erotic thriller? i don't even know her: thoughts on 'The Idol' ep. 2

Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Jocelyn. The music video shoot doesn't match your vision. The dancing isn't as tight as it could be. And if this song flops, it is going to be so fucking embarrassing. It is only natural to blow off some steam with some buds, and with your budding romantic interest, whose name isn't just Tedros, as we knew last week, but Tedros Tedros.

STRAY THOUGHT TIME!

• The music video shoot scene was very compelling. I think it deserves major props for depicting this kind of meltdown. Not to invoke Britney again (but sorry, if we have a blonde pop girl who's losing her mind because she feels like she has no control over her life and career, there is a blueprint for it) but it reminded me of the story behind her "Everytime" music video shoot, shared in Vanessa Grigoriadis's Rolling Stone cover story "The Tragedy of Britney Spears." Britney wanted to show herself OD'ing in a bathtub and getting reincarnated as a baby; on the second day of the shoot, she wouldn't leave her hotel room: "Finally, Britney agreed to do it, but first she said, ‘I need three Red Bulls, and call my doctor,'" says a friend." I need three Red Bulls, and call my doctor. I think about that quote all the time!! Like, what can a girl NOT do with three Red Bulls? They give you wiiings.
• Capri cigs (I think I clocked the signature swirly pack design) are Jocelyn's Red Bull in this scenario.
• The sex scenes continue to be blah, kink-ish nonsense, but they're not quite the "torture porn" promised in the Rolling Stone production exposé. There was definitely an '80s erotic thriller aspect to the cinematography of the scene where Tedros blindfolds Jocelyn and murmurs creepy asides at her while "Chloe," a Tedros acolyte who'd spent the last few hours dancing around Jocelyn's mansion topless and then trying on her clothes, watches. Shooting through the mirror and showing lurid slices of Jocelyn's observers while Jocelyn herself gets a short but blessed break from looking at her own body and being aware of herself...it's not hot (because everyone is beautiful but no one is horny) but it is interesting.
• That being said, if you masturbate with a glass of ice (?) so vigorously that the music video makeup artist needs to airbrush the cuts on your inner thighs? There's no wrong way to eat a Reese's but I think there might be a wrong way to jerk off.
• Chloe squealing to Jocelyn: "You have a pool??" Yes, sweet Chloe. It would be weirder if she didn't have a pool. She lives in a mansion in Los Angeles.
• The "World Class Sinner" sex remix: gimme more, I say. What I learned from this interlude is that Jocelyn knows how to engineer and produce her own music. This seems like a great skill to have and I'm impressed at her ability to turn her orgasmic sighs into quantized percussion.
• Jocelyn needs to fire her entire team. Including her BFF/assistant Leia, who somehow has never done cocaine before? If you are a pop star's assistant, you should be carrying Narcan, testing bags for fentanyl, and chopping up the coke yourself into your pop star's preferred size and shape of line. Anyway, these people have all led Jocelyn astray. Besides duplicitous dancer Dyanne, who appears to have set up Jocelyn to meet Tedros Tedros and fall under what passes for his "spell," we have a whole squad of people who have encouraged Jocelyn to start selling tickets to a tour...based around an EP.......an EP........that hasn't been released yet????? No wonder she went nuts last time. 8 or 9 people in her squad and not an iota of business sense among them.
• Jocelyn also needs to fire her hair stylist. Last week there was a tweet about how flat Jocelyn's hair looks, and it started discourse I don't even want to get into, but I have to say that her hair looked awful in the music video shoot, all crunchy and stringy. She can do so much better. Like, when I saw Lady Gaga headline Coachella in 2017, the first words out of my mouth when I found myself capable of speaking were OH MY GOD HER HAIR LOOKS SO GOOD. Not only was the hair a surprise departure from her usual avant-garde presentation — once it was let out from underneath a severe black cap, it was soft, blonde and fluffy, with subtle pastel streaks of blue and pink — but it looked great the entire show. Extensions? A wig? I don't know, I don't care. All I know is that Jocelyn's haireography could max out its slay quotient — her hair itself could even theoretically become mother — with a better stylist.

• Halfway through the episode, a song by The Weeknd plays. Does The Weeknd exist in the cinematic universe of The Idol? Does Tedros Tedros hear the words "You kind of look like that guy The Weeknd" a lot? Or, I guess, "You kind of look like The Weeknd but with a rat tail?" Also am I insane or does Tedros Tedros not actually have a rat tail? It looks like he has straight hair pulled into a low ponytail that gets braided. This is a rat tail. Tedros Tedros is stealing rat tail valor.
• The song Chloe plays on the piano that everyone starts singing together at the end of the episode was so bad that it worked perfectly. Songwriting is all about letting your dumbest ideas fly forth with confidence. The dumbest shit ends up making the best songs. 90% of 1950s and '60s rock 'n' roll was dumb as hell. Do the Twist?? You look like an idiot. The Swenglish that formed the best pop songs of the 1990s bubblegum era was so dumb. Send the crazy wildin' static..sing it. And this rootin' tootin' homespun "we have Regina Spektor at home" tune really did it for me. Jocelyn is wrapped in plastic and it's not fantastic. The cure is an upright, slightly out-of-tune piano and a sing-a-long. A taste of authenticity......of....family.....

Molly Mary O'Brien runs I Enjoy Music and tweets here.