There’s a lot of talk about The Idol. The show itself, and the mess behind the scenes. What is The Idol, why is The Idol. 

But there’s something I haven’t seen anybody talk about and that’s some of the themes Sam Levinson attempts to explore: inspiration, and what are we willing to do for art.

This little piece is going to have spoilers. If you haven’t seen The Idol, go watch it, or go watch D’Angelo Wallace’s, or Friendly Space Ninja’s recaps.

It also has spoilers for Malcolm and Marie, Euphoria season 2, and Gone Girl.

The reason why The Idol feels so disjointed is because Sam Levinson appears to be torn between the story he was supposed to tell; the story of a young woman being exploited by the industry, and the people in her life, and the story that he actually seems to have wanted to explore at that moment in time; what if this young artist went through hell to come out the other side inspired, and filled with art.

Based on his recent work, it seems like he’s been wanting to explore those themes for awhile now. I see them very clearly in Malcolm and Marie, where the story accuses Malcom, the main character, of staying with his partner because that way he could write an accurate, beautiful story about addiction, and bring it to the big screen. Like saying: we artists are leeches, and we suck inspiration from other people’s suffering.

Then he took it a step further. In season 2 of Euphoria, Sam Levinson says; It’s okay to exploit other people’s suffering, because I’m just raising my voice and using my talent. This is through the character of Lexie, who writes a play about the main characters and showcases their struggles, pain, and shame in front of the whole school. And the plot and other characters reward her. They consider this “brave”.

Sam Levinson’s masterpiece, Euphoria, stroked a cord with a lot of people for its depiction of self-destruction. However, it seems to have given a lot of people a fascination with pain, and what it can do for art. 

Not long ago, in an acting class I was taking, a teenager talked about why she wanted to act. She mentioned Zendaya in Euphoria as her biggest inspiration. She said “I want to be able to depict all that pain, it’s so beautiful.”

Rue’s character arc in Euphoria is the best-written one because Sam Levinson, writer, director, and show-runner of the series went through his own struggles with opioid addiction. And even though Hunter Schaffer is the only other person credited as a writer in the American version of the show, according to wonderful, beautiful, iconic Broey Deschanel; Levinson collaborated with the rest of the actresses to understand their unique experiences. Jules as a trans woman, Rue as a black woman, Kat as a plus-size woman, Cass as a young woman who was sexualized very young, etc. Together they all put their pain on paper, and it made for good television. 

I’m going to start making a lot of assumptions now. I feel that Sam Levinson feels he will never achieve that level of success unless he keeps exploring pain. And I feel that Jocelyn’s plot in The Idol is his attempt at exploring the following idea; what would happen if an artist would be willing to go to any lengths to find inspiration through pain?

The Idol starts as the story of a great pop star who fell from grace. She had a mental breakdown and had to cancel a world tour after her mom died of cancer. We meet her a year later. Her team is exploiting her, and she’s not happy with the artistic value of the new single she’s about to release. Then she meets a creepy club-owner, played by The Weekend, and she feels he’s the only one who’ll be honest with her about the quality of her music. They have a very uncomfortable-to-watch recording session, and she’s very happy with the results. 

Then, Jocelyn has a terrible time trying to record the music video for the single her record label put out for her. Her perfectionism is causing her a lot of distress. She’s trying to be perfect while, at the same time, not being happy with the material she’s putting out.

And at this point I think Sam Levinson wanted us to look back and think: “This is where Jocelyn’s evil masterplan starts”. Friendly Space Ninja says in his video that there’s no way Jocelyn was planning this from the very beginning, and I agree. I believe she actually started planning it the moment she realized she couldn’t go through with a single she was not happy about. 

I believe, from this moment on, we’re supposed to believe Jocelyn is the one in control of everything. She wants to use the creepy club-owner’s abuse, to bring out the good art in her, because this was the only way she felt she could make something meaningful. Unfortunately, Sam Levinson was not very good at telling that story. 

He wanted to pull-off a Gone Girl where the victim is the abuser, but did it in a very lazy way: it doesn’t feel consistent with the character. 

It worked in Gone Girl because of two reasons:

1. We first meet Amy through her fake diary. We make an idea of her in our heads. But when the twist is revealed, she very clearly tells us “that’s not me…some of it is, but it’s manipulated to make Nick look bad.”
2. The filmmakers didn’t wait until the very end to reveal the twist. It happened in the middle of the story, and this allowed us to then get to know the real Amy during the second half, who was not an infallible master manipulator. She was a woman with a plan, but had to adapt, and made mistakes along the way.

Sam Levinson’s attempt to make Jocelyn into Amy Dune falls flat because it lacks consistency, context, and a planting of clues. If this series was all a red hering, it should have been told completely from another character’s perspective. It shouldn’t show us Jocelyn on her own having moments alone with the fake abuse hairbrush. That’s more than a red herring, that’s lying. This should have been a The Great Gatsby type of story where the main character is under a veil of mystery, for it to work.

The reason why I believe very strongly this was Sam’s objective is because, when I first found out about the plot twist, it made me think of that weird scene in episode three where they’re talking about how “you’re not supposed to say no because then you’re denying yourself an experience.” They literally say “some of the most terrible experiences in life can be the most valuable, artistically.” And they talk about how the death of Robert Plant’s 5 year-old son was worth it because this gave the world Led Zeppelin’s All of my Love.

This actually could have worked, if it was Jocelyn the one arguing for the artistic value of bad experiences. It would have shown her belief that trauma is necessary for artistic success. Which, honestly, seems to be what Sam Levinson thinks. To me this is the writing equivalent of method acting:

Funnily enough, I think that could have been an interesting series. An artist who’s convinced they can’t create anything unless they undergo trauma, so they go search for it, and have to deal with the consequences of this search. 

But instead, we got this exploitative series with cartoonish characters and a plot twist that makes no sense when examined against the rest of the plot.

This is my take on The Idol. Let me know what you thought fo the series, and comment what should I do next!