‘The Idol’ Is About the Quest for Perfection. Why Is It So Flawed?

variety.com:

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers from the second episode of HBO’s “The Idol,” titled “Double Fantasy,” now streaming on Max.

On “The Idol,” Jocelyn just wants to be perfect. If only the show around her had such clarity of vision. As played by Lily-Rose Depp, the pop star Jocelyn spends part of the series’ second episode pushing herself through endless retakes of a music video shoot — long past the point at which the thing seems as good as it’ll ever be — in order to attain the crispness and clarity that lie just out of reach in her mind.

Those sequences, with Aronofsky-movie-ready shots of bloody feet and the intriguing chatter among Jocelyn underlings that had been a highlight of the show’s first episode, create, for a time, a sense of Jocelyn’s reality, and what she has at stake.

The credibility problems of “The Idol,” such as they are, come through in the episode’s second half. We are given ample, oftentimes overly blunt, evidence as to why Jocelyn might want a reset. (She hates her own music, and, in references that at times can feel crowbarred into the script, is in a state of mourning for her late mother.) And that she chooses The Weeknd’s Tedros comes as no surprise.