“The Idol” Is Being Dragged Over Its Suspicious Optimistic Critiques

It’s controversial that HBO’s most up-to-date Sunday night time providing, The Idol, was doomed earlier than it even made it to air, with the present shrouded in controversy since final Spring.

Regardless of being the brainchild of The Weeknd, actual identify Abel Tesfaye, and Euphoria’s Sam Levinson, Amy Seimetz was the unique director of the present.

Nevertheless, she abruptly exited the venture in April 2022, with Rolling Stone reporting that “roughly 80 percent of the six-episode series” was completed when she left.

It was later claimed that The Weeknd thought that Amy’s imaginative and prescient for the sequence was “leaning too much into a ‘female perspective,’” and Sam scrapped virtually the entire accomplished work on the venture when he took over as director.

Not solely did this drastically delay The Idol’s launch — and seemingly see the present get diminished to 5 episodes from six — the adjustments that Sam and The Weeknd made to the present left many crew members feeling uncomfortable.

In March, Rolling Stone revealed a troubling exposé that noticed the venture get described as “sexual torture porn” and detailed a tumultuous artistic course of.

And when The Idol premiered in Cannes final month, it was broadly panned by critics — not least due to how salacious and problematic the script was.

However regardless of the entire scandal, the vast majority of viewers have largely simply been left underwhelmed by the present, which has been described as “cringe” and “boring.”

In truth, Episode 2 went viral for what was branded “the Worst Sex Scene in History,” as British GQ went as far as to ask: “Has anyone involved in this show ever had sex?”

So it’s maybe unsurprising that evaluation aggregator web site Rotten Tomatoes has the present rated at only one star out of 5.

However regardless of the low score, the viewers rating is notably virtually 20% increased than the critics rating — which Rolling Stone determined to research, with damning outcomes.

In a report that was revealed on the weekend, the publication revealed that there have been 500 5-star viewers evaluations for The Idol, however solely 9 got here from customers who had beforehand rated different exhibits on the web site. The article summarizes: “98% of the rave reviews came from users who were posting their first review on Rotten Tomatoes.”

The report additionally reveals that the “the majority of positive reviews came from an influx of first-time reviewers in the first four days of its June 4 premiere,” with Rolling Stone occurring to make clear that they “did not find similar activity when compared to The Last of Us, another popular HBO show.”

Evidently, this information has led to The Idol being mercilessly dragged on-line as folks speculated over the place these 500 constructive evaluations have come from.

Discussing the report on a Reddit discussion board, one consumer joked: “Weeknd and his 490 alt accounts.” One other echoed: “98% of that 98% was The Weeknd’s mom with burner accounts.”

Another person added: “Everything about this show is so embarrassing.” One other referenced Lily-Rose Depp, who stars within the present, as they wrote: “The damage control is real lmaooooooo. Take the L and walk away weekend and Johnny’s daughter.”

“they need to give it up. take the L and just forget about it,” yet one more agreed.

Others got here up with doable theories as to who was behind the inflow of constructive evaluations, with some arguing that they might have come from Okay-pop followers supporting Blackpink’s Jennie Kim, who has a supporting position within the present.

There was additionally a principle that The Weeknd’s followers have been creating accounts to help his enterprise, whereas some went as far as to say that Lily-Rose’s dad, Johnny Depp, was concerned.

“As much as I want to believe The Weeknd is making RT accounts one by one to boost his vanity project, I would bet money it’s Jennie stans,” one individual wrote. “As a Kpop fan, she’s the only reason I bothered watching, and I know there’s people out there who’ve hit their Twitter limit and are looking for an outlet for all that pent up stan energy.”

“It’s probably just The Weeknd’s stans trying to bring up the audience score to make it look like the negative critical reviews were the result of some Hollywood conspiracy against Abel,” another person countered.

“Okay but you know I have to ask…” one other stated of Lily-Rose. “Did her dad buy more bot services to give his daughter a confidence boost?”

In the meantime, over on Twitter, another person identified that the suspicious constructive evaluations nonetheless weren’t sufficient to steadiness out the entire damaging ones — which is why it nonetheless has an total damaging score.

“Not The Weeknd’s fans making accounts to rate his terrible show with 5 stars,” they wrote. “Still couldn’t cover up the other thousands of other low reviews.”

Amid the scrutiny that The Idol has confronted, The Weeknd has remained defiant and repeatedly hit again on the backlash.

In an interview with GQ, he insisted that viewers are imagined to “feel embarrassed for the characters,” and known as his personal character “pathetic” and “such a loser.”

He additionally distanced himself from the position, saying: “The only way I could play this role was if it’s something completely different from who I am. And I can distance myself from that character. I wanted to make sure he looked nothing like me, acted nothing like me, just a totally different person.”

The Weeknd lashes out at folks’s damaging feedback on Twitter too. Earlier this month, somebody tweeted “who has the thread or article on why the idol is bad pls i need it,” and The Weeknd retweeted them and sarcastically added: “‘someone hurry please tell me why I hate something everyone is telling me to hate … hurry before I come up with my own opinion.’”

And when one other consumer stated that they have been going to dam The Weeknd as a result of they couldn’t stand the best way he consistently talks in regards to the “mid ass show,” he replied: “hurry up than you taking too long.”

The Idol’s season finale aired on Sunday, and HBO are but to verify whether or not or not a second season will likely be ordered.