Is she a provocateur or a puppet? It’s arduous to inform, and I’m undecided the present has made up its thoughts about her in addition to her aesthetic, which includes skimpy clothes, skinny cigarettes and sun shades. She brushes off the intimacy coordinator as a result of she needs to point out her breasts. Her response to the leaked picture is, “I imply I really feel prefer it might be so much worse.” But she’s additionally disaffected and possibly simply bored.

This is how she finally ends up drawn to Tedros, a membership proprietor with a rattail, who seduces her on the dance flooring whereas Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” performs. It’s obscure why she is so instantly interested in this man. When she says she’s going to ask him over, her assistant and finest buddy, Leia (Rachel Sennott), tells her, “He’s so rapey.” Jocelyn responds that she type of likes that about him.

If Tedros possibly had good insights about pop music, the attract is perhaps extra explainable, however he appears to spout the type of surface-level opinions that Jocelyn ought to reject. And quickly after he enters her residence studio to take heed to “World Class Sinner” precise discussions are barely foreplay earlier than the principle occasion, by which he takes her gown and wraps it round her head. She is sort of suffocating when he takes out a knife, instructions her to open her mouth, and cuts a gap. “Now you possibly can sing,” he says.

The episode opens with a protracted tackle Depp’s face as Jocelyn performs for a lens, performing out instructions to be harmless, mischievous, and susceptible. It ends along with her head totally coated. Is this a couple of pop star’s liberation or her subjugation? And what would Fiona say?

Liner notes

• Tesfaye and Levinson informed Manohla Dargis of The New York Times in an interview that audiences don’t know the place the present goes, with Tesfaye arguing that Tedros is “pathetic.” I suppose we’ll see if there’s some type of desk turning second, however proper now the sequence appears fairly enamored with him.

• Leia asking the bartender at Tedros’s membership for water and complaining “it’s been like seven minutes,” is essentially the most relatable factor to occur on this present up to now.

• Hank Azaria loves doing accents, and his newest as Jocelyn’s supervisor, Chaim, is a brand new stage of over-the-top.

• This present presents an actual take a look at of what you may get away with placing in The New York Times. As I took notes, I used to be making a psychological listing of which strains of dialogue I couldn’t quote.

• There are so many solid members I’m desperate to see do greater than what they got on this premiere, amongst them the all the time nice Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

• “World Class Sinner” is kind of a bop.